Tid bits of music news: Portishead questioning, Memphis airport paranoing, Elliot Smith leaking, Preists singing and the real definition of crowd surfing

A couple of days ago, Portishead asked their fans through one of their MySpace blog posts how they should sell their next album. Interesting idea. I would say there are as much fans proposing the Radiohead/NIN model than there are fans demanding they release it the traditional way. Check it out here.

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Memphis’ International Airport got in part closed down on Tuesday because a bicycle with a sticker of a Florida folk punk band named ‘This bike is a pipe bomb‘ (check out their mysapce here, good stuff) got spotted near its Terminal C.
Words fail me on this one.

“After a security officer noticed the offending sticker, airport staff “had a K-9 bomb dog respond, [police] cleared the scene, and [they] indicated that it was not an explosive”. No kidding. And here’s the kicker: “the bike’s owner was brought into custody and was restricted access to the space around the two-wheeled vehicle”. Rumor has it he has been arrested and that the FBI is investigating.

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Here’s a big (enormous might I add) gift for all Elliot smith fans out there. Outtakes from From A Basement On The Hill were leaked last weak. The monstrously breathtaking masterpiece was apparently supposed to be a double album but dropped some tunes for reasons I have yet to discover. Word has it that some of the tracks were written in the early nineties, so before the release of Basement. You can download it here. (MTV news has more)

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‘The Priest‘ are a trio of actual practicing priests who sing together and all have heavenly voices. Nothing very outstanding there. Fathers Eugene O’Hagan and Martin O’Hagan, who are brothers, and David Delargy have been in the priesthood for some 20 years but they’ve been singing together since their early teens. Again, nothing extraordinary here.

Now for the out-of-the ordinary part.

In February of last year, a musician by the name of Liam Bradley sent off a mobile phone video performance of the trio to Sony BMG. The Major replied briefly after and in April sent the priests a record contract worth $2 million to be released by Christmas (one of the contract’s clauses was for the priests’ day jobs to have priority on their musical career). Their debut recording has been produced by Mike Hedges, whose previous work includes best selling albums by U2, The Cure and Dido. Their self-titled album released on November 18th and immediately hit the top of the lists in both European and American charts. It broke the world record for ‘ fastest selling UK debut for a classical act’. They declined the opportunity to do a major 3 million pound tour. A documentary called ‘The Three Priests Singing” (here is part 1. Just follow through up to part 6 to see it all. It’s very interesting) was instantly produced and relates the priests mass-media adventure during their album’s production process. It has aired publicly in December. Since then the trio has been performing live in the most illustrious cathedral accompanied by the most prestigious orchestras conducted by the most esteemed conductors.

Don’t really know what concluding sentence I could use here, so I’ll leave you to your thoughts on the matter.

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This ain’t really news but it’s still pretty damn awesome:

Bark

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