Yes, they can. It's called having an opinion.

Not necessarily true. Gillian Welch, who hasn't released an album in 8 years has managed to keep it a secret that she's releasing a new album on June 28th. It would still be a secret had it not been reported on NPR's website in relation to a story about a listening party they conducted for new music. Goes to show that even in the age of the Interwebz that you can still keep such projects under wraps.

I've heard quite a bit of it but have yet to buy it. Still need to pick that one up as well as the latest from Steve Earle, Emmylou and The Baseball Project. Cool interview with Cooley here despite the fact that the interviewer is completely fucking clueless:

I've noticed that when some people are huge fans of a band or artist, they never think they get enough love even when the band in question is as popular as Queen. I think it's a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

From RollingStone.com: Pete Townshend Will Finally Deliver His Memoir Next Year The Who guitarist plans release the book in fall 2012, after 15 years of work Elsa/Getty Images By ANDY GREENE Pete Townshend's long-awaited memoir Who He? is finally going to see the light of day. The Who guitarist has inked a deal with Harper Collins to release the book, which the publisher says will hit shelves in the fall of 2012. “In the 1970s, Pete Townshend famously asked the musical question ‘Who are you?’” Harper Collins executive editor David Hirshey said in a statement. “Now, in his autobiography, generations of fans will finally get the answer they’ve been waiting for.” Townshend began working on his autobiography in the mid-1990s. When he was cautioned by the British Police in 2003 for accessing child pornography on the Internet, Townshend explained that he was researching material for the book. "I have been writing my childhood autobiography for the past seven years," he said in a written statement. "I believe I was sexually abused between the age of five and six and a half when in the care of my maternal grandmother who was mentally ill at the time. I cannot remember clearly what happened, but my creative work tends to throw up nasty shadows - particularly in Tommy. Some of the things I have seen on the net have informed my book which I hope will be published later this year." There was no further word about the book at the time, but four years later Townshend began a blog with plans of posting segments of it online. "The backbone is complete, all the research is in place," Townshend wrote. "And yet, because my creative and professional life is still so active, I feel I will never catch up with the present unless I retire simply to write. To retire, simply to write, when I am already a writer, presents a contradiction. So rather than endlessly write, I am going to publish." He published a fascinating account of the day that the Who previewed Tommy for critics in 1969 at a London jazz club, but soon afterwards he shut the site down with little explanation. In September of 2008 he wrote on his website that the book was "on ice." There's been little word on it since. The Who have been off the road since they toured Australia in 2009. Last year they played halftime at the Super Bowl, as well as staging Quadrophenia for charity at the Royal Albert Hall. Roger Daltrey expressed interest in bringing that show - as well as Tommy - on a world tour this year. A few weeks ago, the Who frontman announced an extensive solo tour where he'll play Tommy straight though. What exactly that means for the future of the Who remains unclear. One year ago, Townshend expressed a reluctance to return to the road. "I’m tired of touring at the moment, and I’m writing," he said. "So there are no plans right now." In that same interview, a fan asked Townshend about touring Tommy in 2019 to celebrate the album's 50th anniversary. "If we wait until 2019 one thing I can assure you: I will not be on stage," he wrote. "I will either be composing or decomposing."

From RollingStone.com: Exclusive: Hear Neil Young's Unreleased Country-Rock Gem 'Amber Jean' Gorgeous 1984 tune will be featured on Young's new archival disc, 'A Treasure' Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images By ANDY GREENE Click here to listen to Neil Young's "Amber Jean" In the early Eighties Neil Young moved from genre to genre at a frantic pace – jumping from vocoder-infused New Wave to rockabilly to country in just a few short years. In 1984 and 1985 he toured with the country group the International Harvesters, playing a large number of songs that never found their way onto albums. On June 14th he's finally releasing some of this material on the archival live disc A Treasure. The set contains 12 tracks drawn from various shows on those tours, including five that have never been released. Check out a stream of "Amber Jean," a tribute to Young's daughter Amber that he began playing in concert just weeks after she was born. Young just wrapped up his year-long Twisted Road American theater tour, and next month he's hitting the road with Buffalo Springfield for their first tour since 1968. He's supposedly working on the second volume of his massive Neil Young Archives box set, but when it's actually going to come out is anyone's guess. He tends to take his time on these things.

