Michael Jackson's Public Memorial Service Has Finally Been Confirmed: And for $25, you too can witness history. (T-shirts will also be available.)

Meanwhile...: The DEA is joining Jackson's death investigation.

Are the Get Up Kids Recording New Material?: The band's recent Twitter activity makes it seem likely.

A Lot of Dudes Will Get a Boner Over This One: Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, and John Paul Jones are recording a record together.

Speaking of Cool Collaborations: Jesu + Isis = Greymachine.

Martyr for the record industry: Michael Jackson breaks Billboard record

Father knows best: Quincy Jones to save Vibe?

Funeral for a friend: Atlanta music scene lynchpins raise money for peer’s “green” burial

Stickin’ with Get In The Van: Big name indie acts contribute to book about touring

That’s what you get for helping Sammy Hagar’s career: Chickenfoot cancels shows due to drummer injury

That’s what you get for helping Michael Savage’s career: All That Remains drummer injures hand, drops off Rockstar tour

Two things about Vibe magazine's end: One, it's another death that's tied to Quincy Jones. Two, my dead friend Joe Wood.

Who is Joe Wood?

Last summer's Unity Conference for Journalists of Color took Joseph L. Wood, Jr. to Seattle. He disappeared on July 8, 1999, while birdwatching on nearby Mt. Rainier. He is presumed dead at this point...

One of the most frustrating things about Joe's death at the age of 34 is the loss of all that he was going to be as well as all that he was. He had already edited one stellar anthology, Malcolm X: In Our Own Image, and in his work as an editor at The New Press (one of only two black male editors working at a major New York publishing house), he had acquired and edited such important works as The Race to Incarcerate, about America's crazed prison system. He'd also written reams of dazzling essays and reportage for publications like The Village Voice, The New York Times Magazine, Vibe and Transition.

I believe the first article Joe Wood wrote for Vibe magazine was about Seattle—indeed, the article might have been in the inaugural issue of that magazine. Joe Wood spent the summer of 93 in Seattle, returned to New York City, and wrote the piece. Admittedly, the article was not very good. Admittedly, I hated it. Admittedly, I never told him this in his face because I was ambitious and did not want to lose a powerful ally in NY's literary world.

My problem with the article? It pretty much stated that Seattle was not, as a big American city, black enough because (and this got my goat) it didn't have any projects (or projects at the scale of, say, Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes). What bothered me about this assertion had nothing to do with city pride but the fact that it associated blackness (a racial designation) with the projects (a spacial designation). This was a dangerous way of thinking. Any link between the projects and blackness is arbitrary and not, as Wood seemed to argue, essential. (Similarly, Henry Louis Gates once believed that a link existed between a way of speaking and being black—this link was instantly broken when he heard the English of black Brits.) Blackness and its social and cultural productions or situations are not natural; they all result from accidents—the accident of place, language, climate, birth, so on and so forth.

Joe Wood died a decade ago; Vibe died today. It would, however, be much better if Wood and Vibe were alive, and the only dead thing was that way of thinking about the projects and blackness.

Cutesy Swede gets locked up: Jens Lekman quarantined with H1N1 virus

Cocky Swedes sell out: Pirate Bay sold to gaming company

RIP pt. 1: Sky Saxon of The Seeds passes

RIP pt. 2: Vibe closes its doors

”You will be the kind of person who suddenly gets recognized at places like Burger King, but you will still be the kind of person who eats at places like Burger King”: New reality show stars members of TLC and Salt-N-Pepa

Why stop with just the music?: The Academy won’t grant an Oscar for Best Song unless it meets quality standards

Another NASA tragedy: Buzz Aldrin teams up with Snoop Dogg for rap single

You can skip “La La Love You”. Really.: Pixies announce Doolittle tour

I hate the future: Magic Bullet Records puts catalog online for free, looks to advertising for revenue

I guess the past sucked too: The BBC gives a boy a walkman

Halo of Snakes features Brandon Wallace (old drummer for Champion), Rich Hoak (Brutal Truth), Matt Smith (Hot Cross), and Joey Angel. The band recently recorded a couple songs and posted them on their MySpace page.

Not bad, not bad. Some metal-ish guitar, some doomy bass, some thrashy, pissed off vocals. I don't love it, but I'm intrigued. They supposedly working on a new record as well.

Here's what they have to say about the new music: "No sampling, no beatmapping, no guitar pod silliness, minimal overdubs. We used our actual gear, dimed it, recorded live in the same room (there's feedback! I miss feedback!) We're all pretty pleased."

How punk rock.

In other news, the Hot Cross EP Fair Trades and Farewells is still totally killer and you should buy and/or listen to it right now.

(Thanks for the tip, Punknews.org.)

From the intro:

How do you memorialize a one-of-a-kind musical genius who went crazy, morphed his race and gender, slept with kids, was repeatedly acquitted of child-molestation charges, and then died, alone and $400 million in debt? You’ll find our answers to this question in the collection of pieces below. (Much like the man’s life, it gets fucked up toward the end.)

Michael Jackson: A Remembrance, including:

*Growing Up with Michael Jackson (Who Never Grew Up) by Dave Segal

*The Kiddie-Pleasing Linguistic Inventions of the King of Pop by Eli Sanders

*How Michael Jackson Touched Me as a Child by Megan Seling

*Michael Jackson: Dying in Slow Motion by David Schmader

*No, Really: Michael Jackson Was Crazier Than Anyone Else Has Ever Dreamed of Being by Lindy West

*Michael Jackson, Mon Amour by Kid X, Age 12

*Posthumous Ruminations of One Pissed Angel by Farrah Fawcett

*RIP, Kate Jackson by Adrian Ryan

Find the full line-up here.

