Normally, we trust Perez Hilton about as far as we can throw him (0.3 meter at last attempt), but the rumors that beard aficionado Devendra Banhart (who we used to run into at the Little Joy every other weekend a few years back) is putting the freak in freak folk with Padmé Amidala seem pretty reasonable. We personally think it’s a giant step down from Gael García Bernal, but then again, we can’t wait until Devendra picks a fight with Wes Anderson over this.

– August Brown

Photo by Annie Wells/Los Angeles Times

A 3 1/2-year jail term would give anybody a lot to be angry about (and plenty of time to mull it over), but Mobb Deep’s Prodigy is making especially fruitful use of his time inside the clink. While serving his term for a 2006 gun charge, he’s taken up biweekly blogging for Vibe magazine, and he’s a reliably great read, particularly for his fevered tangents like this one against Disney films (profanity redacted for the kids out there) …

“NAME A BLACK CHARACTER IN ANY CLASSIC WALT DISNEY STORY? … YOU CAN’T EVEN SEE A BLACK EXTRA UNLESS IT’S A MAID OR BUTLER. AT LEAST NOT WHEN I WAS GROWING UP AND I DOUBT RIGHT NOW. RECENTLY THEY MADE A FEW ANIMATED MOVIES LIKE: POCHOHANTAS, ALADDIN, AND LILO & STITCH. IN THESE MOVIES, THEY HAVE INDIANS AND ARABIAN CHARACTERS BUT I HAVEN’T SEEN A BLACK ANIMATED DISNEY MOVIE YET…WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHER GREAT INDIAN WOMEN?”

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If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

– Pauline O’Connor

The local noise-freak quartet HEALTH is one of L.A.’s most volatile and virtuosic live acts, but almost to a fault. They’re so busy sending every song in a thousand different directions (nearly all of which are interesting) that as soon as you hear a sound you like, it’s already over. But beneath all those whiplash twists and turns, there’s a sense of rhythm and haunting repetition that suggests they’d be a great dance band if they’d just sit still for a few minutes.

Turns out, HEALTH thought so too. “HEALTH//DISCO,” out in May,  is a compilation of the many (and pretty ace) remixes of cuts from their self-titled album that have been floating around antagonistic dance-punk circles for a few months. We’re particularly fond of the Missy Elliot-evoking Pictureplane’s remix of “Lost Time” and the NOSAJ THING edit of “Tabloid Sores” that sounds like a sebastiAn track made entirely with a Galaga machine. This is the rare remix album that holds up with (and in many places, surpasses) the original article.

– August Brown

Photo courtesy Fanatic Promotions

If you want to attract the attention of frisbee-addled college students, offering free tickets to a  Dave Matthews concert ranks up there with shouting that a Drug Enforcement Administration  evidence truck has overturned in the IHOP parking lot. So, a round of golf claps go out to the enterprising Obama volunteers who, according to the Indianapolis Star, thwarted Bill Clinton’s Hillary-touting appearance at Indiana University on Wednesday by passing out free tickets to a pro-Obama concert by The Dave at IU’s Assembly Hall this Sunday. Expect plenty of khaki cargo shorts of Hope and elaborate multi-chamber water pipes of Change.

– August Brown

Dave Matthews photo by Joe Pugliese

It’s a rough time to be a foreigner trying to breach the walls of the Impenetrable America Castle, even for a reason as innocuous and wholesome as singing a tune here and there. But now, Congress, in a completely unprecedented move toward productivity, has gotten the bright idea to try to cut some of the red tape and waiting periods required of foreign artists who want to perform in the U.S.

The bill, which the House approved Tuesday and which now goes to the Senate for consideration, would speed up the application process that requires performers to endure some combination of proving they’re serious artists, hiring lawyers, visiting a consulate and paying giant fees. You can expedite the application if you have an extra $1,000 lying around for “premium processing,” which these days even excludes some major-label artists, especially if the Department of Homeland Security suspects you might have a fondness for the agricultural exports of Humboldt County.

The bill would extend the application processing time to 30 days, but with free premium processing if that deadline wasn’t met. The legislation would apply only to non-profit arts groups, not professional touring bands. But it’s still one step closer to the great day Tokio Hotel can behold our amber waves of grain with as little bureaucracy as possible.

– August Brown

Photo by Samuel Kubani/AFP/Getty Images

Wow, so that bro core piece really touched a nerve out there. For now though, let’s put aside our genre hair-splitting and celebrate some more good news from the punk world. The Humanist Chaplaincy, a Harvard University organization honoring cultural and scientific work by the openly non-religious, will present its Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism to Bad Religion singer/UCLA biology professor Greg Graffin. Last year’s recipient was “The Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie, who knows a thing or two about the dangers of religious fanaticism. Graffin will perform an acoustic set after the ceremony, so for you Harvard kids out there, here’s your best chance to yell “We’re Only Gonna Die!” in the school chapel outside of finals week.

