​Our sister paper, The Village Voice, has announced the results of their annual Pazz & Jop critic's poll.

If you're unfamiliar, basically like 1,000 music critics get to vote on their favorite albums and singles, assigning points to the top 10. Then those points are tabulated and Kanye West wins.

Or at least he did this year -- surprising no one.

My ballot is here. Some other familiar names, like Mike R. Meyer, Mike Escoto, Lindsey Holder, Dan Gibson, Michael Lopez and Jason P. Woodbury, are on there, too.

Serene Dominic, a former New Times freelancer who now does freelance work for the Republic, is on there. (He apparently liked everything in his top 10 equally).

And, as always, the man who started the whole thing -- Rober Christgau -- is on there, too.

The best part of the whole thing is that you can click an album and see who else voted for it. Like, say, the Ted Leo 16 of us properly appreciated or the Toubab Krewe record that no one but me liked enough to vote for.

Search for your favorite obscure artist of 2010 and you just might have a new (second?) favorite music critic.

Some birds finally did what we've all been saying to Kings of Leon

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One of life's most basic teachings is that shit happens. Something might just happen out of one's control to the point where they must simply throw up their arms and proclaim, "shit." It's an inevitable part of life that is a great barometer for how one manages those tough times.

Shit definitely happened to Tennessee rockers/American music letdowns Kings of Leon Friday night, and this time the band wasn't responsible. No, it seems the rafters at St. Louis' Verizon Wireless Amphitheater is quite the hangout for numerous birds -- ones with a penchant for recognizing truly shitty music. Our colleagues at A to Z, the Riverfront Times' music blog, have reported that Kings of Leon were forced to cancel their set Friday night after three songs due to being pelted by massive amounts of bird shit, one such attack coming far too close to bassist Jared Followill's mouth.

That's a lot of shit for one night. The band's official press release is after the jump.

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Even if you're not a regular listener of NPR's afternoon program All Things Considered, you may want to have a look at this. Found by Fishbowl LA and reprinted by our sister paper, the LA Weekly's music blog West Coast Sound, it seems that some young people on NPR's staff convinced some of the, um -- less young staff, to spoof Lady Gaga's Telephone. The stars of the show are legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, and host of All Things Considered, Robert Siegel. You gotta love well respected Washington journalists with a killer sense of humor...

More music news after the jump...

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Could we expect to see Barack at the Tempe Improv any time soon?

​So it seems that our president may have a slightly outdated sense of humor. Sound of the City reports that Obama had a carefully planned out comedy routine, using Biggie as the punchline. Apparently he referred to the head of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, as the "Notorious G.O.P."

"Why?" according to Sound of the City? "Because Steele knows 'what truly plagues America today -- taxation without representin'. *Long pause.* 'My brother.'"

They also mentioned that his jokes were written with help from writers of The Daily Show. And evidently they killed.

More daily music news after the jump.. More >>

Should Lady Gaga carry her birth certificate when she swings through town this summer?

​It's a rough time to be an Arizonan. The only thing tougher is being a brown Arizonan. Our moronic, racist legislation, (our sister paper LA Weekly uses a much better, more accurate string of adjectives in their piece) is attracting endless amounts of national attention, and the music world is not immune to said attention.

LA Weekly, published to their music blog a list of the "Top Ten Musicians Who Cannot Tour Arizona Without Proving They're "Legal". Their list includes Carlos Santana, Paul McCartney, Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga, and convicted murderer Phil Spector.

Check it out and share your thoughts. What other musicians should be nervous about entering our beloved desert state now that SB 1070 has passed?

More dailly music news after the jump..More >>

C. Stiles

Scott Storch's mother and grandfather.

​Our sister papers in south Florida ran a fantastic piece on brilliant-turned-bloody-nosed-cokehead producer Scott Storch last week. In case you haven't already seen it, there's a lot to love about this hard-hitting profile, including some real gems from Scott's mom, who bemoans the fact that her son never took care of her comparatively inconsequential financial woes before blowing his fortune.

