Effed Up @ ATP

Here's a video of the great Fucked Up performing yesterday at All Tomorrow's Parties/New York. Just a random 2 minutes 30 seconds of Pink Eyes and crew (and fans) doing their thing -- this video could have been snapped from any 2 minutes 30 seconds of the set and it would have been equally as amazing.

More photos and video from ATP coming soon. In the meantime:

V.I.P. ticketing on Soundcheck

I was honored to talk about V.I.P. ticketing today on Soundcheck, where I uttered an unintentional howler: artists, I said, are “horrified and jealous” by the prices scalpers get for their tickets. John Schaefer didn’t miss a beat on that one.

Here’s the show, in a nifty embed.

And here is my story from the other day on the same topic.

SXSW: In the Dark Castle

Surfer Blood-y shadows

Chinese bands back to SXSW

South by Southwest just announced an initial list of a couple hundred showcase bands for 2010 (it’ll climb up well over 1,000 eventually), and two of the Beijing bands that recently toured the U.S., P.K. 14 and Carsick Cars, are on it. I interviewed two members of those bands, and from what I saw in Brooklyn they were pretty well received by the crowds.

It’s not unprecedented: Lonely China Day and Re-TROS came in 2007 and got thumbs-ups from Jon Pareles. The big question is always whether they will return again. P.K. 14 and Carsick Cars might have a slight advantage here, since they’re already somewhat known, and have gotten their share of critical props: Alex Ross singled out Shou Wang of Carsick Cars in his mega New Yorker piece on Chinese music, and also chose a performance by him as one of his top 10 of 2008.

(HT to China Music Radar.)

Dirty Orchjectors, and Chuck Biscuits update

Dirty Projectors has become the umpteenth touted, smart, beloved, but not huge-selling alt band to do the indie-orchestral thing, playing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Feb. 27.

It was probably inevitable. They follow Death Cab for Cutie, M83, Grizzly Bear, the Decemberists, Belle & Sebasitan, Air and Bright Eyes, all at the L.A. Phil; Joanna Newsom and, again, Grizzly Bear, both with the Brooklyn Phil; and Ben Folds with the Boston Pops. UPDATE: Even as I typed, Grizzly Bear was doing yet another orchestral gig, in London.

I didn’t expect when I got up this morning that I would be giving thanks to Henry Rollins. But thanks, Henry, for never singing “T.V. Party” with the Boston Phil at Tanglewood.

In other sorta Rollins-related news, it appears all but certain that Chuck Biscuits is alive and that his death was a hoax. Read more about it, if you’re not already too disgusted and offended by the whole thing.

‘Here Comes Your Man’ stage video, and Pixies news

With visual reference to the original videos of both “Here Comes Your Man” and “Head On,” this plays as the stage backdrop while the Pixies do “Here Comes Your Man” on their current Doolittle tour, which has been going through Europe this month and arrives in the U.S. via Los Angeles in two weeks, with opening acts.

Pixiesmusic.com “has been attacked by hackers in China,” and apparently as a result, the band has changed its official Twitter account from @pixiesmusic to simply @pixies. UPDATE: Now they say that Pixiesmusic.com is unhacked and “running clean as a whistle,” but they’re still on the new Twitter account.

Black Francis is eating fancy sandwiches.

Joey Santiago has ... “hamtrhax”?

Yorke + Flea = Good

My take on Thom Yorke’s still-unnamed new band is online now.

Press release of the day: Pixies play ‘Doolittle’

Start pricing those trans-Atlantic flights for the fall...

PIXIES ANNOUNCE "DOOLITTLE TOUR"

MONDAY, June 29, 2009 — To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of their 1989 album Doolittle, the Pixies — Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering — will embark on a very special tour this fall — the Doolittle Tour — which will kick off with two nights at the Olympia in Dublin, Ireland on October 1 and 2. Tickets for all dates (listed below) go on sale this Friday, July 3 at 9AM.

For the Doolittle Tour, the Pixies will perform all of the songs from Doolittle and its related B-sides. Pixies' classics such as "Debaser," "Wave of Mutilation," "Here Comes Your Man," "Hey," and "Gouge Away" are all on Doolittle's track listing.

"We wanted to do something special for Doolittle's 20th anniversary," said Black Francis, "and we thought his was a good opportunity to play all of the songs from that album, something we don't normally do at a regular gig."

