Kid Rock gives me yet another reason to like him.

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In a recent interview with Rolling Stone adopted Southerner and noted (surprise) non-meth user Kid Rock announced that 90% of the tickets for upcoming tour are priced at a mere $20. This comes at a time when ticket prices for high-profile tours like Prince Jay-Z & Justin Timberlake have routinely topped the $250. For an artist with the ability to sell-out arenas this is a drastically fan friendly step and one that other artists will hopefully embrace.

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Who's your daddy? Hiram Biram's your daddy! (I talk to Scott H. Biram and he's as cool as I expected.)

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I'd like to think I'm a good music fan. ​When I see a band I don't know opening a show I'm attending I try to familiarize myself with said band. Sometimes it's just another band, but in the case of G.Love & Special Sauce's show in Vancouver in March of 2012 the opener was Scott H. Biram. It was love at first hear. His music is genre-blending madness, crushing boundary lines all over the place. it was with furious energy that I started to devour his catalogue and in late 2012 I tracked him down somewhere outside of Phoenix for a chat about being a one-man band, religious imagery and his general bad-assery for one of my weekly columns. Finally the whole thing sees the light of day. I hope you enjoy it and find it as interesting as I did. Welcome to the First Church of the Ultimate Fantacism!

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Macklemore & Ryan Lewis break a record and I hope it's a sign of a changing landscape.

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The good people at allhiphop.com report that talented guys and generally cool dudes Macklemore & Ryan Lewis have set a record for being at #1 on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop (aka Billboard's Black Attack Chart) for 12 consecutive weeks with the insanely catchy "Thrift Shop".

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Lip$ha - I am aroused by aggressive weirdness.

in

​Yesterday, in the now ubiquitous format of a reddit AMA, Flaming Lips frontman and noted eccentric Wayne Coyne released information about an upcoming full-length album with trash-pop queen Ke$ha, entitled Lip$ha. This comes as exciting news for me as one of last years great "guilty pleasures" (A term that I kind of loathe) was Ke$ha's "Warrior". That record wormed its way into my brain with it's brash, gleeful rowdiness.

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Reggae music kept Clinton Fearon on the path to happiness.

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The great Roger Steffens told me that reggae music is "the sound of the beating human heart at rest," and few musicians embody the warmth and peace of the music like Clinton Fearon. Through his work with the Gladiators, the Defenders and his solo work, Fearon has been keeping roots reggae alive and well for over four decades. I got the chance to talk with him before 2012 Victoria Ska Fest​ about his own introduction to reggae, the changing landscape of the genre and working for shifty contractors. Enjoy!

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