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OK, these get filed under ‘Comedy’ once again…  I hereby name the interview below (drumroll please!): “Private Jets For Climate Change“.  Listen to Matt Bellamy from Muse talk about Rage Against The Machine, Tom Morello, Las Vegas, Muse the Musical, a weird incident with Elton John, and how to impersonate The Edge from U2. 

1. Muse – Myf Jay and The Doctor – Matt Bellamy Triple J Interview 2007

The next item on the menu is the interview I call: “What was that?  It wasn’t me“  Matt is laughing like a man posessed and is barely able to talk to the interviewer about aliens, American space weapons, Exo-Politics, and the Canadian ex-Defense Minister who we all should listen to…

2. Muse – Matt Bellamy and Dom Howard Interview With XFM 2006

This one took place in April of 2008 and is the most serious interview in this lot.  Matt and Dom talk about playing Dubai, Marlay Park, Indonesia and other places.  The interviewer talks to Dom about drums being almost the most overlooked instrument in the band.  Dom, in turn, jokes about his ego.  A lightning that struck the stage is mentioned at one point.  I jokingly call this one: “Do you wanna play Dubai?  Someone must have said yes.“

3. Muse - Phantom 105.2 Interview With Matt Bellamy and Dom Howard 2008

The next interview is short and sweet.  I’ve named it: “I am a little bit turned on, to be honest“.  This took place immediately after the Q Awards in 2007, where Muse have won the award for ’Best Live Band’ yet again.

4. Muse – Matt Bellamy and Dom Howard Interview at the Q Awards in 2007

The following interview was done after Wembley in 2007.  Put your ears together for: “I can’t do this anymore“.  Matt Bellamy and Dom Howard talk to Topshelf Radio in Australia about the project HAARP in Alaska, conspiracy theories (Dom admits to being almost as much into them as Matt), and ’shitting themselves’ before Wembley.  Apparently the boys were stuck half way up in the hydralic lift that took them on stage during their first night at Wembley; Matt proceeds to call them (insert a couple of expletives here).

5. Muse – Matt Bellamy and Dom Howard Topshelf Radio Interview 2007

And the last bit of entertainment for this lovely evening is entitled: “It was bigger than I expected“.  Matt and Dom talk to Virgin Radio about playing RAH for the Teenage Cancer Trust in 2008.

6. Muse – Matt Bellamy and Dom Howard Virgin Radio Interview 2008

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The scans from: grosvenormum — thank you!

Matthew Bellamy

Guitarist of the Decade

We count down 10 reasons why Muse’s frontman has shaped the last decade of guitar, from his blistering solos and heavy riffs, through to his electric stage presence and that superguitar. 

10.  He’s made classical cool again. 

Present Zakk Wylde with a chamber orchestra and he’d probably eat the conductor for breakfast and pick his teeth with the baton.  Matt Bellamy has a different attitude, instead hijacking the fusty world of powdered wigs and harpsichords and fusing its coolest ideas into his mould-breaking guitar solos and riffs.  As you bang your sweaty head to Plug in Baby’s monster intro, you are actually listening to a bastardization of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.  Bach’n’roll, baby… 

9.  His stage presence is off the wall. 

Respect to the Muse set designer, but all the satellite dishes and acrobats in the world can’t compare to the spectacle of a small man from Devon losing himself in the music.  Bellamy doesn’t ‘do’ banter, shout-outs or feet on monitors.  Instead, he deals in unhinged virtuosity, stroking and strangling his Manson through the hits, jolt dancing like an electric eel, using nervous energy to power the greatest show on Earth (or any other planet). 

8.  He saved us from nu-metal 

Sludge-tuned chugging topped with meathead rap was the sound of the new millennium, until Matt Bellamy arrived with Showbiz, fired stinger missile solos into the lumpen rock scene and reminded a generation that life doesn’t have to stop at the seventh fret.  Without rubble rousing early guitar parts like Sunburn and Muscle Museum, this magazine would be full of potato-headed dullards mumbling about “playing for the song”.  Nobody wants that. 

7.  He has a ‘superguitar’. 

Actually, Matt has a bunch of superguitars; all built by UK luthier Hugh Manson and featuring more onboard technology than it took to put the first man on the moon.  Matt’s guitars, including his famous ‘retired’ Delorean or Silver Manson, feature various combinations of Fernandes Sustainer pickups, Z.Vex Fuzz Factory stompbox circuitry and X-Y controlled KAOSS pads to allow him to manipulate his effects with his fingertips.  Genius. 

6.  He made the most flamboyant debut album ever. 

Muse released their first album Showbiz in 1999, the year of Britney Spear’s debut single Baby One More Time and not a whole lot else.  Guitar music was flatlining, so the sight and sound of Matt Bellamy tearing at his guitar strings was exhilarating.  Despite accusations from some quarters that Muse were little more than Radiohead rip-off, Matt’s heroic performance on songs like Muscle Museum proved that something special has arrived. 

5.  He bends all the rules. 

On paper at least, a combination of progressive rock, classical music, electronica and pop shouldn’t really work… a bit like Genesis jamming to those horrible Hooked On Classics albums from the 80’s.  Matt makes it work.  Not many musicians can switch from a beautiful Danny Elfman style piano piece to a heavy as hell riff like he can.  Listen to New Born (Origin of Symmetry, released in 2001) for evidence of the man’s genius. 

4.  His solos are works of art. 

Matt’s solos are as beautifully constructed as his Manson guitars.  A masterclass in expressive guitar technique his solos usually feature tremolo-picked passages, string scrapes, whammy bar clips and inventive use of effects.  Matt has a fantastic vibrato and always manages to make his solos sound spontaneous, even if they are carefully constructed.  Look up Knights of Cydonia: Live at Wembley Stadium 2007 to witness Matt’s killer lead guitar. 

3.  He has unrivalled creativity. 

Matt Bellamy has some really serious chops.  In addition to his incredibly unique guitar style, the guy kills on piano and has a three octave vocal range as demonstrated by his incredible falsetto singing on Plug in Baby and other gargantuan Muse ditties.  As if all that virtuosity wasn’t enough, Matt is also the primary songwriter for Muse, composing classics such as Supermassive Black Hole, Stockholm Syndrome and Knights of Cydonia.  Yeah, we’re jealous too. 

2.  He wrote the biggest riff of the decade. 

If the sheer number of ‘attempts’ at music shows and in music shops is anything to go by, the Plug in Baby riff is this generation’s Sweet Child O’Mine or Stairway to Heaven.  Like its illustrious forbears, Plug in Baby grabbed guitarists by the balls by virtue of its sheer inventiveness.  The sick fuzz tone didn’t hurt much either.  It’s one of those riffs that sounds fresh and unique, and it makes everyone wish they could play guitar. 

1.  He is the Hendrix of our generation. 

Comparing anyone to Jimi Hendrix can get you in some serious trouble, but we can recon you’re on pretty safe ground with Matt Bellamy.  Matt uses effects and feedback like a musical instrument, punctuating solos with weird pops and squeaks.  Just like Jimi.  In Matt’s hands the guitar is more than just a tool, it’s an extension of his body and his voice.  Just like Jimi.  He’s also that extremely rare combination of a guitar virtuoso who can write great songs that will stand the test of time. 

Again, just like Jimi.

For those of you who were curious about the Bach comparison, here is the piece that’s been mentioned:

Bach – Toccata and Fugue in D minor

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Now, there is nothing rare about most of these – they’ve been aroung for ages.  It’s just that I know how many Muse-newbies visit (or accidentally stumble upon) this site and I want them to be aware that there is a lot more to Muse than the five studio albums or ‘Supermassive Black Hole’… I can but try!

Don’t forget about Muse Instrumentals.  Listening to one of these is almost like discovering a brand new piece of music; it’s like listening to Muse from a whole different dimension and with a fresh perspective on sound. 

— Erato1

1. Muse – Apocalypse Please Instrumental

2. Muse – Time Is Running Out Instrumental

3. Muse – Sing For Absolution Instrumental

4. Muse – Stockholm Syndrome Instrumental

5. Muse – Falling Away With You

6. Muse – Hysteria Instrumental

7. Muse – Blackout Instrumental

8. Muse – Blackout Orchestral HAARP Version

9. Muse – Butterflies and Hurricanes Instrumental

10. Muse  – The Small Print Instrumental

11. Muse – Endlessly Instrumental

12. Muse – Thoughts of a Dying Atheist Instrumental

13.  Muse – Ruled By Secrecy Instrumental

Bonus:

Muse – Matthew Bellamy – ‘The International’ End Credits 2009 

Muse – Supermassive Black Hole Acapella Version

Muse – Butterflies & Hurricanes Acapella Version

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Here it is boys and girls, a very Christmas-ey performance of ‘Uprising’ on BBC1 today:

Enjoy!!

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Merry Christmas Musers!

Christmas is just a couple of days away, and even though I am not much for religious celebrations, I didn’t want to leave it without wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

In honor of the upcoming holidays I have dug up a Christmas interview with Matt convenienty titled “He Can’t Wait To Wear His Santa Outfit”.  The interview was published in Kerrang! Magazine in December of 2006.  It’s short and kind of sweet.

– Erato1

He can’t wait to wear his Santa outfit

(December 2006 Kerrang! Article)

We’ve nearly got through another year without WWIII breaking out. That’s got to be a result…

(Laughs) Well, I think there are a few ways you can look at all that. It has felt like it’s been very close, like we’ve been on the edge for a while and a lot of people think it just takes one or two chess moves by the big boys to make it happen. In other words, we’re now only one major move – the castle only has to move five spaces down – and you’ve got yourself a checkmate, or a check at least. That’s probably closer than we’ve been for at least 30 years, but obviously you’d hope that people see sense and back off a bit, calm down, relax, chill out, you know? I think in the long run we’ll probably be all right. 

What did 2006 mean to you as a band?

2006 was the first year we headlined Reading, which was a big deal to us – we’d always had that on the horizon as something we wanted to achieve. I remember watching Rage Against The Machine play there in the mid 90’s and thinking how great it would be to headline and be up there ourselves. So we spent quite a while preparing for that. 

Were Reading and Leeds the best gigs you played?

It depends on what kind of gig you like. They were definitely the most overwhelming experiences overall but then both nights at Manchester on the arena tour were really good – the Manchester crowd’s always brilliant.  And Madrid in Spain was a pretty special one as well. 

Is Black Holes and Revelations your best album yet?

