Merritt, on left

​Stephin Merritt might be the greatest songwriter of his generation. Still, as has been reported before, interviewing him can be quite difficult.

He takes extraordinarily long pauses, then suddenly decides to interrupt just when you thought it was safe to speak. If you refer to him calling himself "introverted" in the past, he will deny that he's introverted. Black is white. Up is down. Adele fans are racist, a charge Merritt has faced himself.

So let's do this. This symbol * will denote an uncomfortably-long pause.

What's the difference between being an L.A. songwriter and a New York one?
I think that the main difference is that you can't sit in a bar for hours in L.A. drinking and drinking, or else you'd have to take a taxi home.

Everyone on the new album seems at wits' end with their partner. There's so much revenge and jealousy, topics that are usually associated with more extreme music.

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​See also:
*Our Beyond Wonderland slideshow
*Beyond Wonderland Rave Could Get Snow This Weekend. No, Really.
*Dave Grohl: His Grammys Speech About Electronic Music Was Bullshit

This weekend, L.A.-based DJ Fei-Fei Wang performed at Armin Van Buuren's trance party at the Beyond Wonderland rave. Within hours of her set, her Facebook wall was plastered with personal attacks. People were calling her a "dirty whore" and saying things like "Someone take a shotgun to Fei-Fei." Why? The DJ, dubbed the "bad girl of EDM," had played dubstep and other music that wasn't trance during her set.

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​Dave Mustaine is intense. His band Megadeth pairs oppositional forces -- aggressive, machine-gun rhythms with near-pop melodies -- and similarly Mustaine's personality seems a yin-yang contradiction of simmering rage and family values.

On the road with the fourth Gigantour, which hits Gibson Amphitheatre tomorrow, February 24, Mustaine remains characteristically outspoken about, well, pretty much everything. Topics discussed include Rick Santorum and birth control in Africa.

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Terrorizer

​Grindcore band Terrorizer formed here, and their 1989 debut World Downfall was extremely influential. After 2006's reunion album Darker Days Ahead guitarist Jesse Pintado passed away, but the rest of Terrorizer has a new album, Hordes Of Zombies, out February 28th.

Now weirdly, and out of nowhere, an unknown Canadian grindcore group called Collapse has filed is threatening to file a plagiarism lawsuit against them and their label, Season of Mist, claiming a passage in Terrorizer's song "Subterfuge" is lifted from a Collapse song titled "Mechanisms Of Oppression." We call bullshit.

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Brian Wilson and Mike Love back in the day

​See also:
*Henry Rollins: The Column! The Beach Boys' SMiLE: Even Better than Advertised
*A Tour Of Beach Boys' Haunts In Their Hometown Of Hawthorne, California - With Pictures!

"A lot of people are thinking that Mike Love is crazy but they've been saying that for years. Ain't nothing new about that." -Mike Love at the Beach Boys' 1988 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction

On Friday, the remaining Beach Boys announced that they would be reuniting to celebrate their 50th anniversary. The band has promised an album of new material and a 50 date tour starting in April at the New Orleans Jazz Fest. For many nostalgic music fans this is good news. For fans of Brian Wilson -- the guiding musical force behind the Beach Boys -- however, this is terrible news.

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Henry Diltz

Priscilla Ahn

​Few genres are as protective of their past as jazz. Some might say it's all they've got.

The discipline is largely defined by the classic record labels that brought the sounds to the masses. Jazz nerds will argue the superiority of one golden recording era versus another just as stubbornly as basketball fans argue Kobe vs. LeBron.

So when, in early 2002, inoffensive songstress Norah Jones won the multi-platinum sweepstakes with her debut album Come Away With Me, it was a little surprising to see Blue Note Records -- easily one of the greatest jazz labels ever -- stamped on the back of those millions of CDs. Although Jones is hardly the only one to blame for diverting Blue Note's legacy, nearly a decade later it appears that the road has been permanently forked.

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Steve Gullick

Beady Eye

​See also: Our review of Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds

Oasis has been a rock radio staple since the mid-'90s. But the band came apart in 2009 when, after years of infighting, Noel Gallagher left the outfit. His brother Liam and the rest of the group have since soldiered on under the name Beady Eye.

With the release of their debut, Different Gear, Still Speeding, at the beginning of the year, Beady Eye showed they aren't trying to replicate their former sound; indeed, the quartet's new brand of stripped-down rock is looser and more ambitious than anything Oasis put out.

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Andrea Domanick

Left Brain performs with Odd Future at the House of Blues in June

​11/7 UPDATE: Photographer Amy Harris has decided to press charges against Left Brain. He faces six months in jail and fines of up to $1000.

10/31 UPDATE: A photographer at the event named Skip Bolen says that Left Brain did, in fact, hit Amy Harris, as well as another photographer. A representative from the festival has also issued an apology to the assembled media.

A female photographer has accused Odd Future member Left Brain of slapping her in the face and knocking her to the ground during the collective's performance in New Orleans yesterday.

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​Brooklyn-bred, L.A.- based electro pop duo Purple Crush are suing Rob Fusari, the producer who discovered Lady Gaga and produced some of her biggest hits. They say they are owed payment for their work on her most recent album and their work for his other artists.

The tracks they composed didn't make it onto Gaga's 2011 release, Born This Way, but the husband and wife duo -- Isla Cheadle and Jared Selter -- say they logged hundreds of unpaid studio hours for Rob Fusari's clients, which also include Macy Gray, Greyson Chance, and Little Boots.

Fusari is a well-known music industry figure. In addition to working with Gaga, he also dated her, coined her moniker, and was in the news last year for suing her. She counter-sued, but both suits were dismissed, leading to speculation that a settlement agreement had been reached.

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Timothy Norris

Timothy Norris' shot of Dave Grohl at a Foo Fighters performance in 2007

​See also our review of Foo Fighters at The Forum, 10/13/11

The Foo Fighters perform at The Forum tonight and Friday, and while fans may be giddy, some concert photographers are less enthused. Our sister paper City Pages in Minneapolis recently published an article lamenting -- and boycotting -- the band's draconian photo release policies, which demand that photographers sign away the rights to their shots, giving the band's management legal control over which photos can be published.

Photo releases at shows are nothing new. They're usually required, with many simply defining when the photographer can shoot and whether he or she can use flash, along with third party restrictions and similar basic use rights. But a number of what are being called "rights grab" releases have begun using ominous and intimidating jargon that effectively ask photographers to relinquish all rights to their images, forever.

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