Odds & ends

* Jesus has a great post on the continued relevancy of Bruce Springsteen with a bunch of live tracks to download of songs from the new album, and some interesting and intelligent commentary. As usual, he also has the fabulous Photoshopped picture.

* Chris Martin’s label really doesn’t like him guesting on other people’s songs. If that were me, I would chafe under such artistic restrictions, but I guess such is the music biz.

* Speaking of the music biz, The Features, whose song “Blow It Out” (off 2004′s Exhibit A) is a singular feel-good masterpiece tune whose lyrics celebrate obsessive love with music, have been dropped from their record label for refusing to record a cover song for a commercial.

* Damn hard to confess, but Liam Gallagher admits that “Oasis are no longer the greatest,” passing the mantle on to Coldplay, U2, or the Stones.

* There is an interesting article that several blogs I read have commented on entitled Up With Grups, by Adam Sternbergh from the New York Metro. It talks about a new generation of music fans becoming parents and how they transmit their tastes on to their children. Interesting positing about the disappearance of the generation gap. The article is incisively funny and perhaps a little bit depressing for some reason? Maybe we are just afraid to grow up.

* Marathon Packs has a very interesting post with the Talking Heads’ 1975 CBS demos. Early, early stuff “recorded right about the time the Village Voice referred to David Byrne as a ‘skinny, neurasthenic Roy Orbison with the voice of a psychotic fifteen-year-old and he isn’t even fifteen’.”

* Bring the girl rock: Sweet Oblivion has recently posted live sets from both Juliana Hatfield and Nina Gordon (Veruca Salt). I love it.

* Tonight in Reading, England there is a Legends Charity Football Match (and by football I mean soccer for all us Yanks) starring none other than Richard Ashcroft. I’d pay to see him all sweaty-like, and it’s for a good cause.

* Summer tour/live performance info:

• Counting Crows summer tour with Goo Goo Dolls
• Ray LaMontagne summer tour with Guster
• Pearl Jam “secret” show in NYC this Friday and an online streaming set from Letterman Thursday afternoon

* And, finally, here’s a short ‘lil video clip from the Ryan Adams show last Thursday. Look how much he enjoys singing Backstreet Boys.

Don’t we all, though. Don’t we all.