To celebrate new releases of some of our most beloved artists of all time, we’ve set up a couple of CRAZY bundles in the store.

Pavement- Deluxe Editions Bundle

An add-on to our current Buy Early Get Now promotion, you can now purchase all 3 available Pavement deluxe editions AND the to-be-release Deluxe edition of Brighten The Corners. Only $50 and you still get all of the Buy Early Get Now goodies!
Buy HERE

Belle and Sebastian Bundle

If you somehow missed the boat on one of the best bands of all time and have been drawn in by all of the positive vibes around the BBC Sessions you can pick up the first 4 of B&S’s classic albums PLUS the newly released BBC Sessions for only $45.
Buy HERE

(Jennifer posted the following via her MySpace page earlier this week.  She’s still on tour with Amy Ray as of this writing and can also be seen at a benefit for the Willie Mae Rock Camp For Girls on December 3 (Zipper Factory, NYC) and Woodstock, NY’s Bearsville Theatre on December 12 (supporting Dar Williams)

Hey everybody-

I recently recorded a version of “Deck The Halls” for a Christmas compilation. Caleb Palma of the awesome Hard To Find a Friend blog asked me to contribute and I did (as did the likes of like Oxford Collapse, Bodies of Water, Jason Colett, American Analog Set and more….). The comp is available for $7.50 as a download right here, and 100% of the proceeds will go to the Children of Uganda Fund.

(now THIS is what we call a video game)

Lovers of the first or second most popular rocker simulation console game will be thrilled to know 3 Mission Of Burma songs are now available for the XBox 360’s “Rock Band” ;   “Mica”, “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” and “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate”.  The Burma 3 pack is available for download for 440 Microsoft points, or you can order the songs individual for 160 points each.  Whether Burma’s video game debut will prove to be as hot a seller as the Century Media Girls Of Metal Pack remains to be seen, but I must admit we’re feeling a little left out in the cold on this one.  For the past 25 years, Matador’s team of programmers have been working on “The Deacons : Escape From Johnny D’s”, and it appears there will be little love for our pioneering title with all this Rock Bandmania going on.

OK, we’ll spare you a feature-length dramatic interpretation of the day’s events (but can we please start a thread about who would portray each member of Fucked Up if we did make one? I think Thora Birch could be a dynamite Mustard Gas).

Rhapsody made a little documentary about the event:

Here’s to posterity.

Rhapsody filmed and recorded Fucked Up’s already-legendary 12 Hour Show last month at Rogan in New York City (and pulled a “Where’s Waldo” with their logo - see if you can spot it!). Soon, they’ll make much of the show available to the world via streaming video and audio, as well as cuddly MP3 downloads. More on that shortly.

In the meantime, relive the magic of the longest day of our lives with powerful takes on The Chemistry of Common Life standouts “Black Albino Bones”, “Twice Born” and “Crooked Head”:

“Black Albino Bones” and “Twice Born”

“Crooked Head”

In announcing their upcoming indie / digital-only EP, the auteurs behind such hits as “Semi-Charmed Life” and uh….whatever their other hit was, have penned the most confusing, self-congratulatory press release this side of my early draft for the Condo Fucks’ ‘Fuckbook’.

Becoming superstars took its toll on the band members’ psyches, and as 3EB ground through the star-making machinery, they eventually found themselves losing creative control of their music and their image, until one day in 2004 they woke up and realized they didn’t recognize themselves anymore. It was then that they decided it was time to take a break — time to take a look inside, re-evaluate who they were as artists, and get back in touch with themselves and their music.

3EB have been inspired by the possibilities and potential that new media provide, and are discovering their own paradigm on how they create and reach people with music. They have toured consistently over the past two years, and sold out every show, playing in front of crowds of up to 11,000 fans, in response to an entirely new fan-base who have discovered this music on the web.

These new fans have proved that, despite a 5-year hiatus between albums, 3EB has in fact deepened its connection with its community.

It’s a pretty amazing piece of work, and aside from their publicist deserving a raise (if not combat pay), we’re now left to ponder the following : just what sort of groundbreaking stuff would these schmoes have come up with had they not “lost creative control of their music”?

Residents of the north, why go to one Matador-related show on Wednesday 19th November when you can go to two?

For one night only, you can see both Fucked Up and Jay Reatard playing in completely separate venues in the beautiful city of Manchester. But never fear dear Northerners, you don’t have to choose one show over the other (which would be as cruel as making you choose between Man City and Man United, I’m sure).

Fucked Up play the Roadhouse at 8pm (there’s a 9pm curfew; it’s an all-ages show) whilst Jay Reatard and company head up the Deaf Institute (oh, the irony) at midnight. There’s even enough time to fit in a Reggae Reggae Chicken Subway between shows. Anyone would have thought we’d planned it.

So in a nutshell, your Wednesday night should look something like this:
8pm-9pm - watch Fucked Up @ The Roadhouse
9.05pm - High-five/back-slap/shake hands with Fucked Up
10pm (approximately) - eat Reggae Reggae Chicken Subway
10.30pm - watch Lovvers @ Deaf Institute
12 midnight - watch Jay Reatard @ Deaf Institute

Well, since Dick Urine, anyway.

If you missed out getting your hands on these little 7″ beauties in their entirety, here is a rare opportunity to win all six PLUS a signed copy of the Beck’s Gamma Ray 7″ (featuring Jay on the flipside covering the aforementioned title track) via NME.

Go here to enter the draw. The competition closes on December 1st, so hurry!

Toyota’s recent “Saved By Zero” spots have inspired everything from Facebook hate groups to actual killing sprees (ok, not yet, BUT JUST YOU WAIT) and is it any wonder that an individual most likely to profit from this aesthetic atrocity agrees that it sucks? From the Las Vegas Journal’s Jerry Fink :

“I would prefer to have been the one singing it,” Cy Curnin says during a recent phone interview from his farm in France. You can hear the real version when the Fixx performs free concerts Friday and Saturday at Green Valley Ranch.

He’s amused at the irony of using the song to tout 0 percent car financing.

“It’s a bit cheesy,” he says. “It was about looking at your own life, not so much about amassing material things but about experiences that lend you to be blissful. It’s peeling away illusions we pick up along the way. Our identity isn’t the suit we wear or the latest gadget. Our identity is the freedom to pick and choose from all aspects of humanity and to make a stand.

“The song was written from the point of view of the release you get when you have nothing left to lose. It’s sort of a meditation. It clears your head of all fears and panics and illusions and you get back to the basics, which is a Buddhist mantra, which I practiced back then, and which I still do. The idea of the song is how great it is to get back to zero.”

The theme drives Curnin’s life.

Several years ago he moved to France with his new wife and started living off the land and off royalties.

“We are 100 percent self-sufficient,” says Curnin, a native of Wimbledon, England. “We’re getting back to the roots of it. My wife runs a guesthouse. We run all of the stuff we grow and produce through the guesthouse, feeding people. Tonight there are six people who will be eating some of our pigs.”