TMZ's got as much of the story as there is. The crux:

We've just learned Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Los Angeles ... and we're told it was cardiac arrest and that paramedics administered CPR in the ambulance.

UPDATE: A Jackson family member tells TMZ Michael is in "really bad shape" and the brothers are headed to UCLA.

Earlier this month came tabloid reports of Jackson's self-starving, a practice that not-infrequently involves potentially lethal heart trouble. Stay tuned, and for now, let's remember the man in happier times.

New Supergroup: Members of Black Lips and King Khan and BBQ form new band, the Almighty Defenders.

RIP: Autopsy concludes Jay Bennett died of a drug overdose.

Fight!: Manager of the Black Eyed Peas has been charged with hitting Perez Hilton.

Freakout!: Crystal Castles throw another on-stage hissy fit.

"The Music Industry Is Saved": The Beastie Boys release new album details, promise to save music industry.

Oxford Collapse Collapse: Sub Pop has announced Oxford Collapse are breaking up.

Looks like those recent Sunny Day Real Estate reunion rumors turned out to be true:

Following a more than 10 year hiatus, all four original members of pioneering Seattle rock band Sunny Day Real Estate will regroup for a 20-date US tour starting Sept. 17th, 2009. In addition, Sub Pop Records will re-issue both Diary and the band’s second full-length album, commonly known as LP2 (or “The Pink Album” for its entirely pink cover). Both re-mastered albums will include rare bonus tracks as well as newly written liner notes and will be released on both CD and LP Sept. 15, 2009, just prior to the start of the tour.

The Seattle date is October 16th at the Paramount. All tour dates are after the jump. No ticket information was included in the most recent press release, but keep your eye on sunnydayrealestate.fm for more information. (And If I find out more, I'll post it.)

UPDATE: Tickets are $28 and on sale this Saturday at 10 am. A pre-sale is also happening for people on 107.7 the Ends mailing list. (per Harms)

TMZ has the story so far:

He won't do jail time, but he will spend 6 months doing things like road cleanup. He's also been ordered to stay 50 yards clear of Rihanna.

He'll spend 180 days doing community labor (8 hours a day—1440 hours total)—which is, in effect, hard labor. He'll do his service in Virginia which is where Brown lives...

He gets 5 years probation for FELONY assault. He'll get supervised probation. He'll have to come back to court every three months.

He must enroll in a domestic violence counseling program.

This is interesting ... the judge said if Brown and Rihanna are at the same public events, the 50-yard stay away turns into 10 yards. The stay away order lasts 5 years.

Brown is now a convicted felon and loses the right to vote or carry a gun....If Brown violates probation, he could get up to 4 years in prison.

Full TMZ report here.

Slate has a little mediation about The Black Eyed Peas' recent shilling for Target, and what it means for the idea of "selling out."

But to retire the very concept of "selling out"? To dismiss the notion that an artist's reputation could ever be sullied by wanton greed? Nuh-uh. I can't allow it.

First, I still hate when a piece of music I love—something that stirs profound emotions—gets directly associated with a brand or product. I want to believe that the art means just as much to the artist as it does to me. When a deeply moving song gets sold for an ad, it's like finding out that the cute girl you've been having long, philosophical conversations with at the coffeehouse spends her weekends turning tricks. Call me sentimental. Call me naive. It's just how I feel, and that will never change.

Second, and more important: We as a culture must reserve our right to shower disdain on the Black Eyed Peas.

That second point is inarguable, although the analogy just before it, about a cute girl who is also a whore, makes me want to slap the author a little bit. But I have encountered TV commercials that make me like a recording artist just a little bit less. "Bag of Hammers" by Thao and the Get Down Stay Down appearing in a Clorox commercial:

...really made me less excited for the band.

But musicians have to eat, too, and the music business isn't doing as good a job with that as they used to do. I wonder if the idea of a band selling out will ever come back into fashion. It won't be anytime soon, at least: I just discovered jinglicio.us, which lists pop songs that appear in movies, commercials, and television shows. It's kind of an evil blog, but the out-front business-speak of it all—"The energetic song is a great fit for the quirky scenes with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds."—has the kind of auto accident honesty that makes me want to become a devoted follower, just to see how soulless it can all get.

Very sad news: 66-year-old Clyde Stubblefield, the drummer who played on several James Brown classics, including "Cold Sweat," "There Was a Time," and one of the most sampled tracks ever, the 1970 single “Funky Drummer,” is now on dialysis until he can get a kidney transplant.

ht: Melvin Gibbs via Twitter

If you've been waiting for the 3rd Kings of Convenience album, your wait is almost over. Eric and Erlend promise to deliver the next album in late September after recording sessions in Italy, Bergen and Erlend's flat. Here is the text:

***********
Bergen June 8th 2009

Dear FANS!

Good things come to those who wait. We know it's taken a while but finally we are done with our 3rd album. It will be released in the very end of September and after that we will go on tour :-) The album was recorded in studios in Italy and Bergen and in Erlends flat.

See you soon!!!
Erlend & Eric

************

Click here to view the back of the postcard.

Hey Old Man in Vegan Shoes: Mike Dirnt designs an animal-product free shoe.

Touch and Go... to Another Label: Quasi signs to Kill Rock Stars.

Delay Denied (Again): The Chris Brown trial will go on as scheduled. Again.

The Least Exciting Feud Ever: Mariah Carey takes a swing at Eminem via her new record.

Miss World Returns: Courtney confirms her next record will be a Hole record.

Bad News/Good News: As Polyvinyl downsizes, they're putting everything on sale.