'It Might Get Loud' director Davis Guggenheim stands behind digital distribution

 
Director Davis Guggenheim tracked three generations of guitar virtuosos in his "It Might Get Loud," focusing on the philosophies behind the sounds of Jimmy Page, the Edge and Jack White. Sound in the film is paramount.

Yet when "It Might Get Loud" is released on home video, it won't be with a giant Blu-ray or HD push that advertises the latest in high fidelity. Instead, the film will be distributed digitally by Apple's iTunes store, which will sell "It Might Get Loud" exclusively from Dec. 8 through Dec. 22.

"I used to think that the quality of downloading music on iTunes was a barrier for me," Guggenheim said. "I just didn’t think it would be good enough. But in the last year, I’ve put 75 movies on my laptop … There are some movies you need to see in a theater or see on Blu-ray. I think for some fans that’s important. I think some people will need to see this on Blu-ray, but some will need to see it on a Tuesday night at 11 p.m. on iTunes. I don’t think it’s an either/or thing." 

Grammys 2010: An early look at album of the year contenders (Part 1)

GRAMMY AWARDS 2010

Good news, perhaps, for Kanye West. He'll have a little less competition to worry about when it comes to scoring some Grammy nominations.

For the first time ever, the Grammy eligibility year has been moved up from the end of September to the final day of August. In making the change, the eligibility period for the 2010 Grammy Awards was shortened to 11 months (the Grammy year will be back to a 12-month cycle, with the new qualifying dates, for the 2011 awards). 

Ultimately, this means that heavy hitters such as Mariah Carey and Jay-Z will now have to wait until 2011 to see their albums get Grammy recognition. An album now must be released no later than Aug. 31 to be in the Grammy running.

That means it's time to look at the albums most likely to be lauded by Recording Academy voters in the album of the year field, Grammys' biggest prize. Note, however, what follows is not a reflection of the year's best albums. No discussion of that sort could happen without mention of St. Vincent's "Actor," Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "It's Blitz!" and on and on and on. 

For now, however, get your pencils and scorecards ready. Here's an early look at some of the works most likely to receive album of the year attention when Grammy nominations are unveiled at the end of the year.

This is only Part 1 of the installment. Pop & Hiss will be back before the Aug. 31 deadline with another five albums, and we'll see how wrong we all were in December.

The line is forming at Jack White's pop-up store

Chau Tu over at our Brand X blog walked over to Jack White's pop-up record store -- conveniently located near the Pop & Hiss HQ here in downtown Los Angeles -- and found a line beginning to form. White's Dead Weather is in town for two shows, one tonight at the Wiltern and one Wednesday at the Mayan. Tu spoke with some of the early arrivals.

Here's an excerpt:

Vannessa Calderon, 19, of Whittier, said she showed up last night but with no one around decided to come back this morning at 8. Clad in a yellow nearly matching the store's paint job (which corresponds with Third Man Records' primary color motif), she's the first in line.

Just after noon, however, she found company with two fellow White enthusiasts. Jack Waskiewicz, 30, of Seattle, and Christine Wood, 18, of Eugene, Ore., met each other at the Dead Weather show in Portland, Ore., on Sunday. And Monday afternoon, they got in a van with Wood's mother (a White fan herself) and drove straight with no sleep about 17 hours (they said they were too exhausted to count anymore), driving right up to the store.

"It's his motivation," said Waskiewicz of what he admires about White.  "Even with this economy and everything, it's giving me something to look forward to."  In the past, Waskiewicz has gone as far as New York and Texas to see White perform, but he still contends, with tired, amazed eyes, that this trip was one of the craziest decisions he’s ever made.  "I mean, I got into this car with strangers!"

Even if you can’t make it into the Third Man Records’ tiny space for the Dead Weather performance Wednesday, the store will be open until Friday, with DJ sets and, we’re assured by Third Man Records staff, a few surprises every day

Read more at Brand X. Dead Weather will play an in-store at the pop-up shop Wednesday at noon. It's first-come, first-serve. Look for the yellow school-bus paint taking over the Regent Theater at 448 S. Main St., near the intersection with 4th Street.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Chau Tu

Jack White's Third Man Records to pop up in L.A.

