misc.

Another day, another band video contest. On Friday, added to the fray with their very own dance contest. Hello, this is Wayne from the band the Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne stated in a .

We re doing this dancers to round out the side of the stage. I want you to get your acts your character, and we ll see if we put you on the list to dance with us at this wonderful New Year s Eve celebration in Los Angeles. So get them ready.

Send them out to us, all right? Get to work. In order to be eligible, fans (18+ only) must upload YouTube footage of their own to the page and also fill out form.

Applicants are instructed to troupe and in-costume, showcasing...

skills. Dancers can serve as the soundtrack to their fierce moves. We say bonus points if you trek City and use the newly coined as yr backdrop.

Keep in mind, however, that travel accommodations will not be provided by the band, so buy a plane ticket and prepare to sleep on whatever your L.A. friend s floor is made out Which reminds us, the gig is at the city s Galen Center (at the University of Southern California) and also features remember, have supported audience audio taping at their concerts, as well as the trading of said material for non-commercial purposes.

And we ve always appreciated this, but today, we re more thankful than ever, as a slew of new Jesse Jarnow of was kind enough to round up an for his readers enjoyment. He managed to track (Keep in mind that none of these mp3s are official, and, given the nature of these things, they could disappear at any moment.) According to Jarnow s list, Me , Let s Fight , Is That the Thanks I Get?

, recreate music right up until (and sometimes during) studio sessions, we re stages. But for the time being, we ve picked a few favorites from the eclectic call-and-response Is That the Thanks I Get, where you ll hear Tweedy s voice reach for the High-Note Hall of Fame, Walken , which trots along before bursting into a bluesy, piano-heavy chorus and bridge, and the lovely, whispery, and dare we say sleepy Lullaby for Rafters and a break from the road right now, but the band s individual members remain busy the majority of December, and he recently contributed to M. Ward s To Go Home single, due February 20 via .

In addition, John Stirratt and Patrick Sansone s duo have a new album scheduled for January.
fans-- get thee to Australia, stat! The band is selling a very limited edition (1000 copies) live album, creatively titled LIVE!

, at their shows, as they have been . The disc, a collection of tracks culled from the gang s September 2005-March 2006 tour, will also be on sale on the group s upcoming (and ) jaunt through Australia and Japan. Fans outside these information regarding LIVE!

s online sale (assuming it doesn t sell out
Win Butler: The money could be coming from the devil for all I care, as long as people are getting the medication. If you happen to turn on one of those TV things this holiday season, you might just hear a certain familiar jam wafting through the decked halls of your household. Seems have lent one of their anthems, Rebellion (Lies) , to Bono and Bobby Shriver s campaign, dedicated to raising money to fight the AIDS crisis in Africa.

Product (Red) has partnered with a number of high profile companies (mega-corporations, some would call them)-- including American Express, Motorola, Converse, the Gap, Apple, and Emporio Armani-- all of whom are selling special (Red) merchandise and have pledged to donate a portion of their profits to , an organization bankrolling treatments for AIDS and other epidemics around the world.
But it s these corporate ties-- and perhaps the increased exposure for everyone s favorite indie treasure-- that might have some Arcade Fire fans seeing red, quite literally. By which I mean, figuratively.

To preempt such grumblings, Fire-man Win Butler recently made his logic clear in a on the Arcade Fire website.
Having talked to all the people in charge of running the Red campaign, wrote Win, and learning about how the whole thing works financially, I am convinced that something of this nature is the only way to get Americans to give large amounts of money to directly fight AIDS in Africa in a sustainable way.
Hey you!

Dude with the shining light bulb above your head! Check it: here s a chance to put all those shiny ideas to work-- and it involves .
London-based educational charity (Design Art Direction) has announced the 29th edition of its design competition, and among the briefs (i.

e., prompts): a Radiohead-sponsored challenge to create a music video for s The Clock , from the man s 2006 debut solo disc . Apparently there are some other categories and it s a prestigious contest or whatever, but holy shit!

