"Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art."
Photo: Bedder/WireImage (Mayer), Mayer/WireImage(Corgan) After reading John Mayer’s controversial recent interviews, Billy Corgan is convinced Mayer is trying to self-destruct. “He’s trying to destroy his career,” Corgan told Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt in an interview outtake from RS‘ revealing new Corgan feature in the new issue, on sale now. “Rather than take a year off or change his musical direction… some part of it is irritating his soul to the point where he’s trying to blow it up. Certainly a talented guy, but empathetically, standing on the sidelines, it’s hard to watch someone literally burn their career to the ground — speaking as somebody who’s done it.”
Corgan also responded to Mayer’s comments on their mutual friend Jessica Simpson (”sexual napalm,” Mayer called her). “As far as it pertains to her. I think for any person who has celebrity to sort of drop rocks at somebody else’s feet like that — there’s things you should really just keep your mouths shut on. There’s things that should just be left alone.”
Beck’s next Record Club project will feature St. Vincent, the Liars and Os Mutantes, Pitchfork reports, though it’s unclear which classic album they’ve tackled.
If you’ve already mastered Rock Band 2, there’s good news on the horizon: Rock Band 3 will be out in time for the 2010 holidays. A statement on the game’s Facebook page promises the new title will “innovate and revolutionize the music genre once again.” Green Day: Rock Band will arrive June 8th.
In addition to being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis next week, Phil Collins will be honored at June 17th’s Songwriters Hall of Fame gala in New York with the Johnny Mercer Award.
Kings of Leon’s Tap Tap Revenge game Kings of Leon Revenge is being unleashed today for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The game features 10 songs including “Use Somebody,” “Notion” and “Sex on Fire.” Check out a preview on YouTube.
We told you about the Rolling Stones’ upcoming Exile on Main Street reissue — which includes 10 never-before-heard Stones tracks — now read our Q&As with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and producer Don Was as they explain how they polished up gems from the vaults for the May disc and reevaluate their 1972 classic:
Who: Pastoral rockers from Denton, Texas, who first broke through with their 2006 track “Roscoe,” on which the group’s classic-rock-loving frontman Tim Smith sang about life in the 1800s. “I don’t do too well in the present,” he says. “Not that old times were better, but I’m more romantic about the past.”
Sounds Like: The band’s latest disc, The Courage of Others, has a sound influenced by 1960s British acts like Fairport Convention and Pentangle, with Jethro Tull-style flutes and references to maidens and merchant ships.
Vital Stats:
• Smith was a John Coltrane devotee until he reluctantly picked up Radiohead’s OK Computer while at the North Texas College of Music. “I didn’t want to listen to it, because of the name,” he says. “I thought, ‘What’s this, some kind of radio-pop music?’ ”
• Before Midlake embraced chiming guitars and meticulous harmonies, the group was a jazz-funk act. Smith ditched his sax when he joined up with the Texas group, which featured current bandmembers Eric Pulido and Eric Nichelson (guitar), McKenzie Smith (drums) and Paul Alexander (bass).
• Like fellow bearded strummers Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, Midlake recall CSNY and Fleetwood Mac. “You want your music to be ask great as those acts,” says Smith, “But I shouldn’t compare my work with everything that’s ever been done. I mean, you can only do so much before you die.”
Get It Now: Watch the band’s trailer for The Courage of Others up top.
Photo: Bedder/WireImage (Mayer), Mayer/WireImage(Corgan)
Photo: Getty
Photo: AFP/Getty 
