Xiu Xiu Release Handmade Tour Photo Book

Surely by now you've seen the two installments of scandalous Xiu Xiu tour Polaroids that graced these very pages, courtesy of tour manager/merch dude David Horvitz. Allowing us an intimate look into the dazzling life of these rockstars in their natural habitats (chiefly hotel rooms, vans, and diners), Horvitz' photos garnered world wide (web) acclaim and remained permanently etched into the grey matter of all who saw them...for better or for worse.

So of course you're fixing for more! And Horvitz hears your pleas, which is why he's put together Xiu Xiu Tour Book #4, the latest installment in his series of handmade picture books documenting the exploits of Xiu Xiu on the open road. This one depicts moments from the Xiu's recent tour in support of The Air Force.

But check it: this time, instead of seedy Polaroids of people peeing on their feet, Xiu Xiu Tour Book #4 collects significantly more tasteful and often fairly artistic shots of the Xiu crew in action. They're hardly professional, however, which lends them a charm similar to that of your family vacation photos. If your family is, you know, slightly insane.

Check out lo-res samples of all the pix here.

Horvitz hopes to make future editions of Book #4 featuring different photographs, and the first one-- which promises bigger pages and more photos than ever before-- is available now for $20 at Horvitz' website. There's even a DIY mail-in option for folks who can't quite swing that sum. Swank!

The Fall Reveal Reformation Post T.L.C. Tracklist

Since we last delivered news from the Fall, Mark E. Smith & co. have made a few minor adjustments on their forthcoming Narnack release, due March 13 of next year.

First of all, the album is going by Reformation Post T.L.C. these days, not Reformation. Track title "My Door" has lengthened as well; it is now "My Door Is Always Open". Additional songs include "Insult Song", "Over! Over!", and "Systematic Abuse".

The record's front cover will feature a picture of the band from rock photographer Bob Gruen.

As previously reported, two Fall-related books are also set for stores in 2007. Smith's autobiography, Renegade: The Gospel According to Mark E. Smith, is due on April 26. The second, Perverted by Language, is a collection of short fiction inspired by the Fall's songs; it will hit shelves on June 28. [MORE...]

Calexico, Notwist Collaborate for Hausmusik Comp
Basement Jaxx, Daft Punk collaborate for house music comp (we wish)

You Can't Always Listen to Hausmusik - But... you might have to make an exception this time. Germany's Hausmusik imprint has stirred up something of a concept compilation by the aforementioned title to celebrate its 15-year anniversary.

For the album, which is due on December 5 exclusively in North America in both CD and double LP with book formats, 14 writers (including Thomas Palzer, Franz Dobler, Katja Huber, Harald, Staun, Didi Neidhart, Julian Weber, Sebastian Dietrich, Rev. Christian Dabeler, Almut Klotz, Roderich Fabian, Nora Scholz, Annemone Fesl and Martin Steinm ller) split into pairs to produce seven stories, each beginning with "Man kann nicht immer nur - hören," which translates to, "You can't always listen to..." Several additional contributors (Martin Dessecker, Doris Lasch, Ursula Ponn, Nadine Spengler, Martin Tom Dieck, Atak, CX Huth, Dominik Binegger, Melissa Gates, Helge Reumann, Xavier Robel, Marion Gerth and Silke Heinrich) produced comic book art, and also lent a hand in the creation of the tales.

The musicians, like the writers, worked in twos, with one artist beginning a song and another finalizing it. Pairs include Calexico and the Notwist, Console and Loopspool, Sodastream and Ms. John Soda, Couch and Squares on Both Sides, and more. [MORE...]

Antony Goes Shakespearean, Orchestral

Antony has always been pretty theatrical, but he's about to take it to the next level. According to NME.com, Mr. Hegarty, along with Natalie Merchant, Gavin Friday, and former Cocteau Twin Liz Fraser, has composed music for a two-part project themed around Shakespeare's sonnets.

Antony's creation will be performed by an eight-piece chamber orchestra from Opera North as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Complete Works Festival.

According to the festival's website, the show is scheduled to run in Stratford-upon-Avon, England on February 24 and 25. NME says that it will then tour Nottingham, Manchester, Gateshead, and Leeds, England in March.