Radiohead!!
According to the contest website, All full or part time students enrolled on higher education courses anywhere in the world (HND, BTEC, BA, BSc, MA, MSc, MD or equivalent) can enter and participants don t necessarily need to be studying a creative course to enter.

So hop to it, young scholars-- the final deadline is March 23, and winners receive money, honor, and cute, stubby pencil statues. Contest details are linked below in stunning .pdf format.

And speaking of bright folks, hats off to Radiohead s own lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, who picked up the Listeners Award at s last Friday, November 24 in London. , Greenwood s BBC-commissioned composition Popcorn Superhet Receiver (stream it by clicking below) was nominated for the prize back in October. The people voted for this one, and selected Greenwood s piece over two concertos, possibly because people like popcorn more than violas.

As part of the honor, lucky Jonny gets a whopping 10,000 from the , to use toward his next composition. Jonny s award-funded opus will premiere in 2007, according to the PRS website. The BBC, meanwhile, named Greenwood composer in residence back in 2004.

And finally, it wouldn t be a Radiohead-related story without another cryptically exciting snippet from the band s blog, . This time, from Thom Yorke s November 20 post: we had a good week in the studio last week. finally things are growing .

We may interpret this to mean Radiohead may in fact possibly record and/or release an article of music in or around the near future, potentially for sure. has always been pretty theatrical, but he s about to take it to the next level. According to NME.

com, Mr. Hegarty, along with Natalie Merchant, Gavin Friday, and former Cocteau Twin Liz Fraser, is scheduled to run in Stratford-upon-Avon, England on February 24 and 25. NME says that it will then tour Nottingham, Manchester, Gateshead, and Leeds, England in March.

Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra.
For the past 10 years, denizens of the Washington, D.C.

area have had the unique opportunity to catch free live performances on a nightly basis at the . Music, dance, theater, the whole bit-- everyone from Norah Jones and Patti Smith to the Joffrey Ballet and the Royal Shakespeare Company have played this thing.
With the tenth anniversary of these free Millennium Stage gigs fast approaching, the Kennedy Center needed a very special human being to lead the celebration charge, a superhuman with the musical mettle to transcend demographic boundaries, delight patrons young and old, and sport one mean-ass mustache-- and that superhuman is .

Along with the (performing Mussorgsky s Pictures at an Exhibition), the (performing Revelations ), and Navy jazz combo , our beloved Suf-jeezy will enchant the Kennedy Center masses on February 5, 2007, as part of the center s free Millennium Stage 10th Anniversary Celebration. The festivities begin at six in the evening, and Sufjan plays the Center s -- joined by the , no less. That s a whole lotta butterfly wings.

What s more, the Center has been webcasting and archiving performances since 1999, so even if you can t make it out to D.C. this February, you can still get your Suf on in your dark, dank, dreary basement thanks to the magic of the world wide web.

Get familiar with the Millennium Stage archives, which boast more than 2,500 performance documents, by clicking .
So hmm, 50 states project, Christmas box set, Kennedy Center performance..

.do I smell a 2008 White House bid? Believe in Stevens ?

Fawn over Sufjan ?
It's a world of slow motion and hyper-speed at the same time. Turns out isn t so silent.

Recently, the Swedish singer/songwriter posted four minutes first post, , was added on October 11. The Swede soonish? Well, I have all the songs written, so now I m just working on the recordings.

..If things go well, it might come out before the referring to ( not.

..the snow on the top of the mountain, nor.

..the snowflake that accidentally made its way across the Texas border, but.

..the Gothenburg snow, falling thick and thin over the pine trees ), and most importantly, his love of badminton.

He explains his affinity for the sport, saying, I like it because it s a graceful sport...

if you want it to be. It s a world of slow motion and hyper-speed at the same time, before going on to and promising to get back to his MySpace community about them, signing off, Yours Truly, Jens Lekman. being the honorable man he is, Jens kept his vow, posting another track, , early this month.