With the first date still three months away, the band is brainstorming on Doolittle-related surprises that will also comprise the nights' entertainment.

The ultimate Pixies Collector's Set, Minotaur, will be ready to ship to purchasers in early October. To find out more about Minotaur and to order a copy, log onto www.ainr.com

Dates for the Pixies' Doolittle Tour, and appropriate links to purchase tickets are as follows:

OCTOBER
1 Olympia, Dublin, Ireland
2 Olympia, Dublin, Ireland
4 SECC - Hall 4, Glasgow, Scotland
6 Brixton Academy, London, England
7 Brixton Academy, London, England
8 Brixton Academy, London, England
9 Brixton Academy, London, England
11 Jahrhunderhalle, Frankfurt, Germany
13 Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam, Holland
14 Forest National, Brussels, Belgium
15 Zenith, Paris, France

Not sure what "Doolittle-related surprises" could mean. Simon Larbalestier photos? Live mix by Gil Norton? Haloed monkeys?

And here is my shameless, self-serving plug.

When a Chinese festival promoter pulls the plug ...

... this is what it looks like. Courtesy of China Music Radar, a blog run by Split Works, a group of Westerners based in Shanghai and Beijing who have promoted shows by Sonic Youth, Ozomatli, Talib Kweli and, last week, Ghostface Killah.

At the beginninng of June, we pointed you in the direction of the JinShan Crazy Beach Music Festival. You can read the post HERE. If you read the post, you will remember that we were dubious about it, seeing as we were 6 weeks away and there were few if any references to it online of in the media..

We’ve just received word that, despite commitments to media partnerships (and, we presume, artists and production), the investors have pulled their investment overnight. The following email tells it better than we possibly could:

Sorry to inform that Crazy Summer Music Festival has encountered big problem and all the promotion and execution works for the festival need to be stopped right now. The investor party had stopped investing on halfway, all due payment for treatment to media partners, for tickets exchange, for artists etc all have no way to continue. Sorry for that. I highly appreciated your big support. We know there are already promotions out at this point, and all the due resources i promised to give are not dispear anyways, please help me exchange all the promotion coverage and exchange resources into countable values and give back to me. We will ask for a rightful payment for giving back to you.

If the investor party had made any behavior in order to get off this obligations, just ignore, all rights and values for you to help promoting the event will be returned.

If there are already pages of promotion out, please exchange into value, and get back to me, iwill get those values back to you. If there are enough to get every information withdrewal, please let those not out. and please still give me the value exchanged from all the preparation and pages left for it. Thanks. Sorry for the big trouble, Sorry.

Sorry for everything, and thanks for your understanding. Sorry.

Honestly, we expected something like this, and we also expect more in this vein as the market progresses. Inexperienced organisers and investors see sexy opportunity – fail to budget properly, fail to obtain the right artists/ promotion/ licenses – investors pull out, festival gets canned. Festivals are very historically tough to get off the ground – conventional wisdom is that they take 3-4 years to break even (if indeed they ever do). We may see more of this before the cycle reaches any sort of maturity...

More tours by Cuban musicians?

Billboard has an interesting piece today:

Encouraged by President Barack Obama’s remarks in April that he’s seeking a “new day” in relations with Cuba, U.S. promoters have quietly begun planning stateside concerts by Cuban artists for as early as June, pending their ability to secure permission from the U.S. Department of State to perform in this country. Washington, D.C., hasn’t authorized such visits since 2003...

Cuban music enjoyed a boom in popularity in the United States after Washington exempted Cuban recordings and other “informational material” from the trade embargo in 1988 and later allowed Cuban artists to perform stateside. ... By 2000, hundreds of musicians from the island had performed in the States, most prominently the Buena Vista Social Club, whose 1997 Ry Cooder-produced album on Nonesuch went on to sell more than 1.8 million U.S. copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

“It became the opportunity to share a rich culture that was previously forbidden,” says Scott Southard, director of International Music Network, who adds that his company may try to bring back some of the surviving members of Buena Vista Social Club for U.S. performances later this year. The George W. Bush administration subsequently reduced the number of Cuban artists allowed to perform stateside and stopped issuing such visas altogether after 2003.

Musicians from Cuba were not the only ones who had visa troubles during the Bush administration, of course.

