2011 is the Chinese Year of the Rabbit but don’t let this complete non-sequitur put you off. Musically, this year has seen an alarming trend of bands reforming for reunion gigs. Or putting things into perspective; one final payday so they don’t have to remortgage the houses and get day jobs in motorway service stations. Where they may, or may not, sell cuddly rabbits.
There has been no shortage of bands announcing their triumphant return to the musical arena. Only yesterday, brotherly duo Orbital released a list of UK dates, though to their credit they are releasing a new album, but hopes aren’t high after hearing new single “Never.” It’s free for reason.
One band however decided to buck the trend of 2011 and called it a day. Poor REM, after appearing on Sesame Street nobody took them seriously. It was almost like people bought their records because Kermit the Frog threatened to butcher Miss Piggy’s insides following their appearance [That's not the right show - Ed.]. Nobody was bothered by the news, but it’s emerged that the split has been on the cards. Just ask Thom Yorke.
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With future lucrative reunion tours now very much an option, yesterday saw everyone making the pun of ‘it’s the end of REM as we know it’, as Michael Stipe & Co decided to call it a day. Most of you had kinda forgotten all about them hadn’t you?
Well, after 31 years of making music, the band have amicably called it a day.
In that time, REM have had some monstrous hits and cult classics. Everybody Hurts and Shiny Happy People are probably the big two you’ll remember most, but there’s more to this group than these two singles. And so, we plot their history in 15 songs.
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Have you heard? Sesame Street is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
Just think about that. Four decades of Sesame Street falsely teaching children that the last letter of the alphabet is ‘zee’ instead of ‘zed’. Four decades of Sesame Street teaching children to laugh in an unconvincing east European accent whenever they count to five. Four decades of Sesame Street showing slightly underwhelming short-form documentaries about bottle factories.
And four decades of solid gold musical performances. For a kid’s TV show, Sesame Street has played host to some genuinely incredible musical acts in its time, and here’s a list of our favourites. Do let us know if we’ve missed any out…
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Believe it or not, there's more to Facebook than becoming friends with people you never really liked and playing games of Scrabble that last for three months.
Because now Facebook is getting in on the free music revolution, by letting REM stream their new album Accelerate through Facebook application iLike a full week before it gets physically released.
The implications for this are huge – if the REM experiment works it might become normal for bands to use Facebook as pre-release tools, changing the face of music forever. Although, let's not forget that we're talking about an REM album that wasn't released in the early-to-mid nineties, so perhaps the only real implication involves millions of Facebook uses updating their status to 'underwhelmed.'
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