Well that was the one where we decided to expand upon what we’d been doing before – we tried to change ourselves a little bit and tried to find the range of the band.  We were just trying to explore where we could go with certain ideas.  We were trying certain styles of music that we weren’t really sure we could pull off before and we’ve opened up a few new things on this album.  If I was only going to show one album to someone I’d show them this one because it shows the diversity of the band. 

What was the biggest revelation you had this year?

I can’t believe that we were ever afraid to have a fourth person play with us.  Over the first three albums we were afraid of that, but on some nights of the week now we’re actually playing as a five piece because we’ve had Morgan (Nicholls, keyboards and samples) onstage and we’ve also had a trumpet player come on for certain songs. I don’t know if that’s a revelation as such but it’s given me the freedom to think outside the format of a three piece in terms of writing songs. 

Were you disappointed when the album ended up leaked all over the internet?

We almost expected that.  It’s kind of the norm these days – it’s pretty much inevitable for any band that has a strong internet presence in terms of fans message boards and all that kind of stuff.  There are so many people involved in getting a record out there and it falls into so many hands before it’s released that it’s bound to happen. 

So where do you stand on the old file-sharing debate?

Some other bands out there have tried to take draconian measures to stop it but I think the physical format of an album is seriously under threat anyway.  Technology is naturally changing the music industry and I think it will naturally change the way music gets from the person who writes and records it to the fans.  I think that the whole process will change radically to the point where the whole concept of an album will be regarded as just a 20th century thing. 

Justin Timberlake came out as a Muse fan at the MTV Europe Awards. Is that mutual?

(Laughs) I’ll just say I’m not familiar with any of his music at all. I believe it’s sort of R&B and I know he was in a boyband once but I’ve never heard their music either.  I’ve probably heard him in a supermarket once but it’s a different kind of world to the one I live in to be honest. 

Do award ceremonies mean that much to you?

I think obviously most of them are promotional edifices both for the people who sponsor them and the people who go to them. But aside from that there’s no harm in a bunch of musicians getting together and getting drunk and having a laugh. 

What about chart positions? It must still mean something having a number one album…

It’s nice I suppose but even that’s less important than it was 20 years ago.  What’s important to us is not making money, it’s having an impact on people with our music and that impact’s happening without necessarily being Number One everywhere. 

Who’s the most famous person you met this year?

I rubbed shoulders with Cameron Diaz while she was hanging around with her Timberlake boyfriend.  She’s probably up there, isn’t she? 

Who did you most want to kick up the arse?

He’s probably a lot bigger than me and I’m pretty sure he’s got security guards who are way bigger than me but Kanye West was a bit over the top at that same awards ceremony.  He started winging about how he’d spent a million dollars on his video and how he should have won the award instead of whoever it was who won it.  That was all a bit embarrassing for everyone. 

What will you be doing for Christmas?

I don’t know yet. I’ve got some family in Leeds and some in Northern Ireland so I might do the rounds and hang about. I might do a proper Father Christmas, just seeing the family, drop off a few presents and then move on.

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A recent conversation I had with someone online has triggered my brain to remember this old interview; so today I’ve pulled it up and re-read it.  I needed a laugh, and the 4 pages above you are full of laughter.  It has been my long-standing opinion that Muse get decent treatment from the Australian Media in general…  I certainly would rather read Triple J than SPIN Magazine, for example.

Still, why is it that every time JMag (Triple J Magazine) get ready to publish a new Muse interview, I know without a shadow of a doubt that they have been reading the Muse Forum; searching not only for new material for the article, but focusing almost exclusively on those threads and posts that would produce the most shock-value for the money? 

Perhaps I get that feeling because it’s exactly what JMag don’t hesitate to do!!

Just have a good look at what jmag’s 2007 Forum search has brought up:

— Erato1

AMuseing Forum Threads

That made us spit coffee at our screens

— JMag

1.  Poll: Which Bellamy abnormality is your favourite?

Female vocal chords, Dwarfism, Anorexia Nervosa, Hyperthyroidism, Low Testosterone, Large Head, Speech Impediment, Space Dementia, Albinism, Unproportionate Extremities, Wonky Tooth, Wonky Nose, Abnormal Stubble

2.  Muse songs to not to do anything different to

Considering there’s about 10,000 threads like ‘Muse songs to scrape your ear to” or ‘Muse songs to have nasty thoughts about animals to’, I’d like to hear what Muse songs you listen to without doing anything in particular?

3.  If there was Muse Monopoly, which songs would be Boardwalk and Park Place?

4.  Petition to Dom to wear the Spiderman suit at NYC Aug 6^th

I thought that there couldn’t be a better time and place for Dom to once again wear his Spiderman suit on stage than their gig at the Garden in New York.  What do you guys think? (This thread received no replies)

5.  Super Pornogenic Matt Thread Part 8: Matt’s Arse in White Jeans

6.  Chris has a big ass

(Arse?  Ass?  Make up your minds!)

7.  Does anyone know Matt’s favourite position?

(Matt’s quoted as saying it’s “sat on the couch, with the girl sat on my lap, facing away from me.”  One fan hypothesizes: “It’s so he can’t see the boobs…”)

8.  Stupid Conspiracy Theory: Matt Bellamy is really Jeff Buckley!!

9.  Dom’s Pornogenic Teeth and Trousers

(All sorts of things are ‘pornogenic’ on a Muse Forum)

10.  I love Matt more than my girlfriend 

**********

And finally the actual interview, which is considerably tamer than JMag’s initial Muse Forum research:

With a second tour in 12 months heading our way in November, the trio from Devon are bringing their huge, prog rock stage spectacular down under following a stint on the 2007 Big Day Out.  Rather than us throw a bunch of questions at Muse’s frontman, we asked you guys to tell us what you wanted to know…

Muse have some obsessive, dedicated fans.  Where do you think the line is between being in the spotlight and having your privacy invaded?

— Everyone should be entitled to be at home, relaxing away from it all and not have people knocking on their door.  I get it a bit, yeah and that’s the place to draw the line.  When we are out on the road we try to meet people and generally be friendly, but I am glad that we are not super famous people where we’re chased when we’re going to the supermarket.  I expect to be able to go there without having any hassles like that.  I don’t want to be caught buying toilet paper!

Have you seen Museslash? (Fan stories about the band, usually involving sex.)

— Museslash?  No, I definitely want to check it out though, it sounds good, entertaining.  I haven’t heard of it until now, but I’ll definitely be checking it out now, that sounds very interesting (laughs).

Who’s your favourite pianist of all time?

— Firstly (Russian composer Sergei) Rachmaninoff.  It’s a close call between Franz Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Chopin.  Some people argue that that Liszt is up there, but Rachmaninoff has some kind of weird, dark edge to his music, which I don’t think I’ve heard with any other kind of music before.  So for that reason I give it to him – he’s got a dark heart.

Do you think your friendship has helped you three guys deal with your success?

— I wouldn’t say success has been a problem, but I’d certainly say that issues come up with being away from home for eight months at a time.  Especially Chris, who has kids and a family.  But having a really close friendship helps us through tough times.  I wouldn’t define success as being a tough problem; I’ve enjoyed it very much.  It’s more the touring side.

So, any fisticuffs?

— (Laughs) Yeah, well… I’m glad I don’t try it because Chris would probably take my head off with one hit.  We’ve had a few chairs thrown around and a lot of drum kits being smashed.  I think me and Chris both attacked Dom and his drum kit a few times… but with friendly intentions!

 If you are in Australia and you’ve only got $20, how are you going to spend it?

— You should be able to answer that question better than me, what do you recommend I do?  Can you get, like, a bus journey to the outback for that much money?  I’ll pretend to be on the dole and get a rail ticket to the outback and go and live in the wild for a couple of years.

What was your first trip to Australia like?

— It was brilliant.  We loved all the sunshine, it blew us away.  We’re used to the grey, miserable depression of England, so being there was a breath of fresh air really.  I remember getting freaked out by all these massive bats that were flying around our hotel.  We were staying on the top floor in Sydney, and we were hanging out on the roof having a gathering with a couple of bottles of wine, and we noticed we were surrounded by massive bats.  That’s the first time I’d ever seen bats in my life – we all shat ourselves and ran away.

Is there any specific place you would want to be at the end of the world?

— On a yacht, actually.  It would be nice to be on the sea, away from all the chaos, just chilling out and relaxing.  Depends… if the end of the world was a massive tsunami, then you definitely wouldn’t want to be out on a boat, but if it was carnage and chaos and everyone going mental, then I think it would be nice just to chill out on a boat.  Go around Maldives or Indonesia, cruise around, swim in the sea and pretend everything’s fine.  You could probably live off fish for a while.  Get one of those little water purification systems so you could just chill out and get away from it all…

You’ve said seeing an image of Hendrix setting his guitar on fire opened your mind to what music could be.  What was it about that scene that turned you on?

— I suppose it was the chaos and the edge, the new idea that you can do whatever you want in your life and in your music.  When I was that age, being in a rock band seemed like it was going to give me that opportunity, to be loose and pretty much do whatever I wanted, both on stage in music and in my life.  I always loved music, but it wasn’t until I saw that that I realized it could actually change your whole lifestyle.

I heard a rumour about the recording of ‘Plug in Baby’ (from 2001’s Origin of Symmetry), involving mushrooms, nudity and a sauna.  What’s the story?

— (Laughs) Uh, yeah.  It was in between recording takes.  In England every now and again, certainly when it rains, loads of mushrooms grow.  You take them to open your mind up to a broader dimension – you get to see the world from a different perspective.  I am sure you get them over there as well, but in England they grow in fields, you can find them anywhere.  They often grow near cow shit, unfortunately.  We found ourselves… not fully naked, but definitely partially naked, in a bathtub rolling around.  The mixture between that and doing the takes… I can’t actually remember recording the song to be honest, but I remember listening to it and saying, ‘Whoa, man, this is cool!’  But a week later we listened to it and thought it was all a bit crap, so we had to spend a week fixing it up.  But for writing and exploring new ideas, I’d recommend mushrooms.  God put them there for us to use!  It’s nature’s drug, you shouldn’t make nature illegal.

Is it true Muse once supported the Spice Girls?  What was that like?

— I’ve got no idea where this came from!  I think someone stuck it on the Internet for a joke and everyone believed it; it’s completely false.  I’ve never played with them or met them.  I wish I did – I would have loved to have supported them… ideally on the same bus as well.

