In addition to waiving the service fee on all shows for any tickets purchased today, LiveNation has deployed LMFAO and Shwayze to personally sell tickets to fans at the Palladium from 6 to 8 PM today. Considering we have spent hours on the phone with several cheerfully robotic Internet service providers today, it’s nice to see an opportunity for human contact like this. Details below:

LIVE NATION ANNOUNCES ULTIMATE ACCESS TRIPLE-PLAY WEDNESDAY!!!
EVERY FAN CAN WIN AN “ULTIMATE ACCESS PASS” GOOD FOR ALL-SHOW ACCESS TO A LIVE NATION CLUB
AND FANS CAN MEET-AND-GREET BANDS ACROSS THE COUNTRY THIS WEDNESDAY ONLY
AS LIVE NATION DROPS THE SERVICE FEE ON HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TICKETS ONLY THIS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28TH

THIS WEDNESDAY FANS BUY NO SERVICE FEE TICKETS AND MEET ANVIL, BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME, DETHKLOK and MASTODON, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH, HELLOGOODBYE, HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD with ATREYU and ESCAPE THE FATE, LMFAO with SHWAYZE, TAKING BACK SUNDAY, TESLA AND THE USED AT LIVE NATION CLUBS ACROSS THE COUNTRY

LOS ANGELES, CA – October 26, 2009 – This Wednesday Live Nation gives fans ultimate access to some of their favorite bands when for one day only every single fan who buys a ticket to a Live Nation club show is automatically entered to win an Ultimate Access Pass to the venue for which they bought their ticket. The Ultimate Access Pass is Live Nation’s golden ticket, good for admission to every single show in 2010 to an individual Live Nation venue. Every Live Nation club venue will have an Ultimate Access winner, with the names of winners posted on LiveNation.com Thursday morning at 12 Noon Eastern time. On Ultimate Access Wednesday every single ticket will be available at reduced cost as Live Nation drops the service fee on hundreds of thousands of tickets in its club venues across the country for one day only.

In addition to offering the concert goers the chance to win the Ultimate Access Pass, Live Nation is bringing music fans and their favorite bands closer together by hosting fan-and-band meet and greets at venues across the country. Bands including Anvil, Between The Buried And Me, Dethklok and Mastodon, Hellogoodbye, Hollywood Undead with Atreyu and Escape The Fate, LMFAO with Shwayze, Taking Back Sunday, Tesla and The Used will spend the afternoon meeting fans, taking pictures and answering questions. The box offices at Live Nation clubs will be open on Wednesday afternoon, selling no service fee tickets to all scheduled events. All fans purchasing tickets at the box office on Wednesday will also be entered to win the Ultimate Access Pass for that club.

It all happens Wednesday, October 28th as Live Nation drops the service fee on hundreds of thousands of tickets in its club venues across the country. In addition to the onsite meet and greets, the No Service Fee offer will also be available at www.LiveNation.com for 24 hours beginning at 12:01 a.m. local time on Wednesday, October 28th on participating shows.

“I just want to say that Hollywood Undead is totally stoked to have this chance to give back to all of our fans across the Nation on this tour,” said Hollywood Undead’s Charlie Scene. “It’s really cool to see everybody working together for the greater good of music and live shows.”

“This week we’re bringing fans 3 amazing opportunities,” said Michael Rapino, President and Chief Executive Officer of Live Nation. “The first is the opportunity for fans to connect directly with the bands they love in our venues, as the bands themselves help sell no service fee tickets. Second, is the chance to win ‘Ultimate Access Pass,’ to every one of our clubs. And third, is the chance to pick up no service fee tickets to see their favorite bands on hundreds of thousands of club tickets on LiveNation.com. This Wednesday is all about Live Nation and the bands we work with saying ‘thanks’ to the fans for their support and their love of live music.”

The following artist will be meeting fans this week in Los Angeles:

LMFAO w/ Shwayze The Hollywood Palladium 6 – 8 PM

Lawn, general admission or reserved tickets subject to available at participating venues and select shows. Parking and shipping fees may apply. Cannot be combined with any other offer or discounts.

Ultimate Access Pass good at one of participating venues only. Not available in Canada. No purchase necessary. For complete details and official rules go to livenation.com.

