Hive is excited to present Garbage, straight from Manhattan’s Webster Hall, as the next installment of our premiere livestreaming concert series Live In NYC. The event takes place on Tuesday, May 22, the same day as the release of the band’s highly anticipated fifth album, Not Your Kind of People. It’s their first New York show in over seven years, and it sold out in about seven seconds, so this’ll be a rare opportunity to see Garbage and preview material from their upcoming album.

We’ve been tight with Garbage for a while: Guitarist Steve Marker discovered lead singer Shirley Manson when he saw a video for her previous band, Angelfish, on 120 Minutes. For her part, Shirley Manson discovered who these Garbage guys were when she looked up the résumé of drummer Butch Vig. At the time Vig had just produced records for Sonic Youth (Dirty), Smashing Pumpkins (Siamese Dream) and Nirvana (Bleach, Nevermind). And even though it wasn’t the first single from their debut self-titled album, most will first remember Manson when she stalked across their TV sets in their video for “Queer.” Since then the band’s made four more albums of slithering, noisy alt-pop, combining Manson’s seductive vocals with the band’s penchant for sampling and sound manipulation (and semi-disturbing video imagery).

You’ll still get all that on their latest album’s first single,”Blood For Poppies,” as well as a newfound (yet still dark) effervesce that you wouldn’t expect from Garbage. So get excited to hear more from their latest, Not Your Kind Of People, as well as others tracks from their deep catalog. You can also expect a great show: Manson is a fantastic frontwoman — as she told V Magazine earlier this year, “You have to play a million shitty clubs before you really learn how to stand onstage and own your role as the master of ceremonies.” We’d say she has this whole standing-and-strutting-onstage thing down (everyone from Katy Perry to Karen O says she’s an influence). Watch MC Shirley Manson and the rest of Garbage play Live in NYC May 22, streaming to your computer screen right here on Hive.

Country icon Willie Nelson has a new record out today called Heroes, which finds the red-headed stranger covering songs of, well, his heroes, and offering up a few new tunes of his own. Last night he took to the stage of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon to cover Pearl Jam‘s “Just Breathe,” fronting an eight-piece band that prominently featured his 23-year-old son, Lukas. The song comes from PJ’s 2009 album Backspacer and not Ten or Vitalogy or any of the grunge titans’ earlier work. We can’t help but think that it would’ve been killer to hear him utter those lines, “Jeremy spoke in class tuhhh-day.” Maybe one day.

Hanging in your parents’ basement isn’t thought of as the coolest thing to do to pass the time, but for New York six-piece Fishdoctor, bumming around during a holiday break was the impetus for “Summer in the Wintertime.”  “I wrote the guitar tracks on my laptop and brought the idea to [vocalist] Jared after he got back from vacation in Australia,” explains guitarist Michael Panico. “The song was inspired by the opposing seasons as it was summer in Australia and winter in New York.” The song comes from the band’s debut album, The Swell — and album that’s inspired by ’60s surf rock sounds more than adolescent couch surfing.

The Swell is out May 29 via Bandcamp.

Adam "MCA" Yauch (left) made his mark on a young Eric Spitznagel, despite never living in New York. Photo: Ebet Roberts/Redferns

Music is ubiquitous and confusing. Twice a month, Eric Spitznagel stares into the bottomless chasm of new (and old) songs, albums and musicians that permeate our lives, and tries to pretend he has any idea what it all means.

It was an unlucky coincidence that my mother’s birthday happened to fall on the same day that Adam Yauch died. The moment I got on the phone with her, she noticed that something was off. I seemed vaguely sad, and she wanted to know why. Which put me in the very weird position of having to try to explain to my mom why I was so upset about a dead rapper.

“I didn’t even know you listened to rap,” she said.

“Well no, not all the time,” I told her. “But the Beastie Boys were different.”

“Because they’re white?”

“No, no, no!” I barked a little too defensively. I couldn’t think of the right words to explain why that wasn’t true, because a part of me was terrified that it probably was. “They’re from Brooklyn,” I reminded her, like that somehow canceled out their whiteness. “And they’re Jewish.”