How does it feel to be the biggest little man in music?

— (Laughs) It’s quite good.  With the guitar on stage you get to feel quite: ‘Hey, man.  I am not too bad after all!  I am only 5’7, but I can play some good riffs so it’s alright.  Everything’s okay.’ (Can’t stop laughing.)

Are you easy to work with?

— (Ponders) Um… no, probably not, I’d say.  I am easy to work with people who know me, but with strangers I am quite difficult.  Just because there are ways I’m used to doing things: it’s probably the disadvantage of being in the band for so long, you become very connected together and have certain ways of working.  I’ve noticed that when you bring other people into the equation they can misinterpret the way you are as being very aggressive or very forward.  But when you are working with your own bandmates you’re used to dealing that way.

Do you crack the whip then?

— We all crack whips with each other, depending on what it is.  They all crack whips with me when I’m playing the piano too much!  I generally crack the whip at them when they are playing cheap drum riffs.  Between the three, somewhere we find a balance.

Is the Paul McCartney song ‘Mr. Bellamy’ written about you? (It depicts a delusional ‘Mr. Bellamy’ sitting on a roof and refusing to come down.)

— I don’t think so!  I’ll check it out.  I seriously doubt it’s about me but… I’d very surprised if it was, that would be a funny situation.

Is it true you’re thinking of working with an orchestra next?

— If Dom and Chris let me!  No, I definitely wanted to do the whole ‘we’ve blown it and become a total pop band’ and I am sure we’ll do some more bits that are a bit more groovy and more dance.  More up-tempo.  There’s definitely a few bits and pieces lying around lying around that have been unfinished for so long that I just think maybe we should lay them down.  We certainly wouldn’t do a whole album but definitely a couple of pieces that we might be able to release outside of an album might be interesting.

How did your father’s band (the Tornadoes) influence you as a musician?

— Dad introduced me to music when I was very young, and played me a lot of 50’s and 60’s records that I probably would never have heard if it wasn’t for him.  I definitely Got that more sci-fi… well, I guess not sci-fi, but I guess what people like to call the more ‘spacey’ sound from his band.  The band he was in before the Tornadoes did this song called ‘Telstar’ – that song was the most well-known. (The instrumental, named after a satellite, was the first British song to hit No.1 in the US.)  For the 50’s it did sound very futuristic and very kind of spacey, so that element of the band definitely came from him.

Is it true you live in the house of former opera composer Vincenzo Bellini and you’re trying to conjure up his ghost?

— I don’t actually live there.  The band were building a place where we could rehearse and live while we were rehearsing, and it’s in the grounds of an Italian opera composer’s house.  I tried to get some of his vibes going because I listened to some of his music and I think it’s brilliant stuff.  It definitely feels like it’s got some kind of musical ghost hanging around.  If I was ever going to get a house and it was haunted, I’d want it to be haunted by a great composer, that’s kind of ideal for me (laughs).

Do Muse fall into roles in the studio?

— Dom tends to take the role of the pedantic devil for the detail; he goes mental for absolutely every little detail.  Chris is more the person who moderates the vibe and says, ‘Look, this isn’t happening, take a break and wait for a day, wait for a few hours until it’s going to happen.’  Dom would play the same song 20 times and get it wrong 20 times, whereas Chris would say, ‘Let’s just take a break and come back.’  Dom would be all, ‘No, let’s keep playing.’  I pretend to be behind the desk.  I am always drawn to being with the producer.  I should be on the other side of the glass singing and playing, but I’m always behind the desk trying to control things – I always end up getting told to fuck off and get back in where I belong!

So are you into recording other artists?

— Yeah, definitely.  It’s frustrating when we are making our own records, because I want to be involved in the production myself but I can’t do it when I am actually playing, you know?  It’s something I’d like to do when I’m older, too old to tour or something.  So maybe in about 10 years when I am slowing down a bit and I’ve got tennis elbow – tennis everything! – I’ll start producing records instead.

What’s one of your most memorable moments visiting Australia?

— There’s been loads.  The Big Day Out is always loads of fun; I got to hang out with a lot of great bands there.  This year was good: it’s a bit of a blur, but I remember trashing someone’s house.  We had an amazing party in this really expensive flat in Melbourne.   Some crazy guy decided he would let a few bands party there.  By the end of it I remember seeing Mike from the Streets holding a couch in the air – he was surfing the couch while taking paint off the wall!  I feel sorry for the guy whose house it was, but he certainly should have known what was going to happen when he invited us!

If there’s a color for sex, what would it be?

— (Pause) Well, it’s got to be red, hasn’t it, surely?  Blue is a bit too boring.

It’s pretty obvious from Black Holes and Revelations you’re disillusioned by the current political climate.  Does public apathy get you down?  Or do you hold out hope for a revolution?

— I’d say I am generally optimistic about people, but I’m pessimistic about society, and the way it’s all been put together.  But generally I’m very optimistic that people will pull through and come out shining at the other side.  I think we’re likely to see some heavy shit over the next 50 or 100 years, but if you look forward 100 years there’s always going to be a group of people having a laugh somewhere.

A couple of big bands have joined together lately – Audioslave, Velvet Revolver.  If you had to start another band, who would you have in it?

— Speaking of Audioslave, Tom Morello would certainly be the guitarist; Flea from Chili Peppers on the bass.  Drums… who’s brilliant?  Maybe Jimmy Chamberlain, the guy who played for the Pumpkins.  Singing would have to be Tom Waits, I’d say.  I think that would be an interesting grouping.

Everyone is impressed by the XY synth pad on your guitar in ‘Invincible’.  Do you do all the work on your guitars yourself?

— I’ve just always fancied something and gone, ‘I can’t believe no one thought of that before.’  I had this effect unit I was using, the XY controller, and I thought, well, why don’t I just stick it in the guitar?  Luckily I’ve got a friend who makes guitars, so I said, ‘Can you stick this in the guitar for me?’ and he worked on it for a while.  It took a couple of goes to get it right but it was quite decent.  So it’s just a case of imagining something and having a mate who can build it.  So a lot is custom made, not personally by me but invented by me, if you like.

How difficult is it to use a jetpack?

— (Laughs) I wouldn’t know because I’ve never used a jetpack.  I think I saw one once, didn’t Michael Jackson use one to get onstage?  I’ve got something that’s a bit like that, but it’s not actually a jet engine.  It’s a 50cc engine with a propeller attached.  You just take a sort of parachute to jump off a hill, and you use the engine to push you higher and higher.  It’s not really a jet, though – ‘jet’ makes it sound a bit more exciting!

Will you be using this device onstage?

— The problem is it’s very weather dependent, so it could go terribly wrong.  It’s a 50/50 that I could hit the stage – there’s a chance I could accidentally go into the crowd and the propeller would probably mince up about 100 people!  So maybe I’ll save that for when we are playing a super massive outdoor venue.  ‘Everyone stand back!’

Lastly, jmag wants to know what’s the question you’d most like to be asked?

— You’re going to ask me that now, aren’t you?  I’m trying to imagine someone coming in to an interview and just saying, ‘Ah, fuck it – do you fancy a pint?’  If you ever meet me, instead of doing the interview just say that, and we’ll go down the pub, have a drink and have a much more relaxed time.

Well, next time, that’s what we’ll do.

— Sounds good to me.

http://erato1.wordpress.com

From Seattle Times

By Jonathan Zwickel

Special to The Seattle Times

The show in Seattle was the last Muse gig for 2009. 

The band are now taking an official holiday break before resuming their touring in January.

I’ll be around though!

– Erato1

http://erato1.wordpress.com

First of all, allow me to say that I have watched the live webcast of the gig last night, and even though the setlist was predictable, I am not going to moan and cause beef about it.  Enough of that goes on at muse.mu. 

And yes, they played Guiding Light.  Again.  I don’t pretend to understand why Muse prefer that song to their much-requested MK Ultra (or anything else from their back catalogue that’s also much requested and is still ignored by the band!), all I know is that Matt’s vocals were good, and so was the guitar riff in the middle of the song.  I don’t mind Guiding Light.

Once again, they were spectacular!  Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Muse are not worth watching live!

— Erato1 

From Soundcheck

What’s always been special about KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas shows at Universal-now-Gibson Amphitheatre -– in addition to being among the ultimate hot-ticket parties of the season, of course –- is that the (typically) five-hour event more or less levels the playing field among its many stars, fresh and established.

I don’t mean you should compare watermelons to grapes –- to pit, say, very appealing newcomer White Rabbits, Sunday evening’s first of nine bands, against the increasingly mighty Muse, Night 2’s rather tremendous closer, currently cresting atop a wave of breakthrough popularity that seems to be leading to what could be a pretty magnificent headlining turn at Coachella come April.

But apart from bringing along their own visual arsenal and those space-age microphone stands Matt Bellamy (above) and Chris Wolstenholme use, the three Muse men don’t really have much of an advantage over undercard acts. Yeah, they’ve got the big-time seasoning and ridiculous chops younger hopefuls might crave -– yet that doesn’t mean a scrappier, less-skilled band can’t win over the room just as handily.

Witness Cage the Elephant Sunday night: talk about a primitive force just blowing people away!

Frontman Matt Schultz –- that dude’s just absurd, a complete convulsing spazz, a marionette with his strings all twisted who nonetheless can balance himself sturdily enough to be held up by his ankles after stage-diving. I’m not sure he sings so much as spews forth whatever comes burbling out of his system. (You know how people warn that you’re getting on their last nerve? This guy IS that last nerve, personified.) Yet his lanky flopping shtick clicks in the context of the rough-hewn Strokes-on-steroids feedback rock that the rest of his fellow Kentuckians throw down. They easily could’ve held their own against most of the so-perceived harder bands from Saturday night.

What I mean, though, is that a Cage the Elephant or a White Rabbits –- or the Bravery, for that matter, the suddenly stronger New York band that had its best KROQ showing by far Sunday night, or dance-rock outfits like Metric and Phoenix, both of whom served up too-brief but deeply effective sets –- any of them has the potential to wow just like the Big Names.

Why? Because every act is essentially reduced to the same half of Gibson’s not-so-large stage, while the deceptively intimate room they must dominate, though it seats some 6,000, feels like it only holds half as much.

