Image courtesy of Uptown Notes.
Apparently sick of NYU kids copping their activist style, students at the New School have barricaded themselves into a building on their Union Square campus. Back in December, the New Schoolers seized a building for pretty much the same reason: they hate University President Bob Kerrey with a deep and devout passion and want him to go the hell away. Students and faculty seem to despise this guy, for reasons both fair and unfair (for a nice primer on the conflict, check out this article from New York Mag). I don’t really know what the anarchist flags and black bloc attire of the protesters have to do with Kerrey, but why miss a chance to help the mainstream media portray you as apeshit insane?
UPDATE: The NY Times reports that the revolution has been quashed. Ol’ Man Kerrey asked the NYPD to arrest the occupiers, so a squad of helmeted riot police stormed the building and took 19 into custody. This’ll no doubt further endear Kerrey to his angry little university.

Pic courtesy of Parlour.
You guys remember 2004? Back when Green Day got all into politics, eyeliner, and bloated concept albums? Well, so does Tony-award winning director Michael Mayer, and he remembers it so fondly that he’s turning American Idiot into a musical running this fall at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in California. Sayeth the Times:

For now the creative team is tight lipped about how, exactly, it will translate the libretto of ‚”American Idiot” into a narrative. As Mr. Armstrong admitted, ‚”It’s not the most linear story in the world.”
But Mr. Mayer said, ‚”If you read it a certain way, you can pull out a multiplicity of voices.” He hinted that a triumvirate of characters referred to elliptically in the album’s lyrics, with names like Jesus of Suburbia, St. Jimmy and Whatshername, would likely emerge as the central characters. All told, he said, the ensemble would include 19 performers playing characters in their early 20s, though no casting has been announced.

Sounds like it has the potential to devolve into a disgusting mess of pretension. Mayer is optimistic, though, and has dreams of a run “in a beautiful, big Broadway theater.” I think that the success of this thing really depends on the casting. My recommendation after the jump.

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The zombie trope is pretty well-worn at this point, but as far as I’m concerned, you can’t have too many music videos that put the undead front and center. “Thriller” it ain’t, but the Handsome Furs’ vid for “I’m Confused” is still weirdly fun. And check out Alexei Perry’s earrings!
Be warned though, this is a NSFW deal thanks to one very confused, very naked zombie.

Handsome Furs “I’m Confused” from Sarah Marcus on Vimeo.

Thanks for the tip, Mike.

via HuffPo.
Ugh. This is probably why a sitting president has never tried this late night talk show business before. You let rip one unfortunate joke, and it’s all anyone will talk about. Seriously, who thought this appearance was a good idea? In a 40 minute interview on a comedy show, something off-color is bound to slip out, and that’ll be the clip that idiot media outlets like us will replay until the proverbial tape breaks. Retards.

They review Young Jeezy first, then move on to “My Girls” about two minutes in.

Hat tip to Stereogum.

Photo courtesy of Indie Passion.
If you’ve never heard of Savoir Adore, you will. As long as the Almighty God of Indie Rock is a just and righteous god, the pop rock quartet headed by co-songwriters Paul Hammer and Deidre Muro is fixin’ to explode. Their set at Death by Audio on Tuesday drove this home with a wild, pop-inflected vengeance. A few months ago, I stumbled across them opening for Bishop Allen at MHoW, and they were really damn good. But this week they brought out the heavy artillery–an arsenal of new songs from their upcoming full-length debut, In the Wooded Forest–and they proved themselves serious contenders for the title of Most Underrated Band in Brooklyn.
Savoir’s brand of fairy tale pop has always been strong in the hooks department, but their new songs had a new level of sophistication and their older songs sounded more fleshed out. The encore, a barn-burning fist-in-the-air anthem with the unlikely title of “Transylvanian Candy Patrol,” took advantage of Hammer’s ample riffing skills and Muro’s spectacularly emotive voice and left the crowd floored (especially a pack of drunken Deidre-admirers behind me, who, once they found out her name, proceeded to chant it at every opportunity). The track (available for free online listening here), is great recorded, but you need to see them live to hear it in all its distorted, Pixies-evoking glory.
P.S. Darwin Deez opened, danced choreographed dances, and sounded great. Plus, their frontman’s appearance somehow inhabits the gray area between Hasid and hipster, and, for that alone, they deserve a mention.

After reading Lola’s post concerning the statistical reasons for my involuntary celibacy, I did a little research on the guy behind the stats, a Caltech Ph.D. student named Virgil Griffith. Turns out he’s something of a pop culture Nate Silver, using his borderline-autistic love of numbers to enlighten erstwhile web surfers about all things shallow and amusing.
Just last week, it seems, he put the finishing touches on a little chart that classifies musicians based on the relative SAT scores of their fans. To do this, he compiled different colleges’ favorite bands via Facebook and matched these acts up to the respective schools’ SAT scores. The results, while pretty far from scientifically significant, are at least amusing. According to the numbers, Lil Wayne fans score the lowest (856-896) and Beethoven’s admirers are by far the smartest (1346-1396). Other revelations: fans of the Used and gospel music are idiots compared to the genius admirers of Sufjan, Radiohead, and Counting Crows (?), while people into Something Corporate and Yellowcard are, as expected, totally average.
The complete chart after the jump (hat tip to The Grip).

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Image courtesy of P4K
The folks at Pitchfork have announced the first few bands on the bill for their 2k9 musical festival, and the lineup looks solid thus far. In addition to FREEwilliamsburg friends the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Grizzly Bear, the Chicago festival will feature the first American performance by the Jesus Lizard in over a decade. The bands announced today:
Friday, July 17
Built to Spill
The Jesus Lizard
Yo La Tengo
Tortoise
Saturday, July 18
The National
Pharoahe Monch
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Sunday, July 19
Grizzly Bear
The Walkmen
Vivian Girls
Also, if you shell out for a ticket, you’ll be able to vote online for what songs you want the four first-night bands to play. Not quite as cool of a gimmick as seeing Public Enemy perform It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in its entirety, but it’s not without its charms. Tickets go on sale 3/13.

As you may have heard, Lil Wayne is forsaking his god-given gifts as a rapper and releasing a rock album, Rebirth, this May. If “Prom Queen,” the album’s first single, is any indication, the whole thing will be a fiasco of Chris Gaines proportions. The video for this bastard child of Auto-Tune and ’90s radio rock showed up on Videogum today and I’ve embedded it below just in case you’re feeling masochistic. Essentially, the storyline is a thugged-out rehash of “Sk8er Boi,” with more tattoos and unplanned pregnancies. And yeah, it sucks.