Pitchfork

The story of the Hold Steady really is pretty inspirational: Midwestern indie lifers whose brilliant older band (Lifter Puller, act like you know) only really found an audience after it broke up give up on the idea of music as a living, form a classic rock bar band for the fuck of it, and then, after years, blow the fuck up with that. Plus they're all extremely funny dudes who know how to talk (Craig Finn in particular), and Tad Kubler's blasé rock star guitar moves are the sort of thing you could watch all day and not get bored.

All of which is to say that the Hold Steady are basically ideal subjects for a documentary. And that documentary is about to happen. On April 7, Vagrant Records will release a double-disc package called A Positive Rage. (In Europe, Rough Trade will release it on April 6.) The first disc will hold the documentary; the second disc will be a live album that the band recorded on Halloween 2007 at Chicago's Metro (we were there!). It'll be the Hold Steady's first live album, and given that this is one of the truly great bands out there tearing up the road right now, it should be pretty essential. The enhanced version will also include the three bonus tracks from the Stay Positive physical edition ("Ask Her for Adderall", "Cheyenne Sunrise", and "Two Handed Handshake") and two more unreleased joints ("Spectres" and "40 Bucks").

But the real reason to cop A Positive Rage will probably be the first disc, a 53-minute documentary that starts out with their first-ever London show and follows the band on their 2006 U.S. tour behind third album Boys & Girls in America. That means it'll show this band right around the tipping point where they became serious club-circuit headliners. The doc will even include footage of a Hold Steady show at Minneapolis's First Avenue, the hometown spot where Prince taped Purple Rain. This should be life-affirming.

In related Hold Steady news, they'll spend spring touring hard, since that's what they do. They've also got a few WTF shows coming up, including a few dates opening for Counting Crows in the UK and, reportedly, a gig at TV chef Rachael Ray's SXSW party.

Real talk: Kanye West's 2008 Glow in the Dark tour was the sort of pop spectacle we don't get to see nearly often enough anymore. It was a conceptually rigorous, utterly batshit concert-as-narrative that found Kanye ignoring the crowd and instead talking to a fake spaceship computer with Esthero's voice. The special effects were nuts, the stage design looked incredibly expensive, and the rearranged songs found room for kettle drums on every track. No other rap star in history would conceive of an arena tour in which he was the only guy visible onstage for a full two hours, and Kanye absolutely pulled it off.

This thing was closer to Disney World's Star Tours ride than it was to, say, Jay-Z's Hard Knock Life tour. Actually, it was probably closer to some old-school art-rock eyeball-destroyer like Bowie's Glass Spiders tour than it was to either of those. Also Rihanna's opening set ruled. I loved it. And now Kanye's turning it into a book.

The way E! Online describes it, the forthcoming Glow in the Dark tome will be a sort of deluxe coffee table thing with photos and conceptual sketches and set lists. The book will also include a CD of the symphonic interlude-music from the show and an interview with Spike Jonze (co-director of the "Flashing Lights" video). Rizzoli New York is set to publish the book in October.

In other Kanye news, on February 13 he'll tape an episode of "VH1 Storytellers" in Los Angeles. When Kanye's mentor Jay-Z taped an episode of the same show about a year and a half ago, all the anecdotes were misremembered scenes from gangster movies, and it was sort of lame. But Kanye's got basically none of Jay's filter, and he loves to talk, so this thing will probably rule. A contest on his website will give away about 80 tickets to fan club members.

Tennessee's Bonnaroo Festival is obviously a big deal, and its organizers are probably better at scoring the biggest names than any other festival organizers in these United States. Last year, for instance, they landed Metallica and Kanye West and Pearl Jam among the usual hordes of jam-bands and indie types. But this year they've outdone themselves.

They got Bruce! With the whole E Street Band and everything! Bruce Springsteen does not need to play festivals, and yet here he is. (This is his only North American festival appearance this year, says a press release.) And the reunited Phish! For two sets! Whatever your feelings on those dudes, that is an extremely big get right there. Also the Beastie Boys! And Nine Inch Nails! And Erykah Badu! And Animal Collective! And David Byrne, Wilco, TV on the Radio, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Al Green, Snoop Dogg, Elvis Costello, Bon Iver, Jenny Lewis, Okkervil River, Santogold, Neko Case, Grizzly Bear, the Decemberists, Yeasayer, Band of Horses, MGMT, and Andrew Bird! This thing is going to be nuts. (No My Morning Jacket though?)