I wouldn't get my hopes up for an 02 DVD just yet as it still hasn't been made official. And by "official" I mean an actual press release.

That wasn't an attempt to censor you or to alter your statement, I was merely addressing that particular part of your post. Plus, others have also assumed Plant has used moments when Zeppelin had a moment in the sun to promote something of his own. I simply don't buy into that. It's just more of the Plant bashing mentality that seems to be so prevalent around here among some factions and has absolutely no basis in fact. I think people are getting the impression that he's retired from something I saw in another thread here where someone wrote to Ross Halfin and he said Page was "retired". Maybe I'm wrong but that's the only place I've read it. Who knows but from what I've read, this new album has been in the works for a number of years now. I posted an article here (perhaps even on the old board) from Rolling Stone saying that on his next record he would be using a different guitar on each track.

I don't recall a single instance of Plant using anything Zeppelin-related to promote any of his solo stuff. What, was he holding up copies of Raising Sand onstage at the 02 in order to promote it? Plans for that album and the tour that followed were done well before the 02 concert even became a reality.

Well played. Makes you wonder what album would be best suited as a floatation device.

Mark Knopfler's long forgotten sideproject, the Notting Hillbillies:

More Joan Armatrading goodness:

Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and Ernie K-Doe. Photo by Sidney Smith. It’s May of 1973 and the British Gods of Rock—Led Zeppelin—sweep into New Orleans at the height of their mysterious and epochal powers as arguably the best rock band in the world. They play a strange concert that night in the Municipal Auditorium; after all, it is New Orleans and Zeppelin is on stage playing their best stuff to a bunch of stoners and hippies and, well, you get the picture. “Jimmy suggestively bowed Robert’s bum during ‘Dazed and Confused,’” says rock journalist Stephen Davis in Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga. “[The Municipal Auditorium] wasn’t state of the art even for those days,” remembers former Atlantic Records executive Phillip Rauls (pronounced like Rolls-Royce, just like the kind Keith Moon drove into a hotel swimming pool.) “It was in a rundown area of town.” Rauls remembers very well those hours just before Led Zeppelin took the stage at New Orleans Municipal Auditorium on the night of May 14, 1973. “In those days, we partied hard,” he says. “We partied before the concerts as well, and such was the case with that particular event. Hell, we were in New Orleans having a Dixie beer and a bowl of gumbo! We were all pretty sky-high if you know what I mean.” Rock critic Jon Newlin wrote a review about the concert in the May 19, 1973 issue of Figaro, a review that is either a brilliant piece of writing or nonsensical rubbish as the Brits say. He described Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant as “a verdical odalisque with a shiny, cylindrical neck like Fernand Leger’s Big Julie, a cross between a peachy Jacobean kewpie doll, and a hard 40’s blonde (on the order of, say, Lizabeth Scott) after 800 volts worth of spoolies. Along with a zany, dumb, rubber band singing voice, he has a cagey galumphing balls-of-the-feet dance style.” To read the rest of the article click here.

I don't buy every issue but out of all the rock n' roll magazines out there it's the one I'm most likely to pick up a copy of. Uncut is pretty good too.

I loved the Furry Freak Brothers, probably the first underground comic I ever remember reading. Too bad their movie Gone With the Weed never got off the ground.

A couple of old favorites from back in the day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at0X6ksBozc&feature=player_embedded

Back when album covers were album covers: Then, when you pulled out the inner sleeve: Brings new meaning to the adage, "you can't roll a joint on an iPod".

You know that saying Casey Kasem has about having your "head in the clouds"?