This isn’t the case at KROQ’s Weenie Roasts (y Fiestas!) at ye olde Irvine Meadows, where at least a third of the bands are shuffled off to smaller side stages –- and where another third on the main stage get swallowed whole by that outdoor venue’s enormity. (It also takes much more effort to come original and convince 15,000 liquored-up party people on the verge of sunstroke that you’re really worth paying attention to.)

Undercard bands have it rougher at AAC, sure –- hardly anyone has heard of White Rabbits, so naturally they played only to as many people as a telemarketer could call in a workday. Yet I bet those people are buzzing about them today … just as I suspect many others will be breathlessly explaining to friends why Phoenix is so much more than merely an omnipresent ad jingle … or why there’s more to Vampire Weekend than just that eh!-eh!-eh! hook … or why Slightly Stoopid actually isn’t stupid at all.

And that’s what I’m getting at: As is the case at Coachella –- and Sunday night’s bill largely felt like a sneak preview to the 2010 fest -– if you can really bring it at Acoustic Christmas, you’re guaranteed to make a lasting impression. Anyone can do it, in any year, whether buried in crummy lineups or ones crowded with talent.

Sunday’s fare was definitely the latter –- no truly weak spots to suffer through, with only stoner detours from Slightly Stoopid and the now-venerable 311 not entirely right for the overall mix (on paper, anyway). I’ve seen more seemingly stellar lineups fall far shorter, yet Sunday surpassed my expectations – everyone brought their A-game, everyone delivered. In more than a dozen years of reviewing this year-end capper, this Night 2 ranks among the most consistently enjoyable marathons I’ve ever sat/danced/cheered through.

That’s largely because this somewhat disparate lineup wound up sharing something in common: they all dig that groove, and their different approaches to such a pursuit meshed surprisingly well. In addition to Cage’s jittery kinda-Jack-White thing and White Rabbits coming on like a smoother Cold War Kids, there was …

• The half-American-half-Canadian Metric, packing more visceral wallop than the group’s sometimes precious records let on. With vocalist Emily Haines (right, the only woman to set foot on the Gibson stage all weekend) strutting and stomping while clad in a gold lamé jacket and equally shimmery black pants, the band roused the arriving audience with kicking expansions on singles like “Help, I’m Alive” (the one in which her heart is beating like a hammer) and “Gimme Sympathy” (in which she wonders who you’d rather be, the Beatles or the Stones) and “Dead Disco” (and funk and rock ’n’ roll – “remodel,” she insists, “everything has been done”).

• Vampire Weekend, the most worldly influenced of the lot, proving that last year’s irresistible debut was no fluke by peppering its energetic set with a few new ringers. The Dick Dale speed picking of “Cousins” and the waltzing Afropop arpeggios of “Giving Up the Gun” (I could have that title wrong) only hint at the rhythmic fun to come. Hard to say if any of the fresh stuff will be as shiny-happy as “A-Trak” or “Mansford Roof” or “Oxford Commons,” but clearly these preppy New Yorkers (boyish of all: frontman Ezra Koenig) are capable of placing an indie spin on most any exotic sound they steal. Everything they attempt feels so natural … Peter Gabriel too.

• The dramatically improved Bravery, whose blend of late-era Bowie and late-’80s-slick Cure has gained both strength and seductiveness. Vocalist Sam Endicott, here in a sleeveless Synchronicity T-shirt, still teems with affectation, and I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to let bassist Mike Hindert sing one, even if he does aim for a Lou Reed vibe. But the band overall has suddenly developed (or just starting showing off) some fierceness; one of the best songs on its third album Stir the Blood, whose title I really shouldn’t print here, exuded dark sexuality in “Why Can’t I Be You?” packaging that didn’t even need the vintage S&M porn as a video backdrop to make its aggressive point. Here’s to sticking with it: after learning the ropes at more than a few low-level KROQ spotlights, the Bravery, like the Killers before them, has now conquered this kind of event. Methinks they’ll last.

• Phoenix, from Paris (the only other overseas import of the two lineups, along with sole Englishmen Muse), who in just five songs pulled off precisely what Metric did and then some, showing how the futuristic electro-fizz sheen of its effervescent fourth album (and stateside breakthrough) Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix can become something altogether more muscular yet still danceable thanks to punchy guitars. Their scant 20 minutes blitzed by like a mega-mix. For a moment it looked like we were about to get a sixth song when vocalist Thomas Mars (left) bolted into the orchestra section, paused to wish everyone a merry Christmas and happy new year, then hollered out une, deux, trois! But that only counted the band back into the “falling, falling” chorus of the irresistible hit “1901.”

Then there’s Slightly Stoopid, so proud to be from San Diego that chief vocalist Miles Doughty wore a Chargers jersey, and 311, one of the few acts from the ’90s that lasted long enough to give rap-rock a decent name.

Stoopid’s 2007 tune “2am,” a breezy gem worthy of the English Beat or UB40 in their prime, is still a most-requested staple on KROQ, and here it shined amid the band’s other solid reggae jams, even if half the orchestra section cleared out within moments of the group hitting the stage. (They’d fare better at Weenie Roast.) But Nick Hexum and the 311 gang, making their self-proclaimed final performance of the decade this night, had a lot to live up to, as they were essentially opening for the most anticipated set of the entire weekend.

What hurts is that they had the audience right from the start, gob-smacking them with hit (“Beautiful Disaster”) after hit (“All Mixed Up”) after hit (“Come Original”) after hit (“Amber”); they were one of the few bands to get the somewhat jaded crowd up on its feet. Consummate pros that they’ve become, they’re skills never lagged –- but their pacing ultimately did. It’s understandable that they’d want to shift focus to tunes off their latest album, Uplifter, yet by front-loading so much good stuff, the middle of the set sagged, with only the swinging ditty “Flowing” standing out.

Finally, Muse … who are in a different class altogether.

I have my doubts about the group’s new look, mind you. The Orwellian overtones contrast well with the band’s operatic music, a mix of romantic yearning and what’s-the-world-coming-to disillusion (epitomized by new single “Uprising” and The Resistance’s title track) that Baz Luhrmann should steal from for his next epic musical. But elfin Bellamy’s form-fitting, shoulder-padded get-up (with magenta pants!) makes him appear like a Gary Numan robotoid, while Wolstenholme’s gear is straight out of Star Trek.

The group’s already oversized music, however, has now grown positively immense, most evident in the whooshing dynamic blast of “United States of Eurasia (+ Collateral Damage),” both the prettiest and most Queen-y thing the band has concocted. Bombast is in their DNA, whether in anthems like “Hysteria” or “Starlight” (their “Clocks” in terms of commercial success) or in slithering sex bombs like “Supermassive Black Hole” and “Time Is Running Out,” the latter of which was the greatest moment of the whole AAC shebang for me.

Muse has been a gathering storm in America for some time, and it seems ready to burst with a thundercrack. Radiohead comparisons are now passé; they may appeal to people who love Thom Yorke’s voice but just can’t get into the Kid A era, yet the group’s amalgam of influences is entirely its own. Their future is now –- for starters, they will undoubtedly kill at Coachella.

Photos above are by Kelly A. Swift, for the Orange County Register.

– A pretty interesting interview, if I say so myself.  Rumour has it that it’s the Coachella Festival that they were talking about at the very end.

Erato1

http://erato1.wordpress.com

From http://kroq.radio.com/

**Thank you Stephanie (Trilateral_) for bringing my attention to this, — I wouldn’t have even known about this without you!**

Sluggo from KROQ will have the pleasure of interviewing our favourite band Muse on Sunday, December 13th 2009.  Radio station listeners and fans were asked to send in their questions to the band, and of course I couldn’t resist doing that!  I’ve asked the first silly thing that came to my mind…  I was being silly while being drunk, really!  I never meant for it to see the light of day!

It now looks like my question to Muse got on Sluggo’s shortlist!  Go to the KROQ link (above) and click on the picture for a bigger view — the second question from the top is mine.  This doesn’t mean that the question will be asked and answered (God, I hope not!!  It’s 100% crap!); it simply means that Muse will have an opportunity to see it and choose whether or not they want to answer it.  We’ll see!

I’ll be listening to Sluggo on Sunday, I’VE ACTUALLY E-MAILED HIM AND ASKED HIM TO REMOVE MY QUESTION FROM THE LIST!

Here is the link to:

KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas 2009 Broadcast & Webcast

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This is a good thing and a not-so-good thing.

Muse, one of the best rock bands in the world, finally is getting some mainstream exposure in the United States.

Snippets of music from the 15-year-old British band’s latest album have been used to pump people up for some football – college and professional – on ABC, ESPN and assorted networks.

Still, it’s not an ideal way for “The Resistance” – an alternately thundering and quiescent venting of rage, fury and consolation in a world of war, terrorism, renascent imperialism and political venality – to be interpreted.

Carrying on in Muse’s tradition of grasping major themes of humanity and insanity, this isn’t an anthem or chant – though there are plenty of both on the album – for football, English- or American-style.

It’s another cry of outrage and undeterred idealism.

However, if it guides some college BCS (Bowl Championship Series) or “Monday Night Football” types to the power and passion of Muse’s music, the capitalistic trade-off (it used to be called “selling out”) will be well worth it.

Plus, let’s give whoever picked the Muse album for its ad-break and intro themes credit for having some very good taste.

A key couplet being played from “Uprising,” the recording’s opening track, neatly fits football’s competitive game plan: “They will not control us/We will be victorious.”

It helps that singer/guitarist/pianist Matthew Bellamy, Christopher Wolstenholme (bass, vocals) and Dominic Howard (drums, percussion), from Teignmouth, Devon, England, chose to incorporate the thumping rhythmic stomp of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Parts One and Two.” It’s been a sports stadium/arena cliché for years and has gotten kind of raggedy and pedophilia-stained.

It helps, of course, to know, that in the same song – fueled by fiery guitars, Bellamy’s defiant, insistent vocal and the trio’s layered revolutionary chants – Bellamy spits out: “They will not force us/They will not degrade us” and “They’ll try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down/And hope that we will never see the truth.” Or “fat cats” having “heart attacks.” Or people “unifying to watch our flag ascend.” Also, “taking the power back.”

Oh, well. That theme extends throughout the 54-minute album, interspersed with placid interludes and bold, hopeful assertions such as “love is our resistance” (“Resistance”) and “I want to exorcise the demon from your heart” (“Undisclosed Desires”).

Muse has been hammering out this kind of universal plea – often in dark, spooky sci-fi guise – on seven albums since 1994.

