By the time you read this, the SITUATION will have his first single out on iTunes. Yeah, that the Situation. What I'm saying is, you might as well skip the rest of this column, because it was written in a pre-Situation's-first-single world — so anything I have to say about music will be totally quaint and outdated.
The single is called "Götterdämmerung Suite, Pt. 1," and it will be released under his own name, Mike Sorrento, rather than the familiar Situation moniker. Advance reviews report that it's a brooding, Byronic, orchestral affair reminiscent of Scott Walker's early work. "Me and Brian [Eno, the track's producer] just posted up in Berlin for a few weeks, just laying down ideas and whatever," the Sitch told MTV News. "We just brought in my boy Vangelis, my boy Mike Oldfield. . . . It was a real dark time."
There's a documentary about DRAKE airing on MTV this week, and it's got a hell of a title: Drake:Better Than Good Enough. His mentor, Lil Wayne, liked to play the hyperbole card by calling himself the best rapper alive. Wayne may have known that he wasn't exactly the best, but at least he got people debating who the best was and mentioning his name in the conversation, right? Drake is learning from the master: claim to be better than you are — Drake, as we all know, is empirically not quite good enough — and, God willing, maybe you'll grow into it.
Hey, let's all take a quick break and spend a minute relaxing, clearing our minds, and silently willing JACK JOHNSON to fall down an open manhole and be eaten by giant rats.
The company that bought the CBGB name has filed for bankruptcy! The closing of the original club was a bummer, but it's truly a tragic day in the history of punk when a merchandising corporation formed to sell T-shirts capitalizing on the name of a once-important venue must close its doors.
Brooklyn Vegan reports that PETE DOHERTY was all set to play a show with SEAN LENNON in NYC, but he didn't quite make it — he was denied entry to the US upon landing at JFK and shoveled onto the next flight back to London. Shit! Is this still the Land of the Free? Doesn't the Statue of Liberty specifically request "wretched refuse" — which Pete most certainly is? Can't a man who's been arrested an average of six times per day for the past eight years still catch a fucking break in this nation? Now we'll never know how spectacular a Sean Lennon/Pete Doherty team-up would be, though I think we can all imagine.
Heartbreaking news: ALAN MOORE, the comic-book dude who wrote Watchmen and V for Vendetta, is pulling out of plans to work with Gorillaz on an opera about a 16th-century mathematician. Just when all the circles on my personal Venn diagram of things I'm extremely interested in finally line up . . .
VINCE NEIL of MÖTLEY CRÜE is coming out with a new solo album called Tattoos and Tequila, a title exactly as outlaw-rock-and-roll bad-ass as he is young. Please, Vince, act your age and call it Hepatitis and Heartburn.