I don’t know where I was going with that.

“Well that’s fine,” she said. “I’ve just never heard you mention these Beastie Boys before.  I didn’t realize they meant so much to you.”

Neither did I, honestly. But for some reason it felt important that she understand what a big deal it was that Yauch was gone. I rehashed every cliché I’d read in countless magazine and online obituaries and tributes. The Beasties represented a New York City that didn’t exist anymore. A New York that, coincidentally, I never actually experienced firsthand. The closest I got to the ’80s New York rap and hardcore scene was walking around Lincoln Mall in the south suburbs of Chicago listening to “Shake Your Rump” on a Walkman. I’m not sure that the two things have anything in common, unless the ’80s-era New York that everybody over-romanticizes revolved around a Chess King and the mostly abandoned parking lot near JC Penny where everybody went to get handjobs.

I don’t feel stupid about this. My nostalgia for things that had nothing to do with me is pretty common. I’m not the only one who owns a CBGB t-shirt despite never having set foot in CBGB.

“They don’t make records like that anymore,” I told my mom. Which isn’t even an original observation. I stole it from a Slate writer who said exactly the same thing, and I’m pretty sure neither one of us was being ironic. I’m not suggesting that music should sound exactly like it did in 1989. That would be insane. They don’t make medicine or fingerless gloves like they did in 1989 either, and our world is better for it. When I say “They don’t make records like that anymore,” what I’m really saying is “I’m not 20 like I was when I was 20 anymore.”

“The problem I’ve been grappling with since Yauch’s death is this: I just don’t know whether to trust my own grief anymore. I can’t tell when I’m experiencing a real emptiness at an artist’s death and when I’m just a Pavlov dog for my Google news alerts.”

A few days later, after the dust of Yauch’s passing had settled, I got into a screaming fit with a female friend about whether a dead Beastie Boy was as big a cultural deal as a dead cokehead who sang about children being our future.

“Yauch’s death is sad,” she said after we’d polished off a bottle of red wine each. “But it’s not tragic, like when Whitney Houston died.”

If I’d been a little more emotionally mature, or at least less drunk, I would have acknowledged that we clearly had different feelings about and attachments to these particular artists. Whitney Houston had a bigger impact on my friend’s life, so she was more affected by Houston’s death. For me, the Beastie Boys made a more lasting imprint, so Yauch’s death seemed more significant. That’s not a value judgment, it’s just what happens when people co-exist in a complex and diverse musical landscape.

But I didn’t say that. I said something along the lines of “… a 47-year-old rap genius dying from cancer is not the same thing as a 48-year-old karaoke singer drowning in a bathtub because she did too much coke.” I think I threw a few “fuck you’s” in there too for good measure.

A Whitney Houston Memorial in Newark, NJ, which Eric Spitznagel doesn't get. Photo: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images

“You’re on the wrong side of history,” she hissed at me. “Twenty years from now, liking the Beastie Boys will be like saying Men at Work is your favorite band.”

“You’re a fucking moron,” I laughed. “Do you listen to any music that isn’t sold at the check-out lanes at Target?”

We said terrible things to each other, as people usually do when somebody tries to tell them that the music they love sucks. It’s an argument you can never win, although I’ve clearly never learned that lesson. I seem to have these arguments every time a popular music artist dies. I became especially irate after Michael Jackson made an early exit. I understood why his family and friends were devastated. But just owning the Thriller album doesn’t mean your world has been forever changed by his passing. All the public grief about Jackson’s death was puzzling to me. It was like turning on the news and the top story was “They’re no longer making red leather jackets with lots of zippers in them!” Okay. I guess I’ll put on a brave face and try to soldier on.

It wasn’t like when Clarence Clemons died. That hit me where it hurt. When I first heard the news, I stayed up all night getting drunk and listening to the sax solo in “Jungleland” over and over and crying. It wasn’t sentimentality. I go to Springsteen concerts, I watch his videos, I buy his new albums. Clemons’ absence haunts my current music listening experience.