So what does the musician see during REM? Doorbells, gymnastics class, beer, relatives and ancestors, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and cinnamon rolls. Of course.

Also giving away his trusty ukulele to one lucky, adventurous fan Less than a year ago, was taking up a day job and ditching the whole music thing for good. Now he s back to being Captain Prolific. As the charming Jens revealed in a recent e-mail to Pitchfork, he has already recorded a heap of new songs for his next record, technically the follow-up to his -stamped U.

S. debut, When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog. And speaking of dogs, he s also begun working with another Swedish Pitchfork favorite: .

In the man s own words:
I have recorded about 30-40 new songs here in Kortedala [an area in Gothenburg], where all my previous songs were recorded. But I feel that I can t work here anymore. It has turned into such a depressive and violent place.

People go to bed at nine and after that everything is dark and silent. I used to like that cause it meant I could go for endless walks without meeting a single person, but after having been mugged and beaten several times I m too scared to go out.
So to get away from that and to finish the record I ve headed over to my friend Sarah Assbring / El Perro Del Mar.

She s helping me with details such as vocal arrangments and sorting out the rotten apples. Her studio is right by the ocean.
I can t say much more than that, I hate reading about artists in the studio and I don t wanna be one of them myself.

I like to pretend that my songs record themselves during the night and when I wake up I will find it sitting on my bed with a cup of tea saying: Good morning, I am your new song. Flaming Lips Honored With Alley in Oklahoma City? thoroughfare in Oklahoma City-- where frontman Wayne Coyne resides-- named after them, reports.

But not just any old thoroughfare: an alley...

littered with open dumpsters, and...

poorly lit at night, the site writes. Note to Wayne: if you decide to visit this alley, pack the giant protective bubble. David Holt, an aide to the city s mayor, Mick Cornett, believes naming the Bricktown alley after the Lips (it is currently untitled) might inspire clean-up in the area.

The re-naming ordinance-- which also seeks to slap country superstar Vince Gill s name on another street-- will go before the OK City Planning Council on November 9. Then, according to a city council representative, the city council will hold a final vote during a meeting on November 28. Wayne wants this to happen and he sees it as a symbolic small road, the post reads.

The fact that it s an alley is even more appealing to him...

like a secret passage. Though it may have dumpsters and parked cars, it s real and authentic..

.It isn t Disneyland [and] they don t want that..

.it s not an obvious homage to entertainment..

.it s about finding something special in an unexpected place.
Casiotone Escapes Fire, Preps Flock of Singles Friday, October 27, and while he and his girlfriend (painfully alone my ass) escaped unscathed, he lost some musical equipment-- and the couple s cat, who is still MIA.

incident, Casiotone has been forced to cancel a series of performances. He will, however, stick out a handful of California dates, as well as one Windy City stint scheduled later this month-- and he ll still hit us with a smattering of autumn releases.
Tonight, for the in just under a year and a half, will infiltrate your home via evening, October 30, at Washington, DC s 9:30 Club, and the show will be made available for series.

It is expected to begin at approximately (and appropriately) 9:30pm Decemberists are currently touring on top of their Capitol debut, (now available in the U.S., and due in the UK January 29 via ).

Costume Contest /gig (according to their ) at Northampton, Massachusetts Calvin Theater. Winners will receive accolades, fame, and Decemberists shwag. Decemberist-song-related costumery, and decide whether you d like to go as The Crane Wife 1, 2, or 3.

What is it about today? Long time no see, members. This evening, indie groovers across North America will welcome the cowbell-totin New Yorkers as they launch their , long-awaited -supporting trek at Washington, DC s 9:30 Club.

by the Rapture all the way through the month-long jaunt, including a newly Pure Nightclub with Hot Chip, Whitey, Justice, Digitalism, and more. appearance at venues across the continent, the Rapture will soon invade your brain for questions to ask the band and submit them . Then maybe, just maybe, you ll hear from the band via telephone during the show s taping!

