Tell Tale Signs, the latest entry in Bob Dylan's official bootleg series should provide a test case for just how durable the Dylanology industry is these days, after a few years of saturation bombing. (Seriously, though: how big is this vault?) It covers the period 1989-2006, not exactly the golden age of the self-proclaimed "poet laureate of rock'n'roll," though it does contain the renaissance period. Three discs, 39 songs. We shall see. Tracklisting and free MP3 info here.

You get used to hearing things you don't like about the musicians you love, but this infuriating story, about the Sex Pistols security guard/entourage attacking Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke with physical force and racial epithets while Johnny Rotten leered and encouraged them, is too much to bear. I worship the Sex Pistols, but I have loads of respect for Okereke and the other young musicians who leapt to his defense, including members of Kaiser Chiefs, Foals, and Neon Neon. Never mind the bollocks, indeed. This is indefensible.

In case you hadn't heard, '90s Britpop stalwarts Oasis are still a going concern in England at least, and when it came time to make their new album, they found themselves up against '80s worldpop stalwarts U2 (also still very much active, apparently) for studio time at Abbey Road. They solved their problem the way rich people always do, with money:

Noel Gallagher has revealed that he paid off Abbey Road Studios so his band could record its new album there.

Irish rockers U2 apparently had the studio pre-booked for December, so Gallagher gave Abbey Road a "bag of money" to kick them out.

"U2 were booked in there with [producer] Rick Rubin," Gallagher told Mojo. "I was like, 'U2? U2 have to have a f***ing six-hour meeting [to discuss] whether to get tea or coffee in the rehearsal room!

"The guy from Abbey Road was like, 'I've got it block-booked for the exact time you want it.'"

The guitarist added: "We actually went down to Abbey Road with a bag of money, and said, 'We can pay for the studio now'."

Oasis's seventh studio album Dig Out Your Soul is released on October 6.

Stop the presses, Courtney Love, occasional musician, has made another blog post, which is always news. The dispatches she leaves on myspace may be grammatically challenged, but they are always so full of vitriol and self-revelation (what else has she to reveal at this point?) that they're worth the time it takes to parse them if you're a voyeur. But if the person is standing naked in a window holding up a giant neon arrow is it still voyeurism? Anyway... this time Ms. Love has her knives pointed at known lothario Ryan Adams, whom she accuses of stealing nearly a million dollars from daughter Frances Bean Cobain's trust fund. How, you ask, could he have gotten so close to that money? Read on below, courtesy of myspace and stereogum. Love v. Adams: It's like two tabloids playing twister! PS Beware strong language.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Ryan Adams you fucking weasel. deal with it.858,00$

Current mood: determined

Listen this is another open letter this to a beyond mediocre piece of shite- maybe its just my moment to fucking get the knives out of my back,

but in any case between 00 and 04 before ....well a dark pit of shit and fake names and insanity follows with lots and lots of people counting on Kookoo cherry not being able to prove things- and thats for another day- those people have not played chess with me.

But i was sitting with some people going thru the 29 american express cards that i didnt know existed that were connected to a few HUNDRED bank accounts,and there were all the bills for Ryan Adams worst record and one of the worst records i can think of in rock and roll history ironically called"Riock and Roll " and it was paid for by ME and mostly by my child.

and when i met Ryan we had a mild little flirtation, why not? but i made the deathly stupid decision to instead of just have very safe sex with him ( hes pretty dirty and man ive been around but im the virgin mary comparitevly) or make friends. no i fucking pimped my useless , ridiculaously terrible loser "Boyfriend" ( who ironically Edward Norton hates no one any more than this fuck and for good reason , yet Edwards OWN business manager put Barber up on West XXth street kitty corner from Edward, Barber could see into Edwards Apartment, and then he had his own Dean and Deluca account and an ABC Carpetand Home account and spent about 250,000 on furniture and another 600,000 dollars on travel, this loser who hasnt had a job since 98 - while Frances didnt have hardly enough to eat and i sure as hell didnt) i pimped Barber onto Ryan,"oooh hes a great producer"- maybe it wasbnt honourable0 i just wanted Barber gone, so maybe i used Ryan to get him gone,

yeah you listen to this shit im listening to my i tunes on right now who names a record "Rock n Roll" what assholes do that?