For those who can’t schlep to Nashville to rummage through the recordings  that Jack White has been putting out since opening his Third Man Records studio and store in the country music capital in March, he’s arranging a brief opportunity to shop here in L.A.

Third Man will set up a pop-up store for three days, starting Wednesday, near 4th and Main streets downtown.  The shop, to be called Third Man Records and Novelties West, will be stocked with copies of the Dead Weather’s debut album, “Horehound,” as well as releases from the White Stripes, the Raconteurs and other acts that have recorded for the nascent label. There'll be T-shirts and other merchandise as well.

The pop-up store will be at 448 S. Main St., and it'll be open Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.,  and Thursday and Friday from noon to 8 p.m. Given that the store will turn up while the Dead Weather is in town for a few performances -- Tuesday at the Wiltern, Wednesday at the Mayan and Friday on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" -- fans might reasonably be on guard for a drop-in by White or any of his three new band mates: singer Alison Mosshart, guitarist Dean Fertita or bassist Jack Lawrence.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Jack White. Credit: Getty Images

Jackson sales taper, make way for Daughtry, Dead Weather

It took an "Idol" to supplant an icon. Michael Jackson has posthumously had the top-selling album in the U.S. for the last three weeks, but the honor this week belongs to Daughtry. The act's second effort, "Leave This Town," sold 269,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, placing it at No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts.

Jackson's sales are not reflected on the Billboard Top 200, as they are eligible only for the catalog chart. The artist's hits collection "Number Ones" added another 192,000 to its sales total this week. But that's down significantly from the 349,000 copies it moved last week, hinting that Jackson's sales momentum may be slowing -- at least until concert promoter AEG releases a tribute film. All told, 647,000 Jackson albums were sold this week, down from the 1.1 million last week.

Daughtry, led by "American Idol" contestant Chris Daughtry, earns its second No. 1 album. Billboard informs us that Daughtry's self-titled 2006 debut landed a bit higher, opening with 304,000 copies sold. Yet the latter's sales were no doubt helped by the album being released during the start of the holiday season.

A breakdown of some other notables on this week's chart:

-- Bluesy supergroup of sorts the Dead Weather lands at No. 6 with "Horehound," an album the Times awarded four stars. A collaboration among Jack White, the Kills' singer Alison Mosshart, Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence and Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Dean Fertita, "Horehound" sold 51,000 copies. The band, who appeared on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" last week, are still a ways away from White Stripes-like numbers. The group's 2007 effort "Icky Thump" opened at No. 2 after selling 223,000 copies.

White Stripes documentary coming this fall

While Jack White is running the road in support of his latest indie supergroup the Dead Weather, it was announced Tuesday that the band that originally catapulted him to fame, the White Stripes, will release a concert documentary in the fall.

Entitled “Under Great White Northern Lights,” the film follows the duo across Canada, where they went out of their way to play unconventional venues such as a city bus and a bowling alley (shades of the band’s long and storied history at the bowling alley-boasting Majestic Theater in their hometown of Detroit).

Directed by Emmett Malloy, "Under Great White Northern Lights" debuts at the Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 19. While there are no scheduled American screenings yet, the trailer and stills from the movie can be seen here.

White also appears in the guitar documentary "It Might Get Loud" with the Edge and Jimmy Page.

-- Scott T. Sterling

Credit: Dana Edelson / NBC

Album review: The Dead Weather's 'Horehound'

There are precious few bands, especially those operating in the sonically weighty end of the musical spectrum, that demonstrate any appreciation for the notion that the notes you play may be less important than those you don't.

The Dead Weather, Jack White's latest project -- a collaboration with the Kills’ singer Alison Mosshart, Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Dean Fertita and Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence -- embraces that philosophy with bone-chilling power on "Horehound," the band’s take-no-prisoners debut.