It will air very early on November 12. Finally, we d like to alert early this month. When discussing some low points of the foursome s (now finished) European tour, he wrote, Waking to a spastic drug dog sniffing my bunk at the Swiss/Italian border.

Getting my records and computer stolen at the Barcelona airport (more on this later). He has yet to elaborate.

And not in the cool way, either It ain t easy being a folk collective in the tumultuous twenty-first century.

Philadelphia s discovered that sad truth firsthand this weekend as they attempted to fly out of Los Angeles LAX airport following their performance at the city s festival. While the band members emerged unscathed, one of their treasured instruments did not. Understandably infuriated, Espers bassist/percussionist Chris Smith told all in a recent bulletin.

According to Smith, airline policy allows a musician to carry on a guitar, provided it s in a soft case. The band have done so numerous times so far this year. Sometimes we have to assure folks that it is cool, wrote Smith, as the agents at the very front gates can be unaware that it is OK to carry on, but it always works out.

We always confirm this when tix are purchased as well as day of flight via phone call.
We did all of this with , the airline in question for this trip.
While Espers had no trouble flying out of Philadelphia for the Arthur gig, flying home was a different story.

One of these videos sucks. Guess which one! clips from the Streets latest album, , for the tracks Never The Never Went to Church clip, directed by Adam Smith is a reflective train ride through the snow-covered countryside.

Though the track isn t exactly a party, its visual counterpart makes it out to be corny and dull, two adjectives that should never pop up in reference to religion (haha). Pranging Out is much better, and does a brilliant job of representing a state of drug-induced paranoia. Some segments of the Dawn Shadforth-directed clip are straight out of a horror film-- wind coming out of nowhere, girls being spied on in the shower, and And speaking of sweating, we d like to let you know that Skinner s training is well underway.

He wrote on his official blog late last week, I am shitting myself. I ran about 15 miles this morning and that fuckin hurts. I m moaning now and I always swore I would never moan.

You don t end up with an AWARD WINNING BLOG by moaning. For info about sandwiches, dreams, and more, hustle on over to the Streets . because this news is seriously breaking.

3...

2...

1...

0mg, s Greg Saunier has a , and according to a press release, it is where he expresses his musical soul. We thought that sort of thing was reserved for records, but whatever. In addition to info regarding Saunier s daily musical doings, the MOG includes lists of songs Deerhoof spun while making The Runners Four (Bowie, Metallica, Miles Davis) and their upcoming album, Friend Opportunity (Amerie, Billy Squier, Flaming Lips), as well as his favorite albums, favorite songs, and more.

on Saunier s listening habits, you dorks. Opportunity will be released on January 23, 2007 courtesy of . In addition, the band is working with composer Ed Shearmur on the soundtrack to the Justin Theroux-directed film, Dedication.

And Saunier mixed new LP, The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere, which Best of all, Monday and performing a Milk Man ballet, based on Deerhoof s 2004 album of the same Finally, we d like to you that Deerhoof are currently on the road with the , , and more. And they ve added a few gigs since last time!
happens tonight on NBC (12:35am EST).

The , a recording of Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins 9:30 Club show, will be webcast live around 7:30pm EST Sunday evening. Lewis is currently working on new solo material and the next Rilo Kiley album, as well as waiting around to take part in an upcoming Postal Service disc. And getting blown off by Too $hort.

She and the Watson Twins will continue their already underway tour through early December.
mouse click, because has arranged a special incentive for customers who pre-order s Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition from participating record stores. Record stores?

! Remember those?!

pre-order, customers will be given a unique code via e-mail; this enables them to download the entire live show, recorded April 24, 1994 at L.A. s Palace, when Pavement were just introducing Wowee tracks to their Then, on November 7, Sentinels Edition and the aforementioned vinyl.

