This is the Listening Post blog's final post.

After today, you can follow our music coverage on the Underwire culture blog, courtesy of current LP writer Scott Thill. I'll keep covering the collision of music and technology on the Epicenter business blog.

As things evolved there was a great deal of overlap among Listening Post, Epicenter and Underwire so there is a wisdom to concentrating our fire where it will have the most impact.

Scott and I are excited about continuing the same coverage we've been doing here, on Epicenter (subscribe via RSS) and Underwire (subscribe via RSS), where we'll rub shoulders with other writers and maybe even tackle a few new topics.

Thanks to everyone who posted to Listening Post blog over the years, whether on a regular basis or as a guest blogger: Sean Michaels, Stewart Rutledge, Scott Thill, Chris Baker, Dave Bullock, Michael Calore, Scott Gilbertson, Laura Moorhead, Lewis Wallace, Angela Watercutter, and Jenna Wortham. Thanks also to Wired blogs editors John C Abell, Evan Hansen, Lewis Wallace and former blogs editors Paul Boutin and Joel Johnson for help along the way. I'd also like to thank Listening Post column editors Evan Hansen, Laura Moorhead and Lewis Wallace for helping to evolve my previous digital music writing into the column that ultimately morphed into this blog, as well as Bev Hanly and the rest of the copyedit team. I know I am forgetting people here; thanks to them as well.

And, of course, thank you, our readers. You made a blog that began as a minor companion to the Listening Post column the #40 blog in the Technorati 100. We've enjoyed writing for you and hearing your thoughts, and hope to continue doing so in our new homes.

Most of all, thanks to the musicians, music lovers and innovative thinkers who make this space such a thrill to cover.

For now, I'll leave you with a nice little tune that Pandora threw my way as I was writing this:

Reporter - "Khanada" (De-Fence Records, 2008; Amazon or iTunes)

It may not have been as polished as his later works Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums, but Wes Anderson's film debut, Bottle Rocket, brimmed with a beautiful brand of naivete not concentrated as strongly in his later films.

One reason for this is the film's excellent soundtrack. Anderson's movies tend to feature top-notch tunage, but there's something about those Bottle Rocket songs and Mark Mothersbaugh instrumentals that gives us that "so fresh" feeling.

But before Bottle Rocket was a feature-length film, it was a 13-minute short film (trailer), with completely different music that Anderson had hoped to use in the feature, only to be told by the studio that the film should not feature jazz.

To coincide the release of the Bottle Rocket Criterion Edition, which includes the original short film version, Fantasy Records collected the songs from its soundtrack and will release them digitally on December 9, when the Criterion edition of the film will be released.

"I was listening to a lot of jazz at the time, especially Coltrane's albums on Blue Note and Sonny Rollins' A Night at the Village Vanguard," stated Anderson. "I was inspired by the use of American jazz in French new wave movies like Breathless. I still love this music... The studio didn't want us to use jazz in the feature version. We didn't license a lot of this music at the time because we couldn't afford it."

Time heals all wounds. Here are two songs from that soundtrack, courtesy of Fantasy Records, available here as QuickTime streams:

Vince Guaraldi Trio - "Skating" (from Peanuts, aka Charlie Brown)

Zoot Sims - "Jane-O"

Other songs included on the short film soundtrack include Artie Shaw's "The Chant," Sonny Rollins' "Old Devil Moon," Chet Baker & Art Pepper's "The Route," Duke Ellington & John Coltrane's "Stevie," Art Blakey covering Horace Silver Trio's "Nothing but the Soul" and the Vince Guaraldi Trio's "Happiness Is."

The ambitious ad-supported music service Qtrax has announced a deal with its second major label: Sony. As part of the deal, Qtrax will offer Sony's digital music catalog for free to those who install its music downloading client.

As with Qtrax's deals with EMI and Universal, Sony only agreed to license its regular digital music catalog, consisting of the same music it has already licensed to digital music stores like iTunes and free, ad-supported sources such as SpiralFrog (updated -- see below).

Qtrax's ultimate goal, however, is to go far beyond that, allowing users to download unreleased, live, rare, remixed and other major label music that's not part of that official catalog, from Usenet or possibly another P2P source. Unlike current P2P networks, Qtrax would share ad revenue with labels and publishers of those works.