For the first half hour or so, they simply played their bedtime music loudly, which just confused my head. Especially since their set was a dreamy series of mason-jar lanterns hanging from telephone-pole setups that reminded me of the fireflies outside my fantasy plantation home. The audience swayed and “woo!”-ed song after song, but there weren’t a lot of arms pumping in the air or bodies jumping up and down. Not that there needs to be—it’s Grizzly Bear—but I like to be surprised at concerts.

Then, right in the middle of my yawn, they broke it out with a basstastic “Fine For Now” and the show was on. Grizzly Bear invited Victoria Legrand from opener Beach House out to sing the ooohs on “Two Weeks,” and then to sing lead on Grizzly Bear’s New Moon soundtrack contribution, “Slow Life.” This was followed by a spacier version of “Colorado,” which the stoned kids behind me repeatedly referred to as “fucking awesome.”  It’s hard to say whether the rest of the show was consistently exciting or if we were still rushing from that boost of energy in the middle, but either way, I wasn’t sleepy in the slightest when it ended.

—Amber Hollingsworth

Download: The Shins “Australia”

(from Wincing The Night Away on Sub Pop)

Photographer Lindsey Best visited the Shins show last Sunday and returned with these shots of James Mercer, Dave Hernandez and a brand-new line-up including members of Modest Mouse and the Fruit Bats. Two pages of her work below and our pre-show interview with James Mercer here.

[View with PicLens]

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Download: The Shins “Australia”

(from Wincing The Night Away on Sub Pop)

The Shins right now are no longer the Shins they used to be—founder James Mercer debuted a new line-up (with members of Modest Mouse and Fruit Bats) last week and will be taking the band from Sub Pop to their own label Aural Apothecary for their next releases. He speaks now about this and Bob Dylan, Heath Ledger and Kermit the Frog, too. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

