Norway's Hove Festival was held a few weeks ago featuring a powerful three-day line-up of musical acts, including Panic at the Disco, Beck, Foals, The Kooks, MGMT (formerly Management), The Raconteurs, and a rare performance by indie rock legends the Brian Jonestown Massacre (photo, above).

The BJM, who were featured with The Dandy Warhols in the compelling rockumentary film, DiG!, was, by all accounts, and considering a history of brawling and drug and alcohol abuse, awesome. This is how you want to see BJM in concert.

Beck performing at Norway's Hove Festival 2008
Other favorite rock and indie artists and bands at the 2008 Hove Festival included Yeasayer, Foals, Flogging Molly, Les Savy Fav, The Cool Kids, Stars, Dinosaur Jr., Paramore, The Go Team and a dozen others. Access the full video playlist.

We've all seen enough low-quality, hand-held videos of music concerts and festivals on YouTube and other popular social media networks. But it is rare to find high-quality video and audio, not to mention full sets, from some of indie's biggest groups and artists for free.

The videos are hosted by NRKP3 in Norway. There is no information listed about how long the shows, complete with thrilling crowd shots, roaming camera cranes and top-notch production, will be available for unlimited, free viewing. See 'em while you can.

Labels: Beck, Festivals, Foals, Hove Festival, Indie Rock Videos, MGMT, Panic at the Disco, Raconteurs, The Kooks, Yeasayer

This year's Live 105 BFD Festival was a completely different gig than last year's fest. For one, tickets sold out fairly fast (being that they were only $10.53 base price; one-third the cost of last year's tickets), whereas in 2007, they were still available on the day of the event, and not only that, but they were giving out free tickets.

Another change to this year's BFD was the fact that the venue was slightly moved around with the stages being set up in the parking lot area. There is still no official explanation for this, but it may have limited the number of tickets sold over last year.

On top of all of that, the 2007 BFD had a better line-up than this year's show, as many fans and reviewers have pointed out (including the San Jose Mercury News): Interpol, Social Distortion, AFI, Bloc Party, The National, Kings of Leon, CSS, Queens of the Stone Age and many others.

But again, for only $10 a pop, it's no wonder this year's BFD sold out, but it would have been a much better festival if they had anywhere near the same amazing line-ups as years past; and people would have paid the $30 or more for more headlining acts - that is pretty apparent from what so many are saying.

Based on the number of new festivals this year, it is not a stretch to conclude that BFD organizers had a hard time filling the line-up with 'top name' bands and artists for this year's event, and thus, the lower price for tickets.

Additionally, they make more money from advertising and vendors than the tickets anyways. Therefore, as one very disappointed past-BFD fan wrote, it's not like the festival-goer is really getting a break, especially if the line-up is such a drag compared to previous BFDs.

So far, there is not a very good selection of YouTube videos to show - which is amazing considering the Bay Area is a major tech and music center of the world. Perhaps, more videos of BFD 2008 will surface later on, but for now, here's the IRC picks:

Alkaline Trio - "Help Me"



Alkaline Trio was one of the best bands in the lineup for BFD 08, so here's another clip - "Radio"



Here's another view of Alkaline Trio playing "Radio"



MSTRKRFT performing with lightshow at 2008 BFD:



More from MSTRKRFT's BFD set:



MGMT serves up "Of Moons, Birds & Monsters"



Airborne Toxic Event bangs out "Sometime Around Midnight"



LoveLikeFire performing "Signs"



The Kooks performing short clip of "Naive"



PlayRadioPlay performing "I'm The Pirate, You're The Princess" at BFD 08



Magic Bullets performing "Yesterday's Seen Better Days"



Thought this was cute; little kid dancing to Cypress Hill



AntiFlag - Song title? (short clip, not best quality)



Santogold performing "You'll Find A Way"

From inside the tent: Cover version of Daft Punk's "One More Time" by (anyone know? Bueller? Bueller...)



If you have any interest in seeing the BFD trash left around after the festival, check out the After BFD video. Other videos include performances from Here, Here; Apside plays "K Vision"; short clip of Flogging Molly; PlayRadioPlay performing "Compliment Each Other Like Colors".

YouTuber OHteenhearts offers a bunch of videos from BFD, but they are fairly low quality and short. Yet if you are a crazy Kooks or MGMT fan, and you just must see no matter what, check them out.

Related reading:

Live 105 BFD - The Flobots
Folly Molly, Cypress Hill, Alexander Hamilton Highlight 2008 BFD

Labels: 2008 Music Festivals, Alkaline Trio, Festivals, Live 105 BDF, MP3s, San Francisco Concerts, The Kooks

San Francisco rock radio station Live 105 kicks off its annual all-day music festival next week, Saturday, June 7, 2008 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mt. View, California.