Update: Qtrax president and CEO Allan Klepfisz said via e-mail from Singapore, "1) Spiralfrog requires you to wait 90 seconds for a download- our average download is 5-10 seconds does not have Sony and does not have global licenses; 2) Imeem Is streaming; and 3) P2P content is included in all our contracts. While we only propose to turn it on in approximately the next 90 days, it is an essential part of the contracts."

Continue reading "Qtrax Signs Third Major Label Deal - with Sony" »

Six lucky candidates from a field of 5,000 have survived contests across hundreds of Guitar Center stores to compete at the 2008 Drum-Off finals on January 10. But who will walk away the best new skin-pounder in the music game? That's up to the bigshots.

They were announced on Wednesday, and feature some fearsome drummers from across the sonic spectrum, including Foo Fighters' Taylor Hawkins, Tool's Danny Carey, No Doubt's Adrian Young, Avenged Sevenfold's The Rev and session vet Kenny Aronoff.  Those distinguished musicians will be joined by celebration host and Jane's Addiction slammer Stephen Perkins, The Mars Volta's Thomas Pidgeon, Shadows Fall's Jason Bittner, and Papa Roach, which performs a headliner set.

Meanwhile, lifers making Guitar Center's "Drum Legends" Hall of Fame include the late, great Mitch Mitchell -- Jimi Hendrix's recently deceased timekeeper, soloing in the video at right -- Vanilla Fudge's Carmine Appice, and Iron Maiden's Nicko McBrain, who just might be the man who owns the best metal name of all time.

The sticks meet the skins in Los Angeles at The Music Box, with $45,000 in career-enhancing possibilities on the line, including $25,000 cash, $20,000 in gear, custom-designed kits, endorsement deals, a feature in Modern Drummer, shopping sprees and onward. Welcome to the big time, drum nuts.

Got a favorite drummer you think should be at the show? Share it in the comments below.

Forrester has new predictions about the future of music. Apparently, 41 percent of music sales will be digital by 2013. As previous studies have shown, the increase in digital sales will not make up for the ongoing decline in CD sales, and so as a result, the music market will shrink  at a compound annual growth rate of 0.8, dropping to $9.8 billion in 2013. Sales in 2008, by comparison, are expected to total $10.2 billion.

A book I'm reading has made me wary about such predictions. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Black Swan teaches that it's folly to try to predict the future based on the past because there are too many unknowable variables at play, and because we never truly know the past in the first place. The events that matter most -- so-called "black swans" such as the original Napster -- are impossible to predict. Therefore, Taleb says, we must be vigilant against trusting predictions while preparing for inevitable unknowns.

Forrester's predictions make a certain amount of sense. We all know CD sales are sinking from their artificially high levels in the late nineties, and it stands to reason that digital sales are increasing, as the population moves online for music and other needs. But its prediction fails to take into account the possibility of another Napster, another black swan.

Continue reading "Music Sales Forecasts Might Be Silly" »

British music fans have a new option for purchasing music online: Amazon MP3, which sells music from all of the major labels and thousands of indie labels in the MP3 format without copyright protection. The British version of Amazon MP3 launched quietly on Wednesday, with no fanfare from the retail giant but was spotted by the Britain-based MusicAlly.

Amazon MP3 offers DRM-free music from all of the majors, as opposed to Apple, which must apply DRM to certain tracks per its label contracts. Another difference between the two giants is pricing. While Apple sticks to a single price for all singles, Amazon allows the labels a bit more variety. Songs in the British version of Amazon MP3 currently range from 87 cents to well over $1.20, and we noticed that one classical piece was priced at $4.43.

The increased competition brought about by a heavyweight like Amazon stepping into the ring may already have had an effect on music pricing in the United Kingdom. MusicAlly reports that as Amazon MP3 launched there, Apple dropped its prices on key albums in the British version of iTunes, including those by Oasis and Fleet Foxes, to under $6.

See Also:

• Amazon Launches MP3 Album Discounts
• Amazon, Google Partner for Mobile Music Store
• Study: 90 Percent of Amazon MP3 Users Didn't Use ITunes Before
• Some Of Amazon's MP3 Tracks Contain Watermarks
• Universal's MP3 Watermarks Will Not Contain Unique Identifiers

A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All has redefined the holiday special for the new millennium. But it may also have redefined holiday songs for the 21st century as well, especially Willie Nelson and Stephen Colbert's "Little Dealer Boy." Think "Little Drummer Boy" 2.0, substitute the phrase "finest gifts" for marijuana, and you're there.