What was it like being interviewed by a Muppet at the Grammies?
James Mercer (vocals/guitar): It was crazy. You remember seeing children being interviewed by Kermit. It’s funny how quickly you look at the Muppet as a living being. It was fun being nominated for a Grammy and then getting interviewed by Kermit was such a silly and awesome little highlight of the night. I don’t think I ever dreamed I would have talked to a Muppet. But I definitely loved the Muppets growing up. I used to get so bummed whenever the show would end. I loved it.
Did you like the Muppet Babies?
That was the cartoon version? I was already a teenager at that point, so I couldn’t really get away with watching that. I was about six years old when the original Muppets came out. So I was at the perfect age to get into that. Now, for my kid, we got Yo Gabba Gabba. My baby girl loves that. The Shins performed on that show. She’s also into tricycles.
What’s the greatest thing your child said to you this week?
Oh, she’s going to be two, and she says some awesome stuff. [Consults wife] Oh, ‘Papa, change my poo poo diaper.’ Yep, and I’ve got the second baby on the way.
How has having a family affected how you do music?
I think there are some changes—related to how children affect your connection that you have with other people. I see other people around me as the children that they were, more so. It’s something that you can imagine and get there without having a kid. But having a child connects you with other people in a way that’s scary. It’s kind of scary to care about the human race. As a young man, I always thought the way to be happy was to not care, to be apathetic about the human race. Which is a weird, dark, place to be. That’s just over. That’s done. I’m not able to be ambivalent about the whole thing anymore. Now I have a huge part of me invested in the future of this planet and these people.
Having made an artistic contribution over the last decade that appears to have some major staying power, is there any parallel there that also makes you care for the world?
I actually don’t think so. There’s some separation there that I feel with the stuff that I produce. I have a personal connection to it and understand that when it leaves me it’s up to the strange factors of pop culture and how that’s going to ingest it. You lose control of it once it leaves you in a way—how it’s perceived. You do your work up front and then everything else is out of your control.
If you could show your top five Shins songs to one person, who would you want to hear them?
Oh boy, I would be really happy if the greats got what I was doing and appreciated it. Bob Dylan would be somebody that I would enjoy his appreciation. Brian Wilson would be a neat person to talk to. David Bowie, if he gave a shit about what I was doing, I would be impressed. Fats Domino is popping into my head.
If you had to pair each of your band members with a mentor from rock and roll history for a day, who would they be?
Joe should hang out with Tito Puente for a day. Ron Lewis our bass player should hang out with Jack Cassidy. Eric Johnson should hang out with Crosby from Crosby, Stills & Nash. Who would be perfect for Dave? I’ve got it: Robert Fripp from King Crimson. And I don’t know who they would match me with. Some old songwriter. Maybe one of the Beatles? Paul McCartney.
You have thirty songs ready to record with the new lineup—how much of it is open to their input?
The way I’ve always done it is I come up with a song that’s kind of the coffeeshop version with the acoustic guitar. And then the guys, we start fleshing it out, and we’ll talk about ‘how many times do we do that part?’ and structure it. The two songs we’re doing right now—‘Double Bubble’ and ‘The Rifle’s Spiral’—I showed up with two parts and they took them and we arranged it together.
What song are you most excited about right now?
I’m really excited about the one we’re calling ‘Double Bubble,’ I don’t know if that’s what it will be called in the end but that’s the working title. It’s really fun to play and the audience really likes it. It’s got a good energy to it. It’s fun to dance to, actually, which is really cool.
Is ‘Double Bubble’ a reference to gum?
Is there something called Double Bubble? Maybe it does. It actually just popped into my head as fitting the feel of the song. Maybe they’ll give us a year supply of Double Bubble.
Will the next album be the first release on your label since splitting with Sub Pop?
It looks like my old band, Flake—we’re going to reissue the record that we did and that might be the first release on Aural Apothecary. The first Shins thing that we ever did was on Aural Apothecary but we’re starting the label again to release Shins things on it but have more control—make more money. I know a fair amount about record labels, and my manager knows more. In a way, it’s kind of simple. You call up a vinyl pressing plant and get prices—they’ll tell you what they need. Then you send off a master, they press it into records and send it to your house, then you send it to record stores yourself. That’s the stripped-down version of what a company like Sub Pop does for you. Maybe they’ve got someone who does marketing and writes press releases but you can do a lot of stuff from your bedroom really. What we’ll be doing with my manager—and he did this for White Stripes, so he’s got that example to work with—we’ll get a distribution deal with a proper label and we’ll strike up a deal where we pay them a certain amount of money and they loan us their distribution infrastructure. Yes.
Now you can be a stay-at-home dad.
I’m already that for the last year, it seems like.
Do you see yourself dedicating the rest of your life to music?
Hmm. I never thought of it that way. Really, I don’t think I could say that. It’s something that’s been lucrative for me and it’s something I enjoy doing. But, other than that, I’d say,’Gee, I don’t know.’ I’m not sure if I’m the type of person who dedicates his life to anything. I’m dedicated to my wife, Marisa, right now, I think. She’s the one I hang out with when I need to forget I’m a musician for a while.
Who would you like to make a hip-hop song with?
If I really wanted to do a hip-hop song, I’d go for Jay-Z. He seems to pull it off pretty well. I’d rap about bitches and hoes. And I’d have an all-black Bentley in the music video.
Does it feel different to carry the same name but have a different band?
It’s something to get used to. But it’s been going pretty well. I’ve known the guys for a while, except for Ron, but he is a really good guy. I collaborate often with different people. Like the Modest Mouse guys. You end up working with the people you hang out with. It’s a local thing. We have easy access to each other.
How did you end up performing at Heath Ledger’s funeral?
The main person who set that up was his assistant, who felt that it would be something he would have wanted. He had done a video for Modest Mouse and was a music fan. I knew him through my old tour manager. I met him because they were friends. He was a real rock fan. I sang a Neil Young cover at the funeral. It was ‘Heart of Gold.’ That was a strange day.

THE SHINS WITH THE DELTA SPIRIT ON SUN., MAY 10, AT THE PALLADIUM, 6215 SUNSET BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 8 PM / $35 / ALL AGES. LIVENATION.COM. VISIT THE SHINS AT THESHINS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THESHINS.

