Countdown Into Now

As I write this, we have approximately 4 days until we get to listen to Collapse Into Now in its entirety, and, according to Dol: "Just one week, 7 days, 168 hours, 10.080 minutes, 604.800 seconds" before we can all get our greasy paws on it to keep. Yep, we're ready for this album!

Which is why we don't have to wait to buy it, to hear it. As I mentioned in the paragraph above, we only need to hang in there a few more days. NPR is hosting a CIN listening party online, with the album being streamed live to fans across the Internet. Also available to those who tune in is a chat feature for discussion of each track, and live commentary from the show's hosts (I hope I'm wrong on this one, but I have reason to believe this commentary will be present during the playback. No taping this one, folks!).

The broadcast will take place on Tuesday 1st March, at 2pm E.T., which for those of you living in the UK is 9am. However, should you miss All Songs Considered, the whole album will be available for listening on March 2nd - free of charge!

This isn't the only good news we've had today. Roughly an hour ago, R.E.M.'s YouTube channel posted a higher quality version of the Mine Smell Like Honey live in studio video. Here it is:

Kirsten on Mike Mills Tribute has been doing a sterling job translating some articles for us, from the German version of Rolling Stone magazine. Find them here, and don't forget to drop her a note of thanks! (Also check the comments section for a few more translated tidbits.)

Now all that's left is the agonising wait until the album arrives. I've been trying to keep myself busy, as always, but sometimes the tension and anticipation is almost too much to bear. Collapse Into Now? More like Collapse Into Shock. Due to this lack of any real news, I hope to do a feature sometime very soon - possibly this weekend - and possibly even begin a little project I've been contemplating. Until I have a proper think about it, however, mum's the word. :)

Yours truly,
Auctioneer

Note: There seems to be some really weird spacing here - the gaps between paragraphs are huge! Doing my best to fix it, but this may take some time.

UPDATE: Fixed! It's amazing what deleting a bit of HTML can do. :)