A Q&A with Johnny Marr

All you Smiths fans who are holding your breath waiting for a reunion, you can give it up.  It's not going to happen--at least according to Johnny Marr.  He likes being a frontman now that his first solo album is out.

That's one of the takeaways in this interview with The Hollywood Reporter:

The Hollywood Reporter: There are moments on The Messenger that immediately call to mind The Smiths. Was that intentional?

Johnny Marr: For the longest time when I did that, I would erase it. What I did with The Smiths is still so loved, but as a young man trying not to be stuck in a box, I went through many periods where it was very important to me to do things other than that. No one wants to have a tag put on them at the age of 24. At the same time, you get to a point where you’re just really happy to have something that people love. So now, when a riff comes up, and people in the control room start smiling, and [you] have a feeling that someone is gonna love it, you just drop your agenda -- you record it, and you just look up and thank the god of inspiration and don’t over-think it. That’s the difference, really, with where I’m at now. It’s good to have those considerations and attitudes at a certain point in your life, but at other times you just drop the shit, you know?

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Your Weird Electronica/Industrial Video of the Day

The artist's name is Sukoshi ("little bit" in Japanese) but I believe we're looking at something from Norwich, England.

A Question That's Confusing Some People: "What Is Indie?"

That used to be such a simple question to answer.  An "indie" artist was someone who was not signed to one of the big major labels.  Now, though, the lines between that definition and what's going on in the business today are very, very blurry both from a business point of view and an artistic one.

Hypebot writes:

Let’s look at some stats: Jack White’s Blunderbuss, number one debut on the Billboard 200, Third Man Records. Taylor Swift, worth $165 million, Big Machine Records. Adele, 21, more than 26 million records sold, XL Recordings. Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know”, Grammy for Record of the Year, Eleven. Macklemore, a number one single on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, no label.

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New Video from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

"Sacrilege" will appear on Mosquito, the band's fourth album, when it comes out April 16.  A full tracklist is below.

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Green Day's First Post-Billie-Joe-In-Rehab Gig Coming Next Month

News about Billie Joe Armstrong's stint in rehab has been very, very hard to come by since he entered treatment in the fall.  All we know is that he hit it hard and has emerged clean and healthy.

Green Day will start making up for lost time with their first post-rehab show on March 15 at SXSW in Austin, Texas.  They'll play following the world premiere of Broadway Idiot (a doc on the making of the American Idiot musical) and ¡Cuatro!, the documentary about the making of their current trilogy of albums.