The latter s A-side boasts Rain s release. It was originally slated for a Thurston Moore-curated compilation, but that didn t end up happening. The B-side different vocals and a slightly different mix than the album brought.

So do the Dictators, Debbie Harry, more for once, beating a dead horse paid off. After years of basically just plain sucking, has announced a decent lineup for its closing week, made up of many of the legendary club s notable alumni. of the usual less-than-mediocre punk bands, the club will deliver some old favorites.

Staying true to their roots are Bad Brains (with three shows), Patti Smith, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie, the Dictators, Avail, and more.

So do Neil Hagerty, Old Time Relijun, Pit er Pat When referencing musicians, we use the term artist rather liberally. Yet the talents of some artists we write about extend well beyond music, to encompass art forms such as , , , and .

The group of artists exhibiting work at L.A. s right now is no exception.

Titled Eager Believer, the show features visual art, faithfully done, by: Devendra Banhart, Nabob Shineywater (Brightback Morning Light), Neil Michael Hagerty (The Howling Hex), Rob Doran (Pit er Pat), Arrington de Dionyso (Old Time Relijun), Arthur Bates (Wicked Poseur), Maya Miller (Double Leopards, Religious Knives), and others.
Eager Believer, which explores themes of ancestry, religion, and ritual, runs from September 28 through October 11. The opening reception takes place tonight, September 29, and will feature a special DJ set by Banhart.

latest MySpace has been M.I.A.

since August 18-- at least to the Pitchfork staff. Sorry, guys. Better late than never though, amirite?

flu lab (see: ) has lost it mystery, as we can now report that M.I.A.

will soon upload a new number to her MySpace the deadly title? In her words, I CALLED THIS BIRD FLU BECAUSE deserve an appreciation night all their own..

.and that they will get. Friday night, the Chicago five-piece will celebrate with not one, but release shows at the hometown venue Schubas.

These gigs kick off an extensive trek through the States, slated to run through mid-November. Along the way, Bound Stems will meet up with Asobi Seksu, the Velvet Teen, Maritime, and more. sure what to expect?

Make an effort to scope out the versions of Appreciation Night tracks Andover , Excellent News, Colonel , Refuse the Refuse , and Risking Life and Limb for the Coupon here (there s a nifty little interview, too).
From to the -- is going through some serious evolution here. He has joined forces with roughly a dozen additional musicians to launch new record label, Human Ear Music, with a show at Los Vibe Central, Jason Creep, and Black Powder.

Human Ear s focus will be mail-order, limited-run releases with handcrafted cover art. The label, a self-described very very fancy and exclusive social club, (how appetizing) is meant to serve as an outlet for a community of L.A.

-based artists, AP included. It will kick off with eight releases, including Pre, a 2-disc/4-cassette anthology of early Pink material from Ariel Rosenberg s Thrash and Burn, contributions from Vibe Central, Bubonic Plague, Geneva Jacuzzi, Greg Gomberg, Jason Supercreep (who will drop a 3-disc set), Andrew S.A.

(a book), and a compilation of collaborative music composed by the Human Ear crew. currently hosting a handful of MP3s, including Ariel Rosenberg s Thrash and will play a series of Australian dates starting at the end of the month.
pumped in the present, because just unveiled a slew of U.

S. tour dates. The Sunderland quartet will follow up two September Japanese gigs But that s not all you ll hear from the heads in 06.

Or vox/guitar man Ross Millard, anyway, as he recently recorded a track with fellow UK-mates . The song, I Remember the Summer Isles , is one of 11 star-studded numbers on YCNI:M s upcoming release, Print Is Dead Vol. 1, due via V2 on November 6 overseas.

Other contributors include Bloc Party s Gordon Moakes, the Automatic, Tom Vek, Field Music, Maximo Park s Lukas Wooller, and more. YCNI:M will stream one song per week on their leading up to Print Is Dead s release. A tracklisting can be found after Yourcodenameis:milo s taste in music, but what about the Futureheads MP3 collection?

