Vegoose Preview – Daft Punk Helmets = $14,000

The book on this year’s Vegoose Festival, aside from the typical late night debauchery, is a curveball lineup card that has more in common with Coachella than its jam-friendly past. And with Ghostface Killah, Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Lupe Fiasco, Atmosphere and M.I.A.on the bill, you can count on a bit of sampling. Add the recently reunited Rage Against the Machine with Daft Punk – possibly playing their last ever U.S. show – and the Stooges featuring Iggy Pop performing Fun House in its entirety, Vegoose proper may be hotter than Rehab Sundays by the pool at the Hard Rock

So once again, with all the new names and genres – Pharoah Monch you ask?, we figured a few factoids would give you an idea of what you’ve got to look forward to in Vegas.

Very few photos of the The Daft Punk duo of Thomas Bengalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo even exist. The French electronic collaborators have appeared either wearing masks, as animation or futuristic robots.  Since 1999, the duo have been robed as robots complete with helmets, armband controllers, backpack power centers and even (reportedly) internal ventilation systems, with the helmets alone costing $14,000 each to manufacture.  Daft Punk started out as a rock band where a negative review in Melody Maker subsequently dubbed the music “a bunch of daft punk.”

Before Iggy Pop became known for smearing hamburger meat and peanut butter over his chest on stage, The Stooges’ earliest carnations in the 60’s featured Pop incorporating a vacuum cleaner and a blender into an intense wall of feedback, along with a ‘Jim-a-phone’ which involved pushing feedback through a funnel device which was raised and lowered to achieve the best effect. There was also a cheap Hawaiian guitar which Iggy and guitarist Ron Asheton would take turns in plucking to produce a simulated sitar drone, while drummer Scott Asheton pounded away at a set of oil drums with a ball hammer.

Although The Shins began as a side-project for frontman James Mercer’s lo-fi project Flake, he stumbled upon the name The Shins as the name was based on a fictional family in the Broadway show The Music Man, which was a favorite of Mercer’s father. The Shins’s Martin Crandall’s girlfriend of six years is fashion model Elyse Sewell, who appeared on America’s Next Top Model

Although they appeared on the Simpsons episode “Homerpalooza,” Cypress Hill was banned from Saturday Night Live in 1993 after band member DJ Muggs smoked cannabis on-air and the band trashed their instruments while ironically playing their second single “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That.”

When asked why his band wasn’t called Kings of the Stone Age, Queens of the Stone Age front man Josh Homee explained – “Kings would be too macho. The Kings of the Stone Age wear armor and have axes and wrestle. The Queens of the Stone Age hang out with the Kings of the Stone Age’s girlfriends when they wrestle, and also it was a name given to us by Chris Goss. He gave us the name Queens of the Stone Age. Rock should be heavy enough for the boys and sweet enough for the girls. That way everyone’s happy and it’s more of a party. Kings of the Stone Age is too lopsided.”

STS9 is also known for their affiliation with the 13 Moon Natural Time Calendar and The Law of Time. The Natural Time Calendar is a growing global movement to change the world standard away from the Gregorian Calendar. The Law of Time is a formula developed by Jose Arguelles that defines the mathematical ratio of 13:20. From 1998 through 2001, STS9 performed special live shows on the Day Out Of Time, the name of the last day of each year of the Natural Time Calendar.

M.I.A.
is Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam and the daughter of a Tamil activist-turned militant, Arul Pragasam. Motivated by his wish to support the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, her father became politically known as Arular and was a founding member of The Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), a militant Tamil group. M.I.A., stands for both Missing in Acton and Missing in Action.

In September 9, 2007 Mastodon performed “Colony of Birchmen” live with Josh Homme at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. After the televised performance, member Brent Hinds was reported of having a severe head injury. A police report later suggested that an inebriated Hinds initiated a conflict with System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian and musician William Hudson. Hinds suffered brain hemorrhaging, a broken nose and two black eyes.

At a 1993 Lollapalooza appearance in Philadelphia, Rage Against the Machine stood onstage naked for 15 minutes with duct tape on their mouths and the letters PMRC painted on their chests in a protest against censorship by the Parents Music Resource Center. The only sound emitted was audio feedback from Morello and Commerford’s guitars.  Regarding this event, bassist Tim Commerford said “Want me to be perfectly frank? The size of my penis — that’s what was going through my mind in Philadelphia. It looked like I’d just stepped out of the ocean. I swear to God, it’s bigger than that. So I was thinking: I wish I’d worn boxer shorts before instead of briefs, because briefs kinda like constrict me. I took them off and it was this … half-roll of nickels.”

