Ja Rule and Charli Baltimore are setting out to be the hip-hop version of Mickey and Mallory — the clip for Ja's "Down Ass Chick," featuring Charli B-more, will be a takeoff of Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers," according to a source close to Ja. Over the course of the three-day shoot, which begins February 22 in L.A., he'll also film the remix video with Baltimore, Ashanti and Ashanti, according to Def Jam; Murder Inc. CEO Irv Gotti will direct both. ... If you're dreaming of becoming a professional DJ, it's time to take your skills out of the bedroom and into the classroom. For the next two months in New York City, celebrity DJs including Jam Master Jay, Kuttin' Kandi, Mista Sinista and Evil Dee will lead courses in disciplines such as battle, mixtape and performance (visit www.scratch.com for more information). ...

Indie music festival Noise Pop 2002 takes place next week (February 26-March 3) in San Francisco with performances by the Dismemberment Plan, New Pornographers and Big Star, among others, and to commemorate its decade-long tenure, a double-disc Ten Years of Noise Pop will be available locally and through the festival's Web site (www.noisepop.com). A portion of the proceeds from the album, which features cuts from past performers including Guided by Voices, the Flaming Lips and Creeper Lagoon, benefits the Popular Noise Foundation (www.popularnoise.org), a nonprofit charity that provides aid to the Bay Area music scene. ... Dixie Chick Natalie Maines will appear in the first celebrity edition of the TLC series "Trading Spaces," according to The Associated Press. Maines will race to redecorate a room in her mother's home (and vice versa) in 48 hours for $1,000 or less in an episode airing April 20. ...

P. Diddy, Rah Digga and female R&B quartet LovHer were among the guests who came out to support Jay-Z and the Roc-A-Fella family at a Roc-A-Wear fashion show in New York Thursday night. Jay and company partied up at the Metropolitan Pavilion while the men's and women's fall 2002 lines were introduced. ... "Rush Hour" star Chris Tucker will host the 33rd annual NAACP Image Awards on February 23 at the Universal Amphitheater. The ceremony, scheduled to air March 1 on Fox, will feature music-world appearances by Alicia Keys, India.Arie and the Isley Brothers as well as Steve Harvey, the Rock, Jamie Foxx and Angela Bassett. ...

There's nothing funny about the popular appeal of crossover heavyweight Jennifer Lopez — she'll be crowned Female Star of the Year by the film industry's power elite at the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas. She and previously announced Male Star of the Year Will Smith will be honored at a banquet next month in recognition of their drawing power at the box office. ... The soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's "The Last Waltz" — a filmed concert by the Band which featured a cavalcade of special guests including Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison and Muddy Waters — will be remixed and released with bonus tracks on April 16. The movie will be released on DVD May 7. ...

Liverpool's arty synth-poppers Clinic will support their second album, Walking With Thee (due February 26), with a three-week Stateside jaunt that begins March 13 in Atlanta. The tour includes a showcase at music-biz conference South by Southwest on March 15. ... El Meswy, Spain's best-selling hip-hop artist, was in the studio recently recording Se Habla Español, his follow-up to 2000's Nadie. M-1 and Stic.man of Dead Prez were on hand to lend lyrical support to the as-yet-untitled project. ...

My Bloody Valentine founder Kevin Shields has recorded "Outro," an instrumental, for the compilation album You Don't Need Darkness to Do What You Think Is Right, which comes out April 1. Other artists who will appear on the LP include the Pastels, Future Pilot AKA and Jesus and Mary Chain partners Jim and William Reid recording as Sister Vanilla. ... Sting, Elton John, James Taylor and Ravi Shankar comprise the first wave of artists announced to perform at the Police-man's annual Rainforest Foundation Benefit Concert, which will take place at New York's Carnegie Hall on April 13. ...

02.15.02

Post-adolescent punks Sum41 are expected to begin working on the follow-up to last year's All Killer No Filler in late April, after their Tour of the Rising Sum sets in Texas on April 21, according to their publicist. The album is expected to surface late this year or early 2003. ... Eve, who's currently in Chicago filming "Barbershop" with Ice Cube, is ready to devote some time to her day job. Murder Inc. CEO Irv Gotti and his beatmaking cohort, 7, said they're gearing to go in the studio with Ruff Ryders' first lady at the end of the month. ... Nickelback, Default and Injected will head out on the spring 2002 incarnation of MTV's Campus Invasion Tour. An itinerary has yet to be announced. ...