Or better yet, just check out the video of the entire song at right. It's a double-exposure romp that might make Jesus blush, if he wasn't already rumored to have used cannabis himself. After all, as Willie sings in the duet, cannabis is a "plant that smokes more sweetly than either frankincense or myrrh."

If you like the tune, you're probably going to love the rest of the bizarro standards found A Colbert Christmas, out now as an iTunes-only digital EP. Heck, you might even dig Toby Keith's War-On-Christmas shocker "Have I Got a Present For You," the very track that had me worried that Colbert's holiday special might suck.

Boy, was I wrong about that.

Meanwhile, "Little Dealer Boy" has caught some flak on Colbert Nation, but I think it is one of the finest Christmas tunes ever laid down. Am I high? Post a comment below and let me know.

See also:

• Review: Colbert Christmas Defends Santa, Beheads Heretics
• Could Stephen Colbert's Christmas Musical Suck?
• Colbert Bests Obama, Wins Marvel White House
• 'Truthiness' Could Swing Stephen Colbert Into Marvel White House
• Colbert Gets His Spider, Likes Neil Young Again
• 3001: A Stephen Colbert Space DNA Odyssey
• I Am Not a Jerk, Says Stephen Colbert

Songbird is like an open source version of iTunes that handles just about everything that program does, while swapping out the iTunes store interface in favor of the world's music blogs.

You can stream music from those sources directly within the program (try that with iTunes' browser), purchasing whatever music you encounter there that strikes your fancy from multiple sources: Amazon, Amie St., eMusic or iTunes. Or, if a blog or other site offers songs as free downloads, those are gathered neatly at the bottom of the screen as well (see screenshot to the right).

At its core, though, Songbird is a solid music playback program -- albeit one that can be customized with add-ons from Songbird and other developers, a strategy we've seen before from Songbird founder Rob Lord, formerly of Winamp, which itself had a wide variety of plug-ins. Lord set his sights squarely on iTunes when he launched Songbird a couple years back, accusing the program of being "like Internet Explorer, if Internet Explorer could only browse Microsoft.com." Songbird, with its emphasis on unfettered access to the web's music sources, proves his point.

Aside from being a solid local player with Web 2.0-friendly music discovery built-in, Songbird can sync music to your iPod, so long as it's not protected by Apple's Fairplay DRM. Although a mechanism exists for playing Fairplay-protected music in Songbird, it didn't work for us (screenshots below).

Beta versions of Songbird have been kicking around for ages, but today's official 1.0 release offers several improvements over the program, including a switch to the open source GStreamer multimedia playback system, which the team says makes this version perform better and with more reliability.

Songbird also added a mashTape feature that harvests images from Flickr, videos from YouTube, artist bios from last.fm and news from Google, all related to the currently-playing song. Minor tweaks include revamped keyboard shortcuts, a new Linux installer (the program runs on Windows, Mac and Linux), the ability to find out where a file actually lives, and the ability to nest one smart playlist inside another.

Here's what the program is like to install and use:

Continue reading "Open Source iTunes Competitor Songbird Officially Released" »

Live Nation and Blockbuster announced a three-year contract that will put the promoter's large-scale ticketing system exclusively in 500 or so brick-and-mortar Blockbuster locations.

As part of the deal, blocks of tickets to shows ticketed by Live Nation will be available only at Blockbuster locations for the first four hours that they're on sale. The plan will go into effect after Live Nation's Ticketmaster contract expires at the end of the year, as part of the rollout of its own ticketing system.

"Our research definitively shows that the vast majority of music fans who prefer to buy their concert tickets at a retail location find Blockbuster to be the most convenient choice," stated Nathan Hubbard, head of ticketing for Live Nation. "Blockbuster's huge national footprint provides Live Nation with a powerful marketing partner to help drive incremental ticket sales to our events and an incredible opportunity to develop other product lines centered around music for Blockbuster customers."

Continue reading "Live Nation to Sell Tickets at Remaining Blockbuster Locations" »

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Like the old joke says -- practice. Now, Google can get you there too. Sorry -- you'll still need to practice. And audition.

Google is putting together a YouTube Symphony Orchestra that will take to the Carnegie Hall stage in five months to perform -- for the first time together -- Chinese composer Tan Dun's Internet Symphony No. 1, Eroica. Classical and non-conventional musicians can submit YouTube videos of themselves playing Tan's composition and a piece of standard repertoire in order to get into the orchestra. Judging will be done by a panel of experts appointed by Google and by the YouTube community.

