Following on from yesterday's news that TV On The Radio, Mogwai, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! and Seekae have been added to the touring event, The Harvest festival has announced a couple of sideshows for The National. Like sideshows for Portishead and Mercury Rev, they're not happening in the same cities that Harvest is. They will have the Walkmen with them however. Which is pretty great. And — some would say — a hard act to follow.

THE NATIONAL - AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2011

Tuesday 15 November - Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide 18+
Thursday 17 November - Metro City, Perth 18+

HARVEST FESTIVAL

Saturday 12th November – Werribee Park, Melbourne
Sunday 13th November – Parramatta Park, Sydney
Saturday 19th November – Botanical Gardens, Brisbane

Sideshow tickets go on sale Friday 16 September, 9:00am from venuetix.com.au (Adelaide) and oztix.com.au (Perth).



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First Cat Stevens, now this. Feted rapper Mos Def (aka Dante Terrell Smith) has announced via MTV show Sucker Free that he's retiring his 20-year-long Mos Def "name" at the end of 2011, and will thereafter be known only by his Islam name: Yasiin.

"I'm retiring the Mos Def name after 2011. I'm actually doing it. Yasiin. That's it. Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years, it's a name that the streets taught me, a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment, and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name and it's time to expand and move on. Also, I didn't want to have to deal with having any moniker or separation between the self that I see and know myself as."

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Jeff Tweedy of Wilco has performed a Black Eyed Peas song, with two surprising revelations.

1. Instead of falling into the trap of merely functioning as a hipster-baiting meme, Tweedy manages to make the performance hilarious, whilst also highlighting the nearly existential stupidity of the original lyrics.

2. Tweedy performed the song as part of an elaborate in-joke. The song was performed at the book launch of former Punk Planet editor Dan Sinker, who's new book The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel, was spawned from the collection of his anonymous tweets under the "fake name" of Rahm Emmanuel. The real Rahm Emmanuel was at the time running for Mayor of Chicago. The fake twitter account appeared simultaneously and ran in real-time correlation to the mayoral campaign, except instead of holding true to the real Emmanuel's actions, involved a puppy, a duck and a time vortex. The account (and subsequent book) was described as "The first truly great piece of literature to be produced using this micromedium that's rapidly transforming communication in the digital age" by Wired. In any case, at moments throughout the story, the fake Emmanuel called on Jeff Tweedy to play a Black Eyed Peas song at a rally. Full circle.



The "fake" twitter account is still up an able to be read, by the way. You should.

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Foo Fighters have announced Canadian punk band Fucked Up will support them on their Australian tour. The group will be pitching to the cheap seats at stadiums around the country in the hour before Tenacious D take the stage as the main support.

Perhaps you saw the Foo's perilously off-the-mark gay shower sex promo video recently?



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Something For Kate might have been telling fans that they're busy writing the follow up to their 2006 LP Desert Lights, but a terrible journalist might say that that news, my friends, is the official fiction. 'Cause Paul Dempsey has been busy Geocaching around New York.



In truth, Dempsey touches back down in his homeland early October for a series of solo shows. Two of which are already sold out.

23rd October - Corner Hotel, Melbourne - SOLD OUT
2nd November – Annandale Hotel, Sydney, NSW 
3rd November - Annandale Hotel, Sydney - SOLD OUT
20th November – Fly By Night,  Fremantle, WA
1st December – The Zoo, Brisbane, QLD

Details at pauldempseymusic.com

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Superstar DJ Tiësto has a new video for his song 'Maximal Crazy'.



Leaving me to admit that a) I'm curiously currently hooked on videos of ridiculously famous DJs playing to enormous crowds and doing nothing at all to bridge the yawning chasm between man and machine, beyond wearing a t-shirt and wiggling their hands in the air, and b) it's mainly an excuse to post this:




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