The festival goes down June 11-14 at its usual Manchester, Tennessee location. Keeping in mind that there are still more names left to be announced, here is the absolutely absurd lineup in all its glory so far:

The few, the proud, the independent record stores. With the rest of the economy joining the music business in a perilous free fall, indie shops are getting hit hard right now. But help is on the way in the form of the second annual Record Store Day, which will be celebrated April 18 at mom and pop favorites around the country. As an incentive to get customers into the shops, Matador is releasing several sweet limited edition vinyl specials.

There's a 7" with Sonic Youth covering Beck's "Pay No Mind" on the A-side and Beck doing SY's "Green Light on the flip, a previously unreleased LP of a 1997 Pavement gig from Cologne, Germany and another 7" with Jay Reatard's "Hang Them All" on the top and Sonic Youth's "No Garage" on bottom. Start drooling.

Only 2,500 copies of each record will be available at participating Record Store Day spots, so plan your camp-out accordingly. Nice and orderly-like:

First off: an apology. Sometimes we get so busy pawing through Decemberists album cover news that we miss something big. And so we're late to the punch on this one: Super Roots 10, the latest entry in the ongoing EP series from monolithic Osaka scene kingpins the Boredoms, is out now. It exists. There aren't any copies up on Ebay yet, but if you keep a watchful eye out, you can probably own a copy for somewhere in the low triple-digits.

The EP went on sale last Wednesday, though CDJapan says that the first pressing is already completely sold out, unsurprisingly enough. The EP comes with typically headache-inducing cover art from frontman EYE, who also produced the thing. Thrill Jockey, the band's U.S. label, has no word on an American release, so tough titties and happy downloading.

The tracklist mentions a remix from Norwegian space-disco master Lindstrøm. Given that the Boredoms and Lindstrøm are basically the only two entities on the planet capable of producing 20-minute tracks that we can bear listening to all the way through, this is pretty much a genius pairing. There's also a remix from someone named DJ Finger Hat, which is such an awesome DJ name.

All the info on the Boredoms' site is in Japanese, and Babelfish is typically unhelpful: "Unexpectedness the seizure rhythm which is attached, the destruction heaven it is rough the vocal and tape operation ......And so on it consists sound, the bold approach use for music the music life body which you are proud in outer space saying, is not overstatement." Actually, that's probably exactly how the Boredoms meant to phrase it.

Photo by Nilina Mason-Campbell

The Decemberists' new album, The Hazards of Love, is due out March 24 on Capitol, but SXSW attendees will get to hear the album played live in its entirety nearly a week earlier. On March 18, Colin Meloy and his merry men and women will headline NPR's SXSW showcase at Stubb's with a top-to-bottom run through The Hazards of Love. It will be the very first time the album has been played live. My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden and Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark, who play important roles in the album's fairytale, will be on hand to sing their parts.

For those who can't make the show, it will be broadcast and webcast on NPR. Other bands playing the NPR showcase have yet to be announced.

-- Rap biopic alert! The former music writer Cheo Hodari Coker, who adapted the script for the Biggie biopic Notorious from his own surprisingly great Biggie book of the same title, has signed on to write a Run-DMC biopic. According to the Hollywood Reporter, he'll adapt Bill Adler's book Tougher Than Leather: The Rise of Run-DMC for the horribly named production company DJ Classicz, which hopes to secure the involvement of Run, DMC, and Russell Simmons. Weirdly enough, this won't be the first Run-DMC biopic, though the last one had basically zero basis in fact and also had Blair Underwood playing Russell Simmons. And lest you think Coker only adapts biopics from books about rappers who were murdered (though, honestly, that wouldn't be a bad career niche), the Hollywood Reporter reports he's also writing a movie called Lowriders, which I really hope is like The Fast and the Furious except with lowriders.

-- The story of DMX's recent headfirst slide into insanity now has a climax: On Friday, an Arizona judge sentenced the once-great rap star to 90 days in prison and 18 months probation on charges of theft, drug possession, and animal cruelty, The New York Times reports. Please, please let this guy get his life back together.

