The Kinks to Release First-Ever Box Set

Photo by Petra Niemeier/Redferns

It's funny how anything nice and just out of one's price range becomes "the perfect holiday gift" this time of year, as all the stuff we don't really need becomes stuff we desperately want. Here's the next item to add to the covet list: Picture Book, the Kinks' very first box set. Sanctuary/Universal will release Picture Book on December 8.

Picture Book collects over 130 tracks across six chronologically ordered CDs, sprinkling rarities, live tracks, and demos (including early ones recorded under the name the Ravens) among the Kinks' classic singles and album tracks. The accompanying 60-page booklet features a biography, a Kinks timeline, and previously unseen photos.

The whole thing was put together with the help of lead singer/songwriter Ray Davies, who recently sent Kinks fans into a tizzy when he told BBC News that a reunion might be in the cards. He said, "We've started a little bit of this and that. It depends if there's good music. We want good new music. I'd like to do it as a more collaborative thing than we used to do." No word on who, exactly "we" is, since Ray's brother/former bandmate Dave Davies still seems to hate Ray's guts, as Billboard.com pointed out.

Ray Davies also told BBC News that he'd like to put out a duets album featuring Chuck Berry, Snow Patrol, and Johnny Borrell from Razorlight. To which we say: No. Please don't.

For now, Davies has some U.S. tour dates starting November 28 in Tampa, Florida. The band Locksley will both act as Davies' backing band as well as open all of the shows.

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Clipse Preview LP With Mixtape, Launch Clothing Line

So Clipse's third LP, Till the Casket Drops, won't make its way to stores this month as originally planned. It's an unfortunate (if hardly unexpected) fate you're sure to hear plenty about on Road to Till the Casket Drops, an all new Clipse mixtape set to, you know, drop December 1 exclusively through complex.com.

The new set packs tie-ins galore: not only is it the first glimpse into the next Clipse record proper-- now due in March, supposedly-- but its appearance is intended to coincide with the duo's long in the worksPlay Cloths clothing line, which launched today (November 21).

Clipse look to be putting together a Play Cloths tour too, but thus far just a couple dates have emerged.

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These Are Powers Announce New Dead Oceans Album

These Are Powers, and this is a news story about their new album. All Aboard Future-- which I personally hope is named in oblique reference to the time-traveling train from Back to the Future III-- collects nine tracks of the trio's funky, freaky hybrid thing, and arrives February 17 thanks to Dead Oceans.

The set follows debut full-length Terrific Seasons, this year's Taro Tarot EP, and a split tour 7" with Creeping Nobodies issued just last month and sporting the TAP jam "Cockles".

For the moment, the future train will take the band-- which, don't you know, includes onetime Liars member Pat Noecker-- to a few spots in the UK and Ireland, but if they know anything about promoting an album, you can bet These Are Powers will be back on the road in the oh-nine.

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The Nerves' Lone EP Gets Expanded Reissue

Photo by Patty Heffley

L.A. power pop trio the Nerves are best known for writing "Hanging on the Telephone", which was famously covered by Blondie (and, later, L7 and Cat Power, among others). The Nerves were only a band for a few years (from 1975-1978), and that-- plus the fact that their only recorded output is a four-song, self-titled EP-- has led them to be largely overlooked in the discussion of proto-new wave pop music.

Alive Records has decided to bring the Nerves back into the public consciousness by unearthing their 1976 EP and supplementing it with a bunch of lesser-known tracks by the Nerves and the members' other bands on a compilation called One Way Ticket. The collection includes demos, previously unreleased live tracks, and tunes by guitarist Jack Lee and post-Nerves acts the Breakaways and the Plimsouls, all remastered for this release.

One Way Ticket is out now in a limited vinyl edition (with the first 1,000 copies on yellow vinyl), and in CD and digital formats bundled with two bonus tracks. Each version of the release features different cover art.

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Beach House, Land of Talk, Stills Play Le Guess Who?

The Canadian-centric Le Guess Who? festival returns to Utrecht, Netherlands' Tivoli venue this year from November 27-30. For 2008, fest organizers have extended their region-specific invitations to bands from the northern U.S., too, which would explain a few outliers in their agenda.

Beach House, Land of Talk, the Stills, Dragons of Zynth, Jana Hunter, Hayden, Telepathe, Think About Life, Hrsta, Cryptopsy, Melissa Auf der Maur, the Shalabi Effect, and quite a few more will make their ways to the Tivoli next week to show 'em how they do things upper North American style.

Kraftwerk Lose Copyright Case in Germany

Yesterday (November 20), Germany's highest civil court ruled against Kraftwerk in a copyright suit, overturning a ruling from a Hamburg state court that established that repurposing even the smallest sample of a song counts as copyright infringement, according to an AP report.

The sample in question is a two-second piece of Kraftwerk's "Metal on Metal", which German rap producer Moses Pelham (the defendant in the case) used in Sabrina Setlur's 1997 track "Nur Mir". Man, of all the samples there have been of their work, this was the one that set Kraftwerk off?

Despite the apparent win for Girl Talk types, this new court ruling still forbids sampling a song's melody, and it requires that a sample "be part of a completely new musical work bearing no resemblance to the original," according to the AP.

Kraftwerk's recourse with the case now is to take it back to the Hamburg court that made the previous ruling. Sounds strange, but I barely understand the U.S. appeals process, much less Germany's.

Kraftwerk have some tour dates this fall Down Under and in Asia. Their next show is tomorrow (November 22) in Melbourne.

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