Vaselines to tour again

Sub Pop reports:

Sub Pop’s May 5th release of Enter The Vaselines is ... effectively a deluxe-edition reissue of the 1992 Sub Pop release The Way of The Vaselines with a new title and new cover art, both from the band, and a whole lot of new material (the entirety of the 17-song second CD/third LP has been added)...

It includes new mixes and re-mastered versions of everything by The Vaselines, plus never-before-heard demos, and live recordings from 1986 in Bristol and 1988 in London.

TOUR DATES:

Sun, May 10th – Los Angeles, CA – El Rey Theater
Mon, May 11th – San Francisco, CA – Bimbos
Tue, May 12th – Seattle, WA – Neumos
Wed, May 13th – Portland, OR – Doug Fir
Sat, May 16th – Chicago, IL – Metro
Mon, May 18th – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg

The Vaselines at Maxwell’s was one of my favorite shows last year. So sweetly raunchy. I’ll skip this, since it’s the kind of thing you can really only do once, but if you missed their handful of dates last year, do try to see of of these.

Guitar heroes

If I were the type to twitter ...

... I’d say that I just shook hands with every member of Metallica. VERY cool story coming soon.

2008: The year in live music

I saw slightly fewer concerts in 2008 than usual — about 90 shows, not counting theater and some other things. Here are some of the more notable events, with favorites in bold itals.

Best were Nick Lowe, Leonard Cohen, the Vaselines and My Bloody Valentine. (Am I getting old, or what?) Most surprsing: Information (opening for Teenage Jesus, who were great too), “From Beyond” (conflict of interest alert), Philip Glass’s “Satyagraha” at the Met, Jamey Johnson, and the Korean avant/traditional fusion of the Tori Ensemble. Most disappointing was probably everything about Oneida’s show at the Kitchen except “Sheet of Easter,” as much as I do love them.