with these trebled up guitars my bandmate said sounded like "really horrific rem on steroids" all treble and compresssion and shit wirtten songs - but so what?

well on my amex atthat time the 858 but also from bank accounts....theres 200,000 thousnad dollar checks written to Barber for "comissions" ididnt even know where the fuck he was ! but here on Amex 28 is the entire invoice for Ryan- your ENTIRE album and meals and drugs and Hotels and outboard gear and wasted fabullous guitars STRAIGHT OUT OF FRANCES"S TRUST FUND

So you little shit, maybe you had NO IDEA right? is that why you used a hysterical voice mail of a very terrified and flipped out me- for your worst reviewed record and well deserved too, this record is shite totally one of the worst recordings ive ever heard yet Ryan you YOU spent 858,000 dolllars on this record of MY DAUGHTERS MONEY. so whats your paying me back plan? illbe in New York next week , you can start by working out your payment plan, because i will litiagate your thieving ass from here til eternity, your a thief and i used to think you had some subtsance to you then i find out your being managed or your money is by Victoria Blake? is that POSSIBLE? whata great PAL that lizard like cretin is t o you and i hope you had fun that week in :Jamaica" whilst more of my kids money was being shoved offshore- but thats not the point- Billy may have made my kid cry but i wasn't in the room - he's family and he always will be- he just laid his Billy trip on a person a little too young for it- I'm over it. but YOU RYAN, OWE FRANCES 858 This record sucks i mean WOW!

is this what youd like me to tell my kid a fraction of her money was stolen for this shite "Rock N Roll " cd shall i post the outboard gear and 4 seasons billls and fancy Nobu dinners, ahh so thats why you released two records at once where you getting paid a salary to let Gollum "produce" you cos we both know what a reall fucking genius that guy is, and this isnt about Gollum- hes inthe hands of the professionals, i walk away now knowing everything, all of it , its disgusting and its a fucking nuclear explosion of greed i dont think american history has ever seen but no other artist was ever involved in this scandalous vile behaviour ......but you were and i note to self; you suck on this record with your bile towards me, ande its gutless and cowardly and shit, and you know it,

Pay me back Ryan, Pay Frances back. an dtake my fucking voice off that piece of shit. everyone in the world knows your giving your all and your all just isnt enough and you just keeep chugging- keep playng mediocre safe music some of wich i like- d an d then i saw these amex bills. it s makes me so sick you used my voice on this, really disgusting and horrific, you knew what they were doing to me and frances, and yet you just spent our money HER money in this specific case- does that makje youf eel like a big man ? stealing from a suicide? A MARTYRED HERO? fun for you. big man. wow. impressive.

Yeah well theres nothing good about suicide and i should know- but to take my near suicidal depression and use it on my daughters paying fo ryour shit record, you get the point you can find me im sure- and ill be happy to work out a payment plan But as God Is My Witness Ryan you will pay back every fucking penny of this. 858,000 dollars for Rock n Roll ? wow you were living large- most people reading this dont even know what record or even artist im referring to , as your just this cult americana wanna be dylan thing- i think you have value as an artist but as a human your beneath contempt- let me know if im incorrect about the fact that you knew full and well that Barber /Gollum was using my money to pay for your self admitedly shit record- and let me know if i am wrong and your not with Blake, if you are your certainly getting what yousdeserve! no wonder you look like utter shit, and healthy as jaundice, HEY YOU KNOW WHEN YOU GO DOWN ITS HYSTERICAL. an excellent lyric wouldnt you think.?

still shooting smack? hows that going for you?