Also on Antony's live horizon is a March 9 appearance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with accompaniment from the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. [MORE...]

Factory Records Book Heads Stateside
Douchebags still wearing Unknown Pleasures t-shirts

Whether through 24 Hour Party People, the magical interweb, or that guy at the record shop, you probably know a thing or two about Factory Records, the legendary Manchester label/collective that gave the world Joy Division, New Order, the Happy Mondays, A Certain Ratio, the Durutti Column, the Hacienda club-- and one of rock history's more colorful stories.

Factory lives on today as F4 Records, but those eager to explore the original label's rich visual legacy need look no further than Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Novel, a 224-page book and future staple of hipper coffee tables everywhere. It finally hits the States in soft- and hardcover formats on November 30.

Originally released in June in the UK, the tome boasts reprints of every album cover, gig poster, and unique article the label-- notorious for assigning catalogue numbers to everything from posters to buildings to websites to a cat-- ever released. The book itself even gets a number: FAC 461.

Factory nut Matthew Robertson put the collection together, and many of the iconic images therein were dreamt up by Factory's resident graphic designer, Peter Saville. Label co-founder and current F4 chief Tony Wilson provides the foreword.

So gather round a holiday tree of your choosing this winter, toast some egg nog and dive into Factory Records with the whole family-- then toss that Anne Geddes shit into the fire.

Mark Kozelek Readies Live LP, Sun Kil Moon Reissue

As of late, Mark Kozelek's been busy pa-rup-a-pum-pummin' up Little Drummer Boy Live, a two-disc, you guessed it, live compilation. But not, as you may have guessed, another one of those gawdurn holiday albums. Instead, the album collects 20 classic Kozelek originals and covers recorded during a series of recent European and North American shows, and arrives November 28 via his own Caldo Verde label.

In addition to Mark's take on Xmas standard "Little Drummer Boy", the material spans the Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon star's mammoth catalogue, including two previously unreleased numbers, "Moorestown" and "Unlit Hallway". Several Little Drummer Boy selections feature Phil Carney as well, also of RHP and SKM, who appeared alongside Kozelek on many of these tour dates. Those of you who choose to purchase the tunes direct from Caldo Verde will be eligible to win one helluva Yuletide present: a 12-string Takamine guitar, played by Kozelek himself from late 2003 through early 2005.

Meanwhile, on February 6, 2007, Caldo Verde will reissue Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts of the Great Highway-- in honor of the record's three-year anniversary (oh boy). The new edition of the record comes with re-worked packaging and a six-song bonus disc. Extra tunes include two covers of Leonard Bernstein's "Somewhere", alternative and acoustic takes, a radio recording of "Gentle Moon", and the previously unreleased "Arrival", which Mark originally put together for the The Girl Next Door soundtrack.

And as previously reported, former Low bassist Zak Sally will put out Nights of Passed Over, a collection of lyrics and other items of interest from Kozelek, on Sally's La Mano 21 publishing imprint. The work, previously released only in Portugal, has been given a makeover since its debut-- a new introduction, the lyrics to Ghosts of the Great Highway, more hand-written lyrics, and several setlists-- and will finally see a North American release in early 2007. Scoop it up then via Caldo Verde, as well as La Mano 21's distributors and Sub Pop. [MORE...]

Franz Contribute to Soundtrack, Doodle for Charity
Alex Kapranos' food book published

Franz Ferdinand will contribute the new song "Hallam Foe Dandelion Blow" to director David Mackenzie's forthcoming film, Hallam Foe. According to the Franz website, the track "was recorded during the band's most recent tour of Latin America and is described as a 'lyrical drunken waltz.'"

The soundtrack will come out on Domino some time next year, and will also include music from Franz's Domino labelmates Sons and Daughters, Psapp, and Four Tet.

In a recent interview with The Daily Record, Franz frontman Alex Kapranos described the new music, which does not use any drums, as "quite dark and full of whimsy."

According to several short descriptions from across the Internet (including IMDB), the movie, filmed in Edinburgh, Scotland, is about a teenager, Hallam (played by Jamie Bell, aka the kid from Billy Elliott and that Green Day video), who becomes a voyeur following the suicide of his mother-- a death which he is certain was a homicidal strike by his new stepmother. Sounds strikingly similar to another H-titled British tale out there, huh?

