Tour Dates

It's all happening people, Fiona is hitting the road. After a handful of sold out shows with her pals over at Largo towards the end of last year, the great Fiona Apple is now hitting the road for a short tour, her first since backing 2005's fantastic Extraordinary Machine. The best part is these gigs will presumably be showing off some of her new material, at least if that guy from that tv show that makes records is to be believed.

Tickets for the newly announced shows aside from the SXSW appearance go on sale this Friday, February 24th. Get them while you can as these shows certainly will sell out. Hooray Fiona, welcome back.

For links and such head over to her official site.

• 03/15 – Austin, TX @ Central Presbyterian Church (SXSW) 
• 03/19 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall 
• 03/21 – Washington, DC @ Sixth and I 
• 03/23 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 
• 03/24 – Atlantic City, NJ @ Music Box 
• 03/26 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom 
• 03/27 – Boston, MA @ Royale

We've known for a long time that Pearl Jam was going to host a festival-like event this summer to celebrate the band's twentieth anniversary. Unfortunately we didn't know when or where, although "somewhere in the middle of the country" was thrown out to help us narrow it down. Today the band has finally answered this question officially, confirming the long rumored shenanigans will take place at Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wisconsin over Labor Day weekend. The latest anniversary celebrating is of course in addition to the numerous reissues the band has put together this year, as well as the upcoming Cameron Crowe directed documentary of the band rumored to be out in the early fall. Woo hoo, Pearl Jam fun.

As for the actual concert the term festival should probably be thrown out and replaced with "guest heavy shows" or something along those lines as each day will be ticketed separately and seemingly nothing will be all that different from a normal show than the amount of openers. Don't get me wrong the openers have some firepower in The Strokes, Mudhoney and Queens of the Stone Age, but they're also going the songwriter route with Liam Finn, Joseph Arthur and Glen Hasnard. For safety's sake we'll leave punk legend John Doe in his own classificiation. It certainly sounds like a grand old time but let's be honest, this is only slightly more appealing than your standard Pearl Jam show, which isn't exactly a bad thing.

What is a bad thing is how the band's biggest fans, those who are paid members of the Ten Club, are somewhat getting the shaft from their favorite musicians. To obtain fan club tickets you must buy tickets to both shows but you only have two options: The "Reserved/GA Weekend Package" or a "General Admission Weekend Package". "Well those don't seem all that bad!" you shout in your corduroy and flannel. Fine, maybe not to you, but what if they replace the words "general admission" with "lawn". How does that sound? Essentially all that's happening here is that if you are a member of the Ten Club and you want to go to see Pearl Jam's special anniversary show in Wisconsin you have to buy at least one lawn ticket to the show. The same lawn tickets people will be trying to give away outside because nobody ever wants to sit in the lawn unless they are under the legal drinking age. Paying for the privelage to not be able to get reserved seats to both nights is insulting, and I'm not even a Ten Club member.

One of our favorite albums of last year was the debut album Innerspeaker from Australian rockers Tame Impala. Of course we offered up some evidence for our case with their fantastic appearance on Morning Becomes Eclectic, but now you can see for yourself as the Perth natives have announced a small North American tour on the heels of their Coachella appearance. If I promise you will hear some heavy late Beatles influences in there does that help get you more excited?

Tickets for the newly announced shows, with support from UK band Yuck will go on sale this weekend. If you've been slow in your planning it's worth noting that the hipster party in the desert is already sold out.   [via the audio perv]

US SPRING 2011 TOUR DATES

• Friday April 15th || Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival || Indio, CA
• Monday April 18th || The Fillmore || San Francisco, CA
• Wednesday April 20th || Wonder Ballroom || Portland, OR
• Thursday April 21st || Commodore Ballroom || Vancouver, BC
• Friday April 22nd || Neumo’s || Seattle, WA
• Monday April 25th || Webster Hall || New York, NY
• Wednesday April 27th || First Unitarian Church || Philadelphia, PA
• Thursday April 28th || Paradise Rock Club || Boston, MA
• Saturday April 30th || Cafe Campus || Montreal, QC
• Sunday May 1st || Phoenix Concert Theatre || Toronto, ONT
• Tuesday May 3rd || Lincoln Hall || Chicago, IL
• Friday May 6th || Black Cat || Washington, DC