Things aren’t as clear-cut with Yauch. I loved the Beastie Boys, but my affection is mired in the past tense. Paul’s Boutique and Check Your Head will always hold a special place in my heart. The two albums after that, the ones with “Sabotage” and “Intergalactic,” respectively, I own them both but only listen to “Sabotage” and “Intergalactic.” And the new one — Hot Sauce something — well … I definitely bought it. It’s on my iPod. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I’ve been meaning to. It’s just, you know … it’s not the ’90s anymore. That New York rap scene/ Chess King in the Chicago suburbs is gone, and Beastie Boys music just doesn’t have the same magic for me anymore.

The hard reality is, Yauch dying hasn’t changed my life in any meaningful way. Nothing is missing for me because he’s gone. My musical memories weren’t fractured by his terminal cancer. When he shuffled off this mortal coil, he didn’t take Check Your Head with him. Everything is pretty much how he left it, and the future of my music-listening is pretty what it would’ve been if he was still around. It’s absolutely a horrible loss for his wife and girls and the people who loved him and the rest of the Beastie Boys. But that kind of loss happens every day. At least a dozen people gasped their last breath in the time it took you to read this sentence. So what of it? When my dad died and it felt like my heart was going to explode, I didn’t expect a call from Ad-Rock.

The problem I’ve been grappling with since Yauch’s death is this: I just don’t know whether to trust my own grief anymore. I can’t tell when I’m experiencing a real emptiness at an artist’s death and when I’m just a Pavlov dog for my Google news alerts. Some days I sign into Facebook and it seems like everybody I know has fantasies of being a obituary writer. For most of February, my news feed was cluttered with reports that Don Cornelius had died. Friends shared videos and told stories and wrote heartfelt eulogies. And I swear it’s the first time I’ve heard any of them mention Don Cornelius at all. When Levon Helms died and “The Weight” is suddenly your favorite song ever, does it matter that you’re full of shit? Or is it enough that Helm’s death gave you a reason to watch The Last Waltz on YouTube again?

My friend who loves Whitney Houston called me the next day, after we’d sobered up, and we both apologized for being assholes. “Never again,” we promised each other. And then we talked about American Idol, and how much we both hate the show, and how all the contestants are terrible, and  it contributes nothing of any value to the world, other than briefly distracting teenagers from having unprotected sex. My friend mentioned how Steven Tyler is looking especially hepatitisy these days, and I laughed so hard it came out like a trumpety snort.

The first video and second single from B. Dolan’s upcoming album House of Bees Vol. 2, titled “2Bad,” finds Strange Famous heavy hitters Dolan and Sage Francis teamed up as the self-proclaimed Epic Beard Men. Directed by Mason Johnson, the same brain behind the politically-tinged posse cut “Film the Police,” “2Bad” is equal parts violent and enlightening. “This video imagines being able to sit all the people you’ve had to cut off, severe ties with, outlast or outsmart in the same classroom, [and] give them one last book report on why they’re no longer relevant to you or anyone,” B. Dolan explains to Hive. “And then smash their blank plastic faces with a baseball bat until the VHS tape pops and you wake up.”

The satisfaction of outlasting naysayers is simple enough, but there are more complicated concepts at play, too. Specifically, the idea of “paying dues” is brought up in both “Still Here,” the first single from the album, and “2Bad,” albeit in very different ways; the former grapples with internal conflict and self-questioning, the latter with external absurdity. “‘Paying dues’ is one of those funny things that everyone says they’ve done, and you’re supposed to take them at their word,” B. Dolan adds. “Everyone thinks their dues are paid up because everyone imagines themselves to be the protagonist of their personal movie… In reality, though, you can tell the cats that have put in the work to master their craft versus those that are riding the momentary wave of attention.”