Those interested in Hallam Foe can scope out its production blog and character MySpaces here, here, here, and here, respectively. The film opens in the UK on February 7, 2007.

Kapranos also published the book Sound Bites: Eating on Tour With Franz Ferdinand in the UK earlier this month. A collection of the singer-guitarist's previously published food columns in the Guardian, it is due to be published by Penguin in the U.S. on January 2, 2007.

In other news, Franz Ferdinand are one of many bands (and artists, writers, athletes, etc.) who generously decorated and autographed canvases to raise money for the disabled children's charity Whoopsadaisy as part of artists Julie Ann Gilbert and Cameron Ross' Stars on Canvas exhibition.

In addition to Franz, Fatboy Slim, the Kooks, and a host of others contributed art to this worthy cause. The pieces will be auctioned off at www.StarsAuctions.com and in a final, real-life auction set to take place on November 26 in Brighton, England.

As previously reported, the band recently contributed to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation benefit compilation Give. Listen. Help. Filter Magazine and Urban Outfitters teamed up for the release, which will be distributed exclusively in Urban stores and on the clothing merchandiser's website. The band is also featured on Buena Vista Social Club's forthcoming collaborative record, Rhythms del Mundo, out today (November 14) on Hip-O Records/Universal Music Enterprises (details available here).

Finally, don't forget to catch the rerun of Franz Ferdinand and What Made Milwaukee Famous on PBS series "Austin City Limits" on November 25.

The Fall Ready Reformation, Contribute Song to Car Ad

Mark E. Smith and whoever else is or will be in the Fall come next year will release their gazillionth full-length on Narnack Records in late January/early February. The album is called Reformation and features twelve songs, including the title track, "My Door", "Fall Sound", and "Scenario", which we really hope is a Tribe Called Quest cover. The album cover will feature a photograph of the band by seasoned rock photographer Bob Gruen.

There are also two Fall-related books scheduled for release next year. The first is Smith's autobiography, Renegade: The Gospel According to Mark E. Smith, due out on April 26. The second is a collection of short fiction inspired by the band's songs and is titled Perverted by Language: Fiction Inspired by the Fall. It comes out on June 28.

The Fall also contributed the Fall Heads Roll track "Blindness" to a recent commercial for a Mitsubishi SUV. Especially weird is the fact that the company inexplicably decided to keep Smith's vocals, which come in right at the end with, "I was walking down the street." What a ringing endorsement for an automobile!

Lightning Bolt's Chippendale Preps Art Book

Who'd have thought that the Brians of Providence, Rhode Island noise duo Lightning Bolt were such Renaissance men? Oh, right: art school. Anyhow, when they're not melting faces on the floors of scuzzy venues around the world with their patented electro-shock assault, these boys indulge their artistic muses: Bassist Brian Gibson animates his kooky Barkley's Barnyard Critters rock cartoon series, while drummer Brian Chippendale, as it happens, has been trading his sticks for pens and markers, illustrating like a madman, and putting together a graphic novel for the past five years.

Ninja, as Chippendale's titled it, will see official release December 1 via Gingko Press, in conjunction with PictureBox (the company responsible for unleashing the Black Dice book Gore upon the world, as well as The Wilco Book). The 144-page hardcover tome boasts some 1,500 illustrations in all, with 80 of those pages devoted to a story "starring a Ninja hunted by the forces of evil," according to a press release. We hope the forces of evil in question are pirates.

The rest of the pages, meanwhile, collect assorted Chippendale pieces, including art for Lightning Bolt records and gig posters. The man's artistic prowess has earned him a few exhibitions, too, including one at New York's D'Amelio Terras gallery that opens tomorrow (November 9) and runs through November 25, and another at Tokyo's Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, open now. Finally, Rhode Island peeps can scope Chippendale's wares at the School of Design's museum in Providence, as part of the show "Wunderground: Providence, 1995 to the Present".