Having seen New York’s rock-driven electronic powerhouse Ratatat seven times (and counting), I’ve come to expect nothing short of greatness from guitarist Mike Stroud and bassist/synthman Evan Mast. No surprises at this show; the duo delivered their usual rock solid, booty-grinding performance. The Palladium, having recently undergone yet another renovation, is becoming an increasingly annoying venue (bag checks and full-body pat downs, seriously?). Regular concertgoers and press alike were subject to impolite security restricting floor access even to those of us with appropriate wristbands. But if you’re not averse to chatting up heavyset men in yellow jackets, you’ll end up having a good time in front of the stage. Before Ratatat delivered their highly anticipated set, the crowd suffered through the ridiculous white-boy rapping of Despot (“I eat donuts with grown-ups”… wha?) and was growing increasingly impatient during Tussle’s tepid not-so-experimental electronic set, the end of which was droned out by ravenous chants of “RATATAT! RATATAT!” from die-hards on the floor.

Gracing the stage a full half-hour late, the duo proved worth the wait. They started strong with the bombastic “Shiller” off their latest album, LP3, and never let up. The audience was almost as interesting as the show itself—mistaking the Palladium for Coachella Valley, a mysterious dude with an endless supply of water bottles wandered through the crowd squirting liquid into the gaping mouths of people apparently unconcerned with what else might be contained within the free water. Ratatat delivered favorites like “Crips” and “Loud Pipes” from their 2004 self-titled debut Wildcat, and “Lex” from their sophomore release Classics, and “Mirando” and “Shempi” from their latest. The set was full of material old and new—“full” being the operative word. My feet were shrieking bloody murder by the end of the looooong hour-and-a-half set, and by the time “17 Years” exploded from the stage, I was ecstatic—not only because it’s my fave Ratatat tune, but because it always signals the end of the show.

—Linda Rapka

(from Skeletal Lamping out now on Polyvinyl)

of Montreal are from the same city as Pylon and are currently touring a stage show to shame Cirque Du Soleil. They speak now from a glowing pyramid slowly rotating upside down atop a horse. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