Megaproducer Megahertz (P. Diddy, R. Kelly & Jay-Z, Nas) just completed a remix with P.O.D. of the band's "Youth of the Nation," the producer's rep said. ... FenixTX have dropped off the SnoCore Rock Tour due to scheduling conflicts, according to MCA Records. They have been replaced by Apex Theory. ... Face to Face will launch a national tour in April to support their new album How to Ruin Everything, which hits stores April 9 through Vagrant Records. The jaunt starts in Salt Lake City on April 4 and runs through May 3 in Scottsdale, Arizona. ... Industrial icons Ministry will release Sphinctour, a live album recorded during their 1996 tour, on March 19. The 11-track LP, which had been a widely circulated bootleg, includes harrowing cuts such as "Psalm 69," "Filth Pig" and "Thieves" and can be previewed at ministry.advancelisten.com. ...

Innovative prog-rocker Peter Gabriel is apparently "down wit' OPP" — he hooked up with Jersey hip-hoppers Naughty by Nature on a track called "Fight Back" for the group's guest-filled April 23 release, Iicons. ... Speaking of Naughty, the group's Treach was among the celebrities who hit New York hotspot Spa on Tuesday night to support Joi (Lucy Pearl), who performed songs off her next LP, Star Kitty's Revenge. The Goodie Mob's Cee-Lo (bandmate of Joi's husband, Big Gipp) and Kelis were also in attendance (click for photos from the performance). ...

Fuel have issued a cease and desist order to Toyota, corporate sponsors of the Fuel the Music Tour, demanding Toyota stop using that title for the rock outing. The band, who says it has fought to make a name for itself and wants it protected, was alerted after confused fans began emailing its Web site inquiring about the outing because a magazine ran an ad for the event on the same page as a picture of the group, who are not involved. ... A London High Court judge has ruled that Robbie Williams will have to pay 25 percent of the royalties from his "Jesus in a Camper Van" — around $75,000 — to Woody Guthrie's publisher, Ludlow Music. Williams, who admitted to parodying Guthrie's "I Am the Way" on the track, will also have to pick up Ludlow's legal fees, which amount to another $75,000.

• Ja Rule
• Charli Baltimore
• Ashanti
• Jam Master Jay
• The New Pornographers

Creeper Lagoon
Photo: Dreamworks

It's rumored that the nearly three years of work spent on Creeper Lagoon's DreamWorks debut, Take Back the Universe and Give Me Yesterday, cost more than $1 million.

"Yeah, I want to correct that rumor," guitarist/singer Sharky Laguana said. "It actually cost $3.5 million." All jokes aside, it would seem that deep in debt is the last place an up-and-coming rock band would want to be, but the guys in San Francisco's Creeper Lagoon seem to have reached a Zen-like state where it doesn't really matter anymore.

"We don't feel any pressure at all," Laguana said. "We were broke before we did this, and we're broke now. What's the big difference?" His bandmate and fellow Cincinnati refugee, singer/guitarist Ian Sefchick, agreed. "I did [feel pressure] when I was making the record, but now I've completely resigned to everything. At a certain point you start realizing that the pressure is f---ing up the way you do art." Take Back the Universe, which hit stores last month, features elements of their dreamy drum-loop-and-sample-friendly LP I Become Small and Go, which first turned heads their way in 1998.

It also includes a number of radio-ready rock rave-ups, such as the first single, Wrecking Ball. The song, which starts out with a lone acoustic guitar before blasting into an arena-rock-sized riff, features Third Eye Blind-like "do, do, do ... do, do, do" harmonies and Sefchick's plaintive but sing-along "Hey, I'm coming down/ Like a wrecking ball" chorus.

On songs like "Under the Tracks" and "Dead Man Saloon," the band — whose lineup also includes drummer Dave Kostiner and bassist Dan Carr — shows its Nashville side.

"We definitely have our country influences," Laguana said. "We just like music. Our band's about transcending boundaries, not existing within them. So if we wanna do some sort of Bad Brains heavy-metal riff, we will, and if we wanna bust out some Hank Williams two-step folk, we might." Though surprisingly cohesive for an album four producers worked on, the record is far from homogeneous. The one-minute instrumental guitar-picking showcase "She Loves Me Not" separates the swirly "Sunfair" from the anthemic booze-breath apology "Up All Night." The 13-track disc also includes the dramatic seven-minute-plus buildup of "Keep From Moving" and the atmospheric dirge "Lover's Leap." "Keep in mind we did this record over a long period," Laguana said, "so as we got interested in different things, a couple songs would stick out and be really good, and a couple songs from each era made it through, so that's why there's a lot of diversity, because it's covering a large period of time." While "Wrecking Ball" has yet to smash through the wall of rock radio ("It's just a Limp Bizkit world right now," Laguana said), the album is doing well at college stations, peaking at #5 recently on the CMJ Top 200, where it now sits at #7.