Snow Patrol Release Avalanche of Material

Between releasing their fourth full-length, Eyes Open, and having to cancel tour dates twice this year due to injuries and ailments, Snow Patrol have had an up-and-down year. Gary Lightbody and Co. are making up for it by foisting plenty of new material on us: an EP, a charity record, a single, a bunch of UK tour dates, and even a little bit of non-fiction writing.

The EP is the band's own AOL Sessions, a digital release featuring live versions of four Snow Patrol songs and a cover of one Bright Eyes song ("You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will.") that you may purchase from iTunes right now.

For the charity record, Lightbody teamed up with Lisa Hannigan-- a vocalist in Damien Rice's band-- to sing a song written by Bell X1's Paul Noonan called "Some Surprise". The track will appear on The Cake Sale, a nine-song album by a collective of musicians of the same name. Other contributors to the record include Rice, the Cardigans' Nina Persson, the Thrills, Josh Ritter, the Divine Comedy, and Gemma Hayes. Oxfam Records will release The Cake Sale in Ireland on November 3, and proceeds will go toward Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign and overseas program work. [MORE...]

Zak Sally Talks Tool, La Mano, Low
Ex-Low bassist's publishing company signs distro deal with Sub Pop, puts out Mark Kozelek book

When we last checked in with graphic artist/musician Zak Sally, he was on ABC News talking about his love for the band Tool. We were confused--but not as confused as Sally himself. In a recent interview, the former Low bassist described the incident to Pitchfork as "just another case of someone asking me to do something bizarre out of the blue."

It all started when Sally-- who dabbles in freelance writing when he isn't too busy creating graphic novels or running his publishing imprint, La Mano 21-- pitched a piece about one of his favorite bands to his local alt-weekly, Minneapolis' City Pages. "I pitched them because it was something I've been thinking about and wanted to write about at some point," Sally explained. "But...I really wanted to get into the show for free. And then I couldn't! I couldn't go see them! Which I'm still kind of fuming about."

The City Pages piece was picked up by the Village Voice, one thing lead to another, and the next thing he knew, Sally was on "World News Tonight". "The whole thing was a surprise to me," he said. "It was absurd in a good way." [MORE...]

Rough Trade Records Chronicled in Book

Thirty years after the opening of the Rough Trade Shop, which gave rise to Rough Trade Records and Distribution, the groundbreaking British label is the subject of a new book. It's part of the Labels Unlimited series, (which previously covered Warp Records), and was published by Black Dog Publishing last week.

Titled simply Rough Trade, the book explores various chapters of the label's existence, discussing its DIY roots, changes in ownership, and various artists, past and present, on the Rough Trade roster. And speaking of that roster, it's an impressive one, including: the Smiths, Scritti Politti, Galaxie 500, the Raincoats, the Pop Group, Mazzy Star, the Go-Betweens, Aztec Camera, Robert Wyatt, the Fall, Young Marble Giants, the Long Blondes, the Strokes, British Sea Power, Antony and the Johnsons, and the Arcade Fire, to name just a few.

In chronicling the history of the label, author Rob Young incorporates archive images, interviews (even a rare one with Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis), and previously unseen photographs.

In other Rough Trade news, the shop's online store will begin selling digital downloads on November 14.

Nirvana's Live! Tonight! Coming to DVD

After a Polyphonic Spree-induced turn-over in the grave, Kurt Cobain is back in the spotlight once again. This time, he's headed to your television set.

Nirvana's 1994 VHS release Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!, which contains material culled from their 91-92 Nevermind world tour, will be reissued on DVD on November 7 via Geffen/UMe. The film has been color-corrected, digitally remastered in 5.1 surround sound, and expanded to include five previously unreleased live tunes from a 1991 performance at Amsterdam's Paradiso. The original video was completed after Cobain's death by Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl.

As previously reported, a film featuring a series of Cobain interviews with journalist Michael Azerrad recently made its big screen debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. Titled Kurt Cobain: About a Son, the AJ Schnack-directed work's next step is theaters nationwide.

Finally, Courtney Love's Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love memoir comes out this Halloween. [MORE...]

Billy Bragg Begets Box, Begins Book Bender

When the world falls apart some things stay in place: for example, the politically charged songwriting of Billy Bragg.