-August Brown

Greg Graffin photo by Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times

There’s a list of usual suspects when it comes to scalping obnoxiously priced concert tickets: Hannah Montana. Radiohead. U2. Vampire Weekend?! Add the Lacoste-loving hipsters to the roster: tickets for the New York act’s sold-out headlining gig at the El Rey tonight have been selling for more than the cost of three days at Coachella. Pairs have gone for as much as $300 on eBay and it’s even worse on Craigslist, where one particularly greedy scalper was asking $400 for his tickets yesterday. Though the band’s next five shows are sold out, the skyrocketing rates seem to be an L.A. phenomenon: A pair for Neumos in Seattle, WA, are going for a reasonable $43 with 14 bids and another seller is only asking $49 for the Portland, OR show at the Doug Fir Lounge.

Which brings up a pair of questions: Is it worth it? And who’s actually paying $400 to see a Paul Simon-aping indie rock band with less than a dozen songs to their name? I can answer the first one: Having seen the band open for Clipse at Columbia University’s free (!) back-to-school blow-out over the summer, I can tell you that their recent SNL performances (embedded below, after the jump) are a solid indicator of the quality of their live show: pretty good. Clipse made them look like Werewolf Tuesday. As for the second? Raise your hands, Vampire bidders.

–David Greenwald

Photo of Vampire Ezra Koenig playing at SXSW by Jack Plunkett / Associated Press

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Remember when we wanted our MTV? For those too young to recall the heady days before the 24/7 dramarama of Lauren Conrad, the initials stood for Music Television. With the April 7 launch of the on-demand streaming video site Pitchfork.tv, indie tastemaker Pitchfork Media is hoping to do for the Internet what MTV once did for the airwaves. Inspired in part by the success of YouTube, the site has been in development since August and original footage has already been shot in New York and Chicago. In a recent IM conversation (edited for OMGs), Pitchfork founder and publisher Ryan Schreiber discussed the launch, jockeying for music’s Ebert & Roeper slot and the future of criticism in an ever-expanding blogosphere.

– David Greenwald

MTV rarely shows videos anymore – do you think you’ll be filling the niche they used to? Or is this something completely different?

Yeah, music videos will be a big part of it. We’re being selective about what we put up so there’s a level of quality control — the idea being that you can just press play and not have to skip around too much to find something that’s good. But the focus for us is the original content, documenting artists.

What kinds of programming are you planning on?

Artist interviews, sessions, documentaries and feature-length music docs and films. We have a couple of great concepts for documentary-style series we’re getting pretty close to putting together. We already have one called “Daytripping,” which is just going around with a band, seeing what they like to do, visiting them in the studio. The Man Man episode that we’re launching with was the first thing we ever shot. We drove to Philly, got a little tour of where they were staying, got burritos, then they rode their bikes to the studio, recorded for a while, and set off fireworks in the street. That actually ran in Forkcast not long after we shot it. We did one with Lee “Scratch” Perry too, which is just mind-blowing.

The press release promised Pitchfork writers in front of the camera – any chance of an Ebert & Roeper-type show with you and associate editor in chief Scott Plagenhoef?

I don’t know if that would ever happen. It’d be crazy, though – we both have pretty outspoken opinions about music and we’re comfortable enough with each other at this point that we can get into heated debates or arguments about bands or songs and both walk away happy.

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You can call him Bob: Sure, memoir publications are announced every day, but this one is special because it comes from the magnificent pen of our former music critic, Robert Hilburn. Plus, ahem, we can attest that it won’t be another “Love and Consequences.” Modern Times/Rodale announced Tuesday that they had signed Hilburn to write “a deeply personal and highly opinionated memoir” about his experiences with some of the musical giants of the ’60s, ’70s and today, including John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Jack White and Eminem. Hilburn has accompanied musicians in some spectacular circumstances, including Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and Paul Simon’s tour through Zimbabwe, a thought that would make Vampire Weekend totally spaz out with jealousy.

News of the Weird: When I was a kid, my best friend and I regularly made something we called witches brew, which involved throwing a bunch of liquid and condiments into the kitchen sink and then stirring it around like it was a bubbling cauldron. Friday’s show at the Roxy kind of reminds me of witches brew — either this will be genius unhinged or it’ll smell like vinegar and everyone will want to get out: Wayne Kramer will sit in with the Presidents of the United States to perform “Kick Out the Jams.” Well, OK! But then it gets even stranger. “Weird Al” Yankovic will perform too. Turns out the spoof maestro met PUSA back when Al satirized their hit song “Lump.” He also directed their video for “Mixed Up SOB.” Here’s hoping that PUSA, Kramer and Al collaborate on a version of “Fat,” just because they can.

– Margaret Wappler

Photo of Paul Simon circa “Graceland” by YG.Yann Gamblin.