When a group of revered and influential rockers come back together after a decade of acrimonious separation and/or inactivity, all but the most hard-hearted punks can grant them one lap around the reunion circuit playing the old should-have-been-hits, if only to collect the accolades and the cash that probably eluded them the first time.

Boston's proto-alternative quartet the Pixies took that victory lap in 2004. Now, while they remain popular enough to play three nights at the Aragon Ballroom—Friday and Saturday sold out, though Thursday only was about half full—it's hard to consider them anything but a cynical corporation cashing in on blatant nostalgia—a hipper version of Creedence Clearwater Revisited or Journey and whoever is singing with that group these days.

So go ahead, guys, and let him know that he should lighten up and stop being such a ridiculous asshole, and to quit being such an indie-purist while he's at it. And be sure to tell him that, duh, it's not possible that there's anything wrong with what the band's doing because they're not forcing anyone to buy anything! Altough maybe you don't have to, since it seems he already has his own commenters starting to show up. Just_A_Girl, for instance, thinks it was totally "pretentions" of him to compare them to Journey. Which is totally fair, come to think of it. I prefer to compare them to Kiss.

Anyway, because Beck is actually a lot cooler and with much better taste than I ever give him credit for, he released a 10-minute tribute to Partch on his website earlier this week. Was it in response to Friedberger being an idiot? We'll probably never know.

Now Friedberger's taken to his band's MySpace page with a pair of positively full-of-shit blog posts that are basically unreadable. In one of them, titled Imaginary Response (clever!), he appears to take a shot at Beck:

How fruitful an imaginary song proved in practice! So as we all move forward, shouldn't we admit that posting songs on the internet—being virtual, in other words—is so last year? So to speak. Isn't that what every music management company intern from Northeastern recommends that bands do? That can't be right

Yes! So last year! Said Friedberger in a blog post on fucking MySpace.

[via Pitchfork]

No word on what those will sound like, but the announcement makes oblique references to the involvement of Dr. Dre and Just Blaze, so that's promising. Relapse 2, meanwhile, will come out next year sometime. On an unrelated note, did you see those amazing cyphers from the 2009 BET Awards? Best idea ever. Check out Eminem, Mos Def and Black Thought freestyling together after the jump.

It also features, as the background music in an early, pastoral scene, the song "Love", an Oscar-nominated number from Disney's 1973 film of Robin Hood, the movie your film editor watched more times than any other movie in the years before he watched The Princess Bride more than any other movie.

In Disney's Robin Hood, of course, Robin Hood and Maid Marian are loving foxes as well. Roald Dahl's Mr. Fox (the book was published in 1970) is himself a Robin Hood figure, a dashing, justified thief who, along with his gang of fellow-animals (badgers, rabbits, etc in both Disney and Dahl), risks life and limb to steal from comically greedy English landowners.

Is the song in question embedded after the jump? Oh gee I don't know better click on the jump and find out.

• You have no idea how many times Yahoo Answers has refused to respond to my question, "Dear Yahoo Answers, are Hall and Oates in love? Sincerely, L Magazine Film Editor Mark Asch, BFA."

Anyway that is a very brief historical summary of why Pitchfork's Douglas Wolk is reviewing Do What You Want, Be What You Are: The Music of Daryl Hall and John Oates today. He wisely leaves larger issues of taste, irony and history to idiot big-picture bloggers, and contextualizes the hits (and misses) within the style of the times. He gives it a 4.8, but that seems to have more to do with the selection than anything else, because we all know that it's ok to like Hall and Oates now, and not even ironically. Postmodernism wins!

Also, Nina Simone's cover of "Rich Girl", also.

After a typically extended period of silence, Belle and Sebastian have re-surfaced, posting the above image on their website yesterday, dropping a hint that they might be working on the follow-up to 2006's brilliant The Life Pursuit. Now if the Hold Steady and John Prine would just announce new records as well, my year would be totally set. [via Tiny Mix Tapes]

"Cousins," the second single from Vampire Weekend's forthcoming album, Contra, hit the internet on Monday, and today we get the video. The song itself is crazy good, like "A-Punk" on speed, and the video is pretty great too. Two thoughts so far: One, I don't know if it's the jagged movements or his slightly longer hair, but Ezra Koenig is starting to remind me of John Linnell from They Might Be Giants. And two, he holds up a boot, then a picture of a boot, that very well might be the very same LL Bean Katahdin boot I hope to receive for Christmas this year.

And yet the company has managed to put a season together, to re-emerge as a contender in 2009-2010. But its future remains uncertain. And so, in its struggle for survival, City Opera is trying to strike a careful balance this season between popular repertoire favorites and more distinguishing fare; the company generally separates itself, or tries to, from its higher-profile competitor across the plaza in its embrace of neglected classics, up-and-coming singers, and modern composers—especially Americans. So, while the company will produce Don Giovanni up until around Thanksgiving and Madame Butterfly in the spring, it’s also currently staging a revival (which opened on November 7) of the late Hugo Weisgall’s Esther, which City Opera premiered to critical acclaim in 1993. New York opera enthusiasts have been waiting ever since to see it again. And surely, City Opera is counting on them to come in droves—because they need them now, more than ever. Esther looks like the company’s secret weapon. In case of emergency, break it out.