1/10: Lou Reed and John Zorn (with Laurie Anderson) @ The Stone
1/19: Blonde Redhead, Raveonettes, School of Seven Bells @ Terminal 5
1/29: Vampire Weekend, Beat the Devil @ Bowery Ballroom
2/1: Joanna Newsom w/ Brooklyn Philharmonic @ BAM
2/6: Cat Power @ Terminal 5
2/13: Jason and Lucas Ajemian’s “From Beyond” @ 436 West 15th Street (behind Passerby bar)
2/13: MGMT, Yeasayer, Violens @ Bowery Ballroom
2/14: Yeasayer, MGMT, Chairlift @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
2/23: The National, My Brightest Diamond @ BAM
3/7: “Peter Grimes” @ Metropolitan Opera
3/10: Vinicio Capossela @ Joe’s Pub
3/13-15: SXSW (highlights: Motörhead, Holy Fuck, My Morning Jacket, Liam Finn, Bon Iver, Atlas Sound, Wye Oak, Pissed Jeans, Handsome Furs, Health, 2 Live Crew, White Shoes and the Couples Company, the Pillows)
3/30: Boredoms @ Terminal 5
4/2: Beach House, Papercuts, Luke Temple @ Bowery Ballroom
4/4: Shelby Lynne @ Ethical Culture Society
4/6: Simone Dinnerstein @ Town Hall
4/9: Nick Lowe w/ Robyn Hitchcock (and Elvis Costello!) @ Grand Ballroom, Manhattan Center
4/16: Joe Jackson @ Town Hall
4/17: Opening party @ John Varvatos store, 315 Bowery (former CBGB): Wayne Kramer, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Tom Morello, Jerry Cantrell, Slash, Joan Jett, Ian Hunter, Ronnie Spector, others.
4/19: “Satyagraha” @ Metropolitan Opera
4/30: Madonna @ Roseland
5/4: Tashi (Wuorinen, Takemitsu, Messiaen) @ Town Hall
5/19: The Swell Season, Interference @ Radio City Music Hall
5/24: Rosa Passos @ Allen Room
6/6: MIA, Rye Rye, Holy Fuck @ McCarren Pool
6/11: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss @ WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden
6/13: Teenage Jesus and the Jerks (Lydia Lunch, Jim Sclavunos, Thurston Moore), Information @ Knitting Factory
6/14: Oneida (“The Wedding”) @ The Kitchen
6/20: My Morning Jacket @ Radio City Music Hall
6/23: Coldplay @ Madison Square Garden
6/25: Leonard Cohen @ Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts, Montreal (pre-festival)
6/26-28: Montreal International Jazz Festival (highlights: Dee Dee Bridgewater, Vieux Farka Touré, Return to Forever, John Jorgenson, Al Green, Hank Jones duos with Joe Lovano and Brad Mehldau; Mehldau solo; Saxophone Summit w/ Lovano, Dave Liebman and Ravi Coltrane)
7/5: Rush @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center
7/9: Vaselines, Indelicates @ Maxwell’s
7/12: Beth Orton, Matt Munisteri @ Celebrate Brooklyn
7/13: Breeders, Matt & Kim, the Whip @ McCarren Pool
7/18: Billy Joel @ Shea Stadium
7/19: Matmos, Leprechaun Catering @ Le Poisson Rouge
7/20: Liars @ McCarren Pool
7/25: Black Kids, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, Zambri @ Santos Party House
8/7: Neil Diamond @ XL Center, Hartford
8/9: All Points West: Radiohead, the Roots, Kings of Leon, Black Angels @ Liberty State Park, NJ
8/17: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Menahan Street Band @ Central Park Summerstage
8/20: The Ex with Gétatchèw Mèkurya; Mahmoud Ahmed and Alèmayèhu Eshèté with Either/Orchestra; Extra Golden @ Damrosch Park Bandshell, Lincoln Center Plaza
9/10: Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Joe Lovano @ Village Vanguard
9/17: Lee Ann Womack, Jamey Johnson @ Allen Room
9/23: My Bloody Valentine @ Roseland
10/11: Haroon Bacha @ Forest Hills Jewish Center
10/16: TV on the Radio, Dragons of Zynth @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple
10/17: “Baltimore Round Robin” w/ Beach House, Jana Hunter, Santa Dads, Lexie Mountain, Lesser, Teeth Mountain, Nautical Almaniac, Lizz King, Creepers, WZT Hearts, Ed Schrader, Sand Cats, Thank You @ Le Poisson Rouge
10/21-25: CMJ (highlights: Shugo Tokumaru, Jay Reatard, the King Khan & BBQ Show, Growing, Psychic Ills, Sian Alice Group, Mission of Burma, the Muslims, School of Seven Bells)
11/7: Rosanne Cash, Joe Henry @ Rubin Museum
12/5: “Red Hot + Rio 2”: CéU, Curumin, Bebel Gilberto, José González, Otto and João Parahyba, w/ Kassin, Moreno Veloso, Domenico Lancellotti, Money Mark, Janja Gomes, Jorge Continentino, Carlos Darci and Zé Luis @ BAM
12/6: Tori Ensemble (Yoon Jeong Heo, Erik Friedlander, Kwon Soon Kang, Young Chi Min, Ned Rothenberg, Satoshi Takeishi) @ Asia Society
12/10: Bon Iver, the Tallest Man on Earth @ Town Hall
12/18: “La Bohème” @ Metropolitan Opera (with Ramón Vargas)
12/31: Joan Osborne @ City Winery
12/31: Akron/Family, Deerhoof, Megafaun, etc. @ Knitting Factory

(Top photo credit.)

Reading Reed, Reed reading

Saw Lou Reed the other night at the Housing Works Bookstore Café in SoHo, reading from his new collection of lyrics, Pass Thru Fire.

Like everything Reed does, it was amazing and perplexing. When he didn’t look bored, he looked wounded; when he didn’t look wounded, he was angry, physically so — the crowd was told that flash photography was forbidden, and when some poor schmuck snapped him with flash at close range, Lou slammed his fist in rage.

He’s constantly slipping between emotional extremes, on the one hand aloof and cynical, on the other vulnerable and coiled like a snake. When he performed Berlin in Brooklyn two years ago, I couldn’t take my eyes off his face: such numbness and yet such pain. You can see it in Tony Cenicola’s wonderful portrait of him that accompanied my interview with Reed for that show. I was jealous; I hadn’t even come close to cracking that shell.

Nor will I ever, and nor will you. Because perhaps the most important part of his persona is something that I realized was the answer to one of the questions put by the Housing Works audience. (They couldn’t ask directly — the mere mortals had to write their questions down on slips of paper, to be asked later by Alan Light, whose expression upon being shot down by Reed’s gruff answers was priceless.)

