Billboard.com — Jimmy Buffett’s annual traveling concert / unstopped carnival / tailgating-driven insta-tent city is back on the road. You may be befuddled by this entire escapade, you may wonder what could possibly drive normally average, probably mostly boring people to attach massive, makeshift fins to their SUVs and considerably more ridiculous apparatuses to their bodies, and yet the evidence is irrefutable: You may never find another environment in which so many people are so reliably, viscerally thrilled to hear songs that they are, every year, absolutely assured of hearing. Read the full review at Billboard.com.

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• Jimmy Buffett – Tryin’ to Reason With Hurricane Season (live in Indianapolis 8-11-09).mp3
• Grab the full show via BuffettNews.com.

Billboard — Mos Def’s late-2006 release “True Magic” was so quietly whisked out in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s (without cover art, no less) that rumors circulated that the “real” album was coming sometime later (it wasn’t). That might have been for the best. Where “True Magic” was the uncomfortable sound of Mos stretched too thin among his myriad pursuits, “The Ecstatic” is a more focused set with more high moments than Mos has hit since his near-perfect (and never remotely approached) 1999 masterpiece “Black on Both Sides.” The killer first half is filled with off-kilter, dissonant soul hooks and Mos’ hypnotic, just south-of-smoked-out verses, all nicely merging his obsessive drive for hip-hop innovation with a distinct purpose. The beats are better, too: There’s an angry tuba and xylophone on the banging Chad Hugo-produced “Twilight Speedball,” the epic and orchestral “Life in Marvelous Times” (they’re not) and the humid, hallucinogenic Eastern vibes on the dark narrative “The Embassy.” The back half is all over the place, prone to the sort of detours that seem designed solely to show off Mos’ scope, like the all-Spanish throwaway “No Hay Nada Mas.” Still, when’s he’s on, which is more than not, Mos is refocused and seemingly rededicated.

• Mos Def – Quiet Dog.mp3

Billboard — Thanks to a deep love of live music, being outdoors, the symptoms of heatstroke, sweaty insomnia, flimsy sandals and people who are baked out of their minds and dancing where I would like to be walking, I’ll be covering Bonnaroo this weekend (with the extremely talented and personable Troy Carpener) for the good folks at Billboard.com, making us one of a very select few people to be covering this festival for The Internet.

We’ll be doing daily recaps, blogs, video interviews, etc. etc. social media multimedia one-man mobile uplink unit-ing all weekend long at Billboard’s Bonnaroo Page.

First up, our brief and ragingly incomplete 10 Must-See Bands Itinerary can be found here.

When my friend TiRon got me up to speed on “Jerkin” while I was in LA and showed me YouTube videos of the craze that took off in 2008 I laughed at a lot of what I saw, and so did my friends as we all talked about what the younger generation particularly in the LA scene are getting into today (can’t believe I’m in an age group that’s now out of touch with what teenagers are into haha). But then the more we talked about it and the few times I heard the song ‘You’re A Jerk‘, the dance I wasn’t doing but the song was growing on me, to the point where I downloaded it as soon as I got back to New Zealand.

I can’t say I keep up with what these young guys are doing but I did see DJ Skee say he was at the video shoot for the single today and then this popped up in my YouTube subscriptions. I was pleasantly surprised with how [at least for the camera] the two present themselves; if you’re yet to hear the song or see the dance, I suggest taking a look – for the sake of keeping up with the younger generation at least

The Fray’s self-titled album debuts at #1 on the Billboard top 200

The Fray Topples Springsteen On Billboard 200.

According to Billboard.com, Kelly Clarkson has made history on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 with her new single taking the largest leap to No. 1 in the chart’s 50-year history.

Kelly’s ‘My Life Would Suck Without You’ will go from #97 on the chart to #1 after selling 280,000 digital downloads in its first week of release in the U.S.!

This is the second time Kelly has set the record for the largest jump to No. 1.

In October 2002, her American Idol “victory song,” A Moment Like This went from #52 to #1.

Congratulations to Kelly!!

