AOL Music: Tori Amos First Listen

AOL Music is offering up the complete “Big Wheel” plus clips of “Bouncing Off Clouds” and “Teenage Hustling” for your listening pleasure.

Tori herself comments a bit on each track:

• “Big Wheel”: “‘Big.’ One of my favorite words, along with ‘Little.’ Now if I’m a guy, I’m probably going to prefer the word ‘Big’ when associated with my abilities, rather than my other favorite word. As a woman, I don’t mind at all if the whole world thinks that I have a Big Aspiration to straddle that piano stool every night for over 100 shows by Christmas. I don’t mind that at all.”

• “Bouncing Off Clouds”: “Over half of relationships that end in a verbal war could at least be on speaking terms again if at least one of the combatants realized what verbal artillery to use and what verbal artillery not to use — if you ever expect to have a drink with this person again, much less anything else. This is sung by Clyde.”

• “Teenage Hustling”: “I highly recommend singing this at the top of your lungs, preferably in rubber tights. For those gals who don’t move so well in very high heels, the advantage of rubber is obvious if you take a tumble — stains are unobservable to the naked eye and if you do fall, you may be lucky enough to bounce. This is sung by Pip.”

Thanks to Jon, Scott, hairspray queen, and jason.

"Big Wheel" Rolls To Radio April 2

It looks like “Big Wheel” will be the first single from American Doll Posse, at least in terms of radio airplay. Starting April 2, the song will be added to AAA radio stations, according to Triplearadio.com.

Michael, thanks for letting us know.

Tori On NPR

Alexander told us about a fun Tori segment on NPR. You can hear bits of “Teenage Hustling” ( oooh, we LIKE it! ) and “Big Wheel”. The part where one of the interviewers says “Uh-oh, eeeoooh” is pretty priceless. [Edit: Tori starts around 26:00.]

[UPDATE: If you scroll down the page, you can listen to “Big Wheel” in full. The link says “Teenage Hustling,” but it’s wrong.]

Completely un-Tori-related: stick around after the Tori segment to hear a clip from a truly grooving Delta blues song, “Down In Mississippi,” from the upcoming Mavis Staples album We’ll Never Turn Back.

WYEP Wrap-up

WYEP’s Saturday Special on Tori we previously reported on just started broadcasting and it turned out to be Rhino Records’ Fade to Red radio special where Tori discusses the videos on the DVD collection. I’m sure most of us were hoping for something a little more current that might drop a few more hints about the new album. Alas!

However, all is not lost as Tori placed tenth in WYEP’s Top 50 Women in Music, as voted on by the station’s listeners. She’s in good company as the nine women who precede her are, in order, Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, Bonnie Raitt, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday, Carole King, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, and Patti Smith. WYEP aired a special yesterday afternoon during which DJ Rosemary Welsch counted them down. That program will be rebroadcast on Saturday, March 31st starting at 9:00 AM ET.

Finally, we previously mentioned the two Discumentaries about Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink WYEP has available for your streaming pleasure. They also have two other streaming clips taken from Tori’s March 16, 2003 appearance on WYEP’s Club Cafe. The two clips each include a short interview segment and one song: “a sorta fairytale” and “Upside Down”. The Realaudio streams can be found in WYEP’s Below the Surface archives.

New Song On Promosquad?

Several people have written in to say there’s a new song, “Secret Spill” [sic], up on everyone’s favorite site, Promosquad. None of us here have been able to pull it up, but enough people have written about it that we we wanted to mention it so that those of you with full heads of hair can go looking for it. We don’t have any left to tear out.

WYEP's Women's History Month Celebration Includes Tori

As part of their celebration of Women’s History Month, Pittsburgh radio station WYEP will be airing a series of “Saturday Specials” focusing on women in music. Tori will be subject of the third of the five programs. The company she’s in isn’t too shabby either as the other four shine the spotlight on Patti Smith, The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, the Indigo Girls and the Dixie Chicks. Tori’s special airs at 1:00 PM Eastern on Saturday, March 17th.

Pittsburgh locals can tune in WYEP on 91.3 FM and everybody else can stream the station live over the Internet.

Thanks to Kimberly for the head’s up about this!

Note, too, that the day before, WYEP will broadcast their countdown of the Top 50 Women in Music at 2:00 PM Eastern. One reckons that a women who gets her own Saturday Special may also turn up in the countdown as well….

Hear New Songs From ADP!

You can now hear long clips of two songs from American Doll Posse, “Big Wheel” and “Bouncing Off Clouds,” at Promo Squad. The site requires you to register and rate other songs before you get to hear them. Have at it!

Thanks, Christina!

Update: For those of you having trouble getting Promo Squad to serve up either of the two songs, head on over to PerezHilton.com where you can stream “Big Wheel” on demand!

VH1.com Offering Tori Videos

VH1’s Web site is now offering a plethora of Tori videos including Jackie’s Strength, The Big Picture, Silent All These Years, China, Crucify, Winter, God, Past The Mission, Talula, Professional Widow, Raspberry Swirl, Sleeps with Butterflies, Mary, Strange Little Girl, Bliss, 1000 Oceans, Spark, Hey Jupiter, Caught A Lite Sneeze, and Cornflake Girl (US version). Thanks to Lorna for tipping us off.

Update: Apparently the videos only work for United States viewers—at least, they don’t work for the Europeans, unfortunately.

Smells Like The Best

Tori’s cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came in at number 31 on BBC6’s top 40 best covers list. Listeners picked the winners, which included Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” (number 1), Nirvana’s cover of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World” (number 13) and two Kate Bush songs—China Drum’s rendition of “Wuthering Heights” and Futureheads’ take on “Hounds of Love” (numbers 20 and 4, respectively). William Shatner’s “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was voted among the worst. We can’t argue with that.

Thanks to sender-inners Melissa and Matt!

BBC 6 Music Best/Worst Covers Vote

BBC 6 Music is conducting a vote on the best and worst covers of all time. Tori’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” has already been added to the list, but it you can also make new suggestions when you submit your vote.

The on-air countdown of the Top 40 best and worst covers takes place from 10am-1pm GMT (11:00-14:00 UTC) on Saturday, January 27th.

Thanks to melissa (deadcanary) for telling us about this.