According to the band s recently revealed , At the Drive-In, Vashti Bunyan, Fleetwood Mac, Prince, Tom Waits, and more are all on it.
In s Fake French , Kathleen Hanna sings, I ve got Plan B ability. She s talking about birth control, not Option X over Y.

Still, the metaphor applies to bandmember (and Snarla author) Johanna Fateman s new project: Along with her BFF (and recent Seattle transplant) Shaun Cottle, Fateman is revamping , a beauty salon in New York City s West Village.
The first unisex barber shop in New York (and, some claim, the entire U.S.

), Seagull opened in 1971. It s named after the title character in Richard Bach s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, an actual bird who realizes that squabbling over food is, like, totally lame and maybe he should learn to fly instead. Fateman and Cottle s revamp includes custom-designed furniture by David MacLean, vintage styling chairs, and tchotchke-stylee magic from the co-owners personal collections.

Seagull is staffed by a fistful of professionally trained stylists, and also a rotating group of hungry artists and off-tour musicians-- basically everyone you ever wanted to pick up on the subway and didn t. Fateman is the receptionist (and if you ve seen the Well Well Well , you ll know it s a job she has down pat), and Cottle wields his steez as a hair stylist and color specialist. Before moving to New York, he spent seven years at , the only salon in Seattle where you can bring in a box of crayons and necklaces, then ask if they ll dye your hair to match.

(They will.)
When Fateman isn t at the receptionist desk, she s working on LIBBER, a new project with Tracy + the Plastics Wynne Greenwood. According to the zine , LIBBER brings percussion-based songs and video in a marching-band style to the stage.

Does this leave any time for Le Tigre? It s not impossible. (And Hanna does sing about multiple alliances, whoah oh oh.

) In the meantime, our hair s looking sweet. Watch your back, MySpace; y all must ve spited somehow-- whether it was all the scantily clad photos of preteens or the irritating turned Craig Finn Co. away, we ll never know.

In fact, these anti-MySpace paragraph. Regardless of their motivation, the Hold Steady are giving the Space a run for its money with their first-ever testimonial feature where viewers can talk about the band, likes and dislikes, life experiences, and more. In addition, there s a message board where the lads All right, kids; it is once again time to hop onboard the crew press train.

A few stops behind? Fear not-- read up on Pitchfork s latest stories, an interview with Jamie Stewart and a mega Xiu Xiu to-do list, untitled, half-finished disc), the collab (due November 7 via ), and The Air Force s -directed Bishop, CA video? Good-- let s go from there.

project on his plate, , and he needs some fan participation! All you need to do is bring type 600 Polaroid film and a self-addressed, stamped the merch table and wait anxiously by your mailbox where you will, with time, receive film you provide is how many photos you will get). For free!

! Xiu s fall trek of North America where, for the mere price of film and postage, you ll have a slim chance to receive a nekkid picture of Stewart..

.or at least . Play those odds!

Before was an acclaimed sell-out-venues-in-mere-hours musician, he was a writer. But you knew that already. Who else but an introspective, Flannery O Connor-loving fellow with a creative writing MFA would pen song titles like A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze ?

Or Come to Me Only With Playthings Now ? Carl Sandburg visits him in dreams, people!
For the current issue of magazine (a quarterly journal of creative non-fiction), Stevens traded his banjo for a pen, writing ebulliently on this month s topic: music!

The 1,500-word personal narrative opens with a description of one of his first musical gigs-- an instrumental moment with pots, pans, and spaghetti:
In the obscure backrooms of my memory, there is a gauzy portrait of me drumming pots and pans on the kitchen floor. I am a bumbling infant, top-heavy, lower-lipped, thumb-suckling, encountering gravity for the first time, buffered by an afghan laid out on the linoleum, banging the consequential music of kitchen utensils: a chopstick on a glass lid, a plastic spoon on a rice steamer, the tap dancing of a whisk on a box of spaghetti. This is my first performance.