So that happened. But then so did this:

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Dante's Inferno

so it took 5 years YES to get all 29 amexes sorted through and an absolute time line, so WHAT?

have YOU ever willingly ever had 29 amexes? NO! me neither. and when you see a passing "Guitar Center" charge on an amex if your a musician do you double check it? NO! so i had to got o my production manager as that year was especially horrific, and we made a time line, you have NO idea what that few years was like for us, and you'll all get it soon, as its just a terrible descent into Dante's Inferno and because i simply do not suspect evil in people, so if some loser is making two albums unlikely as it seems at once and there's charges for entire outboard gear , fabulous dinners while i scrounged to feed my child - well sorry but I'm fucking PISSED, that's that. Ive tried to "communicate" but am i really supposed to call or write or have a lawyer call or write the former "Business Manager" who applied for the 74 Visas and 29 amexes and enabled all this insanity and say "oh out of the XX,XXXXX you stole would you mind paying for some suck ass indie album"

how does one do that?

i had a very heavy evening but since we are becoming terrifyingly great, I'm happy to oblige you Gawker people for about oh one more millisecond.

Otherwise we are amazing and I'm listening to Lanegan in the wee hours very loud, and he as always is so underrated and so fucking evocative and an American Treasure, and i wonder what hes up to. not an indie record which sucks, not anything he does.

NOT TRYING TO BE DYLAN!

just trying and succeeding i hope you'll agree at finding my voice

its alright ma, im only bleeding

Corkaroonie

And then, as all tantrums must, the tantrum subsided into humanity:

Monday, July 21, 2008

The raven himself is hoarse Current mood: gallant

Well, I went to the gawker people and addressed them myself. I'm not educated, upper middle class and I have been on food stamps so I probably won't get.. errr... "published", but it would just bore you guys – I'm so happy that my friend just got here from the Mighty Blighty, and he's so lovely. We work on Monday and I'm so excited after such an emotional weekend - our friends brother ( the bands and mine) was shot and it was just very dramatic and draining. I hope to get sick of smoking and take up bobbin lace making instead.

I'm trying to read ( I had an Amazon orgy, I mean ORGY) every single book on every single topic that interests me, leading to another, and so forth, et cetera... In addition, I would like to finish; The Science of Power, The Importance of Being Famous, The Lotus Slipper History, The History of Corsetry, Hadrian's Memoirs and Russell Brand's very inspiring "Booky Wooky". [Note: she means "Booky Wook"]

I think that I may do this movie; it's just a few days and I have to check out this kid with whom I am to have cougar (movie) sex with but wtf. I like the director as long as he gets me and I really get along with the guy who'd have been playing my husband....wait, did we make out?....naw. Anyway we've always gotten on really well and it's not months and months, it's just a few weeks of semi-working so it doesn't take away from the record at all... Rock 'n' roll, k.... Rawk & rolllll!

Anyway, yeah, I put those amex xerox' in the post... I doubt much will happen but it's pretty gruesome to me that an artist would knowingly rip another one. As far as news agencies or whatever in Zimbabwe picking up my GP story, I would never EVER invade someone's privacy and kiss n tell about details. I just want to add to O that that I smoked OUTSIDE and certainly not in the presence of young children – it's a very large yard - it's the same thing that I'd write if I was feeling romantic and all lovey about Stipe (who also is very private!)

I'm perfectly aware of people's privacy boundaries and I don't see myself including details of personal things, other than romantic details of a very, very pleasant day with very, very pleasant people, perhaps... Furthermore, I also feel that since it was written quite hastily (my post the other day with the Bunny-men in it), the "comment IQ is higher than you'd expect" came out stupidly wrong - I meant her emotional and instinctual intelligence quotient is just vast - and certainly larger than mine - I love people who I can learn from. Their mystique business and relationships are none of my business to discuss, nor would I ever - as Sharkey put it. As I have found Madonna near me on occasion, I've also found her to be silly - funny and cute, yeah, but she's got a very sly sense of humour sometimes - we don't have ANY relationship presently but our karma seems a bit intertwined. We have a number of mutual friends, and in the end, I like her. I like her brother too, so this book thing is a little tragic to me. I'm so glad no one in my immediate REAL family would ever write one of those things - my biological mother and father can write their insane books 'till the cows come home, neither of them knew me, Kurt or my kid, so it's just insane people's fiction.

