andPOP - Pop Culture With Substance

Canadian rocker Hawksley Workman (Ryan Corrigan) has set his upcoming album, Meat, to be released January 19th. He will also release Meat’s follow up album, Milk, later in the year, according to Chartattack.com.

Corrigan will start a cross Canada tour that will kick off in B.C. on March 6th and conclude in Toronto on April 24th. Tickets will eventually be sold through Ticketmaster, with a presale starting today and ending Thursday through Six Shooter Records’ website.

Workman’s debut album, For Him and the Girls, was released on 1999, and will go on sale today in the U.S. for the first time.

Breaking news: Adam Young, the artist behind the electronic/pop project Owl City reveals exclusively to andPOP that he he hates owls. In the Q&A, Young — whose single “Fireflies” continues to top charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 — dishes on a possible collaboration with Lights, insomnia, Canada and of course, his “intense dislike of owls” (sorry Owl Society).

“I really hate to pop your bubble, but I in fact have an intense dislike for owls,” admits Young. “I mean, honestly. Does anyone really like owls? They eat vermin and puke up nasty pellets. If I owned an owl I’d name it Toilet Face.”

While he may dislike owls, what he does love is music. Young, whose voice closely resembles that of Death Cab for Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard, describes his music like so: “It’s like a flock of sweaty sheep in gym clothes at Anytime Fitness relentlessly running on treadmills and eating powdered sugar donuts simultaneously while watching ‘Brady Bunch’ reruns on overhead TVs. It’s also like grass.”

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Britney Spears’ first show of her 14-gig Australian tour was a bigger spectacle than expected.

A review in the Sunday Telegraph claims fans stormed out halfway through the show in Perth in an outrage over her lip-synching. But today, News.com.au filed an article giving the other side of the story: that one Australian reporter fabricated the whole thing.

It’s a case of “you had to be there”, but for Spears, it’s still hurtful. Paul Danity, her Australian tour promoter, says she is “extremely upset” and has been holed up in her Perth hotel since the incident on Friday night.

Reports were circulating the fans walked out of the show, despite having paid up to $1,500 for tickets and driving more than two hours to get there.

“It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard,” Dainty told The Australian.

“I’m so angry. We can take heat if there’s something wrong and people can review shows badly — that’s something you have to live with — but to say people stormed out of the show was an absolute fabrication.”

The Perth Burswood Dome released a statement in Spears’ defense.

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A superstar in his own right, Russell Peters is to comedy lovers what Robert Pattinson is to pre-pubescent girls. The Canadian humorist born to Anglo-Indian parents became the first comedian to sell out the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, and is one in a handful of comedians to perform at the Madison Square Garden to a sold out audience. Peters’ new tour celebrating his 20th anniversary kicks off this January.

Anyone who’s seen him perform knows that one of the many things that distinguishes Peters from other acts is his dead-on accuracy when it comes to accents. What’s his secret?

“I listen,” he tells andPOP. “You’ve got to listen to get the inflections and the intent of what people are saying.  That means listening to people when they’re happy, sad, angry.  That’s how you learn how they speak. I still can’t do a Scottish accent though – doesn’t matter how much I listen and try it… those tricky Scots!”

Fans can hear him and his array of accents when Peters hits the road with “The Green Card Tour” in celebration of his 20th anniversary. But rest assured the jokes will focus on a variety of cultures as usual, not only on Americans. “The reason it’s called The Green Card Tour, is because I’ll be getting my Green Card in 2010,” he explains.

And if you’ve ever dreamed of opening for Peters during one of his shows, here’s your chance. He’s looking for a Canadian BFF (not a la Paris Hilton) through SIRIUS Satellite Radio and Russell Peters’ Search for Canada’s BFF. “In this contest we’re looking for anybody’s and I mean anybody’s ‘Best Funny Five Minutes,’ ” says Peters. “This is a chance for all those people who watch stand-up and say, ‘Hey!  I could do that’, to actually get up on stage and do it, with a chance to open for me somewhere in North America.”

