Despite knowing better, women continue to find themselves attracted to assholes. It'll only end in tears! You don't have to tell us. The very assurance that it will end in tears is part of the sick, disgustingly alluring cycle. The fact that women do love assholes, however, is what makes a career for a man like Greg Dulli a reality. He's not devastatingly handsome in the traditional sense, nor is he built with the grace and speed of a stallion. But Dulli, frontman for Afghan Whigs, possesses that exasperatingly seductive aura of a man who will fuck you better--before fucking you over harder--than anyone you've ever met. And the jerk doesn't mind singing about it, either. The Whigs reached perhaps the zenith of this proud, sadistic embrace of infidelity on Gentlemen, the band's 1994 release on Sub Pop. Sheer pomposity and careless abandon fortified an otherwise mediocre collection of songs, making it, for me at least, the most memorable album of the Whigs' career, if not the most skilled. Now, after 14 years and six albums, the four-piece has announced that it has disbanded. Though distance apparently used to keep the band's music "fresh," according to a press release last week, Dulli blamed the many miles that separate the band members' homes for the split. (Dulli recently sold his house in Seattle and moved to Los Angeles; bassist John Curley and drummer Michael Horrigan live in Cincinnati; and guitarist Rick McCollum resides in Minneapolis.) Not much was said about whether the rest of the guys will seek out other musical outlets, but Dulli assures us all that he is hell-bent on continuing, and that his recent release with Twilight Singers will be followed up by another album. Until then, I'll keep warm with the memory of Dulli onstage at the Showbox in 1998, bellowing that the reason I didn't like his band was that I needed to get laid. Yep, that had to be it, Greg, because it surely couldn't have been the cheesy fedora and faux black-guy routine, huh? What an asshole... sigh.

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Was that VH1 hauling all those lights and fancy cameras into the Sub Pop offices early last week? Rumor has it that a 10-years-after Nirvana Behind the Music is in the works. Fitting, given that grunge (Everett True's forthcoming book, Live Through This; the incredible bands Exbestfriends and Watery Graves) is the obsession of the hour, isn't it? I, for one, couldn't be happier.

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Automaton is likely to find being in prison preferable to playing in one, given the insane itinerary the band must follow for its show at the Washington State Penitentiary later this month. The 7:30 a.m. load-in time mandates a super-early morning drive to Walla Walla; then the band must present officials with an intensely detailed inventory of equipment, down to the guitar picks. Band members will then be put into protective custody, where they will be body-searched before playing three sets in the maximum-security "yard." Though some of the band members' downtime between 45-minute sets will be spent in the thrilling metropolis that is Walla Walla, members of Automaton will be free to mingle with prisoners for 15 minutes following each session. The prison's entertainment coordinator assures the musicians that most of the inmates are very nice people, and that they will be as curious about the band as the band is about the prisoners. The real troublemakers will be denied access to the show. They'll be locked away in what the prison calls "modern-day solitary confinement."