The question was, “What’s your secret to being cool?” He’s a pro, so he made some pithy joke, and he got his laugh. But the real answer is: Be an asshole. Be superior, be indifferent, be too self-absorbed to care about anyone else, but then lash out. Show gratuitous anger. Show that the slightest thing that other people do can piss you off — that their very existence pisses you off. That’s how to be cool, and it’s why no one will ever be cool the way Lou Reed is cool.

But enough about that.

Pass Thru Fire. Not impressive, for several reasons. Not because of the literary content — though Reed himself seemed barely interested as he read his own words, two or three of the songs, especially “Rock Minuet,” froze me.

What’s irritating is that the book is one more bit of redundant catalog exploitation, and it’s sloppily done, too. By my count this is Reed’s fourth book of lyrics. It follows Between Thought and Expression: Selected Lyrics of Lou Reed, which I got for Christmas in 1991; The Raven, from 2003, which is the lyrics to POEtry, Reed’s “disjointed gray mass” of a theater piece, after Edgar Allan Poe; and the previous edition of Pass Thru Fire, from 2002. The new edition adds about 100 pages, with The Raven and a short section called “The Latest.”

And that’s just the books. This is the guy whose music has been compiled, boxed and otherwise repackaged at least 12 times in the U.S. (and still more overseas): Walk on the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed (1977), Vicious (1979), Rock and Roll Diary: 1967-1980 (1980), City Lights (1985), Walk on the Wild Side & Other Hits (1992), Between Thought and Expression: The Lou Reed Anthology (1992), The Best of Lou Reed & the Velvet Underground (1995), Different Times: Lou Reed in the ’70s (1996), The Definitive Collection (1999), NYC Man: The Collection (2003), Platinum & Gold Collection (2004), and Playlist: The Very Best of Lou Reed (2008). (Only one of these is really essential: Rock and Roll Diary, with definitive liner notes by Ellen Willis.)

Plus eight live albums: Rock n Roll Animal (1974), Lou Reed Live (1975), Live: Take No Prisoners (1978), Live in Italy (1984), Perfect Night: Live in London (1998), American Poet (2001), Animal Serenade (2004), and Berlin: Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse (2008).

Who knows how much of this clutter Reed himself can be blamed for, and how much is the cheap and greedy work of anonymous label executives over the years. But there’s no excuse for the book, which was laid out as though the designer had just gotten his first copy of QuarkXPress and was dying to show off that he new how to add smudges and wavy lines to the text, and have it all line up in a circle pattern and then fall apart, etc., etc.; if you saw a copy of Ray Gun in 1993, you’ve seen it all. But it’s more than dated, and it’s beyond gimmicky. It’s idiotic, tasteless and even disrespectful — to his own work.

Here are a few pages from the book. These are not doctored and are not scanner mistakes — this is really the way it was designed. Lou, how could you. Is it just so that you can release The Ultimate Pass Thru Thought and Expression Collection, Velvet Edition in 2013?

Where were you in ’92?

So, MBV.

Loudest band ever. Turn your intestines into linguine. Man, you shoulda been there back in ’92 — their sound birthed 1,000 bands and 5,000 rock critics.

I’ve been hearing this for 16 years. I am one of the unlucky many who did not see their infamously loud tour with Dinosaur Jr., and I have no idea whether I never had the opportunity to seem them (did they go to Albany?), or simply wasn’t cool enough at age 17 to know it was happening.

Now I’m of a certain age and in a certain bizness and, last night at Roseland, finally got to see the storied My Bloody Valentine. Based purely on vibe, I would guess that the crowd was split evenly between those who had seen them before (and let us all know), those who hadn’t (and have been living with jealousy), and those who hadn’t but lied and said they had. I wonder how many dates happened under false pretenses last night.

It says something about their legend that my first reaction was slight disappointment: they didn’t actually seem so loud. Was the problem my ears or everybody else’s? Or could it be that they had turned down? Reports from the previous night had many people running out with their hands over their ears, or hiding in safety back by the merch table. But to what’s left of my ears, it was no more extreme than any other rock concert. And how could it be otherwise, really? Doesn’t everybody use essentially the same equipment?