As BLABBERMOUTH.NET first reported on November 12, DOWN will team up with hellbilly rocker Hank Williams III (ASSJACK, SUPERJOINT RITUAL, ARSON ANTHEM) for a U.S. tour in February/March. Also scheduled to appear on the bill are EVIL ARMY and WEEDEATER.

DOWN bassist Rex Brown has told Billboard.com that there’s “a lot of material left over” from last year’s “Over the Under” album, which was recently released in a deluxe edition through Best Buy. The outtakes will be considered for the fourth DOWN album, but Brown added that the quintet is also “writing constantly on the road. We still have all these ideas, and we play a lot of new stuff at sound check, just to feel it out. Hopefully we can get back in the studio in the fall and work on something.” Also in the works is a documentary of DOWN’s 2006 reunion after a nearly four-year hiatus, including both live and behind-the-scenes footage. “It’s kind of about us learning how to walk together again,” Brown said. “It just chronicles the life on the road of us starting to play again. We’re right in the middle of it now.”

Hank Williams III’s sixth album, “Damn Right Rebel Proud”, was released on October 21 via Sidewalk Records. According to a press release, the CD is “filled with a self-described ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ mix of disturbingly dark stuff and ‘good ol’ country.’”

“Damn Right Rebel Proud” follows the fierce and edgy “Straight to Hell” (2006), which broke all the rules of country music while still managing to honor its traditions. “That was a big one for me, man,” III says of “Straight to Hell”. “Rock kids that don’t listen to country understood it. That record really had an impact.”

Anberlin’s Feel Good Drag is #11 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart.

Mickey sent us round the link to the article featured on him on Billboard.com, now the visuals to the interview are here to watch.. GFCNY’s co-founder talks about making the much talked about XXL Magazine cover, The Achievement, and giving his music away for free (via his ‘The Leak‘ series). Take a look:

GFCNY’s main man continues to pop up all over the show..

UPDATE: He really is all over the show, over at VIMBY with a Q&A, and a Billboard.com interview which he had to say this about -

“One of my dreams as a kid when I wanted to become an artist was to get a feature in Billboard. I’m asking for the blogs to post this. This is a great achievement.“

It certainly is so here you go, the link below to check it out for yourself..

Click here to read: Billboard.com Interview w/ Mickey Factz

So, ich surf heut zu viel, noch mal billboard.com. In Erykah Badus Diskographie dort wird der zweite Teil ihres New Amerykah Albums gelistet. Die Information stammt wohl aus dem Katalog von Universal Japan. Als dortiges Veröffentlichungsdatum wird 19. November 2008 angegeben. Also: Im November ist unter Umständen mit Erykah Badu “New Amerykah, Pt.2 (Return of Ankh)” zu rechnen. Hoffentlich. Mehr zu Teil 1, hier bei mir oder hier bei Helga-Rockt.de.

Ja nu. Interessiert an Musiknews und Gossip kommt es schon mal vor, die News-Seite von billboard.com zu besuchen. Dieser Tage kann es passieren, dass dann unvermittelt das Browser-Fenster sich minimiert und eine Mitteilungsmeldung aufspringt, die suggeriert man solle doch schnellstmöglich sein Antivirus aktualisieren auf Antivirus 2009. Ich hab ja keine Ahnung, weiß aber doch, dass das echte Verarschung ist. Glücklich unter *** surfend, mach ich mir da erstmal keine Gedanken und wundere mich nur, wie “forcedscan” und “pcvirusbuster” es schaffen, eine Seite wie billboard.com zu – nennen wir es – kapern. Vielleicht sollte mal jemand Nielsen Business Media Inc. auf das bei ihnen lagernde Webroot aufmerksam machen? Ich nicht. Viel Spaß beim Surfen. Ach so, Google-Ads scheinen auch nicht mehr ganz ohne zu sein.

“I’ve never heard the word ‘yes’ so much”

-Stephen Christian of Anberlin on the move to Universal Republic

Anberlin are featured at Billboard.com talking about their new album, selling out, major labels and  the pressure that goes along with it.

It worked for Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, but will an association with producer Rick Rubin work for the little ol’ band from Texas? Check out the ZZ Top story at Billboard.com