On Sunday the band wrapped up an opening stint on the Guided by Voices tour in Philadelphia, and the show was taped for the HBO live music series "Reverb." An HBO spokesperson said the Creeper Lagoon/Guided by Voices episode will probably air in the fall.

After a half-dozen more Stateside shows, Creeper Lagoon will head to Europe to play with ex-Pavement guitarist Scott Kannberg's new band, Preston School of Industry, and J Mascis. Upon their return home, the group plans to hook up with Scottish rockers Idlewild for a U.S. tour, Laguana said.

• Creeper Lagoon

Creeper Lagoon
Photo: MTV News

More than two years after releasing their dreamily psychedelic debut, I Become Small and Go, Creeper Lagoon are finally getting ready to release the follow-up, Take Back the Universe (And Give Me Yesterday). The San Francisco Bay Area band issued a six-song EP, Watering Ghost Garden, in October to help tide fans over, but singer-guitarist Ian Sefchick recently said his bandmates are restless for the album's planned April 17 release.

"It's been very frustrating," Sefchick said. "The songs that we're writing now, they're not completely different, but they're more advanced than when we started writing for the record, because it's been so long. It's like we don't even know who we are anymore. It's kind of, 'Let's get the damn thing out so we can move on and grow.' " Part of the reason for the delay in releasing the second album has been the band's sessions with no fewer than four producers, including ex-Talking Head Jerry Harrison (Live, Rusted Root), Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev), Greg Wells and Mark Trombino, over the past two years.

"It wasn't like we set out at the beginning and thought, 'Oh, we're going to work with 10 different producers and go to all these different studios and blow all this money,' " guitarist Sharky Laguana said. "It was always that we'd want to work with somebody for the whole record." "In the beginning, we wanted to do the whole record with [Harrison], and he was like, 'Well, I've got to do this thing and that thing and I just finished up the Live record and I'm starting up garageband.com. So, I've got this and that going, but I've got three and a half weeks right here that are open, and I'd love to do something in that time I've got available.' " The Dust Brothers' John King aided Creeper Lagoon on several tracks from I Become Small and Go, issued on the Brothers' Nickelbag Records label.

Creeper Lagoon have announced a brief promotional trek, starting on January 25 in Reno, Nevada, during which they'll road test material from Take Back the Universe (And Give Me Yesterday). Creeper Lagoon tour dates:

• 1/25 - Reno, NV @ Zephyr Club
• 1/26 - Sacramento, CA @ Old Iron Side
• 1/27 - Cupertino, CA @ Fishbowl
• 1/30 - Los Angeles, CA @ Knitting Factory
• 1/31 - San Diego, CA @ Casbah
• 2/1 - Santa Barbara, CA @ The Edge
• 2/6 - New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge

• Creeper Lagoon

By securing its opening spot on the Dandy Warhols tour, Bay Area fave Creeper Lagoon has finally emerged from the shadows of the studio, where the band has been toiling away on its new album, the group's first since 1998's acclaimed "I Become Small And Go."

In conjunction with the tour, Creeper Lagoon has just issued a five-song EP, "Watering Ghost Garden," via SpinArt Records. The band hopes the EP will tide fans over until the release of its second album, "Take Back The Universe And Give Me Yesterday," next year.

"We've been making this kind of opus record for the last two and a half years, since 'I Become Small And Go' came out," frontman Ian Sefchick recently told MTV News,

"We've just been taking so long to do that," he continued, "and we've had so many songs that we were like, 'Hey, nobody's going to hear this stuff.' Because there can only be, what, 11 songs on a record, usually, and we've got hundreds of songs. So we picked some really good songs that we had that we didn't think were going to go on the record and put [them] on an EP." [Real Audio]

For "Take Back The Universe," Creeper Lagoon has been working with producers such as former Talking Heads keyboardist Jerry Harrison, David Fridmann (who collaborated with the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev), and Mark Trombino, along with a host of different engineers and mixers.