I feel really bad for both of them- she's just naturally in default - like anyone goes into sometimes. That's a psychiatric term, I guess that I picked it up from therapy, like when I feel like a shivering chubby stripper, I'm in default. She hasn't always been sharky to me, she's just like that - sort of stiff - maybe a lot of people project things onto her, in fact, I know they do. It must suck... wait.....it DOES suck. I don't know, I'm not her.

I certainly don't dislike Madonna, I just wish she had returned a call that I made a few months back. She would have saved me a fortune in another rip-off Artiste who says he works for her, and then I find out that he doesn't. She's been doing nothing but well in her finances, although we're extremely different types of people and different types of artists. However, A lot of our mutual friends tell me that we're a lot alike - and maybe we are - I always get uncomfortable with that comment, but it always happens with ANYONE who knows us both, and it always has, so maybe its body language or something. We all know it's not musical. I know one thing about kaballah that IS true- speak no evil tongue and see no evil eye - does confronting anther artist who you've discovered due to the sheer vastness of the paperwork to be gone thru publicly count as evil tongue? I don't think so. I know I was enraged and remain very upset at the guy's behaviour. Also because he used my voice mail and I was hurt and low and scared shitless and that voicemail wasn't left for him, but I digress, in any case, moving ON...

I'm making a resolution to do a two hour tozo a day, every day somehow and yoga FIVE times this week. I want to be in-flow but the only flow that I know is when I chant and that just makes everything so much better- I perceive things and even receive shocks, like the Ryan one... I get them daily but I don't care as long as it stops. I just want to move on into the future and forget this financial shit – As Marie Antoinette said, "let them eat (their stale) cake. I cant blog a trial, it's something only lawyers can work out, so it's just something that I have to suck up. One thing that DOES enrage me is when urban sophisticates with great breeding and cynical cognition of life make FUN of being robbed blind. I wasn't raised to understand wealth, or even a fico score , or entities or be a forensic accountant and if I don't do most of it myself it won't get done, and so I've learned a lot and I share a 100000th of it occasionally, if it can help anyone that's great. But to make fun of stealing and to imagine that lawyers and cops and loan officers are these fucking saints who don't steal from uneducated rock musicians rap musicians and athletes is just plain fucking stupid? Got it?

Okay , now I don't have to mention it again, ignorance will do your ass in , so when the media members who subscribe to my blog revive them they need to think really hard before stating I'm "crazy" or "high" because I didn't major in English or Medieval History at Brown or Yale. I never said I did, nether do I eat fine food with my fingers or not have my own personalised stationery. I'm rather ....errr...gracious, I guess, in how I like to l.ive, and the people i like to be around. I like to learn from and I like to be ethical and simply not a thief or liar or denier or obstructer. Just let's all get the fuck on with it, life is too short, i chose to continue working on this record for a lot of complex but very easy reasons, i fell into the luck of being in a truly monstrously great band, for the first time in my life although Hole was great on occasion there's an innocence to this and a beastliness to this that I'm honoured to have the shamanistic moments o have ive been ripped apart and orgasmic at the things we come up with and I'm far more musical than any other thing. In fact, i care more for music than for anything else except my child. Music is all there is to me when the fire has died and you've got a nickel a tin cup and a pencil there's always music , and that's all I care about in the end in the beginning in the alpha and the omega, if you want to know me know my music and draw your conclusions from that- the rest is dross. That's hard to say when I'm not exactly prolific, but i hope when i do rise up with new songs that are sonically the way i want them - then fuck it. judge me on that and that alone, I'm a musician first and foremost and I'm enormously slow but that's just too bad cause i won't go through another record that doesn't t slake me slay me and i know is my voice. i have far too much to say in fact we have 34 songs and i have to [part with some , none are shit, and its l.ike losing a child, ii went for about 5 years without writing a real song and 3 years without writing one at all, the other 2 just struggling to care enough then a gush went off and im like a waterfall of mojo, and thats just the reality of my life given that statement its past midnight and i need to read write and make lyrics that will astound, spin em around and rub em in my skin like cobwebs.

