From Blackfoot's Facebook page: It's bad enough that they've been touring around the country for the past fifteen years without lead singer, principle songwriter and founding member Rickey Medlocke but now they're touring with absolutely NO original members which begs the question, when is a band no longer the band they present themselves as? To me, this is little more than a tribute to Blackfoot. From what I understand, when the group wanted to regroup a few years ago they had Rickey Medlocke's blessing to do so without him even being in the band (he has a bigger, better paying gig in the band that calls themselves Lynyrd Skynyrd). He apparently produced their upcoming new album and approved the new line up. Someone out there might be happy with that but I know I would have no interest whatsoever in seeing them in concert. To be honest, I haven't heard anything else by them I'd liked nearly as much as Strikes anyway. I have something like five of their albums altogether, some better than others but none that really stand up to Strikes. For the record, I've seen them in concert twice. Once, as the headliner at Minges Coliseum in Greenville, NC around 1980 or so. Also on the bill that night was opening act Def Leppard who were followed by the Johnny Van Zant Band. The second time was at Roadies in Goldsboro, NC when they were touring in support of Siogo. At that time they had just added former Uriah Heep keyboardist Ken Hensley to the line up. Little did I know at the time but that Roadies gig was Charlie Hargrett's last show with the band at the time (he joined the Medlocke-less version several years ago). Charlie relates a brief bit about that Roadies concert on his website.

Not a bad performance but the quick camera cuts and MTV-style editing of the DVD it comes from (R.E.M. Live) makes it nearly unwatchable. Tourfilm is still my favorite documentation of a R.E.M. concert that's available on an officially released DVD. Hopefully they'll release one from the last tour at some point.

Wilco covered Jim's "36 Inches High" at the show they did in Raleigh last year. It's also been covered by Nick Lowe, who joined them onstage for that one (as well as "I Love My Label").

http://youtu.be/1JAti6pN2xY

I wouldn't say I disliked any of them but it took me a while to get into the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Big Star's Radio City and #1 Record.

Not a YouTube clip but this is definitely Zep related (even though Zeppelin's version is a cover), it's Alabama Shakes doing "How Many More Times" on WXPN's World Cafe.

Interview with Mike Mills (formerly of R.E.M.) from 92.9 FM in Atlanta.

Patterson Hood Explains Wal-Mart Opposition in Athens, GA (From MTVHive)

I strongly suspect Sharon is behind this as well. Someone needs to kick her ass to the curb, pronto.

On the Robyn Hitchcock tip, it looks like he's going to be performing with the Venus 3 (Scott McCaughey, Peter Buck and Bill Rieflin) in Israel in March. I've only seen Hitchcock in concert a couple of times (both of which were with the Venus 3) and they were both very much a treat.

The Grateful Dead did the same thing for the Winterland concerts that were filmed for The Grateful Dead Movie. From what I understand they were noise canceling mics for the Dead's Wall of Sound set up.

Tim Easton is a singer songwriter who's usually referred to as "alt.country" but this cut is a prime example of just how difficult it can be to label artists and how misleading those labels can sometimes be.

Though it's not part of a tour, he and Crazy Horse already have one concert date scheduled for February 10th in Los Angeles where they'll be performing as part of the MusiCares tribute to Paul McCartney. More on that from the Thrasher's Wheat blog. Here's some more info on the new Crazy Horse albums (yes, it looks like there's two): Exclusive: Neil Young Discussing Crazy Horse Reunion (From Rolling Stone)

Bill Ward Threatens to Quit Black Sabbath (From Rolling Stone)

Meanwhile, yesterday in downtown Athens...

If you're referring to the "Skynyrd blew the Rolling Stones off the stage at Knebworth" story, that didn't come from any of the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd themselves, it came from the audience. Even so, the truth of the matter is that Skynyrd apparently performed in the late afternoon (this footage makes up the bulk of Freebird the Movie) and the Stones didn't play until late at night so it's not like their sets were in close proximity to one another.

I found the Cindy Bullens at a new record store in town that specializes in vinyl only. The Jackson Browne came out of the used CD rack at another store and the Kathleen Edwards CD nearly completes my collection of her works.

Marshall Chapman remembers Tim in this performance from 2010 that was recently posted on the very excellent Music Fog website:

You really don't want to hear the answer to that do you? I'm not saying that it's in the wrong forum but if you're going to conduct a poll it's probably best to actually include a poll. Check the other topics in this forum and you will see where the majority of them have a poll, like the one I linked to in my previous post. It's really not all that hard to figure out.

That isn't a poll but this is. Kind of hard to have a poll without an actual poll.