Blonde Redhead
has been around since 1993, and recorded seven albums. The band formed in New York when a pair of Japanese art-students, Kazu Makino and Maki Takahashi, met Italian twins Amedeo and Simone Pace. Soon after, Makino and Amedeo Pace were married, Takahashi left the band, and Blonde Redhead have since remained unchanged.

Lupe Fiasco
is open about his Islamic faith, in which he showcased it in his underground remix of friend and collaborator Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks”, entitled “Muhammad Walks” by stating “Well, I was born Muslim, so Islam plays a part in my life and everything I do, to a certain extent. I’m not like the poster boy for Islam… I still got my flaws and stuff like that, so I don’t really wear that on my sleeve… I don’t go to clubs, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, you know like my whole – the whole groupie situation is shut down.”

Gogol Bordello’s
frontman Eugene Hütz had a lead role as Alex in Everything Is Illuminated, based on the critically acclaimed novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer. Hütz also contributed to the soundtrack for Everything Is Illuminated along with his brother and several of his band members. Hütz is going to star in the lead role of A.K., in Madonna’s film directing debut in Filth and Wisdom, due out in 2008.

As most already know, Public Enemy helped to create the “Rap-Rock”” genre by collaborating with Anthrax in 1991 for “Bring Tha Noize,”  they were also the first hip-hop act to base their entire image around a political stance and were the first rap-group to make extended world tours, which led to huge popularity and influence in hip-hop communities in Europe and Asia. Public Enemy also changed the Internet’s music distribution capability by being one of the first groups to release mp3 albums, a format virtually unknown at the time. Before his Flavor of Love reality run, Flavor Flav is given major influence in the development of the rap sidekick or “hype man” as Chuck D’s right hand man.

In a 2003 interview with Glide Magazine, Michael Franti was quoted as saying about our commander in chief: “George Bush, obviously, he has a lot of healing to do, obviously has a lot of misdirected emotion and he can probably benefit from getting out of his head a little and getting into his heart a little. I’d rack up his iPod with a lot of shit, we’d sit down, have a plate of beans and rice and then I’d smoke half a spliff and offer that to him.”

Muse headlined two sold out 90,000-capacity gigs at the newly-rebuilt Wembley Stadium on June 16 and June 17 and were the first concerts held in the new facility. Both Wembley concerts were filmed for a DVD/CD release titled “Live At Wembley 2007” slated for release at the end of November 2007.

Infected Mushroom
is an Israeli psychedelic trance duo. Formed by Erez Eizen (also known as I.Zen) and Amit Duvdevani (also known as Duvdev) in the city of Haifa, located in the northern parts of Israel, the duo has garnered a large international fanbase.

Ghostland Obsevatory’s Myspace
page describes their sound as “A robot making love to a tree.’’

Zach Gill, ALO’s keyboard player, went to college with Jack Johnson, and has recently provided piano in Jack Johnson’s band. Jack also frequently “hijacks” (as in, “Hi, Jack!”) ALO shows to play his music with ALO as his backup band.

Ghostface Killah has an affinity for Clark’s Wallabee shoes. On the cover of his debut album Ironman, he is pictured with Raekwon and Cappadonna holding several pairs of brightly colored Wallabees. Ghostface actually devised a way of dying Wallabees different, interesting colors, which were the height of fashion at the time. Ghost can be heard discussing this technique on the Cuban Linx record, where he describes dying a pair blue and cream. Often at shows, Ghostface will make a point not to remove his copious layers of clothing, despite the sweltering heat of the stage lights and venue.

UNKLE’s
1998, release Psyence Fiction featured an all-star lineup that included Thom Yorke (Radiohead), Mike D (Beastie Boys), Kool G. Rap, Jason Newsted (Metallica), Badly Drawn Boy and Richard Ashcroft (The Verve).

Brendan Bayliss of Umphrey’s McGee father Bob Bayliss is the head tennis coach at Notre Dame. Bayliss has been coaching tennis for 37 years, and the Irish since 1987. Bayliss has led Nortre Dame to 15 NCAA Championship berths in the past 16 seasons and has helped his teams post 10 top-20 finishes in that time.

Although indie jammers moe. have had the same lineup since 1999, they can count five members as ex- band mates: Ray Schwartz (guitar -1989 — 1992), Steve Hunter (saxophone, vocals, 1990) Dave Kessler (guitar 1990 — 1992), Mike Strazza ( drums, 1995) and Chris Mazur (drums, 1996). Of course current percussionist Jim Loughlin left the band in 1995, later to return in 1999.

Thanks to wikipedia for facts and info.  This year’s Vegoose is scheduled for October 27+28 in Las Vegas, tickets are still available.

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