-- Prog-metal nerds rejoice: Swedish pastoral death metal kingpins Opeth will spend the month of May touring the U.S., bringing epic Norwegian Viking metal survivors Enslaved along with them. Average song length at this show is going to be well into the double-digits.

-- Justin Greaves, a former member of doom metal institutions like Electric Wizard and Iron Monkey, now fronts the awesomely named stoner-folk band Crippled Black Phoenix. In Crippled Black Phoenix, he gets help from plenty of acquaintances who want to prove how down they are with doom metal, like Mogwai bassist Dominic Aitchison. On April 15, Portishead's Geoff Barrow will release 200 Tons of Bad Luck, the band's second album, on his own Invada Records.

-- Warp Records is riding a nice little wave lately with Jamie Lidell and Flying Lotus, and the long-running IDM label hopes to keep it going with its latest discovery, electro-pop producer Tim Exile. Warp, in association with Planet Mu, will release Listening Tree, Exile's third album, on March 17.

Photo by Eirik Lande

Okkervil River will release their deconstructive car-radio jam "Pop Lie" as a single on Jagjaguwar on April 21.

On its two B-side tracks (one "Pop Life" revamp and one orphaned song from the Stand Ins sessions), frontman Will Sheff lets the rest of the band take a coffee break and plays all the instruments himself.

OK. So. Erykah Badu had another baby. That's probably the big, important news here. She gave birth to a baby girl at home in Brooklyn yesterday morning, and by all accounts the kid is healthy. No name yet. Congrats, etc. But the part of this story that everyone is going to remember is the way Badu and the baby's father, blog-rap enigma Jay Electronica, let the world know about the birth: They Twittered it.

Both Badu and Jay have protected their Twitters, so you had to have been among Badu's 4595 followers or Jay's 4560 followers to keep up on all the baby-related goings-on this weekend. Because, you know, privacy and all. But someone at MTV News must be among those followers, since this article gives us the complete TMI blow-by-blow.

According to MTV, Badu started things off with "Morning, I'm in labor," then told all her Twitter followers about the length of time between the contractions. Then she disappeared from Twitter until the baby was actually born, for understandable reasons. Jay, however, stayed on his Twitter grind throughout the experience, starting things out thusly: "Labor has begun. Stand back. No hospitals. No doctors. No medicine. We're waiting for the midwife to show." Um, where the fuck was the midwife?

Jay would go on to Twitter about Badu's water breaking and how much she was dilated. And then this Twitter-bomb: "I see the head, full of hair." He also sent a Twitter-message to the producer Just Blaze: "You should be here." Just Blaze, ever diplomatic, managed not to Twitter back with "Um, that's OK, I'm good."

Later, from Jay: "Feb. 1 2009 my first child, my daughter born at 130 PM exactly. It's the happiest day of my life." Aw. And then, from Badu: "I can't believe it's over. Home birth, no painkillers, about five hours, she was a little past due date, but I didn't mind waiting. Breath."

Great news about the baby and all, but this has to be the weirdest leap any major artist has ever taken into the post-everything Web 2.0 universe. The sense of mystery and remove that great artists once projected has now given way to this rampant, almost pathological oversharing, and now pretty much anyone with an internet connection can learn about every squishy moment of Erykah Badu's labor. Maybe it's time for the artists of the world to get off the damn computer.

Badu already has two kids from previous relationships, one with OutKast's Andre 3000 and one with the West Coast rap legend the D.O.C. If they'd had Twitter a few years ago, the world might never have looked at Andre the same.

A-Trak freaks getting sick of jogging to last year's Nike Running Man mix, there's hope for you yet. The famed DMC champ/Kanye DJ/Kid Sister boyfriend/remix-a-holic is readying another chopped-up comp for all your exercise and/or dancing needs. It's out April 14 on Thrive and it's called Infinity +1, as in "I hate you to infinity" ... "Well, I hate you to infinity...plus one!" Well done, A-Trak.

The disc covers au courant indie dance-night heavies-- MSTRKRFT, DJ Mehdi, Midnight Juggernauts, Little Boots. (Full track list below.) And those looking for a more interpersonal A-Trak experience should check him out when he hits clubs from coast to coast starting February 13 in Chicago. One-up yr bros: