’90s hip-hop icons A Tribe Called Quest and The Pharcyde are reforming for this year’s Rock the Bells festival. [Los Angeles Times]

In other ’90s-related news, recently reunited shoegaze legend My Bloody Valentine are going to curate the New York branch of the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival this fall. [NME]

Indie singer-songwriter Conor Oberst is going to release his first solo album in 12 years. [Billboard]

Former Libertines bandmates Pete Doherty and Carl Barat to write a musical together. [Guardian]

American Idol contestant David Cook had a digital album for sale on Amazon? [Idolator]

R.I.P., singer-songwriter Paul Davis. [MSN.com]

Synth-pop fans should brace yourselves, because what you’re about to read is going to make you fall backwards, knocking over all your Book of Love and Propaganda CDs. After 23 years apart, vocalist Alison Moyet and synth-wizard Vince Clarke are reuniting as Yaz — or Yazoo if you’re outside the States — and are touring not only in Europe, but also in America for six shows come this July. All of this is happening in celebration of their new 4-disc box set In Your Room, which will arrive in May of this year. The box will include remasters and 5.1 mixes of both Yaz albums along with a CD of rarities, plus a DVD featuring all their videos and a new documentary. Check out these five prime Yaz moments below, then go to their official website for tour dates.

Yaz - Situation
Yaz - Bad Connection
Yaz - Nobody’s Diary
Yaz - Only You

Yaz - Don’t Go:

Rock fans around the world are counting down the days until December 10, when Led Zeppelin hits the stage in London as part of a tribute to Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. News of the band’s reunion has sparked rumors of new songs and a 2008 tour, and while nothing has been confirmed, the speculation is generating a considerable amount of excitement. Even if you’re not one of the lucky few who managed to score tickets for the big show, there are still plenty of ways to get your rock on.

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In Detroit circa 1971, jazz musicians Phil Ranelin and Wendell Harrison created a self-funded enterprise known as Tribe. Tribe was simultaneously a record label, a band, a magazine, and a clearinghouse for community information in the Motor City. Other members of the creative community joined and read like a who’s who of jazz in the city at the time: Doug Hammond, Harold McKinney, Marcus Belgrave, Roy Brooks, Kenny Cox, Charles Eubanks, David Durrah, Charles Moore (a co-founder of the City’s legendary Artist’s Workshop in the early 1960s with John Sinclair and poet George Tysh), Daryl Dybka, Buddy Budson, Ron Jackson, R.J. “Bud” Spangler, Will Austin, Jeamel Lee, the poetry group the Black Messengers, Billy Turner, Ron Brooks, Lopez Leon, and Ed Pickens, among others. These musicians played on one another’s albums. It was a collective and cultural organization in the same way the AACM was in Chicago, the Underground Musician’s Association was in Los Angeles, and the Black Artist’s Group was in St. Louis. In other words, this was a creative organization to be reckoned with.

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Just because it took them 13 years to deliver a studio sequel to their 1994 live album Hell Freezes Over, don’t say that it took the Eagles a long time to cash in on their reunion. They started cashing in almost immediately, driving up ticket prices into the stratosphere as they played gigs on a semi-regular basis well into the new millennium. So, why did it take them so long to record a new studio album? It could be down to the band’s notoriously testy relations — Don Felder did leave and sue the band in the interim, settling out of court in 2007 — it could be that they were running out some contractual clause somewhere, it could be that they were waiting for the money to be right, or the music to be right. It doesn’t really matter: there was no pressing need for a new album. Fans were satisfied by the oldies and the band kept raking in the dough, so they could take their time making a new album. And did they ever take their time — the gap between 2007’s Long Road Out of Eden, their first album since 1979’s The Long Run, was nearly as long as that between their 1980 breakup and 1994 reunion. Far from indulging in a saturation campaign for this long-awaited record, the Eagles released the double-disc Long Road Out of Eden with surgical precision, indulging in few interviews and bypassing conventional retail outlets in favor of an exclusive release with Wal-Mart, who were not only the biggest retailer in America but where a good chunk of the band’s contemporary audience — equal parts aging classic rockers and country listeners — shopped. (The album was also available on the group’s official website, eaglesband.com, via musictoday.com.)

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