VinylToday.com – Vinyl Records

J.J. SMITH “WOOOOOO!!!” “It’s over!” “Put that in your pipe and smoke it New Jersey!”

With opening lines demanding “Dementia, you better treat me good/The human race is going through a second childhood,” it initially seems as if Conor Oberst’s latest album might involve a continuation of the infirmity themes which dominated his solo debut last year.

Chris Blackwell didn’t exactly have a master-plan when he founded Island Records with £1,000 in 1959. Thirty years on, he sold the company to PolyGram for $300 million. In the intervening years, Island had grown from a fledgling operation, licensing its potential hits to bigger companies, to a stand-alone independent in tune with the underground and slowly seeping into the mainstream.

Just as he had to get past the songs on Mona Bone Jakon in order to get to the material for his major breakthrough with Tea For The Tillerman, explains Yusuf, so did he have to work through the songs on his comeback album An Other Cup in order to reach the more satisfying condition represented by Roadsinger.

The injuries sustained in a road accident while touring in support of 2006′s Mo’ Mega album rather derailed the momentum of this fearsomely intelligent but pessimistic “conscious” rapper, whose self-assessment here as being “over-skilled and understated, often underrated” is more accurate than most hip-hop boasts.

A live album by the Zac Brown Band will be released later this year, according to an interview with Billboard magazine. Brown also said a new studio album will be released in 2010 and that the band has more than 20 songs recorded for the project.

r.a. washingtonMuAmin Collective, hip-hop Years Performing: 7 Day Gig: soccer coach, clothing store manager, college student With its third album, “World B. Free,” due out early next month, local rap act MuAmin Collective — Aaron “aLiVE” Snorton (producer, MC), Josiah…

Soulja Boy Tell’em is working on his third album, titled The DeAndre Way. “My third album drop, it’s over with, man,” the MC promised in an online video.

TORONTO — Ontario moved to take on U.S. entertainment giant Ticketmaster by introducing legislation Wednesday that would stop companies from profiting twice by selling and reselling the same tickets to the event.

Paramore announced a September release date for their upcoming third album on Fueled By Ramen.