Tuesday, August 14, 2007

A Bad Week to Be a Dance/Punk/Alt Country/Spoken Word Fan.

According to various reports, Ted Leo and !!! have lost band members this week. Apparently bassist Dave Lerner hightailed it from the Pharmacists to join a real pharmacy school here. J/k, though considering Girl Talk only recently quit his job as a bioengineer to focus on his music, anything is possible. Brooklyn Vegan reports that !!! co-lead-vocalist John Pugh did not appear with the band at Lollapalooza and has reportedly left the band. Perhaps to form his new band Interrobang, aka "!?" (All right, enough with the bad jokes.) We'll see if Pugh shows when !!! and the Field play their Midwestern shows this fall. Wait, that's right! They haven't scheduled any.

In other disappointing news, Wilco cancelled its 8/14 Duluth, Minn. and 8/15 Winnipeg shows due to guitarist Nels Cline's agonizing case of the chicken pox. Notes PF, "And you thought Sky Blue Sky was wimpy!" Now that hurts.

Lastly, Cat Power has added a slew of dates to her fall tour, but has apparently adopted the trend of skipping the Midwest entirely. Oh, well: check out this interview with Voxtrot's Ramesh, who complains that Chan Marshall's onstage presence is not so much singer as "talker." After seeing CP perform at this year's Pitchfork Music Festival, I concur -- lots of talk-singing and stalking the stage in smeared mascara. Don't we all just love a train wreck, though?

(Photo shamelessly nabbed from PF.)

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