Mosshart brings a wildcat's ferocity to her vocals; she's a fearsome adversary to all those high-pitched metal wailers. White, leaving the guitar work predominantly to Fertita, takes up his seat at the drums to drive this machine in tandem with Lawrence's titanic bass lines. Beefy riffs, upended beats and blues-rooted atmospherics are dolloped on sparingly, until it's time to explode with a solo.

"I like to grab you by the hair / And drag you to the devil" Mosshart snarls in "Hang You From the Heavens," which she wrote with Fertita. "Stand up like a man," she warns in the quartet-composed "Treat Me Like Your Mother," "You better learn to shake hands / And treat me like your mother."

In White's "Cut Like a Buffalo," his lead vocal, one of just two on this outing, is accompanied by the convulsive sounds of Mosshart's gurgles as he cries, "Is that you choking / Or are you just joking?" There's no joke here -- just mountains of chest-rattling primal rock designed to reassert the elemental power of the four-piece rock group. Mission accomplished.

-- Randy Lewis

The Dead Weather
"Horehound"
Third Man
Four stars

Live: The Dead Weather at the Roxy

With an electric Alison Mosshart out front and Jack White on drums, it's a sideways storm.

Alison Mosshart's lips nearly grazed Jack White's when the pair shared a microphone Wednesday night at the Roxy. The room grew more humid during that encounter, though the singers never touched. Later, when White took one of his showy guitar solos, Mosshart simply stood and stared. Did her locked gaze signify adoration? Or was it hostile -- a silent way of shouting, "Get out of my spotlight"?

In the Dead Weather, the group that unites Mosshart with White, along with guitarist-keyboardist Dean Fertita and bassist Jack Lawrence (who also play with White in the Raconteurs), the foundations of the four-piece rock band are shaken loose just enough to let some interesting complexities surface. The band's sound is firmly rooted in heavy blues-rock, but the presence of Mosshart up front and White mostly behind the drums turns this revival on its side, if not completely upside down.

Mosshart, a member of the drone-rock duo the Kills, is a riveting frontwoman whose erotic power isn't attached to feminine clichés. Singing lead for most of the Dead Weather's hour-and-change set, she was in constant flux: shaking her slender hips and knotty black hair, leaning perilously into the crowd, dancing in a seeming stupor one moment and coiling to leap the next.

Her vocals went from a sultry murmur to a scary growl, evoking forebears such as Grace Slick and Polly Jean Harvey but never settling into mere imitation. They weren't gospel-strong; Mosshart found power in innuendo and seductiveness, as well as by daring to be ugly. Often, her voice mingled with White's high wails in a fashion that could fairly be described as familial.

Dead Weather: Jack White's newest stripe

His new band, Dead Weather, plays a 20-minute set, sounding a lot like a stripped-down version of the White Stripes.

Reporting from Nashville -- Jack White took the wraps off his new band here Wednesday night, launching phase three of his ever-evolving career with a 20-minute live performance by Dead Weather, fronted by the Kills singer Alison Mosshart, at the site of his new Third Man Records headquarters.

The private show, attended by about 150 invitees, took place in the downtown building that houses not only the label's offices but a performance space, a record store specializing in vinyl, a photo studio and a darkroom.

White, playing drums and singing with Mosshart, is joined in the new group by two of his Raconteurs bandmates, guitarist Dean Fertita (also from Queens of the Stone Age) and bassist Jack Lawrence.

During the four-song set, Mosshart writhed at the mike while Fertita and Lawrence provided the heavy blues-rock groove on sibling white single-cutaway Gretsch hollow body guitar and bass. Mosshart joined them with a matching white Bo Diddley cigar box guitar for "So Far From Your Weapon."

White took his place at the drums, the instrument on which he first learned to play music. He came out from behind his kit just once, duetting at the mike with Mosshart on "Weapon."

The band's debut album, "Horehound," is due in June, and the first single will be "Hang You From the Heavens," which Third Man is issuing on a 7-inch vinyl single as well as making it available for download.

Read more Dead Weather: Jack White's newest stripe

Photo: Jack White, right, with his new band, the Dead Weather. From left, Alison Mosshart, Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita. Credit: Christopher Berkey / For The Times