Whether championing the working class of England, challenging current interpretations of patriotism, or battling the terms and conditions of MySpace, the folk-punk artist remains a stalwart of progressivism-- and, unlike many mainstream artists whose music is (as he once described to newspaper The West Australian) "rammed down your throats and used for car adverts," Bragg consistently challenges the status quo.

Lucky for fans, his rejecting of consumerism doesn't mean there isn't plenty of his music to consume. On October 17, Yep Roc Records wraps up a massive reissuing of Bragg's solo releases by treating U.S. fans to Volume 2, a nine-disc box set featuring dozens of remastered tracks you've never heard on car adverts.

Tracing the evolution of Bragg's sound (from stripped down arrangements to the addition of a full band), Volume 2 includes four reissues: Workers Playtime (1988), Don't Try This at Home (1991), William Bloke (2002), and England, Half English (2002). Each CD is accompanied by a second disc of bonus material, a good deal of it previously unavailable, selected by Bragg and his old friends/collaborators Grant Showbiz and Wiggy. Like any decent box set of this magnitude, Volume 2 contains bells and whistles: in this case, a DVD containing a 1991 televised concert and a 2006 live show.

The prolific Bragg also released a book recently, The Progressive Patriot: A Search for Belonging, an impassioned response to the July 2005 London transit suicide bombings. He's presently touring the UK in support of the work. [MORE...]

Gorillaz Release Flood of Demon Days Multimedia

Animated multi-platinum act Gorillaz are following the success of last year's Demon Days with a DVD (their second), four iTunes-only EPs, new toy figurines, and an autobiography. Not too shabby for a bunch of cartoon characters.

The DVD, Phase Two: Slowboat to Hades, is the follow-up to the Phase One: Celebrity Takedown DVD that followed the release of their self-titled debut, and it is scheduled for an October 31 release.

According to a press release, Phase Two "rounds up the Demon Days era's award-winning videos, hi-tech performances, inventive animated shorts, acceptance speeches, and more," including "a brand-new 3D DVD reconstruction of Gorillaz' online hangout, Kong Studios. Viewers can wander through this decaying palace of sin and watch the breathtaking live performances in the cinema, visit the band's bedrooms, tour the corridors and find games, original animatics [?!], cameos from some of the Demon Days guests, and off-color jokes galore." It also comes with a CD-ROM full of 16 games, 45 desktop wallpapers, eight screensavers, and "hidden, achievement-based extras."

The four EPs that come with "previously unreleased videos and a digital booklet with images and access to bonus content like wallpaper, buddy icons, and more" are as follows: the Dare EP, due out October 24, the Dirty Harry EP, due out November 7, the El Mañana EP, due out December 5, and the Feel Good Inc. EP, due out December 26. They will be available exclusively via iTunes. [MORE...]

Death Cab, Modest Mouse, Bright Eyes Photos in Book
Beulah, Grandaddy, Rogue Wave on accompanying CD

The list of bands Peter Ellenby has photographed since he began in 1994 reads like the graduation announcement for a whole class full of indie rock elites, from role models such as Sonic Youth, the Flaming Lips, Frank Black, and Mike Watt to the more recent likes of Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, and ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead.

To commemorate Ellenby's work, Chronicle Books released the first book-length collection of his photographs this week. The book's name is Every Day Is Saturday, and it comes with a 21-track compilation of previously released songs by the bands featured in the photographs, including Death Cab, Grandaddy, Beulah, American Music Club, John Vanderslice, and John Doe. Doe (originally of X) also wrote the foreword to the book, and Tim Scanlin of Actionslacks wrote the introduction.

Here is an incomplete list of other artists featured in Every Day Is Saturday: Sebadoh, Bob Mould, the Jesus Lizard, the Beastie Boys, Jeremy Enigk, Foo Fighters, Murder City Devils, Rocket From the Crypt, Neko Case, Rilo Kiley, Queens of the Stone Age, Rogue Wave, the Get Up Kids.

On October 27, a book release party will take place at San Francisco's Bottom of the Hill, featuring performances by Oranger, John Doe, ¡Carlos!, Engine 88, Overwhelming Colorfast, and special guest Spiral Stairs (aka Scott Kannberg of Pavement and Preston School of Industry). [MORE...]