Other potential stadium shouters – most notably the surging, ice hockey-ready “Knights of Cydonia” (“No one’s gonna take me alive/The time will come to make things right/You and I will fight for our rights/You and I will fight to survive”) from “Black Holes and Revelations” (2006) went unnoticed. Oh, well, again.

There’s enough potent material on “The Resistance” to supplant even Queen (“We Are the Champions,” “We Will Rock You”), to whom Muse pays fond tribute amid the palpable anger of the towering/tender “United States of Eurasia (+ Collateral Damage).” Bellamy, a truly believable and legitimately operatic vocalist, pleads: “These wars they can’t be won/Do you want them to go on and on and on?”

Like many of the seminal, still-stunning (if slightly silly) stadium- and progressive-rock bands of the 1970s, Muse aims high, crafting dramatic, theatrical songscapes that are bold, brash, beautiful. Sometimes, they’re just over-the-top enough to match the memorably acceptable excesses of Queen (“Guiding Light”), U2, Rush, Metallica and hordes of other bands who weren’t embarrassed by dreaming big while occasionally missing the mark with too much melodrama.

Again, Muse factors in delicate piano interludes. However, the 12-minute, three-movement, falsetto-flecked “Exogenesis: Symphony” (lush strings, classical piano riffs, soaring choruses of peace and hope) might take some devotees awhile to embrace fully.

“I Belong to You/Mon Couer” employs the kind of odd inventiveness (skronky saxophone, French lyrics, tinkling piano glissandos) with which the late-period Beatles tinkered.

“Unnatural Selection” is as potent and propulsive a rock anthem as the templates from almost any previous era (“I want the truth/I am hungry for some unrest/I want to push this beyond a peaceful protest,” “I want the truth”).

It’s hard to believe after “Black Holes …” and “Absolution” (2003), but “The Resistance” is another powerful, potent surge forward for Muse, which is at its very best onstage, where its shows are explosive and overwhelming in their intensity.

Back in 2004, the band opened San Francisco radio station Live-105’s annual, multiband December concert. Modest Mouse headlined.

These are concerts where recording artists return the favor to station programmers who support their music. Muse – as is the case with most bands from the United Kingdom who go otherwise overlooked in the U.S. – has sold out every show it’s played in the Bay area since 2003.

There’s another one on Friday night at Oracle Arena. This time, Muse is headlining a lineup that includes Ukiah’s punk-rocking AFI; Los Angeles’ Thirty Seconds to Mars, New York’s Vampire Weekend and Toronto’s Metric.

Interestingly, Thirty Seconds to Mars released its own ambitious, Muse-like opus on Tuesday. “This Is War” is an apt title for this expansive, inventive hard-rock (with strings and other things) album.

Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut album – quirky and sort-of-world-beat influenced – was one of 2008’s best. The group didn’t quite make it back this year, but its follow-up recording (“Contra”) will be released Jan. 11.

Hopefully, the Muse “themes” (signaling ad breaks and intros, etc.) won’t get as annoying as comedian Frank Caliendo’s commercial omnipresence during the2008 Major League Baseball playoffs on TBS. That wasn’t funny.

However, if Muse’s ambitious, addictive rock music succeeds in psyching up football followers this season, maybe the band will get someone at the Grammy Awards to notice it next year. (“The Resistance” was released Sept. 15, beating the 2009 qualifying deadline.)

After all, the equally brilliant Kings of Leon finally popped up on the Grammy selectors’ often-myopic radar screen this year.

There’s always hope.

Contact reporter Tony Sauro at (209) 546-8267 or tsauro@recordnet.com

Five songs for this week. You know the drill. I’m shattered so the writing is appalling but just listen to the music and everyone’s happy.

1. Lady GaGa – Fooled Me Again, Honest Eyes

Sometimes I think people forget there’s more to this woman than wacky outfits and promiscuity. This song is quite easily one of the finest things she’s done, and yet I have a foggy memory telling me she recorded this as a demo in 2006, so the chances of it being released now are slim to none. Which is a shame really. I was having a real conundrum as to which GaGa song to put on here. Well, I say a real conundrum – I mean I gave it some thought for at least seven seconds. But I’m absolutely in love with this, Speechless and Dance In The Dark at the moment. I’ve even sidelined Bellamy for her. It’ll be all change by next week, but for now this is on repeat.

2. David Bowie – Heroes

I’ve been listening to a lot of Bowie recently, apropos of nothing. Everyone knows this one; it’s not exactly an original choice on my behalf, but whatever. It’s my blog dammit. My favourite song of his is Absolute Beginners but I kind of have a sting in my tail about that one at the moment for reasons that are too long and boring to go into here and now. So Heroes wins this round.

3. DeVotchKa – How It Ends

Not the cheeriest song in the world, it must be said. These guys have never really taken off in the UK and I don’t know why that is. Perhaps it’s because the general public are more appreciative of shit like the Black Eyed Peas or fucking X Factor and they’ve forgotten what real talent is. I’ve noticed a lot of DeVotchKa’s stuff being used in TV syncs, but just being a sync band isn’t the greatest accolade is it. Probably earns them a pretty penny though, so I doubt they’re very fussed.

4. Marina and the Diamonds – Obsessions

I cannot wait for Marina’s album. I haven’t been this excited about a new release release since…oooh, September? But seriously, I am really looking forward to it. Marina is the only person rivalling GaGa for my affections at the moment. I have mixed feelings about Mowgli’s Road but I’m sure it’ll get better in time. I will do some kind of manic, over the top thing about the album when I finally hear it. I bet you can hardly wait.

5. Tom Waits – Blue Valentine

“Like a pebble in my shoe as I walk these streets”. I fucking love that lyric. It’s like…all these hundreds of thousands of people around the world have written all these devastating songs about heartbreak, but no one’s ever really written anything so succinct that you actually feel their discomfort. Like physically feel it. I think it’s genius. It was Tom’s birthday on Monday too, fact fans. Happy birthday Mr. Waits (I’m sure you’re reading this; you have nothing better to do).

Et finalement! It’s not really a proper song, but I have listened to it literally 10 times this week so I might as well bung it on. It’s this blog’s answer to a bonus remix track on an album which was below par to begin with, and is now going in the bin.

Matthew Bellamy – Piano Thing

What a bloody wonderful composition. That is all I have to say on the matter.

Are you a big fan of Adam Lambert? Yes, that guy with the fantastic vocal range who placed runner-up to Kris Allen in this year’s Americal Idol and who stirred controversy at the recent American Music Awards by locking lips with another guy during the tailend of his production number.

So are you a fan of Adam Lambert? I know I am. I just got hold of his debut CD “For Your Entertainment” via iTunes and can’t help but gush over the line-up. Except for a couple of ditties that do not hook me up instantly, the rest of the songs (16 all in all inclusive of two bonus track downloads from iTunes) are pure ear-candies in a very substantial pop-glam-rock way. My top picks are, of course, “For Your Entertainment”, “Whataya Want From Me?”, “Time for Miracles” and “If I Had You.” By the way, there are superstar cameos by Pink, Lady Gaga, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, Matthew Bellamy of Muse and Justin Hawkins of The Darkness. What more can you ask for?

This is one explosive cd album. You won’t regret buying it.

Below is an audio clip of “For Your Entertainment”:

video courtesy of YouTube/AdamOfficial

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Facebook Group: Click Here

Shockwaves NME Awards 2010

Please, click on the link above to vote.

Important! How To Vote:

Please enter one response in each box.  Where required, please always enter the artist name first, followed by any other information required e.g. album title. 

If you misspell your nomination it may not be counted.  Thanks!

The relevant categories are:

Best British Band

Best Live Band

Best Album…

Of course, (evil snigger) we can always vote Matt Bellamy for Worst Dressed if we so decide!  

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From www.examiner.com

When Muse came to town this year in September as the opener for U2 they got a lot of attention. Some may say they stole the show from one of the world‘s biggest rock bands. Their new CD The Resistance has gotten a lot of press as well due to spectacular singles like “Uprising” and “Undisclosed Desires.” But the last time they played the DC area as a headliner it was at the Patriot Center in 2007 and Muse must like that venue located in Fairfax, VA because they are making another stop there on March 1 next year and bringing the equally amazing Silversun Pickups with them as their opener.

Before the band even announced the date officially today, the Patriot Center site, an ad in the Washington Post, the 930 Club and local station DC 101 started publicizing the date days ago. Tickets are going on sale this Friday December 11 at 10am through Ticketmaster. A presale for members of  www.muse.mu will take place tomorrow followed by the Ticketmaster presale this Thursday December 10. There are also five other dates that have been announced so far: Atlanta on February 27; New York on March 5; Boston on March 6; Michigan on March 13 and Utah on April 5. All six dates are listed under the tour section of the band’s site already with onsale dates this week. These are in addition to a few festival stops in the U.S. this month.

But while the band left many concert goers buzzing about them after all their stops opening for U2 they didn’t even have their complete stage show or a full set. When Muse gets to play a wide array of hits from their impressive catalog of songs (they have released five CDS) and also utilize their imagination which means cool effects on stage, see singer Matt Bellamy’s light up piano for example, they are at their best. When their 5th CD The Resistance came out, to paraphrase Bono, they were number one in 24 countries and are sure to be number one here soon. It’s amazing to think they haven’t become megastars in the US yet with such brilliant songs as “Hysteria,” “Time Is Running Out,” “Starlight.” “Supermassive Black Hole,” “Plug In Baby,” “Knights of Cydonia,” “Bliss” and that is just to name a few. Their diverse songs and completely distinctive blending of metal, alternative rock, pop and even a sound best described as symphonic all demonstrate why they truly are one of the most famous bands all around the world. Thankfully America is slowly and finally catching up.

Both Muse’s live shows and CDs esp the brilliant new CD The Resistance all showcase their underrated talent. There’s Matt Bellamy’s gorgeous vocals and mindblowing skills as a guitarist and pianist, Dominic Howard’s superior ability as a drummer and Christopher Wolstenholme‘s ability to rock the bass like no other. But for anyone who may have missed Muse when they came to town with U2 do not miss the chance to see them this time around. The combination of opening for U2, having songs featured on both Twilight soundtracks and with their latest CD gaining favorable critical press all have given them a lot of new fans and exposure. This also likely means tickets will go fast so get them ASAP. Tickets go onsale for the March 1, 2010 show this Friday at 10am through ticketmaster and are $55. They can be purchased by going to the Ticketmaster site.  Don’t miss a chance to see Muse and the equally amazing Silversun Pickups on one ticket.  But pardon the pun resistance really is futile because Muse will be the next big rock sensations that is if the U.S. catches up to what other countries already know.

