Batman News: Siri has some Lego Batman easter eggs.
Rock Band VR Coming to Oculus Rift
Rock Band will be coming to the Oculus Rift on March 23rd. The reports I’ve seen have been pretty lukewarm about the devices:
The scaling back of Facebook’s first big retail push for VR comes after workers from multiple Best Buy pop-ups told BI that it was common for them to go days without giving a single demonstration. An internal memo seen by BI and sent to affected employees by a third-party contractor said the closings were because of “store performance.”
Story of the Year Recording With Aaron Sprinkle
It looks like Story of the Year are recording their new album with Aaron Sprinkle.
The Bombpops – “CA in July” Video
The Bombpops have released a new video for “CA in July.”
An Oral History of The Beatles’ First U.S. Concert
This weekend marked the anniversary of The Beatles’ first U.S. concert, the Washington Post has an oral history:
I never was a screamer. It was all about the music for me. The concert started with some warm-up groups, and I was relieved because I had heard about the screaming that went on in England. And I thought: Nobody’s screaming. This is going to be nice; we’re going to be able to hear them. (Laughs.) When they started playing, you couldn’t hear a thing. It was unbelievably loud, like white noise. I remember the policeman near me stuck bullets in his ears.
Rian Dawson and Cassadee Pope Get Engaged
Rian Dawson of All Time Low and Cassadee Pope have announced their engagement. Congrats to the happy couple.
Prince Albums Return to Streaming Services
Prince’s Warner Music catalog has returned to a variety of streaming services, including Spotify and Apple Music:
The Purple One’s Warner Music catalog, including the albums “Purple Rain,” “1999” and “Sign O’ the Times,” will be available Feb. 12 on subscription-streaming services including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Napster and iHeartRadio …
Sturgill Simpson Announces Tour
Sturgill Simpson has announced some new tour dates. They’re below.
Reservoir – “Smoke Signals” (Song Premiere)
Reservoir’s long-awaited debut full-length album, Mirage Sower, comes out March 17th. Today we’re excited to bring you the album’s first single “Smoke Signals.” This track is the album’s heavy, sprawling, closer and it can be streamed below. Like what you hear? Make sure you pre-order the album via Glory Kids Records.
Open Thread: The Grammy Awards
The Grammy’s are tonight and we’ve got an open thread in our forums for the award show. Everything starts at 5:00 PM PT on CBS.
Relient K Release New EP
Bruce Springsteen – “I’ll Stand By You”
Bruce Springsteen’s unused Harry Potter song, “I’ll Stand By You,” has found its way online. You can stream it below.
Fall Out Boy as Early Fall Out Boy
Cameron Hurley (who did The 1975 as Blink-182 cover) is back with a rendition of Fall Out Boy’s “Centuries” as though recorded during the Take This To Your Grave era. You can stream that below.
It’s pretty good, but I think the band would have played it just a tad faster.
We Need Your Help: We’re Expanding Our Supporter Packages
This April will see the one year mark of when I started Chorus. By and large it’s been the most fulfilling stretch of work in my entire career. It’s been stressful. It’s been intense. But it’s also been extremely fun, challenging, and stimulating. As we come up on this anniversary I’ve been working on the first set of changes I want to make to the website to prepare ourselves for the future. There will be some design tweaks coming shortly, but the first thing I want to focus on is tightening up our supporter program.
Our supporter program has been a resounding success. When I started this project I made the argument that I believed the future of online publishing was going to depend on dedicated readers for websites to continue development and publication. Over the last year I’ve only become more convinced of this direction. And, I’ve been blown away by the first year of support from readers of this website. However, one of the main pieces of feedback I’ve heard is: I love this website, I love what you’re doing and want to help make sure it stays around, but I don’t really want to sign up for a forum membership account, is there any way I can become a patron without needing to join the forum community? My goal was to provide that functionality in the easiest form possible and allow readers to help support our continued existence for mere pennies per day.
If that’s all you need to hear, please take a look at our membership packages and sign up, if you want to be woo’d a little bit more, I’ve a longer pitch for you below.
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The Ultimate Andrew McMahon Setlist
We’ve been giving Andrew McMahon a lot of love this week, all in honor of his brand new album, Zombies on Broadway. On Monday, we published an interview with him and yesterday, we reviewed the new record. Today, we’re attempting the impossible: distilling McMahon’s impressive 15-year career into one ultimate concert setlist.
For this playlist, I mostly adhered to the rules established last year in Craig Ismaili’s Ultimate Jimmy Eat World Setlist: 20 songs for the main set, two songs for the encore, and a mix of tunes that includes both hits and career-best songs. I did, however, dispense with Craig’s 80-minute rule, simply because that would mean burning one-eighth of the set on “Konstantine.”