There’s a lot of talk about the Of Montreal live spectacular—what are you traveling with?
Jamey Huggins (drums/bass/and more): This time we have 17 people, two busses, two giant trailers and our own stage. We’ve got dancers and actors and tons of stage props. The whole show has turned more into a theatre performance than a typical concert. And there’s all sorts of video projectors and movable risers and video screens and ridiculous stuff. We had all sorts of ridiculous ideas. Sometimes we had to scale them down but most of the stuff we’ve built ourselves. It’s not exactly professional but it’s our best attempt—it’s like a home-made version of a Broadway play or something. The whole thing was done with no experience. We sort of made it happen.
Where do the costumes come from?
Some of them we make and some of the more sophisticated ones we bought from costume companies. 50 percent of it is thrift-store and the other half is basically a hodge-podge of things that were either given to us, made for us, or that we buy. We have these things called nude suits that are flesh-colored lycra body suits that have genitals drawn onto them. We can’t get naked because obviously we’re playing a lot of all-ages venues. So we have these nude suits and the actors look like they’re completely naked from the stage but they’re really just these funny suits that have nipples and pubic hair on them. It’s kind of silly. But that’s the thing. We’re not trying to do high art. It is sexual and it is retarded and it is supposed to be funny and entertaining.
What’s one of your favorite creations?
That’s a difficult thing to answer. I guess one thing I’m proud of is the rotating stage piece because it was my design. I had originally designed it for my drum set so we could spin around. But then when it got too complicated with all the mics and stuff we decided to turn it into this rotating room.
But you’re not tied to the drums, right?
Not even remotely. I’m the one that plays seven different things in three different stations. I rarely play the same instrument even through one song. I’m jumping back and forth between drums and guitar and bass and keyboards and horns, all sorts of stuff. So I get the most exercise up there. Well, maybe next to Kevin—he’s dancing his ass off. When I joined I was part of a package deal with Dottie the keyboard player. We both joined on the same day saying that either one wouldn’t do it without the other one. At that time I was supposed to be the bass player. Me and the other bass player both knew how to play drums, so we started switching and playing half drums and half bass, and then he quit and I had to start being the drummer. For four albums I would record other stuff, but live, 90% of the time I would play drums. On this tour, we’ve hired a new drummer to take some of the weight of the parts I was missing so I can be free to play other stuff. So for me I guess it was kind of a big deal—because I was always considered to be the drummer of the band but now he plays more drums than I do. I sort of hand-picked him. There were all these people blogging that I was being replaced but I was the one who found him. It was my idea.
If each of your band mates were a condiment what would they be?
We would all be a bunch of fruits. Kevin would probably be a banana and a peach and a strawberry and then the rest of us are all a bunch of kiwis. We‘re like a family. This time we’ve got Kevin’s entire family. We’ve got his wife, his daughter, his brother—we’ve got 11 crew people, so this time it’s more like The Real World on wheels. 17 people co-habitating in this weird traveling circus kind of lifestyle. For now it’s very functional.
How’d it get from A to Z—the theatrics and the music?
I think it’s that we are all performers and we all collectively have this tendency towards theatrics. Very slowly it’s gone from us wearing our normal street clothes on stage and simply playing through our music to incorporating a few video elements, and then maybe dressing up a little bit, and then slowly it’s gotten to the point where it’s full-blown multiple costume changes, acting and video. The other thing is that most bands—and we used to do this—record the music together and then the point of the concert is to recreate the album for people. In our case, Kevin has taken this strange course where he decided to start making these private albums on his computer. So we don’t function like a normal band does where we just write songs and jam. He creates these songs on his laptop and hands them to us. Since we all have so much creative energy and we’re not putting it into the musical side, it’s very natural for us to want to be involved in creating something of our own, so we come in and make the whole stage show. It’s us trying to take his music and make it exciting for us. It’s kind of funny because we used to be musicians and now I feel a lot more like an actor.
Do you think you guys would go back to plain clothes?
Well, I don’t know about the plain clothes. We all have developed a pretty keen sense of fashion over the years. I know what you mean and I think, yes, we’re very close to that. The question becomes—how can you top it? Like last time we had this stage with light up catwalks that were pressure sensitive like Michael Jackson, and people thought that was pretty impressive. And then in New York we had a horse. Now every show we go to they’re like, ‘How come you don’t have a horse?’ And then last time we had three video screens and this time we have five. So every time you try to top it, it gets a little more out of control. At some point that has to hit a peak. I don’t think we’re quite there yet. But we all understand you can’t continue to top yourself in this grand way every time so I think we’re trying to get as much of this out of our system on this tour. We all agree that there will be a stripped-down tour with less production and more weight on the music. In England we had to strip everything down because we can’t carry all this shit internationally. And we discovered—or rather, rediscovered—that actually we’re all capable of playing acoustic and harmonizing. You start seeing all these electro-funk dance songs that are used to having drums and synthesizers and multiple backing tracks and beats and all this crap and we started playing them just with acoustic guitar and tambourine and our voices and singing the parts with our mouths—the synth parts and stuff. And it was this great realization that we could do this stripped-down thing. We started talking about incorporating that into the show and hopefully in the next tour we will do some of those moments, if for no other reason than to prove to any of the haters that we can be just a very stripped-down musical group. At the heart of it we are musicians and it’s fun to sing together and not have everything be overblown. But, yeah, anyway, for now, we’re taking it to fucking 11 as much as possible—shooting way over the top. But I do see in the very near future a totally different approach.
If you could play a show anywhere, where would you like to play?
On a ship. Not a cruise ship like some cheesy family Carnival line, but a really nice Scandinavian kind of Viking-type ship and it would go around—I’ve thought it out—it would be a Scandinavian tour following the path of the Vikings from when the Danes, Swedes and Norwegians were all fighting. We’d probably start in Northern Norway—like Bergen—and come around down southern Norway to Denmark and then around to Sweden and end up in Helsinki. And the whole thing would be that the ship has a built-in stage and we would go to ports at 6 or 8 cities and then drop the side of boat and the people in that town come on the boat and the boat is the venue, and I want to do a whole tour that way. We are living on our traveling stage, we go from town to town, and we put on a concert. We’ll do it in the summer, of course.

OF MONTREAL WITH HEALTH ON SAT., NOV. 22, AT THE HOLLYWOOD PALLADIUM, 6215 SUNSET BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 9:30 PM / $18.50 / ALL AGES. LIVENATION.COM. OF MONTREAL’S SKELETAL LAMPING IS OUT NOW ON POLYVINYL. VISIT OF MONTREAL AT OFMONTREAL.NET OR MYSPACE.COM/OFMONTREAL.