"This is the first online collaboration of its kind," said Timothy Lee, product marketing manager for Google, adding, "classical music is hungry for innovation."

Sheet music for the pieces is available on YouTube in PDF format, along with individualized conductor video featuring Tan conducting each part -- so, if you're a timpanist, you can download Tan conducting the timpani part just for you. Instructions are available in 17 languages to put much of the world's classical talent on the same page, so to speak.

Lee (pictured on the right), who was involved with this idea from the start, explained to Wired.com that in addition to putting the winning performers into a live orchestra for the Carnegie Hall performance, Google will mash the uploaded performances by each winner into a single video with little boxes containing each performer, with the audio from their auditions mixed into a single orchestral track.

This means that even if you don't attend the April 15 Carnegie Hall event, you'll be able to hear what the winning players sound like together. However, there are no plans at this time to allow YouTube users to create their own "fantasy" orchestra comprised of their favorite players, said Lee, who is on a year-long sabbatical from Google as he earns his MBA from Stanford.

Continue reading "Google Crowdsources Carnegie Hall Concert" »

From remixing Rod Stewart, DJ Shadow and Radiohead to performing a kitchen-sink set with typewriters and wine glasses under the moniker Stripmall Architecture, San Francisco's Halou is a productive factory of musical ideas. Launched in 1995 by Ryan and Rebecca Coseboom and featuring engineer Count and others, Halou is currently hawking two 2008 efforts, its digital-only self-titled fourth full-length and an EP called Sawtooth.

Halou has had help from, and helped out, some bigshots along the way. Ryan and Count have aided the production of bands as different as Blackalicious, Keane and No Doubt, while Halou has collaborated with Cocteau Twins mastermind Robin Guthrie on its newest effort, and scored feature films like This Girl's Life and Quality of Life. The band has also challenged conventional wisdom with side projects like Stripmall Architecture, which plays San Francisco's Cafe Du Nord on Monday night and makes strange music out of typewriters, crystal glasses, xylophones, cello and other instruments. Fans who bring thumb drives to the show tonight will get Stripmall Architecture's loaded onto them for free.

Speaking of free, Listening Post caught up with Ryan Coseboom to talk about releasing his band's newest effort for free online, as well as the Cocteau Twins, Stripmall Architecture, and why discs aren't going anywhere, even though he'd rather have vinyl.

Continue reading "Halou Shines With Cocteau Twins, Stripmall Architecture, USB Drives" »

Ten-year-old Volker Bertelman couldn't afford a synthesizer, so he modified the family piano to sound like a harpsichord by pressing metal tacks into its hammers. Mom was not amused, but she couldn't have known that her little boy would soon make a living doing more or less the same thing.

Bertelman has become an accomplished player of the "prepared" piano -- a piano that has been modified by any number of hardware additions -- under the name Hauschka. For a typical piece, he makes more than 20 adjustments to the innards of a grand or upright piano using duct tape, felt, cellophane, bottle caps, leather wedges, aluminum foil, sheets of paper and E-bows (normally used to sustain notes on an electric guitar), as well as materials donated by his fans.

"Wherever I play, people are surprised," Bertelman told Wired.com in an extensive interview. "When I'm playing in front of an indie audience, people are just discovering more classical music. And when I play in front of a classical audience, people are surprised by how experimental a piano concert can be.

"I would say my audience is an audience that is open for discovering things," said Bertelman, whose latest album, Ferndorf (German for "distant village"), was released to critical acclaim by Fat Cat Records earlier this year. "What's also interesting is that there's a huge range of age ... there are old people, but at the same time there are very young people -- like, 18 -- and they think I'm a freak."

Continue reading "Modded Pianos Delight Indie Audiences, Classical Buffs" »

 

Here's the full interview we conducted recently with Hauschka's Volker Bertelman, a pianist who modifies his instruments with tacks, tape, felt, plastic wrap and other materials to alter its sound for his compositions, attracting fans from indie rock and classical circles alike.

As this interview reveals, Haushka arrived at the idea of modifying pianos on his own, occasionally has his equipment thrown in the trashcan by overzealous cleaning staffs, and plans to do to the orchestra what he has already done to the piano: approaching it as one would a digital audio workstation.