I am eleven months old. I am a drum major. I am a ragtime rhythm section.

I am a wild animal knocking rocks on the hard shell of mother earth, the prehistoric paradiddle. I am nerves and muscle gaining strength.
The issue also features a photo of dapper Stevens on the cover-- and the real news here is that tricked-out stache!

Dude! What the shit!?

To read the full story, pick up issue #9 of Topic. From these humble percussive beginnings to a massive, ocean-spanning tour-- catch Sufjan live this autumn. Dates after the jump.

is trying to preserve a legacy. No, not legacy (didn t he already ruin that with MACHINA?), it s the legacy of being the latest celebrity rocker to discover .

Previous fans of the group William S. Burroughs described as a four thousand-year-old rock n roll band include Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, Sonic Youth s Lee Ranaldo, and jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman.
Most recently, it was Corgan who took a break from recording the to visit the Musicians in Morocco to observe Boujeloud, their annual fertility ritual where a man drapes himself in goat skins to represent the god Pan (or Boujeloud in Joujouka) and the musicians play music to soothe him, scare him, and eventually drive him from the village.

According to a press release, the music for this ritual has several movements which would equate to a symphony or the score of an opera if it were European classical music. Quipped Corgan, in a recent issue of Spin: This is the closest any other music comes to rock..

.in its intensity. Enter , the record label responsible for releasing two previous records by the Master Musicians of Joujouka, 1995 s Joujouka Black Eyes and 1996 s Sufi.

From the same sessions with producer Frank Rynne that produced those albums comes Boujeloud, an album-length recording of music from the ritual of the same name. Sub Rosa will release the record September 12, and it will come with an eight-page booklet of explanatory liner notes written by Rynne as well as previously unpublished archival photographs. And if all that wasn t enough, Joujoukans believe that dancing to this music brings good health and a long life.

Who needs the ? Sign me up for the !
All right, friends.

Ready for a bidding war you can t refuse? One clue: it s black and white and red all over. Any guesses?

All right, it s Jack White s old house.
main man has put his former Detroit lair on the market. For a mere $930,000, you could be the owner of this mammoth masterpiece.

Interested? Go . bedroom hand-painted by White himself, the grand staircase/foyer (aka Third Man Studios, where the Stripes have recorded), and a red-and-white-striped laundry room and bathroom.

Arctic Monkeys Invite Fans to Phone In and Sound Off! Got something you d like to personally say to the ? Been dying tell Alex how good he looks on the dancefloor?

Share some fabricated stories about the Bay Area? Tell the whole lot to sod off? Well here s your chance.

The Arctics have just extended an open phoning invitation to their North American followers via fan community . It s quite simple, really. Dial the magic number, then enter the second magic number, then enter the third magic number (all detailed below), and finally, leave a SHORT, CLEAR, and WELL THOUGHT OUT message for the Monkeys.

Profanity is OK, but not encouraged. Same goes for, ahem, monkey-business. Encouraged, at least on the website: addressing painfully boring topics such as How did you first hear about the Arctic Monkeys?

Internet users of North America, we know you can do better than that.
So then what? Well, the Arctics will post their three favorite messages on theriotvan.

com and hit their creators with prize packs. And then, who knows, maybe your voice will pop up on the follow-up to Whatever People Say I Am, That s What I m Not. Maybe the last track on that one will consist of a saccharine outpouring of answering machine fan-love.

Maybe I m totally talking about the new Christina Aguilera album, whoops! Call quick-- the deadline is Monday, August 21-- and be warned: that s not a toll-free number.
Do you have a news tip for us?

Anything crazy happen at a show you attended recently? Do you have inside info on the bands we cover? Is one of your favorite artists (that's not somebody you know personally) releasing a new record you'd like to see covered?

You will remain completely anonymous, unless we are given your express permission to reveal your identity. (Please note that publicists, managers, booking agents, and other artist representatives are generally exempt from this rule, but will also be granted anonymity if requested.