"Scott always told me he had plans to do certain things for the family," she says. "But then I guess things got bad before he got around to it," she says. "I read about all these other rappers' mothers -- P. Diddy's mother, Kanye West's mother, Jay-Z's mother. Their sons all took care of them."

Ouch. Spoiler alert: It gets worse at the end of the story.More >>

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Google's vast stretch of the blogosphere is going silent. The search giant, who owns the popular Blogger service and blogspot.com domain has been destroying content from music bloggers deemed to be copyright infringes. Google has owned up to it on its Buzz blogger: "When we receive multiple DMCA complaints about the same blog, and have no indication that the offending content is being used in an authorized manner, we will remove the blog."

Sites like Pop Tarts Suck Toasted and I Rock Cleveland were hard hit, as the blog lost almost all it's content, some of which was backed up. You can read a note from the editor here, which contains the following passage:

Sorry for the mass nature of this little note, but as you may have noticed my blog - http://poptartssucktoasted.blogspot.com - was murdered by the villainous conglomerate known as Goggle (Blogger) yesterday morning. due to copyright infringement or however they want to spin.

Question: Does anyone really feel sorry for music bloggers who regularly mock copyright law with their posted Mp3s?

Answer: Sorta.

I'm really torn about this one. On one hand I am a music blogger (sorta, though for a villainous conglomerate of sorts, Village Voice Media) and I hate to see Our People suffer at the hands of a giant corporation who seems to be making good on an Onion story by destroying all information it can't index.

On the other hand, its obvious music bloggers have paid little attention to copyrights over the years and they have benefited from that. Every blog I read has one of those little "If you request we take it down, we will" disclaimers but -- and I do have a law degree folks, even though I write about music -- that ain't how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act works. Maybe it's how it should work, but it's not how it does work. Copyright holders are not burdened with the role of enforcing their rights on a case-by-case basis -- the government and large corporations do it for them. Bottom line: You don't have the right to infringe on something unless you get busted, as so many music bloggers seem to think.

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Ever since we got a press release about Green Day's impending album, 21st Century Breakdown, a few weeks ago, I've been eager to see when the band would start playing live again. Turns out our sister paper in San Francisco was there to see Billie Joe, Tre, and Mike play for the first time in two years. Well, play as Green Day for the first time in two years, anyway, since they were here in Phoenix under assumed names about a year ago.

Anyway, the reviewer was not quite as excited about it as I probably would have been, but it's worth checking out her take on the show.

From our sister paper in St. Louis comes a funny blog post about a Craigslist ad for a new indie rock club that's requiring a mix CD with applications for bartender, barback, and doorman.

mix cd should contain music in and around the neighborhood of indie rock/pop. the more unknown the bands/songs the better, but not at the cost of song quality, i.e. an unknown 7/10 song trumps a well known 8/10 song, but an unknown 7/10 song does not trump a well known 9/10 song.

Eek. Not sure I would want to bar tend for someone quite that anal ("the less less head on the beer the better, but not at the cost of speed of pouring. i.e. a 1/4-inch layer of head is good but not if it takes 45 seconds to pour. a 1/3-inch layer of head in 30 seconds would trump that") but it's pretty cool anyway. Here's the original ad. The commentators on the blog post seem to suggest it's real, by the way.

Black Kids will get all "Partie Traumatic" on your ass at Shake! next month.

Jacksonville, Fla. indie rockers Black Kids will grace DJ William Fucking Reed's popular weekly dance/rock night Shake! Saturday, April 25 following their show at The Clubhouse Music Venue at south Scottsdale's The Rogue Bar. Some of the members will guest spin for what is sure to be a packed club night.

The band is currently touring in support of their 2008 debut album Partie Traumatic. Their infectious single, "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You," has been played on countless CW sudsers.

If you haven't checked the group out, we recommend giving them a listen. Heck, it's one of my favorite albums of 2008! The disc is filled with poppy new-wave tracks - some which Reed has spun at Shake! - that are sure to have you bouncin'. We're guessing that Black Kids will do just that when they take over the wheels of steel next month. The April edition of Shake! will also feature the indie acts Mates of State and Metroid. Cover is $7 and the party will kick off at 10 p.m.