Eliot Van Buskirk, Wired.com: Thanks for taking the time today. I'm very impressed by your music. I didn't know about it until now, but I really enjoyed it.

Volker Bertelman, Hauschka: Thanks a lot for that.

Wired.com: My father is a pianist, and when I was growing up, I was a boy soprano singer. I was in "Ancient Voices of Children," the George Crumb piece...

Bertelman: Right...

Wired.com: And so I saw my dad messing around in the piano a little bit, just with his hands. But I'm not too familiar with prepared pianos. How did you first encounter the prepared piano?

Continue reading "How To Mod a Piano: The Hauschka Interview" »

After Long Blondes guitarist Dorian Cox suffered a stroke in June that paralyzed the right side of his body, calling into question his future as a guitarist. Since he plays leftie, a paralyzed right hand means no fretwork.

However, Cox is hopeful about recovering with the help of the SaeboFlex glove, pictured. Purely mechanical and requiring no electricity, the SaeboFlex glove "allows the neurologically impaired individuals the ability to incorporate their hand functionally in therapy and at home by supporting the weakened wrist, hand, and fingers."

"My right arm and leg aren't really usable so I can't play guitar," Cox told the Daily Telegraph. "That was a nightmare because it meant the band couldn't carry on and my livelihood had suddenly gone. But it could have been a lot worse."

The Long Blondes broke up in October mainly due to Cox's condition.

He recently spoke with the NME about what it's been like to use the glove. "It's a fantastic service, it's helping tremendously and I think it can work wonders for me and others – it's almost like a gym for my hand. I know things might never be the same again and nobody can give me a definite answer about whether I'll play guitar again, but I'm getting back on track with their help."

See Also:

• Designer Envisions Glove-Like Musical Instrument
• Geek Music Trifecta: Wii, Theremin and Star Trek
• A Glove That Speaks Volumes

Late 2008 might seem a bit late for the launch of a brand new website where bands can post their videos in hopes of being discovered, but Microsoft apparently doesn't think so. The company launched MSN Unsigned on Monday, giving independent bands yet another avenue for distributing their stuff for free online -- in this case to MSN Music's five million-plus British users.

Only UK users will apparently have access to the videos, probably due to copyright concerns, rendering the service relatively useless for music fans outside of Britain. However, there doesn't seem to be a restriction on uploading videos from outside of that territory.

In addition to the videos, MSN Music Unsigned also accepts individual songs for potential inclusion in its podcast, which will feature track-by-track analysis by music insiders. The site also offers more general advice for aspiring musicians with articles like "How to form your own boy band" and "Why you don't need a record deal."

See Also:

• OurStage Looks To Provide Opening Bands for Live Nation
• OurStage: Pushing Bands Up the Long Tail
• OurStage To Promote Winning Artists on AOL
• Microsoft Backtracks On MSN Music DRM Abandonment

Next summer, the youth of America will have a new entertainment option: ArenaFest, a music, fashion and sports circus for the indoor set that could convince social network denizens to go out and meet each other in the real world.

Unlike tours from the Rolling Stones, the Eagles and other boomer-oriented acts, which tend to charge upward of a hundred bucks per seat, ArenaFest will only costs $27.50. To attract the younger crowd, it will feature bands, extreme sports, social networking features, a modeling competition, a dating game, and videogame competitions on the venues' Jumbotron display.

Music, while not the sole focus of ArenaFest, will play a large role. Starting Monday, bands that want a chance to play in front of an estimated 100,000 fans at ten ArenaFest events can create a profile on Sellaband, a crowdsourced record label. 18 artists will be chosen from those that enter to play ten shows apiece at various ArenaFest events in their area, opening for a more established band.

Continue reading "ArenaFest Hopes to Lure the MySpace Set" »

Dr Pepper's recent publicity stunt in which the soda manufacturer offered to give every American (with a few exceptions) a free soft drink if Guns N' Roses managed to release its long-awaited Chinese Democracy album by the end of 2008 was an unmitigated success in terms of attracting attention for the brand. Apparently, Guns N' Roses had nothing to do with it, and now the band's lawyer Alan Gutman has taken the soda manufacturer to task for a "shoddy" promotion he says fooled fans and ripped off the band's image.