For more information on Muse check out the band’s official website: www.muse.mu, www.myspace.com/muse or follow them on twitter at www.twitter.com/muse

Muse's The Resistance is No. 16 on 20 Watts' Best of 2009 list

PREVIEW: Visit Muse’s MySpace

Top Track: “United States of Eurasia”

It seems like this is the year Muse finally broke out in the states. Even though the band always garnered critical acclaim they never made a huge impact on the American mainstream market. Before The Resistance was released in September Muse made their first appearance on the cover of Spin. Shortly after the release of The Resistance the lead single “Uprising” became the number one alternative rock song in the country. Soon after that Muse was brought on board to open up for U2 on their 360º Tour.

On Muse’s fifth studio album they shine in the moments when they experiment with simplistic but incredible guitars riffs, soaring vocals, and intricate synth work.  This is pretty much what Muse has always done, but they stepped it up especially on “Uprising” and “United States of Eurasia.”

Muse has always been compared to Queen, and this CD definitely shows why. With powerful gutair riffs that would be right down Brian May’s ally, and vocal harmonies that only Queen could replicate, Muse emulate on of the most underrated bands in rock history. While no one could ever touch Freddie Mercury’s charisma Muse frontman Matthew Bellamy certainly tries his best. As the CD goes on it does lose some of it’s steam, but the three part “Exogenesis: Symphony” trilogy that closes out The Resistance is definitely noteworthy simply because it is so experimental and epic.

Overall this might not be the best Muse album, but it’s still one of the best albums of 2009. Long time Muse fans may have been disappointed with this CDs less exciting direction, but it definitely had a strong impact on the mainstream, and isn’t it about time that all of America takes notice of these innovative Brits.

– Eric Hoffman

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OK, I admit — there is absolutely no reason to bring up this long-forgotten interview from the 2004 May edition of NME (New Music Express) Magazine, other than it really makes me laugh!  I started reading through this a few days ago while cleaning up one of my USB drives, and got distracted, as always… 

The article is the usual mix of Musery: politics, religion, aliens, Bush, poker, lost plots and split lips.

The author called us (the Musers) ”obsessed, enthralled and frothing at the mouth with enthusiasm” — and as much as the sane part of me would like to, I can’t disagree with that observation!

And, oh yes….. I forgot to mention that Muse-ism is now a religion!!

Have fun reading this!

xx

— Erato1

Readers, we come to inform you of a crazed new religion that’s sweeping through North America.  One brought across the Atlantic by three missionaries, who organize congregations at so-called ‘churches’ that, for some reason, are littered with empty Budweiser bottles and fag-ends.  Worshippers gather nightly at these venues, to be baptized in a sea of flying lager and praise their leader, a pocket-sized cross between a sci-fi geek and a snotty punk ok.

But be aware: because whereas the devotion levels reach religious fever pitch, this ain’t no fundamentalist nonsense spouted by a firework-hungry Texan.  Oh no, this is Muse-ism, something that’s starting to take a vice-like grip on the Yanks just as it has back home.

The band have been out here for just over a week when NME arrives in Montreal, and so far the tour’s been a barrage of screaming fans, ear-splitting volume and serious gambling addiction.  What more could you want?  Sacrificial blood?  Well, you should have showed up for their Atlanta date then, when disaster struck during a routine rock star leap and Matt Bellamy ended up skewering his face on his own guitar.  “I didn’t feel any pain at first,” he winces, when we meet up with the band at their swanky hotel.  “Then I spat out this liquid and there were gushes of red stuff spurting out all over the microphone.  I ran back stage and started puking up”.  Drummer Dom Howard’s face whitens as he recalls the moment: “I knew it was bad as soon as he turned around, there was blood dripping everywhere.”

Matt whips out a pack of cards and starts shuffling them frantically (this is a very Matt Bellamy thing to do): “At first you could feel the stitches stretching my face as I sang but now the only problem is that they seem to be disappearing into my lip”.  He looks towards his band mates, perhaps sensing their minimal sympathy, and confesses, “I’ve been guilty of throwing guitars around recently.”  Erm, right…how come?  Matt stares deep into the NME’s eyes, suddenly reducing the pace of his shuffling.  “Do you ever lose the plot?” he whispers.  In what sense?  “Well, just when you’re sitting in a bar and the lights are a bit dim.  You start going a bit dizzy and you’re not sure what your name is and you’re surrounded by people you don’t know.  Then you start thinking, ‘I’m not even sure how I got here.’  I get that a lot.  Especially onstage.  And that’s when I start chucking guitars around.”

Ok, so Muse have never been the kind of band to divert attention, their music, especially on last year’s wonderful “Absolution” LP, sounds like it’s been beamed in from some fucked-up galaxy where such pointless aspirations as ‘cool’ don’t exist.  A place where weaving space-solos can’t be too long, baroque-fuelled classical interludes can’t be preposterous and somersaulting vocal meltdowns can’t be too similar to the noise of getting trapped in your flies.

Its blatant disregard for playing it straight that makes it all the more surprising that America is falling for them.  Not so long ago, the only UK bands getting heard across the Atlantic were bland unit-shifters such as Coldplay.  Now Yanks are craving the looniest stuff we can throw at them, be it Spandex-clad cock-rock (The Darkness) or glammy boyband metal (Lost prophets).  Well, feel free to add operatic warble-rock to that list.  Because despite having to pull a show in Philadelphia, a combination of rest and very expensive US psycho-drugs meant Muse were back on the road four days later, and on the receiving end of a totally deranged reaction at every show.  “There’s definitely an internet thing going on,” says Matt on the buzz.

Bassist Chris Wolstenholme agrees: “The second album (‘Origin of Symmetry’) isn’t even out here, so to see 800 people jumping up and down singing all the words to those songs was really surprising.”

NME witnessed the madness first hand on Monday night, where the band play a sardine-packed Spektrum club in Montreal.  When we roll up a few hours before the doors open, there’s already a queue of devotees snaking down the street.  At the very front are Lindsey, 22, Amanda, 21 and Brian, 20.  They’ve been here since 2pm after a mammoth eight hour drive from Waterloo, an hour outside Toronto.  Why didn’t they just go to the Toronto show tomorrow instead?  ”Oh we are!” laugh the two girls in tandem.  ”Then we’re going to Coachella, just to see Muse.  They’re more than just a band – they’re something to believe in. ”  Which sums up the typical Muse fan perfectly – obsessed, enthralled and frothing at the mouth with enthusiasm.  Muse, you see, are the kind of band that soundtrack your deepest thoughts, rather than a night out on the piss.  And, like the girls said, the kind of band to believe in.

“Our music’s never fitted in with any particular scene, especially now,” reckons Matt.  “I think that attracts people who don’t feel they fit in either.”  In other words, being a Muse fan offers a sense of belonging.  And right now, the need to belong to something other than a world on a one-way mission to obliterate itself is pretty fucking important.  Perhaps that’s the reason why the current crop of UK bands breaking out in America are less about conformity and the ability to blend in unnoticed among the airwaves, and more about standing out in loony trousers, offering something alternative to Bush and Blair’s war on liberalism.  Matt agrees: “The fact that there’s a whole load of people who don’t agree with what the government’s doing probably encourages them to seek out freedom and things they feel more free with, even if it’s just their mind.  It’s a way of showing that they appreciate things that aren’t just anti-abortion rallies or whatever.”

Do you think that the rise of these bands comes as a direct result of the war in Iraq?  The band look quite put out, as if this suggestion is taking something away from their music.  “We’ve always risen slowly,” says Chris, “so I don’t think it’s just to do with the changing state of the world.” But in actual fact, an ability to align your music with your feelings of a generation is something few bands ever achieve.  And right now, when Dubya goes to open his SUV’s electric windows and hits the ‘Nuke Everyone’ button by mistake, it’ll be Muse that people will be grabbing from their shelves to face the fire with.  Their songs speak of panic, fear and alienation at a time when other bands speak of getting loaded and the perfect mullet angle.  And although Matt’s keen to point out (“For me, a political band is about bringing unknown causes to the public eye, like Rage did”), he does acknowledge that the feeling that we’re all going to roast at a glorified Bush ‘n’ Blair bonfire is a major influence on their music.  “It’s hard to avoid writing about these things when we see it in the news everyday,” he explains.  “At the moment there’s another Vietnam kicking off just because of some… (spits) donkey in America, making these decisions because he thinks his way of thinking is better than other people’s.”  So what would you say to George Bush if you ever met him?  Matt thinks for a minute before his eyes well up with righteous anger and deep-seated contempt.  He plunges deep within his soul for words loaded with the heaviest of venom he can muster.  “I’d say to him… ‘What’s 9+6?’”

Later that night, in front of just over 1,000 people, Muse take the stage to a reaction that’s truly unlike anything else we’ve ever witnessed.  Seriously, it suggests they’re not so much cracking North America, as beating it across the skull with a series of crunching inter-planetary metal-riffs.  When they arrive, the resulting roar makes NME temporarily deaf for the next three days.  When the bands unleash the feedback-fuelled WMDs on ‘Muscle Museum’, it doesn’t just get the moshpit leaping but the entire venue and staff behind the bar.  And when the gorgeous classical flourishes of ‘Ruled by Secrecy’ float across the audience, Montreal’s collective heart swoons in tandem.  No doubt about it, there’s a full on connection being made here.

“A lot of our songs do deal with panic and mistrust, the feelings of decisions being made out of your control,” says Matt later.  “So I guess people relate to that. I get a lot of those moments in my life and they stay with me.”  This isn’t surprising.  Matt Bellamy, you see, is an extreme sort of guy.  Like his music, he’s not one to do things by halves.  Right now, for example, he’s a self-confessed poker addict.  He got into a game a couple of weeks back and hasn’t stopped playing since.  According to Dom, he goes to bed shuffling a pack of cards and wakes up doing the same, something we’ve notices throughout our time here.  But when we approach the subject of Muse, and Matt in particular, are a bit more intense and passionate than the average band, they are keen to play it down.  “Everyone has those moments of extremity in life – it’s just not always socially acceptable to express them,” Matt argues, while pulling off a technically impressive under-the-leg shuffle.  “When you’ve seen something horrific on the news you can’t start screaming down the aisles of Tesco.  But that feeling stays inside you, and we’re able to bring it out through songs.”  He turns the question to the NME.  “Have you ever panicked about your own death?”  Of course, yeah.