And even though it was wonderful to hear songs like “I Only Said” and “When You Sleep” early in the set, something wasn’t clicking. I thought about grunge, I thought about Sonic Youth and Dino Jr., I thought about the color on the cover of Loveless and how it basically proved that MBV was on the right side of their own sonic Manicheanism. But it just sort of seemed like another concert.

At some point, though — I think it was when they played “Soon,” or maybe a song or two before — it clicked, because of two things: (1) it got really loud, like really loud, in a way that I could feel in my chest, and (2) it stopped making sense. During “Soon” the music seemed to be pulling itself in different directions, the grungy guitars tugging downward against the high, whistling sample. It was out of sync, like most of MBV’s counterpoint, but that’s what seemed to keep it moving.

For the finale, “You Made Me Realise,” they basically played 10, 12, 15 minutes of noise — I don’t know how long it was, but it felt like the loudest thing I had ever heard/felt in my life. I could see the drummer, Colm Ó Cíosóig, bashing away but I couldn’t hear him; he was lost in the blast of pure guitar, or at least pure something. [This blog describes the listening experience as “like standing in front of a jet engine preparing for takeoff,” and clocks the “Realise” noise jam at 15 minutes.] When they went back into the song, I had forgotten they had even been playing a song.

And when the lights went up and I turned around, there were people holding their ears and other people with blissed-out smiles. That’s the My Bloody Valentine I wanted to see.


(Photo via Flickr.)

Boredoms rumors: 9/09/09?

For various reasons, I didn’t go to the New York version of “88BOADRUM” on Friday night, which was led by Gang Gang Dance while the Boredoms themselves performed the piece in Los Angeles. “77BOADRUM,” last year, was one of the concert highlights of my life. But I knew that this one, while cool, could not compare; I’d rather hold on to the memory. (More important were conflicting social plans — I had a date with a very important 4-month-old that no number of indie drummers and freeloaders in skinny jeans was going to keep me from.)

But a source in Los Angeles tells me that when Eye was asked whether he would gather 99 drummers on 9/09/09 for a third iteration of the “BOADRUM” cycle, he had a surprising answer: 99 drummers was “too much,” but he would consider doing it with 9.

So who knows whether the show will happen, but we at least have learned one thing about Boreology: 77 is good, 88 is good, 99 is too much. I would love to know what the exact cutoff is.

Press release of the day: Summer of misery

STAIND IS BACK

MULTI-PLATINUM BAND ROLLS OUT NEW FLIP/ATLANTIC ALBUM:

THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS DUE AUGUST 19;

NEW SINGLE, “BELIEVE,” RELEASED TO RADIO AND iTUNES ON JUNE 24

WORLDWIDE SUMMER TOUR KICKS OFF JULY 4, INCLUDING DATES WITH 3 DOORS DOWN AND HINDER; INTERNATIONAL DATES WITH NICKELBACK SET FOR SEPTEMBER

Multi-platinum band STAIND has announced the much-anticipated release of THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS (Flip/Atlantic), available August 19. The first single, “Believe,” hits radio and iTunes June 24. A worldwide summer tour kicks off July 4 in Muskegon, MI prior to band’s joining the 3 Doors Down bill on July 9 in St. Louis, MO. STAIND will also tour internationally with Nickelback beginning September 8 in Cologne, Germany.

Repeat: Staind is not only still making music, but it is also touring with 3 Doors Down, Hinder and Nickelback. Rivaled in awfulness only by the Counting Crows/Maroon 5 tour.

Yet another M.I.A. update: Stet Europe cancellation ... or is that just U.K.?

Despite what her record label says, M.I.A. told New York magazine’s Vulture blog that her European tour is definitely canceled, as she had announced from McCarren Pool on Friday. Or at least her “U.K. tour,” she said, allowing for a certain bullshit factor.

Her MySpace page has numerous European festival dates listed throughout June and July. No U.K. dates there, although she appears to have had at least two lined up: Dublin (which confirms that it’s canceled; also, that’s not the U.K.) and London (which as of this writing is still selling tickets.)

“My manager was supposed to cancel it yesterday,” M.I.A. told Vulture on Tuesday, “but he was watching football — don’t tell anyone — and he forgot.”

Whatever. I’m done with this. Anyone whose travel plans have been screwed up, I feel for you.