Destroyer, Califone, Okkervil River on YETI 4 Comp
Plus! Exclusive mp3s from Destroyer and the Blow

YETI magazine is back with another enormous heap of literary and musical goodness. YETI 4 has 244 pages full of pieces like an archival interview with the late science fiction author/MacArthur "genius" grant recipient Octavia Butler, an Okkervil River tour diary written by Will Sheff, and a guide from Pitchforker/Matmos-ian Drew Daniel entitled "How to Sing Along to 'Sweet Home Alabama'". Also included are interviews with Dan Bejar (which, according to a YETI representative, was conducted by "his eight-year-old mini-me"), Todd Barry, and the Blow, in addition to plenty of fiction and full-page illustrations.

That's not even cracking the surface of the magazine's contents, but the real news for Pitchfork readers is the accompanying YETI 4 compilation, which is completely full (literally, as it's almost 80 minutes long) of exclusive and unreleased tracks from the likes of Destroyer (two tunes from Ideas for Songs, a cassette-only release with an original run of 50), Califone (an alternate mix of Infinite Mixtape track and Psychic TV cover "The Orchids"), Okkervil River, the Blow, and Somos Marquis Homos, a confounding collaboration between the Murder City Devils' Spencer Moody and David Bazan of Pedro the Lion fame. Other contributions include an Eritrean folk song and a rare 1950s 78 tribute to country musician Jimmie Rodgers by two unknown Kenyan singers.

YETI will release the magazine and compilation on September 1, which also happens to be the first day of the previously reported Halleluwah Festival, where quite a few of the contributing musicians will perform. YETI has given Pitchfork two exclusive MP3s from the compilation for your sampling pleasure: Destroyer's "No One Needs to Know" and the Blow's "Get Around". You can download both at the links below.
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Sufjan Stevens Pens Personal Essay for Topic Magazine
Flannery O'Connor Smiles Down Approvingly from the Clouds

Before Sufjan Stevens was an acclaimed sell-out-venues-in-mere-hours musician, he was a writer. But you knew that already. Who else but an introspective, Flannery O'Connor-loving fellow with a creative writing MFA would pen song titles like "A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze"? Or "Come to Me Only With Playthings Now"? Carl Sandburg visits him in dreams, people!

For the current issue of Topic magazine (a quarterly journal of creative non-fiction), Stevens traded his banjo for a pen, writing ebulliently on this month's topic: music! The 1,500-word personal narrative opens with a description of one of his first musical gigs-- an instrumental moment with pots, pans, and spaghetti:

"In the obscure backrooms of my memory, there is a gauzy portrait of me drumming pots and pans on the kitchen floor. I am a bumbling infant, top-heavy, lower-lipped, thumb-suckling, encountering gravity for the first time, buffered by an afghan laid out on the linoleum, banging the consequential music of kitchen utensils: a chopstick on a glass lid, a plastic spoon on a rice steamer, the tap dancing of a whisk on a box of spaghetti. This is my first performance. I am eleven months old. I am a drum major. I am a ragtime rhythm section. I am a wild animal knocking rocks on the hard shell of mother earth, the prehistoric paradiddle. I am nerves and muscle gaining strength."

The issue also features a photo of dapper Stevens on the cover-- and the real news here is that tricked-out 'stache! Dude! What the shit!? To read the full story, pick up issue #9 of Topic.

From these humble percussive beginnings to a massive, ocean-spanning tour-- catch Sufjan live this autumn. Dates after the jump. [MORE...]

Unreleased Cobain Interviews Become Movie
Ben Gibbard provides the soundtrack

We all know Kurt Cobain as Nirvana frontman, Courtney's love, and, more recently, an action figure from beyond the grave. According to journalist Michael Azerrad, however, Cobain was more accurately, "a person who a lot of people thought they understood but probably didn't," MTV.com reports.

Azerrad first met with Cobain in 1992 to interview him for Rolling Stone. "Courtney [Love] greeted me at the front door of their apartment, and we walked down this long hallway, with a bedroom down at the end," he told MTV. "And I was just dreading what I was going to find in that bedroom. But what I found was a man lying in bed, with his feet pointed towards the door. His feet were sticking out from underneath a blanket, and his toenails were painted red. He was extremely nice, told me to come in and sit down. And then he offered me some grapes."