“Well, for that short instant, whether it’s on a plane taking off or whatever, you feel something incredibly strong inside of you.  But it’s not publicity acceptable to express, right?  So you ignore it.  Like, you might be in the office one day and something says something that winds you up.  Deep down you want to get a gun and fucking shoot everyone, but you can’t, right?”  “Ever get that feeling?” laughs Dom, conscious that perhaps Matt’s not doing too well in the ‘appearing normal’ stakes.  Later that night, after the fans have dispersed home, the band relax in the dressing room over a game of – guess what? – Poker.  The table is loaded with huge wads of US dollars, brought out for the benefit of the NME snapper.  “So, how much are we really playing for?” asks Matt, nervously.  “Five dollars each, yeah?” Proceedings are interrupted by a self-confessed rock ‘n’ roll doctor (his other clients include Ozzy) who arrives to rip Matt’s stitches out while we all stand around and gawp.  As conversation veers towards tonight’s wild-eyed crowd reaction, NME asks Matt if he sees a parallel between religious devotion and the way certain fans react to his music.

Ever modest, he simply laughs: “Well, I don’t really think we’re providing them with a life after death!  And that’s the fundamental premise of religion.  But I don’t really think our fans take things quite that seriously.”  The band look a little uneasy, perhaps because the idea of organized religion isn’t really in line with their musical mission.  Matt explains his awkwardness with the questions: “The problem with most major religions is that their key texts state that they’re the only one.  That to be truly religious you have to abandon all other ways of thinking.  We’d sooner promote the idea of being more open-minded.  It’s hard not to find attractive aspects in all religions but to settle on a path…well, it’s more fun when you can latch on to any old berserk idea and believe whatever it is you’ve read that week.”

We catch up with the band the next day in Toronto.  The gig at College Street’s Brit-obsessed Mod Club is similarly explosive, although the high percentage of industry here (from Muse’s new US label) means a more muted reaction, despite the efforts of a few Union Jack-waving fans.  Post show the lads are hanging backstage in the dressing room, discussing the toxic properties of cheap red wine and father-of-three Chris’ marriage last December, which saw them all invest in their first suits.  As drinks are consumed, Dom and Matt reveal that they’re both about to start helicopter pilot training.  “Let’s get one small enough to land onstage at festivals,” says Matt, before considering the consequences.  “We’d be bound to crash and mince the crowd with the propeller, wouldn’t we?”

It transpires that last night the band stayed up gambling until 6am but tonight’s dressing room is a gambling-free zone (they haven’t kicked the habit; Matt just can’t find any cards).  However, they get their fix by discussing how they could introduce an interactive poker game on their website.  NME can’t help but feeling that this is only a short step away from selling crack on the merch stand, but we don’t say anything.  We’re too busy trying to make Matt admit that he’s an ultra-intense nutjob from the planet Freakazoid and so we start grilling him about how deeply he feels about music again.  “I think from a young age, music’s something where I’ve felt something a bit further, if you know what I mean,” says Matt.  “You get these intense, amazing feelings and music’s the purist form of expressing that.  But I mean, everyone feels things passionately, unless they’re not even a human being.”

Surely you see yourself as more passionate than, say, The Strokes?  “I find The Strokes pretty intense, to be honest.  It’s something about his voice that’s intense and emotional.  I think most bands feel the same about their music as we do about ours.  Even a band like The Darkness take it seriously, you know.  And they’re kind of like Spinal Tap.  Only real!”  Hang on one second! There’s a distinct whiff of the pot calling the kettle none-more-black here.  After all, you’re the guys wheeling out deranged baroque interludes where the middle-eights should be.  Just take tonight as an example – Matt aiming his guitar, rocket launcher-like, towards the crowd, thrusting his fist in the air and turning the lunacy dial way beyond 11.  Muse are a band you can take seriously, sure, but they’re also a band you can enjoy on a level of sheer hilarity, much in the same vein as The Darkness.  The band look slightly puzzled, offended even.  “Erm…the odd rock pose, perhaps,” offers Matt.  “But musically there’s not much there.  They’re more about reviving a particular genre, a retro thing which you can’t say about us.”  Chris: “We do have Spinal Tap days…”  Matt: “But we haven’t got any catsuits yet, and I’m happy to say that’s never going to happen.”  Never?  Matt: “Never.”

Perhaps it’s entirely reasonable to see why Muse don’t like pigeonholes, whether it’s lumping them in with ultra-passionate doom-mongers or OTT metal-merchants.  They’re a band so oblivious to trends that it’s almost unfair to group them with anyone.  But surely, with the music they make and the interviews they give, it’s reasonable to assume that these three Brits are somewhat out of the ordinary.  After all, Matt has previously expressed love for a particular theory that suggest we’re all the product of an alien who carried out experiments on cavemen-type creatures in order to make the human race mine gold for them.  “We make weird music, perhaps, but we’re not weird people and we don’t really want to be seen that way,” says Matt.  “That particular theory sounds ludicrous in print, but the guy who came up with it was the main advisor for Colin Powell in the Gulf War.”  And you’re saying that makes him sane?

Matt Laughs: “True.  But this theory does explain a lot of things.  Like how Minotaurs were just products of the experiments to find the perfect creature to mine gold.  It’s really interesting.  It says that one day the aliens will come down to Earth for the gold and they’ll be the standard traditional alien – 10ft tall, green eyes, long arms, that kind of thing.”  Thing is, Matt, this just isn’t the kind of thing everyday people chat about.  “People talk about this sort of thing all the time in the pub,” he counters.  “That’s the direction I’m going for; really, it’s just that sometimes it comes across as me preaching.  It’s not like that.  I’m just bored, and talking about gold-mining aliens from a geothermal planet is more interesting that record sales, isn’t it?”

It is indeed – because in a music scene made up of dullard, contrived rock stars who spend more time quality-controlling their image than their music, it’s refreshing to have a band with no hang-ups about what they do.  Matt agrees: “We did these interviews a while back and I came across looking a bit of a twat.  From then on I just thought it was time for me to… be myself, even though that normally means speaking loads of crap.  I think American bands are extremely conscious trying to match their music with this image of them swaggering and smoking.  But we’ve not got any shame, really, even if that means writing extremely overblown songs representing random moments of panic.  

We’re letting it all come out naturally, we’re not afraid of anything.”

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97.9 FM Website

Concert info: 

MUSE

with special guest Silversun Pickups

Saturday, February 27

7:00 PM

The Arena at Gwinnett Center

Tickets on sale Saturday, December 12 at 10 AM

99X Presale Friday, December 11 from 10AM to 10PM (Details coming soon)

Arena box office, Ticketmaster, by phone at (800) 745-3000, or online at www.ticketmaster.com

For those of you who are going to try to win some tickets, the station’s phone number is: (404) 741-4999

Next week the radio station will be giving out tickets every day with Lewis at 1:30 p.m. and Kinard at 4:30 p.m. (CST, I assume)

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As the title suggests and ringrocker.com reports, Germany’s biggest music festival has tapped some of music’s biggest names for its 2010 edition. Rammstein, Kiss, Muse, Kasabian, and Motorhead will highlight next year’s Rock am Ring & Rock im Park, set to take place simultaneously in Nürburgring and Nuremberg from July 4-6. Also announced are Bullet For My Valentine, Editors, Gogol Bordello, Rise Against, Gossip, and As I Lay Dying.

For more information, head to the festival’s official website.  Tickets, priced at €145, can be obtained via eventim.de.

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Thanks to Psyche for the scans!

The Black Swans

Never afraid to try something different, Big Day Out headliners Muse have gone off the rails – and couldn’t be happier.

By Manlio Benigni

Muse are not your average band.  While others persist with the verse-chorus-verse ease with the three-minute pop song, the British trio have consistently aspired to something a little different – and the results have not always been easy to listen to.  Their new record, for instance, could seem impenetrable to the uninitiated – a dense, operatic and occasionally classical body of work, The Resistance is everything that a rock album shouldn’t be.  Self-produced and deliberately overblown, the trio’s fifth album was such an affront that for a while their label even considered not releasing it.

It’s fitting then that The Resistance should prove to be Muse’s greatest moment so far.  Critics are raving, and even the U.S. market is starting to pay attention, after all but ignoring previous releases.  Australia, of course, is enthralled, and Muse’s spot at the top of this year’s Big Day Out bill is the main reason the festival has sold out nationwide.  Clearly, Matthew Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard have arrived.

The Resistance’s journey from conception to release has been a bit like a chase scene from a James Bond film, beginning on the opulent shores of Italy’s Lake Como, where the band recorded the set in a tiny studio by the water, and ending in the luxury of the Belvedere, the lakeside hotel where our interview takes place.

It was on these same shores that George Clooney recently attracted a gaggle of paparazzi during his hunt for a cappuccino, but Muse, in contrast, look like reluctant stars.  This almost haughty attitude is not a case of snobbishness, but a need for protection.  Protection of their creature – their album, their music.  You don’t expect scandals that will wind up in the London gossip mags from Muse – just music of a kind only they are willing to produce. 

That adventurousness, however, doesn’t mean Muse are universally loved.  While their fans adore them for their apocalyptic lyrics, brash sounds and epic status, their critics detest them for those very same reasons.  Still, you certainly can’t compare the sound of Muse with any other band.

I ask Howard, sitting at a table outside the Belvedere patiently waiting for our interview to begin, if the band has ever felt lonely within the contemporary scene.  An unassuming guy who laughs nervously at every question, the drummer suddenly becomes serious: “It’s true, at some level we’ve always felt extreme, almost a case apart.  In the U.K. there is this continuous cycle of bands emerging from the scene, who then vacate their spot rapidly to some other band who has already managed to sign a contract, before being replaced by another band and so on…  If that doesn’t happen to us, it means we’re really dealing with an exceptional case.  We’ve never been part of that mechanism, and that’s a good thing, because it means we are free to create music we love, without imposing restrictions of any sort on ourselves.  Our diversity is not the result of a planned effort; it has always come naturally to us.”

