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TRAVIS have cancelled all forthcoming European tour dates, as drummer Neil Primrose is in hospital with a suspected broken vertebrae. Primrose was injured in a pool accident in France, where the band are currently on tour. The official word from the Travis camp: "Whilst relaxing in the pool, Travis drummer Neil Primrose struck his head and was knocked unconscious. After realising his predicament, other band and crew members dragged Neil from the pool and gave him assistance. He was taken by ambulance to the local hospital in Belfort to receive treatment and to undergo tests.

Bjork announced the tracklisting of her upcoming 'Greatest Hits' album to be released in September. The tracks were chosen by fans on bjork.com for the as-yet-untitled project. She will also be releasing a DVD of her Royal Opera House concert in August. Click the 'Read More' link for the tracklisting.

The Shining have postoned their US tour. As mentioned before, the Shining are a new band with a couple ex-members of the Verve. They were scheduled to play three dates (NY, Toronto, and LA) next week but have pulled out. But hold on to your tickets because they will play those shows and we'll let you know as soon as they reschedule. If you haven't bought tickets, then enter to win tickets at the US Shining site.

Sloan
Pomona, CA, Glass House
June 29, 2002

One of my first online friends made me a tape with several tracks from Sloan's "Twice Removed" album back in 1994 and I've been hooked ever since. You would think that I've seen them a billion times in the past eight years but this past Saturday was my first time at a Sloan gig. It's actually really annoying that I've never seen them. One time I threw a house party on the same night of their gig, and the worst-missed-Sloan-show was when I was talking about how great they were at a club and someone said, "Didn't you see them last week?" I had no idea they were even on tour! Needless to say, I wasn't going to miss this show for the life of me.
The Glass House is actually two venues. One is a normal size club-type venue, the other is a little closet which hold a few hundred people at the most. Sloan played three shows in the area so they were easily a "closet" band.

NOT a good way to end a Thursday afternoon, folks. Breaking news has just hit the AP wire that JOHN ENTWISTLE, bassist for THE WHO, has died today in Las Vegas. The Who were scheduled to begin a massive summer US tour in mere days. Cause of death is yet to be released. Entwistle was a mere 57 years old. Play Quadrophenia LOUD tonight.

Salon has another article about the the current state of pay-for-play (or payola) between the record labels and the radio stations. The process is pretty simple, instead of labels directly giving money to radio stations (which is illegal), they hand it over to independent promoters. These promoters then pay radio stations to add songs to the playlist. Even if the program director added a song on his/her own doing, the label for that particular artist would still get an invoice.

Nick Bowman send in this link with a little behind-the-scenes look at Audiogalaxy written by one of their programmers. It's pretty interesting and I'm surprised that Audiogalaxy lasted as long as it did. Once Napster went down, did they even stand a chance?

It's been some time since the amazing Coachella Festival and I'm sure most of you who didn't go are sick of hearing about it. But one of our members, David Virr, sent in a review offering another perspective on the festival.  Read on for David's review...

As mentioned earlier ex-Verve members Simon Jones and Simon Tong are in a new band called The Shining. They are coming to the US with a massive 3-date tour with stops in NY, LA, and Toronto! :) Allstar's got a little blurb about the band and how they've inked a US deal with EMI. Their debut album, 'True Skies', will be released this fall.

AUDIOGALAXY is done. Financially bereft of funds to fight their ongoing RIAA lawsuit, the beleagured file sharing site yesterday settled their suit and agreed to block ALL non-authorized titles. Which means that, though the site still remains up, you can no longer use the Audiogalaxy Satellite to download songs (except the very few authorized by record labels.)