The best news of last week

Sleater-Kinney isn't the greatest band ever, but they are my favorite band ever. "Dig Me Out" took me from a music fan to a music junkie, and their two farewell shows over the summer were the most powerful performances I've ever seen (and worth every penny of airfare).

So in a week that included an Arcade Fire show, the best thing I saw was photos of Carrie Brownstein again holding a guitar. Carrie played a four-song solo set at a reception for a new book of writing about Portland. She played:

The Go Betweens - "Love Goes On!"
The Ramones - "Danny Says"
Sleater-Kinney - "Funeral Song"
Bruce Springsteen - "Dancing in the Dark"

Behold:




For a million reasons, this reminds me of the morning I turned on the TV and Michael Jordan was back, but wearing No. 45.


There's more details about the show over at Tiny Suns Infused With Sour, a really solid S-K news blog, especially for post-hiatus updates.

Sleater-Kinney — Funeral Song (MP3)

A couple of random S-K tidbits: After Thursday night's Arcade Fire show, I told a friend that, with Carrie Brownstein seemingly in retirement, Regine was my new indie crush. Twenty-four hours later, Carrie re-emerges. I was silly to stray.

Also, after the first night of the farewell weekend, some of us were in a bar talking about what we thought each member would do after S-K, and one guy said he thought Carrie would write for a while, find a group of musicians nobody has ever heard of but were immensely talented and put together the ... greatest ... rock ... band ... ever. After a 24-song set and a few beers, that sounded like heaven. Still does, actually.

This is how rumors get started

This seemed like a fitting story to report from PDX...

Just last week, the White Stripes (busy working on a new album)announced a tour, starting at San Diego's Street Scene summer festival. So said Billboard and the DJs on 91X, among many others. Two days later, everyone realized that the dates were from 2005. Whoops.

But with the news seemingly everywhere at once, how do these rumors get started? This week, we got a glimpse. Word is Corin Tucker, of now-defunct Sleater-Kinney, is working on a solo album. So the rumor goes. And here's how it started:

A Sleater-Kinney fan on Livejournal, a blogging Web site, posted an instant message conversation she had with a person she didn't know. This person (who knows who he is) says Corin is working on a solo album. He says he ran into her at an instrument shop in Old Town.

That post then shows up on one of the top S-K fan sites, described as a rumor but tantalizing nonetheless.

A link to the fan site then shows up on Largehearted Boy, one of the more popular music blogs. (feel like high school yet?) With it's Drudge-style list of music stories from newspapers/magazines/blogs each day, the site is far from a meager blog, getting thousands of hits a day.

So is it true? SubPop, S-K's old label, says it has no knowledge, but Corin did play four new songs (plus a cover of "Son of a Preacher Man") at an art show last weekend.

And that's how it begins. Let the rumors go wild! The fact that so many of us want it to happen so badly will only fuel it.

Really viral video

I deplore blogs that just post links or YouTube clips and then say "click here!" But I also don't want to give too much away on this one.

So I'll just say: A puppet interviewer, dancing kids and Sleater-Kinney.

P.S.: Isn't it about time for that Sleater-Kinney reunion tour? Isn't six months enough time away? Wouldn't the first day of Sasquatch be a fabulous place to come back?

In other Sleater-Kinney non-news, still no word on a DVD. The band asked for fans' concert footage shortly after the late-summer break-up, and they had a number of cameras filming their farewell concerts in Portland. But mum remains the word.