A band apart – or, if you like, extreme.  You only have to listen to frontman Bellamy for a few minutes to realize you’re not dealing with your average rock star.  Gone is the inane chatter about groupies and million-dollar record deals – today Bellamy is quoting author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose famed 2007 novel The Black Swan heavily influenced the lyrical drive of The Resistance.  The novel deals with the triumph of chance upon the world, the random and completely unpredictable events, or ‘black swans’, which change our lives forever.  The tome is repeatedly quoted by Bellamy in the song “Unnatural Selection”.

The popular theory espouses a “meritocracy”, where the smartest and hardest-working take the spoils, Bellamy (and Taleb) beg to differ. “It’s not true,” he explains.  “Take the stock exchange, for example.  In The Black Swan, Taleb mentions an experiment conducted on a chimpanzee: they made it throw darts at a target composed of public company’s names, on which they would then invest money.  Well, while randomly hitting at targets, this chimp became something like the eighth most important trader in the U.S. (laughs).”

Slightly built and unerringly polite, Bellamy is almost elfin in appearance.  It seems normal for him to quote Camille Saint-Saens’s Samson and Delilah as a major influence in composing the song “I Belong To You”, or to feel more comfortable listening to Liszt, Chopin or Rachmaninoff than rock’n’roll classics.

There’s a simple explanation for this, Bellamy says: “I’ve played the piano since I was a child, when I was seven, maybe eight years old.  But the first memorable music for me was blues and rock’n’roll.  That pushed me to pick up a guitar when I was a teenager and to join a band, to leave the piano for about six or seven years.  Then when we were recording the first Muse album, there was a piano in every studio, so I started playing something, like the guitar part for “Sunburn”, the first song of our first record, Showbiz.  And our producer, John Leckie, says, “It sounds a lot better like that, better than the guitar version.”  Since then I started to listen to classical music for the piano with a lot more attention.  I understood that the piano wasn’t necessarily something delicate; it could also be a heavy rock instrument, to be abused.  Why not?”

It’s obvious Bellamy is conscious of the ‘arty’ aura that surrounds Muse, but even more obvious he doesn’t care about it.  “In our previous records it looked almost like we were restricting ourselves,” he confesses.  “But the time is right now for us to show all our complexity.  Consider the song “United States of Eurasia”: dramatic, theatrical, a little bit Queen, a bit like Chopin.  It may sound ridiculous, because there is so much stuff all together, but there is nothing we can do.  This is where our ‘screwed up’ component emerges, totally insane,” he laughs nervously.  “It’s always been important in Muse to keep an extremely open mind, never being afraid to experiment, something that a lot of other people would find unusual, embarrassing or uncomfortable.  We’ve managed to remove the idea of being cool at any cost.”

If Muse’s heads are swirling in the clouds of high art, then their heart still pulses on earth.   Lyrically, the first three songs of the new album – “Uprising”, “Resistance” and “Undisclosed Desires” – evoke a future reminiscent of George Orwell’s ‘1984’.

“A year ago, when we first started to work on the album, the feeling of discomfort towards what was happening around the world was tangible,” Howard observes.  “You couldn’t turn on the TV without facing what was happening in Thailand, in Iran and in England, too: an overwhelming feeling of dissatisfaction on a global scale.  Also, because it has been a while since we’d seen such a huge number of people protesting in the streets… That’s why some of our songs were generated from the idea of ‘resistance’.”

Bellamy elaborates: “The song “Uprising” is about the scandal of inflated reimbursements for some members of the British Parliament and the crisis of the British Banks, but all in a mocking tone.  There is no more democracy in England; we are governed by a Prime Minister that no one has even elected.  And all those scandals… I just wanted to communicate to people the idea that there is space for change, that revolution happens all the time, even if they aren’t always bloody.”

Still, it’s not all so politically heavy handed.  This is the band that takes those three songs of fists-in-the-air defiance, and places them on the same album as “Exogenesis”, a three-part symphony that is the result of years of work.  The songs take their cue from the piano playing and orchestral intuition of Bellamy, and have drawn comparisons to the epic psychedelia of Gong’s “Flying Teapot”.

Howard, becoming serious, explains: “This composition is born from the idea that the human race wasn’t necessarily evolved on this planet; maybe at the beginning of evolution there were some external interferences.  The three parts that compose “Exogenesis” tell the story of someone who is forced to leave the Earth by need and is forced to start a new life in another part of the Universe.”

So, just the usual then.  Luckily, Wolstenholme keeps Muse steadily anchored to the ground of this planet.  Tall, well built and sporting a long beard, the bass player holds court from his hotel room, with an air-conditioner buzzing away in the background, and platters of every edible delicacy laid out on the tables.  Puffing on a cigarette, the extroverted Wolstenholme is a bit like his bass guitar – in spirit, the solid backbone of Muse.

“Matt has the tendency to use his guitar as the solo instrument,” he explains.  “Consequently, my bass guitar plays a role very close to the rhythm guitar, almost like a melodic bass.”

Ever the working class element, Wolstenholme elaborates on the more practical sides of his job.  “On this record we haven’t really used a producer, but instead we had an excellent sound engineer named Adrian Bushby, who works with the Foo Fighters, and we produced as much as we could by ourselves,” he says.  “What you hear is the final product produced by three musicians who enjoy playing together in the same room.  The simple fact of having a studio all for ourselves has certainly improved our focus.”

And it seems to have improved efficiency too.

“We worked on the record for a year, but the overall production process has been a lot faster than in the past,” Wolstenholme explains.  “Every time we felt we were ready, we’d run straight into the studio to record, instead of being forced to follow a production schedule, simply because the studio was already paid in advance.”

It’s not every band that can afford to rent space on the  shores of Lake Como, an extravagance Bellamy says was worth every penny: “When we were living in the U.K., I always felt a lot more pressure coming from the record label and the fans…  Here on the lake everything appears to me a lot more calm, even the people.  An artist prefers a place where he can reach a sort of mental peace.  This would not be possible for me in a place like London or New York.  I consider myself a metropolitan kind of person, but in a city I struggle a lot when concentrating on my job.”

Here, once again, is the paradox that is Muse – a hard rock power trio with symphonic ambitions, an ‘arty’ band with pop sensibilities.  In a world where much of the music scene is measurable and predictable, Muse have opted to become the Black Swans, whose rare and unexpected events have the power to change the course of history.  This is not dictated by arrogance, but from confidence in their own skills.

Or maybe Muse don’t know any different.

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“BURBANK, Calif. – (Business Wire)

Muse’s current single “Uprising” has now topped Mediabase’s Alternative Rock chart for 13 consecutive weeks, breaking the record for number of consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Mediabase Alternative Rock chart for the 2009 calendar year. 

“Uprising” is the first single from the British rock trio’s fifth studio album The Resistance, which earned the band their highest-ever debut on the Billboard album chart when it bowed at No. 3. Muse’s previous album, 2006’s gold Black Holes and Revelations, peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard album chart. The Resistance also notched 20 No. 1 debuts around the world, including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, and the U.K.

Muse, which is vocalist/guitarist Matt Bellamy, bassist Chris Wolstenholme, and drummer Dom Howard, will perform on Saturday Night Live on December 19^th. In addition, the band have announced a series of upcoming holiday radio shows in the U.S, including KROQ’s legendary Almost Acoustic Christmas at Los Angeles’ Gibson Amphitheatre on December 13^th. Please see below for all dates.

The Resistance was produced by Muse and mixed by famed audio engineer Mark ‘Spike’ Stent. The band, which recently supported U2 on several American tour dates, are currently winding up a sold-out tour of the U.K. and Europe. They will announce details of a spring headlining U.S. tour in support of The Resistance shortly.

In other Muse news, the band has been nominated for a 2010 People’s Choice Award, which is voted on by the public, for “Favorite Rock Band.”

1. Muse – Uprising

Muse’s upcoming U.S. tour dates are as follows:

 

In what promises to be a lively interview, Adam Lambert discusses the unreleased Muse track “Soaked,” which he covers on his (ironically titled?) debut For Your Entertainment.

Listen to the Muse version below. I simply can’t post anything from Adam Lambert’s album. It is so overproduced and overmixed and overhydrated that it begins to sound exactly the same way a video game looks. I was a fan during his run on American Idol, and believed the comparisons to Matthew Bellamy to be fair. Both have a cocky, high-flying, and acrobatic vocal style, and both straddle the fence between delicate and brash. So Lambert’s performance of “Starlight” made sense, as did this cover:

“Soaked” is a slightly odd Muse track, to be sure. But For Your Entertainment is hands-down the disappointment of the year. We were expecting glam metal wrapped in progressive rock. But what we got was a Britney wrapped in a Justin.

These Muse at Glasonbury Festival 2010 rumours have been going around the Web for about a week now.  I believe eFestivals and Gigwise sites were the first ones to start talking about it, and even though I brought those articles to everyone’s attention on the official Muse Forum, I didn’t want to say anything on here until I heard something a little bit more concrete…

This is from www.bbc.co.uk (about as concrete as it’s going to get at the moment):

David Bowie and Muse linked with Glastonbury

David Bowie has played Glastonbury twice – in 1971 and 2000 (pictured) David Bowie has denied that he will join U2 on the bill for next year’s Glastonbury Festival. Bowie played at the second Glastonbury in 1971 and press reports suggested he was considering an offer to return for its 40th anniversary next year. But his website said: “Sadly, there is absolutely no substance to this story.” Stadium rock band Muse could be on the line-up, though. TV host Jonathan Ross said Muse singer Matt Bellamy told him the band were “probably doing it”. Muse appeared on Ross’s chat show on Friday and Ross relayed Bellamy’s off-air comments about the festival via Twitter. The band headlined the final night of Glastonbury in 2004.   Muse have said they are likely to headline festivals next summer They will play stadium shows at Wembley and Old Trafford next September and bass player Chris Wolstenholme recently told NME that they also expected to play summer festivals. A Glastonbury spokesman was unavailable for comment. U2 will headline Glastonbury’s first night on Friday, 25 June, a booking that has sparked passionate debate among the festival faithful. Some have welcomed the news that one of the world’s biggest bands will appear, while others see them as pompous and past their peak. Speaking in September about the anniversary, Mr Eavis told the BBC: “The expectations are really high. So we have to deliver on that. We’re trying to get the best headliners in the world.” Bruce Springsteen, Blur and Neil Young headlined this year’s show, which was recently named best major festival at the UK Festival Awards. Next year’s sold-out event takes place on Mr Eavis’ dairy farm from 25-27 June. No other artists have yet been confirmed, although US crooner Andy Williams announced that he will be performing.