coachella

What was that purple thing John Paul Jones was playing?

At Coachella on Friday night, I had the thrill of seeing one of my musical heroes, John Paul Jones, play live with Them Crooked Vultures, which also features Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) on guitar and vocals and Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) on drums. The set had a lot of highlights--including a tremendous jam on "Scumbag Blues"--but my favorite part was seeing Jones switch between instruments, including basses with four and ten (!) strings, a mandolin, and a keyboard.

As well as...this thing. It looked like some sort of slide guitar with an electronic … Read more

Coachella iPhone app and the festival experience

Rock festivals have sure gotten easy. Back when I attended the first Lollapalooza in 1991, I had only a glancing knowledge of most of the acts on the bill, and the only way to hear them before the act was to find a friend with a deeper music collection or beg the local DJ to play, say, a Siouxsie and the Banshees song from before the MTV era. (As if.) In more recent years, navigating big multi-stage festivals like SXSW and Seattle's Bumbershoot have required the mind of a military logistics expert. To catch all the acts I wanted … Read more

My Bloody Valentine adds U.S. shows

My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" is one of those records that keeps getting better as I get older. (The Stones' "Exile on Main Street" is another.) The first time I heard a song from it, it barely registered--just a rather hard-to-hear shoegaze song on a long compilation featuring everybody from Lush to Slowdive to the Boo Radleys (who, despite their unfortunate name, made a great impression). But I kept running into devoted fans, so when I saw the re-released vinyl a couple years ago, I bought it. I didn't like it on the first listen. … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 736: Plurk that Plurkin' Facebook

Facebook comes under attack by Canadian privacy groups, but everyone's already moved on to Plurk. Er...maybe. Also: self-destructing DVDs are back! Yay! They were such a good idea the first time around, we're betting they'll be a monster hit, what with their wasteful, throwaway nature and ridiculous pricing and all. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 736

Mars lander’s robotic arm makes contact http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9956964-7.html

U.S. town tells Street View to push off http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/02/north_oaks_street_view/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9956753-7.html

Motley … Read more

Prince covers Radiohead @ Coachella

When one rock legend covers another, there's a fine line between one-upmanship and tribute, disrespect and validation. Prince is as cool as they come--surely you've all seen him upstaging Eric Clapton at the 2004 Rock Hall of Fame induction ceremony by shredding the heck out of Clapton's original solo on the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

This weekend, he took a 15-year-old single by one of the biggest bands in the world--a song that the band distanced itself from and seldom plays anymore--and made it sound new again. Prince. Radiohead. "Creep." See … Read more

Desert tunes: Death Cab For Cutie, Portishead, Jack Johnson

This week, tens of thousands of alt-music junkies are fleeing to the desert to take part in the hottest event around: the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. And when we say "hottest" we mean both temperature hot and, yes, sexy hot, as well. We're impressed with the headliners, such as Portishead , Death Cab For Cutie, Jack Johnson, but we're even more down with the bands in the small print, too, such as Little Brother, Jens Lekman, and Modeselektor.

We're not actually going to Coachella (bummer), but we will be celebrating virtually via the playlist … Read more

Hotshot robot enjoys insult comedy and stealing your girlfriend

Attendees of this past weekend's Coachella music festival in Southern California spotted a robot named Hotshot who apparently roamed the fairgrounds making colorful robotic commentary. Falling somewhere between Short Circuit and Triumph the insult-comic dog, Hotshot seems to be a remote-controlled bot with a head-mounted camera and an off-site operator who provides the robot with its witty banter.

Hotshot begs an interesting and possibly terrifying question. Is it possible to engineer a robot that has a better chance of getting lucky than you do? Not some kind of super-realistic sexbot like Cherry 2000, but a Johnny 5-style robot … Read more