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Fall Out Boy About Half Done With New Album

Fall Out Boy
Jason Tate

Fall Out Boy talked with NME about their new album and how it’s about halfway complete so far:

Well, the album is not finished. We’re about halfway done. But songs like ‘Young And Menace’ are the furthest left, like you know – the wildest part of the album. The song will make sense on the album and the album is like – we’ve updated the software since the last album, so I think the album will sound different to people.

Green Day Have a Bunch of Unreleased Stuff

Green Day
Jason Tate

Mike Dirnt of Green Day talked with Music Feeds about all the unreleased material the band has stored away:

We have so much stuff, and some of it has morphed into other songs, you know, a song that took 10, 20 years to evolve but started off as a jam or started off as us singing a different lyric to it or whatever. I mean, there’s little opuses in other songs and things like that we’ve done that people have never heard.

And:

I don’t know when they’ll see the light of day, but me and Billie always said ‘at some point everything comes out in the wash.’ So, you know, at some point it’ll all come out. We’re not in any hurry to do that because this band has never really been in the business of looking backwards. Maybe some day when we’re older, then we’ll look back.

Closer to a DumpsterFyre Festival

Blink-182
Jason Tate

If you were on social media last night you probably saw the Fyre Festival shit-show start to go down. It first came across my radar when Blink-182 pulled out:

Blink-182 is pulling out of the much-hyped Fyre Festival in Exumas, Bahamas, telling fans on Twitter that they were worried that festival organizers would not be able to provide the production needed for their performance.

And then it got weird:

Fyre Festival appears on to be on the brink of collapse with flights to Exumas canceled as organizer struggle to deliver basic accommodations to festival-goers, some who paid thousands of dollars for to attend the three-day festival.

And weirder:

Created by rapper Ja Rule and entrepreneur Billy McFarland, the event – which was scheduled to begin on Friday and for which tickets cost between $1,500 and $250,000 – is off to a rough start and social media is buzzing about the failed festival.

And scary:

But when guests arrived for the first weekend on Thursday, they found grounds that were woefully lacking in the promised amenities and organization, according to accounts on social media that highlighted the soggy tents, bad food and general disappointment verging on panic.

This entire story is just bonkers. From the amount of money paid by guests, to the collapse, to the images shared from the festival grounds and amenities.

Amazon’s New Echo Look Has a Built-In Camera for Style Selfies

amazon
Jason Tate

Brian Heater, writing for TechCrunch:

With the addition of a camera, Amazon’s new Echo Look device can now see and hear all. The device is a sort of standalone selfie machine so users can take full-length photos and videos of themselves specifically for the sake of checking their fashion choices in the morning.

I’m always worried that as I get older my inner-curmudgeon will lead to me not getting technology in the same way I did when I was younger. This device sounds a little like something from a dystopian novel, right? A device that can take photos, videos, and listen at all times … that they recommend you put in your bedroom?

A Struggling ESPN Lays Off Many On-Air Personalities

Jason Tate

The New York Times:

ESPN on Wednesday began another round of layoffs, this one aimed at on-air personalities, perhaps the starkest sign yet of the financial reckoning playing out in sports broadcasting as cord-cutting proliferates. […]

The network has lost more than 10 million subscribers over the past several years. At the same time, the cost of broadcasting major sports has continued to rise. ESPN committed to a 10-year, $15.2 billion deal with the N.F.L. in 2011; a nine-year, $12 billion deal with the N.B.A.; and a $7.3 billion deal for the college football playoffs, among many others.

The Ringer:

This is what’s mind-blowing about the ESPN layoffs. It’s possible that the money the network decided it had to cut is so big that it couldn’t just prune people from fading properties like SportsCenter, or more fully abandon its plan to colonize local sports pages, which had been evident for some time. Here is ESPN cutting a digital reporter covering its biggest growth sport — one of two writers it attached to maybe the most popular sports team on the planet right now.

Dr. Luke Is No Longer the CEO of Sony’s Kemosabe Records

Sony
Jason Tate

The Hollywood Reporter:

Now, Dr. Luke’s relationship with Sony is under a microscope, and according to one source, the two sides are in the midst of negotiating a split. Another insider pushes back on the notion of a divorce. But according to court papers, he is no longer the CEO of Kemosabe Records and the company asserts he no longer has authority to act on its behalf. A page devoted to Dr. Luke on Sony Music’s website has also been taken down.