Satan strikes again! Injured Murder City Devil Derek Fudesco is back in Seattle after valiantly playing 11 live shows despite having broken his leg onstage in Glasgow, Scotland, during the band's European tour. He'd had enough of those dang foreign physicians, and winged it home to get some good old American doctorin' done on complications stemming from the surgery he underwent the day after the mishap. The Devils will continue the tour without him (which means no one will be there to thank the crowd after each song--such a nice boy!), but Fudesco is staying put in Seattle while he gimps around on his "polio sticks" and rests up for the band's two-day record-release party June 10 and 11 at Graceland, upon their return. The album, In Name and Blood (Sub Pop), hits the shelves on June 6. Be sure to check out track six, a straight-up cover of Neil Diamond's "I'll Come Running" with Fastback Kim Warnick on backing vocals. It's a beaut.

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Former Hammerbox/Goodness frontwoman Carrie Akre has a full-length solo album, Home, due to come out July 25 on her label, Good-Ink Records. Personally, I've been waiting for years for Akre to take her rich vocals down to a more intimate level, and early reports of Home promise just that. Plenty of Akre's friends and relatives pop up on the disc, including Harris Thurmond, Reggie Watts, Garth Reeves, Eric Akre, Jeff Wood, and Phil Hurley. A release celebration takes place with two shows (an early all-ages and a later 21-and-over) on Sat July 29 at Sit & Spin.

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New Wave-Aoke came and went again May 16 at I-Spy, and just about every band member who isn't currently on the road packed the house and hammed it up on stage, singing their favorite '80s tunes with a Canadian cover band backing them up. Kevin Willis spun from his collection of '80s gold up on the mezzanine, while the most shocking collection of hot babes and slick guys belted out ripping versions of "Psycho Killer," "I Love Rock and Roll," "Just Like Heaven," and--pant, pant--a guy named Sky absolutely killed with his sexy version of "China Girl." I'm not sure when it'll all happen again, but you're surely an idiot if you miss it next time.

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Portland's newsweekly Willamette Week has pulled out of its lame attempt to purchase The Rocket. Well, that's not exactly true. They still wanted to buy it, it's just that they couldn't find one single person to invest in keeping the Seattle version going while Willamette Week's publishers concentrated on revamping the Portland edition. Not one person. The Portland panic-meisters were so sure it was a done deal that they had already hired a staff of 10 to turn "their" Rocket into an extreme sports/dating/music rag (in hopes of competing with the Portland Mercury, The Stranger's new publication set to debut the first week of June--with Wm.â„¢ Steven Humphrey at the helm), but then had to fire them all when the deal fell through. Tsk, tsk. Or should I say HAW, HAW, HAW?