I'm just now getting around to watching the Bob Dylan video for "Must Be Santa," off his incredibly weird holiday album, Christmas in the Heart, and you know what? Bob Dylan is awesome. Bob Dylan in a big white top-hat is awesome, Bob Dylan in a Santa hat is awesome, Bob Dylan playing bartender is awesome, Bob Dylan smoking a cigar is awesome, Bob Dylan dancing and almost doing sort of a pelvic thrust thing (1:09) is awesome, Bob Dylan having the ability to transport himself from one side of a room to another in a split-second like a vampire is awesome, and Bob Dylan looking suspiciously at Santa Claus just moments after a man jumps through a window for no apparent reason is awesome.

Dinner Table Discussions will begin sometime next year, and feature the three moms' takes on current events, interviews and responses to viewer-submitted issues and concerns. The only way I would ever watch this show would be if it turned out that all the "submissions" were actually problems their sons needed help with. There would be the "What do I do if I'm convicted on a gun charge and going to jail for a year?" episode, or the "Someone more powerful than me thinks that my favorite gimmick is corny, do I confront him?" episode. That I would watch.

Yesterday, Variety posted an article on the pretty significant impact Winfrey has on the music industry. Basically it boils down to this: If Oprah can convince a whole bunch of people to spend their summer reading three Faulkner novels like she did back in 2005, she can help Michael Buble sell 132,000 albums in three days like he did in October. Hell, Warner Brothers actually pushed up the release date of Buble’s album to correspond with his appearance on Oprah. And if propelling Michael Buble to number one on the Billboard charts wasn’t enough to convince you, sales for Whitney Houston’s comeback album “I Look To You” jumped 77% after she was on the show, and Filipina pop singer Charice sold 60,000 singles after an appearance in September. I mean for the love of God, Journey was on her show in October, and their latest album—which (a) has been out for a year already and (b), holy shit, did you know Journey released a new album?—moved 10,000 copies the following week. In fact, according to Billboard’s “Maximum Exposure,” Oprah is now the second best way an artist can get their music out to the public, the first being an Apple commercial.

The video for Alicia Keys new single, "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart," made its way online this morning, and it's about a woman with healing powers or something. Totally not important. Fast-forward to 1:22, though, where you'll notice that a car has killed a dog and knocked over a bright orange distribution box belonging to a certain free, pocket-sized biweekly magazine.

In an interview with MTV News, he spoke candidly about each of his four full-lengths. Get Rich or Die Tryin, he reminds us, was the highest-selling debut hip-hop album of all time. His follow-up album, The Massacre, was the record he made when he was fat. And his third album, Curtis... well, that one was capital-A Art.

"This right here is my artist album — Curtis, album three. I had to name this album Curtis. My grandfather's Curtis Sr., his first born is Curtis Jr., I'm his first grandchild, I'm Curtis James Jackson III. And that's why my third album is titled Curtis. I attempted to make this album human. That was my outline for what the record should be. I wrote 'Straight to the Bank,' I put laughter in the record — that was one of three records. I wrote what I felt what was representation of joy. I wrote 'I Still Kill' featuring Akon. 'I Still Kill' had the aggression, anger. 'Ayo Technology' was love, sex. I put a lot of different things into this album, and I found a new place musically collaborating with all the talented artists on this project. What's interesting is I came up with the concept before Before I Self Destruct and wrote four demo tracks before I decided to go with Curtis because I knew Before I Self Destruct would impact harder behind this."

Then he talked about the new one, Before I Self Destruct, and he definitely likes it, but it's not clear if he thinks it's art. Click through to see what he had to say! But also feel free not to!

“Them Crooked Vultures are keenly aware of the different ways in which modern music fans digest new music and are therefore especially happy to be able to offer the first single as a downloadable Rock Band game track.”

If you are inclined to purchase the track, don't. But if you do, know that it will cost you 160 Microsoft points, 200 Wii points, or 99 pence, depending on what kind of nerd you are. [Gigwise]

Darlings - "Teenage Girl" from Joseph Tirabassi on Vimeo.

Adapted from The House of the Dead, Dostoyevsky’s Siberian dispatch about pre-Soviet prison camps, the Czech composer’s final opera, sung in his native tongue, is unremittingly bleak in sound, as is every aspect of Chereau’s toast-of-Europe production (which uses a tenor in a role usually sung by a mezzo-soprano) now at the Metropolitan Opera: haggard men in Communist-colored clothing smoke and shuffle blankly, penned in by 30-foot-tall gray walls, usually coming to life only to quarrel and brawl over bits of bread like citypark pigeons. (The production marks the long-awaited Met debut for Chereau, best known for his 70s Ring cycle and avant-garde films like Gabrielle.) These men are desperate to survive, despite their desperate, unsurvivable circumstance; they often move, when they can move at all, like scurrying cockroaches frightened by a switched-on light.

That move no doubt facilitated Mase's next move, word of which came today via HipHopWired. The latest phase in the smooth-talking MC's comeback will reportedly hit next Friday (November 20), when Mase floods the free mixtape market with five mixtapes on the same day. Dubbed (hilariously) I Do The Impossible, the five-disc mixtape will be hosted by an international slate of five different DJs. Try to contain your excitement for the next week, and I'll let you know on the 20th whether or not Mase did in fact do the impossible.