We’ve all heard the insane and seemingly implausible urban legends surrounding the Black Lip’s Arabia Mountain album. Producer Mark Ronson almost dying from eating liver sashimi, using a real human skull as a reverb mic, naked recording session, Sean Lennon and Q-Tip secretly played on the album, the mysteries go on and on. Well now is your chance to get to the bottom of it all.

Here’s what you do… buy the album on sale at eMusic for $5.99, think about what you really want to know from the Black Lips, think on it some more, don’t just go with your first question, this is your one-time shot, then ENTER HERE to get that question answered. If you win, not only will we record the band answering your questions to you personally, but we’ll also send you some Lips swag. Signed vinyl anyone?

Here is a thing that you should probably know about: Today the Black Lips are streaming their new album, Arabia Mountain, for freesies on Grooveshark, which is a pretty nice thing to do. The album will be released June 7th, so why not give it a sneaky pre-listen and tell us what you think?

Also the Lips are on tour right now, so if you want to hear the songs from the horse’s mouth or whatever, you can find your town below and do that. And, after you listen to Arabia Mountain and decide you’d rather die than live without it, you can pre-order the deluxe edition (it’s got an extra song, “Kiss it Goodbye”) right here, or the normal folk regular version right here.

LISTEN TO ARABIA MOUNTAIN

 BLACK LIPS HAVE A NEW SINGLE

The Black Lips have finally peeled their grungy asses off the couch and released the first single from their forthcoming album, Arabia Mountain. Make sure your boss isn’t looking, grab a beer and some headphones, and let’s have a listen.

Black Lips just dropped a new video for “Modern Art” – it’s the first taste of their collaboration with Mark Ronson (Go Out and Get It was a song produced by Lockett Pundt of Deehunter). The clip was directed by occult expert and Kenneth Anger protege Brian Butler and co-stars a human skull, a rooster, a bomb blast, and more fun than you can manage.

-The Black Lips 2011 Tour is now underway. Click here for cities & dates.

To find out what American garage rock looks like (and to know what it’s like to be in an independent band) right now, VBS toted a bunch of cameras around the USA and found a scene that was vibrant, loud, eloquent, effed-up, and nearly impossible to define. The musicians, artists, writers, deejays and label owners that we talked to could only be united by a single common thread—their commitment to music that they enjoyed, on their terms, at whatever cost necessary (or, in some cases, unnecessary). We met nice, smart, funny people who love rock and roll, don’t traffic in B.S., and had the wherewithal to pick up a guitar (or complementary instrument) at some point in their young lives, put their face to a microphone, and manage to not think too hard about what was going to come out.

Join us for Part One of New Garage Explosion!! With a nod to the genre’s founding fathers (bands like The Lollipop Shoppe and MC5), we travel first to Memphis to mind-meld with Magic Kids and to go head-to-head with Jay Reatard in the last interview he filmed before his death in January of this year. Next we hit Detroit, where watch The Dirtbombs wreck a bowling alley and talked to Dave Buick about the power of the hand-printed record.

The Scion Garage Festival is this Saturday! Tickets are still avail http://bit.ly/cVz09M. Watch The Black Lips perform at last years festival in video above.

People who don’t eat animals are sometimes a handful, but they’ve got nothing on people who won’t eat certain animals.

Read the rest at Vice Magazine: STEWED SQUIRREL - Viceland Today