It's bad enough for Cave completists that he's about to put out a hardcover mini-book detailing the making of the song Dig, Lazarus, Dig! (Speaking of which: we can only hope this will start a trend of artists putting out their own 33 1/3-style books -- why not go right to the source on these things?) Now, if we want to see their first North American tour in five years, we've also got to book hotels in Canada? Fuckers.

It's bad enough for Cave completists that he's about to put out a hardcover mini-book detailing the making of the song Dig, Lazarus, Dig! (Speaking of which: we can only hope this will start a trend of artists putting out their own 33 1/3-style books -- why not go right to the source on these things?) Now, if we want to see their first North American tour in five years, we've also got to book hotels in Canada? Fuckers.

Watching Iron Maiden last week, I was struck by something that might seem like an odd thought: “Wow, people seem to *really* love Iron Maiden!” This might seem like kind of a duh, but when you consider how thoroughly this audience knew every word and every lick of these songs, and when you consider that Iron Maiden shirt-wearing had saturated a good 80% of the audience market, you begin to get a grip on the sheer adulation this band gets from its audience.

Watching Iron Maiden last week, I was struck by something that might seem like an odd thought: “Wow, people seem to *really* love Iron Maiden!” This might seem like kind of a duh, but when you consider how thoroughly this audience knew every word and every lick of these songs, and when you consider that Iron Maiden shirt-wearing had saturated a good 80% of the audience market, you begin to get a grip on the sheer adulation this band gets from its audience.

We've got a couple pairs of tickets to give away for the Feist show, July 8 at BOA Pavilion. If you're interested, fill out this little form. We've also got some T-shirts and CDs and whatnot. For your girlfriend, of course.

Also, if anyone's got a band and wants to open for Coldplay at the Garden, our pals at FNX can make it happen.

DOWNLOAD: The Lights Out, "Liquid" (mp3)

Among the things we learned from nine pages of supplementary material provided by the Lights Out: they’ve been called “peppy,” “irresistible,” and “muscular”; they boast about their good parking karma; at least one of them is a recovered hippie; they’re really, really into Miller High Life; the quartet somehow formed before any of them had ever heard a note from any of the others; and “Liquid,” a jaunty little ditty from their new EP, Heist!, is about shallow people dating and subsequently taking arbitrary revenge on each other.

In 2004, Esquire's Scott Rabb was struck by what he later described as "the worst idea I've ever had": the fiftysomething writer decided to go several rounds with the female boxer Ann "Brown Sugar" Wolfe, a 33-year-old ex-con. In his article "Last Tango in Cleveland," Rabb describe how, despite some serious training, he went on to get his ass handed to him by a girl.

Sigur Ros
At the Bank of America Pavilion
Friday, September 19, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $25.00 and $35.00
*plus $5.00 venue and applicable convenience fees
Tickets go on-sale Friday, June 27, 2008 at 10:00 am

New Kids On The Block + Natasha Bedingfield
At the Dunkin’ Donuts Center
Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 7:30 pm

Sigur Ros
At the Bank of America Pavilion
Friday, September 19, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $25.00 and $35.00
*plus $5.00 venue and applicable convenience fees
Tickets go on-sale Friday, June 27, 2008 at 10:00 am

New Kids On The Block + Natasha Bedingfield
At the Dunkin’ Donuts Center
Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 7:30 pm

No, Phoenix circulation manager Mike Awesome isn't gay for Cute Is What We Aim For. But he did serve time as their roadie, which is why we're now able to satiate the dreams of 16-year-old girls everywhere by providing these up-close-and-personal shots of the band taken on stage, backstage, and on the bus, taken over the weekend at their sold-out show at Middle East downstairs. 20 more shots after the jump >>>

With the staff split down the middle between last night's gigs by Polvo and Iron Maiden, we elected to send our ace photog the Rev. Aaron down to the Maiden show, since, well, everyone already knows what Polvo looks like. Words, however, are not enough to describe what, exactly, Iron Maiden was up to at their big summer shew.

Pollard: the new Mulder?

To what do we owe the honor?

Ever since Guided by Voices, Robert Pollard has seemed almost embarassed by the relative straightforwardness of his most famous band's name: among the intentionally ludicrous monikers he's tried on for size over the years have been Hazzard Hotrods, Psycho and the Birds, the Soft Rock Renegades, Lexo & the Leapers, Airport 5, Circus Devils, and one of our personal faves, Go Back Snowball.

DOWNLOAD: Teletextile, "Safer Two" (mp3)

It’s always a bummer when a perfectly good Boston band sneak off and become all Brooklyn before we even get a chance to develop a crush on them. The good news is that the latest from Teletextile is chock full of remote-crush fodder: ambient electronics, sumptuous arrangements brimming with pianos and strings, ambitious melodies, and, most notably, the enchanting feather-light vocals of Pamela Martinez — who has inched away from the overwrought idiosyncrasies that had us blurbing her as the American Björk.

When we heard there was a new track up on Girl Talk’s MySpace earlier this week, we rushed over to check out what kinds of crazy mash-up concoctions Gregg Gillis has whipped up now. “I,” which was mysteriously the only track on Gillis’ MySpace, seemed like a throwback to his earlier albums - no lack of infectious beats, but if he was sampling anything at all it was fragmented to the point of imperceptibility.