Today's Hotness: The Replacements, Gang Of Four, Interpol

>> PunkNews points to, uh, news that a Replacements box set and new best-of set is forthcoming. There's currently no release date for the box, but Bastards Of Young: The Best Of The Replacements is slated to drop on May 23 on Rhino. Hopefully the box will be better than All For Nothing, Nothing For All. We've heard literally a whole bookbag full of Mats boots, some good quality, some less than good. There is certainly a lot of extra stuff around, even if Paul and the boys took some of their Twin/Tone master tapes and tossed them in a river one time. Anyway, more details here.

>> LargeHearted Boy points to some scintillating live Gang Of Four video here. The band just stands there amid the feedback and owns it, blowing minds of hipsters at SXSW with a version of their classic cut "Anthrax" and the beginning, we think, of "At Home He's A Tourist." The video is 20MB, but definitely download it. The band couldn't possibly rock much more steadfastly. Egad.

>> While there's still no official comment or confirmation on Interpol's alleged move from Matador to Interpants, err, we mean Interscope, Matador exec Patrick Amory does offer here some numbers in the comments to Coolfer's original post illustrating the sales arc of certain Matador acts' catalogs. Nothing we probably couldn't find out via Google or Soundscan, but you know how numbers attract us like shiny objects dazzle a raccoon.

>> Yes, Radiohead's Thom Yorke yesterday also spouted off about Tony Blair's environmental record, and about jerks reaping huge profits by re-selling tickets to a benefit the band is playing. But more importantly, in a very weird way doesn't Yorke kind of look like Clay Aiken in the picture accompanying this NME item? Perhaps a little more so in the smaller version that was on the NME main page this morning. It's the hair and the cheekbones.