Later that year, Azerrad laid the idea of a Nirvana book on Cobain, who approved. Following the proposal, Azerrad interviewed the frontman over a series of months.

"I'd fly out to Seattle from New York, and he'd call me and say, 'OK, great, come over at around midnight,'" he said. "So I would take a nap, and then I'd head over. And we'd start talking, and often keep talking until the sun came up. It was basically a man, in his kitchen, talking to someone he trusts in the wee hours of the morning. The TV was always on. He was a huge 'Speed Racer' fan. He loved Chim Chim the monkey. He'd be sitting in his kitchen wearing ripped jeans and a pajama top."

Close to 25 hours of interviews were recorded, the majority of which Azerrad used in his 1993 Nirvana book, Come as You Are. Just months after the work landed, however, Cobain committed suicide. Emotionally unable to go over the remaining interviews (or even to listen to Nirvana albums, for that matter), Azerrad shelved the leftover material, not touching it for nearly a decade.

Dun dun dun...UNTIL NOW. Or a few years back, anyway, when Azerrad was interviewed for the They Might Be Giants documentary, Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns), and got to know director AJ Schnack. The two bonded over their passion for Nirvana, so when Azerrad dropped the "I've got a truckload of unreleased Cobain interviews in my apartment" bomb, Schnack was like, "Say WHAT? Let's make a movie!" Or something along those lines.

"It won't fit into what anyone is expecting about a Kurt Cobain documentary, and it's not a traditional rock doc," Schnack explained to MTV. "There's no archival footage in the film, and Kurt only appears at the very end. Basically it's the chance to sit with his voice and listen to him tell his story."

The final product, titled Kurt Cobain: About a Son, was based on 90 minutes of conversation snagged from the tapes. It features music by some of Cobain's favorite bands, from his widely known-about loves the Melvins and David Bowie to lesser-realized favorites like Queen, R.E.M., and Cheap Trick. And get this: Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard and legendary grunge producer Steve Fisk provide a "plaintive, ambient soundtrack," according to MTV. Grundie!

About a Son will debut on September 10 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Following its premiere, Schnack and Azerrad plan to take the film to theaters across the nation. But it's not easy viewin', folks.

"The movie is funny in a way and brutal in others," Schnack commented. "And listening to his voice, coupled with the visuals of the places he lived, it's both mesmerizing and haunting. You get the feeling that he was an ordinary guy-- with problems and issues-- who sort of became famous despite that. He was this really extraordinary ordinary man."

In related news, various news sources including MTV.com have reported that Courtney Love plans to release a 288-page memoir, Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love, come November. The book will include poetry, letters, childhood records, lyrics, fanzines, show fliers, never-before-seen photos, and journal entries on the topic of Cobain's death, the couple's last good night together, and more. A book tour will take place with the release of The Diaries, and is expected to hit Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York.

Aesop Rock Writes "Children's" Book
Plot features asshole who learns to sweet-talk princess

All those tongue twisters weren't for nothing. Aesop Rock has just been warming up for his magnum opus: a "children's" book. The Def Jux MC has collaborated with visual artist Jeremy Fish on The Next Best Thing, "a short story about the creative process," according to a press release. This "children's book that's not for kids" is 24 pages long and comes with a 7" picture disc that features a song with lyrics corresponding to the book's images.

According to an email from Aesop Rock, "The song is a rap song that incorporates a 'chimes' sound into the beat. At the top of the song, the reader is asked to turn the pages with each chime. The song is a full rap song in which I describe the steps, in chronological order, to this writer's block cure." 

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Do you have a news tip for us? Anything crazy happen at a show you attended recently? Do you have inside info on the bands we cover? Is one of your favorite artists (that's not somebody you know personally) releasing a new record you'd like to see covered? You will remain completely anonymous, unless we are given your express permission to reveal your identity. (Please note that publicists, managers, booking agents, and other artist representatives are generally exempt from this rule, but will also be granted anonymity if requested.)