Bloody Outage Outrage
The announcement that reunited British music legends The Stone Roses were to be a headliner at this year’s Coachella festival ignited another “Who the hell are those old dudes?” barrage on social media. But old-timers took control of the conversation this past weekend when Irish cult heroes My Bloody Valentine suddenly released their Chinese Democracy, the 22-years-in-the-making m b v, as a $16 download through their website … which crashed instantly. Despite waiting two decades, many MBV fans still lost their shit when they were unable to access the album. One fan even petitioned the White House, writing “Whereas the My Bloody Valentine website isn’t working and there’s a new record on it, we the people hereby petition the Obama administration to make it work again.” President Obama must be a Shoegaze superfan, because by the next morning the site was stabilized.
Boxing (Wine) for Dollars
Hard Rock legends Motorhead might be turning into merch whore extraordinaires KISS (but with better music). After launching a headphones line a few months back (and, logically, a line of skis a couple years ago), the site metalinjection.net reports that the group has lent its name to a new boxed wine. “Motorhead Sacrifice Shiraz Bag-in-Box” — which follows a line of beer, vodka and fancy bottled wine — is only available in Sweden, though we reckon fans can recreate the experience by painting a box of their favorite cheap vino of choice to resemble an amplifier with a large Motorhead logo in the middle. Gene Simmons would be proud, but no doubt disappointed the band has yet to market giant, hairy Lemmy temporary facial moles.
Cincinnati Is Weird
Perhaps it was the mania surrounding Cincinnati-spawned Pop sensations 98 Degrees reuniting. Perhaps now-40-year-old New Kids on the Block fans are still trying to justify their “Joey 4 Ever” tattoos. Or maybe it’s because Boyz II Men was the jam back in the day. Somehow, the Cincy stop of “The Package Tour” — featuring the aforementioned groups — in late June sold out U.S. Bank Arena within hours this past weekend. While we normally applaud efforts to “keep Cincinnati weird,” decisively selling out an aging boy band arena concert might be taking it too far.