Gutman send a letter to Dr Pepper Snapple Group president and CEO Larry Young describing the giveaway as an "unmitigated disaster which defrauded consumers" and claims Dr Pepper "brazenly violated [their] clients' rights," according to Billboard. Gutman demanded that Dr Pepper extend the giveaway and print a full-page apology in several of the nation's prominent newspapers. And, of course, he wants damages for Axl Rose and company in return for "the unauthorized use and abuse of their publicity and intellectual property right."

Continue reading "Guns N' Roses' Lawyer Accuses Dr Pepper of Fraud " »

The world's three largest record labels have been negotiating to offer their music without DRM in the iTunes music store for the first time ever, according to Cnet sources who couldn't confirm that the labels had agreed to ditch digital rights management (DRM) altogether. At least they're talking about it.

And one of these labels, Warner Music Group, appears to be doing more than just talking. Some of its music has already appeared in the iTunes store in DRM-free form. Could the rest be soon to follow?

Some had speculated that Apple would announce DRM-free music from all four major labels on Tuesday, when it updates the store with music releases, because new albums are generally released on Tuesdays. And when the iTunes Plus area of iTunes briefly disappeared yesterday, those rumors intensified.

However, Tuesday came and went without any such announcement. We contacted Apple, Sony/BMG, UMG and WMG at around noon EST on Wednesday to see if they have anything to tell us about this and will post an update if or when we hear back. It'd be nice if labels would stop trying to use DRM as a bargaining chip to try to force Steve Jobs budge on song pricing, album bundling and other issues; that way, all of the music in the iTunes store would be available in the unprotected AAC format, causing fewer consumer headaches and widening the hardware compatibility of iTunes-purchased music.

In the meantime, we searched the iTunes store for music from all four major labels to see what sort of DRM-free tracks are available there at this point. Here's how they stacked up:

Continue reading "More DRM-Free Major Label Music Sneaks onto iTunes" »

Thanksgiving is tomorrow for us Americans, so Listening Post would like to take the time today to give thanks for the stellar year in music. Here are five examples of why it was exceedingly easy to tune in, turn on, and rock out in 2008.

The Return of My Bloody Valentine
After the reunion of the Pixies in 2004, there were few bands left alive that Listening Post would chase around the country, along with other thankful hordes. My Bloody Valentine was the top dog among that slender contingent, and it roared back to life in 2008 so loudly that we were convinced that Kevin Shields' legendary band returned only so it could kill us all. Which it did, figuratively speaking, counting up the concert receipts and shattered eardrums. And as we did with the Pixies in 2004, we anxiously await My Bloody Valentine's next move, which so far promises to be a resuscitated album and who knows what else. Who cares? We're dazed, confused and happy to have been alive in 2008.

Trent Reznor, Propheteer
The music industry is filled with too many whiners, complaining about infringement, arguing about distribution models, moaning about lost revenue that never existed in the first place. The biz is crying out for people who actually do things, and so far Trent Reznor is answering the call. From exploiting the wonders of BitTorrent to offering Ghosts I-IV  and The Slip for free, Reznor has proven that you can embrace the future and stay comfortably paid for your bravery.

Continue reading "Thanks For the Tectonic Sonics, 2008!" »

Fans who can't find the Beatles in the iTunes store can take some solace in Paul McCartney's recent admission that he doesn't object to people downloading music without paying for it.

"It's weird for me [downloading music]. I'm not from that," McCartney told the Daily Express. "I'm from going into a shop and buying a 45. We've come through vinyl, tapes and CDs -- it's all the same, except people don't pay for it [today]. I don't mind. It works out."

It's also weird that Beatles catalog is not available on iTunes while McCartney (sort of) endorses free downloads. But according to him, the Beatles/iTunes holdup is due to the record label EMI "want[ing] something we're not prepared to give them" as part of the deal.

Perhaps the answer is to try something new. Like everyone else in the music business, McCartney was fascinated by Radiohead's In Rainbows pricing-optional release and thought about participating. "I like it, it's a new idea. I like its anarchic-ness. I thought about buying it for one pence and telling my friends I'd paid £10," joked the former Beatle and current Fireman.

See Also:

• The Fireman Cometh: Paul McCartney and Youth's 'Electric Arguments'
• Video: McCartney and Youth Talk 'The Fireman'
• Paul McCartney's Blistering New Sound
• McCartney Confirms 'Mystery' Beatles Track
• What Do Chavez and McCartney Have in Common?
• McCartney to Israel, Palestine: Give Peace a Chance

Photo: slagheap