Every month, 33 1/3 editorial assistant Kaitlin Fontana will compile the best, weirdest, most interesting music and sound news from the past 30 days and serve it up to you in one handy, easy to digest list. May we present 33 Things that happened in November?*
Drumroll please…
1. Happy Thanksgiving, ‘Muhrica! We’re bringing you an early 33 Things this month as a result.* Need a distraction from family holiday time? Here are at least 60 great albums you probably haven’t heard.
2. Oh Lord, it’s no Mercedes Benz, but it’ll do: this month, Janis Joplin was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
3. Norah Jones and Billie Joe Armstrong have released an album of Everly Brothers covers under the moniker Foreverly, and it’s a combo that Stereogum calls “surprising and pretty wonderful.”
4. Andrew WK, subject of a forthcoming 33 1/3, is hosting a New Year’s Eve PARTY!!!! in NYC, and you’re invited!
5. You live, you learn that Alanis Morrissette and American Idiot producer Tom Kitt are developing a Broadway musical version of Jagged Little Pill.
6. The Arcade Fire requested that attendees wear “costumes or formal wear” to their tour shows for Reflektor, then later relented amid a fan backlash. “Good luck hearing these brilliant, disco-leaning pop gems through those sweatpants,” frontman Win Butler added.
7. In this month’s “Let’s all feel old and listen to hip-hop” news, A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders just turned 20.
8. Also, you can listen to Busta Rhymes back in fine form, with Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and, yep, Q-Tip long for the ride.
9. Wait–there’s more: Wu Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is also 20. Take a member-by-member trip down memory lane.
10. Oh, no—we’re not done yet. Dust off your shoulders, cuz Outkast is reuniting.
11. And to celebrate, let’s read a career retrospective on the Atlanta duo, shall we? To summarize: We’re old, and we like hip-hop!
12. To commemorate the opening of a new Brooklyn location for UK music superstore Rough Trade, Television are playing not one, but two gigs in New York next weekend (I’ll see you at the Saturday one!).
13. Famed classical composer Steve Reich rewrote Radiohead’s music for the 20-member chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound, and they performed it at the Met. Oh, and Reich has a lot to say about his process and progress. It’s pretty great.
14. The author of our Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle 33 1/3, Richard Henderson, now hosts a 2-hour weekly radio show called No Condition Is Permanent, which streams live from luxuriamusic.com (or from Luxuria via the TuneIn iPhone app) every Saturday evening from 9pm-11pm PST. Congrats, Richard!
15. At the first ever YouTube Music Awards, Arcade Fire’s Win Butler interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech, Kanye-style, demanding a win for “Harlem Shake.”
16. Meanwhile Mr. ImmaLetYouFinish himself cancelled some tour dates due to “routing logistics” (lagging sales mayhaps?) before releasing the weirdest, most indulgent music video of all time. Then, of course, Seth Rogen and Let’s Talk About Love second edition contributor James Franco promptly destroyed it in this shot-for-shot remake:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRckgn36lzY&w=560&h=315]
17. Just as we put up our Q&A with Chris Ott, the author of the Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures 33 1/3, Ian Curtis’s kitchen table (yes, from that kitchen) went up for sale on eBay. Eerie!
18. Winner of this month’s “a headline you can’t make any better” award: Australia says Katy Perry is trying to ruin its ecosystem with her album.
19. And speaking of thunder down under: In honor of a long-heralded return to Kangaroo Country, Superchunk released a live album recorded in Australia in 1996. Buy it now, before a dingo eats it. Pass the Vegemite. That’s not a knife; this is a knife, etc.
20. Second place in the “a headline you can’t make any better” contest: Stephen King and John Mellencamp (nee Cougar) wrote a musical together. Oh, and you can watch a clip from it!
21. Our number one favorite book subject, Celine Dion, quite accurately explains what happened to Miley Cyrus in this incredibly entertaining video. Cher Mme. Dion: May we suggest a “Celine Explains the World” web series? Merci, Tout le Monde.
22. Members of the Calgary Opera wrote and performed a Rob Ford aria. Nothing like opera to class up lyrics like “I’m mayor Rob Ford, your champion / Never smoked crack, (ahem) wait, I’ve smoked crack. I’m just in a drunken stupor.”
23. T-Swift covered Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” live in concert. Now you have heard the princess of country music say “vomit.” And “yo,” for that matter.
24. The Village Voice sure has opinions about women with Neutral Milk Hotel tattoos. That, or we don’t get the joke. One or both of those things.
25. Remember rap rock? Remember when it was thought popular enough to become a brief and terrible television show, Shasta McNasty? Yeesh. The 90s, amirite?
26. And speaking of the 1990s, here are 15 one hit wonders from 1998. (Side note: Vulture’s entire Fame in 1998 series is great. It made me wanna put my tender/ heart in a blender/ watch it spin around to a beautiful oblivion…you get it).
27. Bret Easton Ellis has a podcast, and that podcast had Kanye West. Behold.
28. Bjork. Explaining. Television.
29. If you still miss Lou Reed as much as we do, you can listen to this 1979 WPIX radio show and feel a tiny bit better about things. Or read Patti Smith’s goodbye. Sigh.
30. Lauryn Hill is out of jail and going on tour, and people who comment on websites have lots of thoughts about this (scroll, ye mighty, and despair).
31. Music is good for you. Science says so. Take that, creationists!
32. In case you were wondering—if Kurt Cobain was alive today he’d look like an illustration of an older version of Kurt Cobain (but these are cool, regardless).
33. Bob Dylan and an Israeli artist made an interactive video for “Like a Rolling Stone,” and it’s way cooler than the term “interactive video” implies. Go see. Seriously.
Rendezvous then I’m through with you.
That’s it for 33 Things for 2013 (we’re going on vacation until music news gets voluminous again in the new year). Happy holidays, everyone. Especially you, Older John Lennon in a Turtleneck. Can anyone say silver fox?