This is one of the best day-long music festivals in the United States considering the ticket price - a mere $10 - and the range of popular indie artists playing at the 10-hour festival. Talk about bang for the buck!

Tickets are on sale now. IRC does not endorse any ticketing outlets, but you can click BFD ticketing (links to Google results) to find tickets.

If it is like it was last year, you can also take a chance and show up to get free tickets. People in blue coats were handing out free tickets at the gate shortly after 1 pm.

If that doesn't happen, you'll probably still be able to buy tickets at the box office, or if worse comes to worse, find one a scalper.

Gates open at 11:30am, festival starts at 12:00pm .BFD Line-up for the BudLight Festival Stage (12:00pm-8:30pm) with links to MySpace pages:

Cypress Hill

Pennywise

Flogging Molly

Alkaline Trio

The Kooks

Everlast

Anti-Flag

Antithetic to the Cure

Atreyu

Airborne Toxic Event

Flobots

The Whigs

More bands!

Moby
MSTRKRFT
DJ AM
Santogold
Steve Aoki
Lyrics Born
Mike Relm
PlayRadioPlay
DJ Omar Richard
Oh HOTTUB
DJ Miles

SOUNDCHECK LOCAL San Francisco Bay Area Stage (1:00pm-6:00pm)

The Phenomenauts
Love Like Fire
Here Here
Magic Bullets
Apside
The Hundred Days
Federalists
The Action Design

Labels: 2008 Music Festivals, Alkaline Trio, Cypress Hill, Everlast, Festivals, Live 105 BDF, Moby, San Francisco Concerts, The Kills, The Kooks

Brighton, England's garage rock indie band The Kooks are set to release their new album, Konk, on April 15 on Astralweeks in the U.S. and April 14 on Virgin Records in the UK.

The new Kooks album, named after The Kinks singer/songwriter Ray Davies' Konk Studios where it was recorded in late 2007, is the band's second album since their 2006 acclaimed debut Inside In/Inside Out.

That album went triple platinum in the UK, spawning a number of chart singles, and later helped the band get invited to South by Southwest, which is a huge deal for any musician or band.

Konk was produced by Tony Hoffer who has worked with Beck and Air.

Stream Listen to Konk on Imeem.
MP3: The Kooks - "See the Sun" from Konk
MP3: The Kooks - "Mr. Maker" from Konk
Link: The Kooks Official Website
Link: The Kooks' MySpace page
Videos: Stream Kooks' videos inside their own cool Flash-powered amplifier box.

With dozens of Kooks' 2008 concert shows already booked for North America, UK, Japan and Europe, it's likely The Kooks will be on the loose soon in a city near you.

The Kooks are Luke Pritchard (vocals/guitar), Max Rafferty (bass), Hugh Harris (guitar) and Paul Garred (drums).

The following is The Kooks new video from Konk, "Always Where I Need To Be".

Labels: Albums: Konk, Ray Davies, The Kooks, The Kooks Tour Dates, UK Album Releases, Videos: The Kooks

The Kooks announced a blitz two-week spring tour of the U.S. that will start with their performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 29.

The band's debut album, Inside In/Inside Out, released on Astralweeks, has been one of the hottest-selling debuts for any indie band in years.

The debut has already gone quadruple platinum in the U.K. and the band is catching on in the U.S. and Europe as one of the hottest new indie rock groups to emerge in recent years.

Make sure to check the IRC website for an exclusive set of live acoustic gigs featuring songs from their debut album and TWO new songs - “Need To Be” and “Miss You”.

The Kooks Tour Dates:

(not all tickets on sale yet. See which are.)

04/29 – Indio, CA – Coachella
04/30 – San Francisco, CA - Slim’s
05/02 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge
05/03 – Seattle, WA – Crocodile Cafe
05/05 – Chicago, IL – Metro
05/07 – Columbus, OH – The Basement
05/08 – Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace
05/10 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza
05/12 – Washington DC – 9:30 Club
05/13 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club

Labels: Coachella Music Festival, Music Festivals, The Kooks

The Kooks were named best UK-Ireland rock band of the year and The Killers took away the prize at the MTV Europe Music Awards. Oh, and Madonna was "snubbed." Cool.

Fans of The Kooks might want to check out the following sites:

The Kooks Official Web Site
Kooks Fan Site - My Space (warning: embedded music)
The Kooks - Wikipedia
Kooks Similar to The Kinks - Variety
Kooks Discussions - forums.thekooks.co.uk

Killers Resources:


The Killers Music - thekillersmusic.com
The Killers Portal - Yahoo! Music
The Killers Fan Site - thekillersfansite.com

Labels: Music Awards, The Killers, The Kooks