During its recent live sets, Creeper has been playing several songs from the "Watering" EP, including "Centipede Eyes" and "Big Money Struggle," [RealAudio] the latter of which was produced by Harrison and was being considered for inclusion on the LP.

"['Big Money Struggle'] was done in the sessions for the upcoming album," guitarist Sharky Laguana noted. "It was just one song. I guess we're not really very good at collectively figuring something out, but somehow we collectively figured out that that wasn't going to be on the album. I don't know exactly how we stumbled across that."

"We had a lot more mellow songs, I think, than rock songs for the EP," Sefchick added,

"Just as a kind of change of pace," [Real Audio] Laguana agreed.

Creeper Lagoon did indeed opt for a change of pace during sessions for "Watering Ghost Garden" and the forthcoming new album, as the band chose to eschew the samples and drum loops the Dust Brothers' John King grafted onto several tracks from "I Become Small And Go"

"We're not really using samples very much these days," Laguana noted.

"We still use a lot of keyboards and a lot of weird synthesizers and stuff," Sefchick said.

"But we're not really using the hip-hop beats," Laguana continued. "The thing we noticed, too, was that when we stopped using the samples live, it seemed like people enjoyed the shows more."

"And we still get laid," [Real Audio] Sefchick jokingly added.

Creeper Lagoon will wrap up its opening stint for the Dandy Warhols following an October 17 show in Minneapolis, after which the band may head back out on the road to support J. Mascis on his fall tour.

Creeper Lagoon's "Watering Ghost Garden" is in stores now, while DreamWorks Records tentatively plans to release "Take Back The Universe And Give Me Yesterday" in March 2001.

Dates where you can catch Creeper Lagoon in the next few weeks:

• 10/11 - Toronto, ON @ The Guvernment (w/ Dandy Warhols)
• 10/12 - Detroit, MI @ St. Andrews Hall (w/ Dandy Warhols)
• 10/13 - Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop (w/ Dandy Warhols)
• 10/16 - Chicago, IL @ Metro (w/ Dandy Warhols)
• 10/17 - Minneapolis, MN @ Quest Club (w/ Dandy Warhols)
• 10/19 - New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge - CMJ
• 10/26 - West Hollywood, CA @ The Troubadour

• Creeper Lagoon

College rock faves the Dandy Warhols have announced dates for the first leg of a planned fall North American tour in support of their newest album, "Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia," starting on September 29 in Nashville, Tennessee.

San Francisco's Creeper Lagoon will open for the Warhols on the upcoming shows, which are currently scheduled through an October 16 performance in Chicago. The Dandy Warhols will then head to the land down under for a few Australian gigs in late October before returning to the States to resume their tour in November.

Creeper Lagoon will use the shows to tout its upcoming six-song EP, "Watering Ghost Garden," due out via SpinArt Records on October 3. The release marks the first new material since Creeper's critically acclaimed debut, "I Become Small And Go," in 1998, and the band plans to issue its second album on DreamWorks Records in March.

The Dandy Warhols have just recorded a cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's classic protest song, "Ohio," for inclusion on the soundtrack to "Last Party 2000," a political documentary from Donovan Leitch set to air on TV on November 6 (see "Third Eye Blind, Rage On Tap For 'Last Party' Soundtrack").

A rough mix of the "Ohio" cover will be included on an upcoming promotional EP, "Tales From Slabtown, Vol. 2," due to be serviced to college stations in the next few weeks. The "Tales From Slabtown" disc will also feature the Dandy Warhols' version of AC/DC's "Hells Bells," as well as a remix of their current single, "Bohemian Like You."

Dates for the initial leg of the Dandy Warhols' fall North American tour:

• 9/29- Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
• 9/30 - Raleigh, NC @ The Brewery
• 10/1 - Baltimore, MD @ Fletcher's
• 10/2 - Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
• 10/3 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
• 10/4 - Philadelphia, PA @ TBA
• 10/5 - Albany, NY @ TBA
• 10/6 - Providence, RI @ Met Cafe
• 10/7 - Boston, MA @ Axis
• 10/9 - Montreal, QC @ Club Soda
• 10/10- Ottawa, ON @ Zaphods 2
• 10/11 - Toronto, ON @ TBA
• 10/12 - Detroit, MI @ St. Andrews Hall
• 10/13 - Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
• 10/14 - Dayton, OH @ TBA
• 10/16 - Chicago, IL @ Metro

• Creeper Lagoon
• The Dandy Warhols

Rocket From The Crypt will join Creeper Lagoon, Guided By Voices, and dozen of other acts at this year's Noise Pop Festival this month in San Francisco.