With a low quota for nonsense but a supreme sense of gratefulness, B. Dolan keeps the MF Doom quote from “Still Here” in mind as he moves forward. “Even dope artists should expect to ‘pay dues forever,’ [and] the moment you start taking your spot for granted is the moment you lose it.” Dolan describes House of Bees Vol. 2 as mature, direct, unapologetic and unrestricted, “the opposite of swag.” “The Epic Beard Man viral video teaches us two very important lessons. The first is that people who look like grumpy senior citizens will occasionally hop up and kick the living shit out of you in public. The second is that when people proclaim themselves to be motherfuckers you should always take them at their word,” B. Dolan resolves. “Sage Francis and B. Dolan are both motherfuckers of the highest order. Watching us rock a live show is like watching a homeless old man turn into a human tornado and destroy everything in sight. Call the Amber Lamps.”

Pre-order physical and digital copies of House of Bees Vol. 2, due June 12th, and download the first single “Still Here” for free at the Strange Famous Records official site.

Photo courtesy of Motormouth Media

With today’s release of Max Payne 3, Rockstar Games continued their trailblazing integration of music and video games, this time enlisting L.A. noisemakers HEALTH to score the latest adventure. HEALTH’s kinetic noise rock fuses propulsive drums, sharp bursts of guitar and layers of serrated electronic squelches to create violent, high drama blasts that fit perfectly with the bloody, flashy firefights of the Max Payne franchise. Like the noir trilogy, HEALTH’s music is visceral and dark, yet accessible, so it’s no shock that the two dovetail on this project.

Over a nine-month stretch, HEALTH put their third album on the backburner to create some six hours of music for the game. Any sustained period of output like that will naturally cause a band to evolve — and that development is evident immediately upon hearing the hazy industrial grind of “Tears” in the frustratingly short commercial released last month. Listening to the Max Payne 3 score, we heard a band who expanded its sound while streamlining it, vacillating between ethereal brooding (recalling “In Violet“) and incendiary pounding. So we called up HEALTH’s bassist/noisemaker John Famiglietti — who’s also the band’s resident gamer — to talk about the lengthy process. He gave us these five key steps in making the Max Payne 3 score.

1. Support the Action

“Rockstar was never like ‘Hey, make this part sound like this song, or like X. They just hired us to be ourselves, and would guide us at specific spots where they were looking for a certain amount of power when the music drops in. So we got to do what we wanted, but within the framework of the game and its narrative, which was awesome.

2. Mix It Up

There’d be certain levels, we’d just be like “alright fuck it, we’re not gonna try and sound exactly like us.” We’d take a unique reference point, and use that as the jumping off point for the level, so it was different from all the rest. A lot of stuff we would never do, like an ambient or suspenseful track, that you have to have in a particular scenario. We did tons of those in the game, endless things we hadn’t done before.”

3. Don’t Fuck With the Legacy

I know as a fan of shit, when you get fuckin’ pissed when they just fuck things up and they don’t stay true to the source material — of course people are pissed, man! That’s important to them. So I’d hate to be that guy to mess with it. We wanted to do our thing and bring something new and special to the game, but we did stuff for hardcore fans — a lot of references to the old music. Fans have an emotional connection to that, which is what you want. So when it came to the theme, we were really faithful. With only minor changes, we reproduced the cello theme from Max Payne 2 and the piano theme from the original. We just weren’t gonna fuck with it.

4. Push It

This was, by a bajillion, way more music than we’ve ever produced in the entire lifetime of the band. And of course, it’s not all in there. There’s a lot of concepts or tricks we came up with on scrapped songs that will live on with totally new HEALTH material. It’s an ass pain, and the length of time is definitely brutal, but we had to turn around so much music so much faster, I think that’s all very good for anyone who makes music. To get better at it, or just get faster at it.

5. Collaborate With the Company

With an album it’s like ‘do you guys like this? I like this,’ and that’s it. We’ve never had to bounce things off other people or get anyone else’s opinion. Rockstar was super cool. We worked closely with the music supervisors and developers or whoever, they’d tell us what things they had a problem with, or when it needed to go in a different direction. Totally different experience.

Max Payne 3 is out now and the HEALTH single “Tears” is available on iTunes. The full soundtrack drops on May 23 Sample “Tears” below:

Loren Wohl for MTV Hive

… but overall, it looks like everyone had a good time. Check out photos of the audience and the smiling DJ himself from Hive photographer Loren Wohl below.