Au revoir mon petit cherie/

Vaguely human, anway.

Country is not amused, according to Us.

Jessica Simpson's first country concert was met with mixed reactions.

Audiences booed and clapped as the singer, 28, opened for Sara Evans on Satturday at the Country Thunder USA festival in Randall, Wisconsin.

"I don't know what your perception is of Jessica Simpson or what tabloid you buy, but I just want you to know that I'm just a girl from Texas," Simpson told the crowd. "I'm just like you. I'm doing what I love and dating a boy."

She dedicated the tune "You're My Sunday" to beau Tony Romo, who was in the audience, and performed a slew of covers — including Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" — as well as her new single "Come On Over."

One concertgoer told the local paper: "I'll have to drink a lot of beer to sit through her concert."

Added another: "She's an embarrassment to country music."

Not all were haters.

One fan told the paper, "I actually like her country songs better. She has a great voice, plus, she's adorable."

Despite the lukewarm buzz, her father Joe recently told Usmagazine.com his daughter — whose album drops September 9 - is ready for country. "It feels really good," he said of her album. "She is extremely happy."

While I was away, the Boston Phoenix did something novel to celebrate Independence Day: They made a map of the U.S. and named the best band, solo artist, and new band for each state. The part you will like best is clicking on your own home state, and other states in which you have lived. If, for example, you live in Washington state, as I do, you will learn that the winners are, respectively, and not massively surprisingly, Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, and, wait for it, the ubiquitous Fleet Foxes. (Or, to prove it's not all rock: Pennsylvania's winners are The Roots, Trent Reznor, and Santogold.) Then, if you're game, you can post a comment that says Alice in Chains were WAAAY better than Nirvana, and then people can argue. It's fun, and like America itself, free.

It was hard to decide how best to deal with the key elements of this item in headline form, because this is a family-friendly blog service. With that in mind, can you honestly resist a story about David Lee Roth, once and again and probably no more of Van Halen, gagging on a mouth full of nuts? No, you can't. We're all 12 up in here. The good/bad news: It wasn't really David Lee Roth. He has an impostor! From Canada!

Welcome back. I hope your holiday was as enjoyable as mine. Now, then, it seems you have a couple of choices: Do you want Madonna and Latin baseball players (yes, multiple), or do you want Ronnie Wood of the Faces and Stones and a teenage Russian waitress? The good news, friends, is that you really can, if you really want to, have it all.

Not until she's 30, relax! That's years away, yet. I mean, she's only 27. It's practically a lifetime in showbiz years.

"

I am working hard now so I have the choice to retire when I want." Keys says, "I would like to travel the world and stay in places instead of having to move on like I do now. I want to experience difference cultures."

In keeping with the current trend of pop stars giving albums away with UK newspapers (see also: Prince, Paul McCartney), the indefatigable David Bowie offered a 12-song deep cuts compilation with this past Sunday's Daily Mail. An excellent tracklisting if you're a serious fan, possibly some rough going if all you know is "Let's Dance" and "Changes." But if that's who you are, leave it to the man himself to take you by the hand (journalistically, as it were) and guide you song-by-song through the often cockeyed reasoning and process behind the selected numbers—and you can read the whole thing here. David Bowie: It's not that he never disappoints; it's that he's so good when he's good that you never get tired of waiting for it.