• 2/23 - Jimmy Eat World, Sensefield, crumb, Gardener @ Bottom of the Hill
• 2/24 - Imperial Teen, Push Kings, Dealership, Blanket @ Bottom of the Hill
• 2/25 - 764-HERO, Red Stars Theory, The Aislers Set, Fiver @ Bottom of the Hill
• 2/26 - Creeper Lagoon, Grandaddy, Death Cab for Cutie, Rodriguez, Glasstown @ Great American Music Hall
• 2/27 - Murder City Devils, Kingdom First, Magnolia Thunderfinger, Me First @ Bottom of the Hill
• 2/27 - Trackstar, I am Spoonbender, Thingy @ Cafe du Nard
• 2/27 - Guided by Voices, Buelah, Snowmen, Lunchbox @ Bimbo's 365 Club
• 2/28 - Fastbacks, Alien Crime Syndicate, Bracket, Bitesize @ Bottom of the Hill
• 2/28 - Rocket From the Crypt, Oranger, Sixteen Deluxe, Carlos, Elevator Drops @ BIMBO'S

• Creeper Lagoon
• Guided By Voices
• Rocket from the Crypt

In one of the niftier tours making the rounds this summer, Vegas-flavored hot rod rockers Rocket From The Crypt are currently making the rounds with thinking-man's pop purveyors Creeper Lagoon, and will soon be joined by the band who told us they'd tour if only someone would give them a ride, red-blooded rockers the Donnas.

RFTC and Creeper will continue the one-two punch they launched in mid-July, and will invite the Donnas aboard for a handful of West Coast dates in August, including a show on the Donnas home turf of Palo Alto, California. (For more on the Donnas breed of straight-ahead rock, check out our MTV News Online Feature "Meet The Donnas" from May.)

If you've sampled RFTC's recent self-titled album, Creeper Lagoon's "I Become Small And Go," or the Donnas' "American Teenage Rock 'N' Roll Machine" and want to check them out live, here's where to look:

• 7/23 - Cambridge, MA @ Middle East Club
• 7/24 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
• 7/25 - Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
• 7/26 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Graffiti Showcase
• 7/28 - Toronto, ON @ Opera House
• 7/29 - London, ON @ Call The Office
• 7/30 - Cleveland, OH @ Peabody's Down Under
• 7/31 - Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick
• 8/1 - Chicago, IL @ Metro
• 8/2 - Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
• 8/5 - Seattle, WA @ RKCNDY
• 8/6 - Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
• 8/7 - Vancouver, BC @ Starfish Room
• 8/8 - Seattle, WA @ Crocodile Cafe
• 8/10 - San Francisco, CA @ Fillmore (with the Donnas)
• 8/11 - Santa Cruz, CA @ Catalyst (with the Donnas)
• 8/12 - Sacramento, CA @ Bojangles (with the Donnas)
• 8/13 - Palo Alto, CA @ Edge (with the Donnas)
• 8/14 - Pomona, CA @ Glass House
• 8/15 - San Diego, CA @ To Be Announced

• Creeper Lagoon
• The Donnas
• Rocket from the Crypt

As producer-wunderkinds the Dust Brothers prepare to release their "Greatest Hits" record, the first offering from the Brothers' NickelBag label is already kicking up a little dirt of its own. The band is called Creeper Lagoon, and their first single is "Wonderful Love."

With the new single and several other album tracks produced by Duster John King, the Bay Area band became quickly indoctrinated with the duo's quirky style and soundings, which have graced records ranging from Hanson and Beck to the Beastie Boys. Creeper Lagoon sat down with MTV News recently and discussed working with the heavyweight production team and the experience of being sonically "dusted."

"[The Dust Brother] are song massagers," said vocalist/guitarist Ian Sefchick, "they make them feel better, so we got to have a second chance on a lot of the songs. We'd recorded some of the material already, but there was certain things about it that bugged me for months and months. With John we got to go in there and just redo it, all the stuff we didn't like."

"[John] was like kind of a mid-wife to the whole song process," added guitarist Sharky Laguana, "and he just kind of helped pull that baby out. Made it all come together." [550k QuickTime]

Creeper Lagoon plays tonight at Liquid Joe's in Salt Lake City, and will hook up with Rocket from the Crypt for an extended summer tour together, beginning on July 14 in New Orleans.

• Creeper Lagoon