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Weezer have announced their first few dates in support of their upcoming seventh studio album, Raditude.

According to chartattack.com, the dates will see the band playing smaller venues in the United States and include a stop in Toronto for the Edge’s Jingle Bell Rock at the Air Canada Centre on Dec. 5. That show will feature IllScarlett and other performers.

Tickets go on sale Oct. 24 at 11 a.m. through Ticketmaster, but members of the Edge’s Inside Edge can get tickets in a presale which is on now. Tickets run $19.50, $39.50 and $59.50.

Weezer just released the video for “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To,” Raditude’s first single.
Raditude is out Nov. 3.

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To promote their latest album, Chinese Democracy, Guns N’ Roses will tour Canada in January, reports CBC.

The first show will be in Winnipeg on Jan. 13. The band will also perform in Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Hamilton, Ont., London, Ont., Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City, Halifax and Moncton, N.B.

The band will also tour Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

Phish continue to make their comeback after a long-rumored fall tour was announced Friday morning. On the heels of Joy and a sold-out reunion tour, Phish will play 13 shows starting on November 18th in Detroit. Stops along the way include double-headers in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Albany and 3-night return to Madison Square Garden in New York, NY. More dates are expected to be added in the coming weeks and tickets go on sale starting October 23rd. Before then, a limited number of tickets will be available for order directly through Phish’s online lottery ticketing system. A full tour itinerary can be seen here.

Meanwhile, Phish have killed off a few more albums at their Festival 8 page, getting closer to revealing the album they will play in its entirety on Halloween. Phish’s Halloween tradition of covering an album in its entirety as their “musical costume” will take place for the first time since 1998. The festival will be Phish’s first since 2004’s Coventry in Vermont, and the band’s first-ever festival taking place on the West Coast.

On the verge of kicking off a U.S. nationwide tour to promote the upcoming release of Say Anything’s new album, frontman Max Bemis has so far successfully avoided the evils of success.

But there’s plenty more time to come.

The L.A. band’s new self titled album will be their third official release, and it aspires to surpass the startling success of the first two.

“The whole transformation of everything in my life was the inspiration for the album, which centered mostly around the marriage to my wife,” Bemis tells andPOP. “Our music is basically the story of my life in chronological order.”

The biggest shift of ideals on the new album is that its focus is self-empowerment rather than self-loathing. His previous albums had a major focus on frustration with the opposite sex, but his April 4th, 2009, marriage altered his perspective on life and music.

Bemis is critical of the tendency indie bands have of conveying self loathing to their fans.

“Too often you see bands lean too far to one side. They’re either some cookie-cutter bullshit or they’re sulking with anger and resentment toward the cookie-cutter bullshit. There is a space in between, and that’s where we need to be,” he says.

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The poster for Michael Jackson’s This Is It has officially been released by Sony Pictures, who are producing the film. This Is It hits theatres on October 28th and features the legendary singer preparing for his last performance which would have taken place beginning this summer starting at London’s O2 Arena. The Estate of Michael Jackson is in full support of the release of the film.

The wait for Jay-Z’s much-hyped new album will be over sooner than expected thanks to an Internet leak, according to NME.com.

The Blueprint 3 will now be released tomorrow (Sept. 8), three days earlier than plan. This will mark Hova’s third album following his alleged retirement in 2003 and the third instalment in his critically-revered Blueprint series. The Sept. 11 release was originally planned to fall eight years to the day following the 2001 release of Blueprint.

Despite being overshadowed by the 9/11 attacks, Blueprint still sold 426,000 copies in its first week and has since been named a must-have album by nearly every music critic out there. It even squeezed into Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list at #464.

The online leak of the much-awaited Blueprint 3 was a minor hitch in Jay’s plan.

“I may be the most bootlegged artist in history,” he told MTV News. “It’s a preview. I’m excited for people to hear the album. I’m very proud of the work I’ve done, so enjoy it.”

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