MAY 5: "WONDERFUL" LEAKED TO RADIO

To the surprise of many, the new single "Wonderful" had its radio debut on Friday. WBCN 104.1 in Boston and Q101 in Chicago both aired the song at 5pm local time.

Why so early? Both stations have long-standing friendships with the band. Additionally, Everclear will play radio festivals this month for both stations.

Q101 has apparently continued playing the song throughout the weekend. If you feel lucky, they have a webfeed via their website.

MAY 3: JAPANESE RELEASE

Okay - to answer a bunch of questions.

A certain major online music and book retailer is announcing a May 16th release date for the Japanese version of Learning How to Smile. They claim bonus tracks, etc.

Well, here's the problem. That release date was announced by EMI Japan (who distributes Everclear in Japan) several months ago - long before all of the delays that pushed back the release date of the record.

Heck, at that time, Learning How to Smile was supposed to be released in the US around May 16th. Of course, as you know, it's coming out July 11th.

Put simply - the May 16th date is wrong. The Japanese version of Learning How to Smile isn't being released until late June at the earliest, and may not actually come out until later.

If you pre-order it from said unnamed retailer, there's a damn good chance you won't receive it until after the US version is released.

Recommendation? Give it a few weeks. Since we don't yet know what those bonus tracks will be, it's always possible that there will be a different import (a CD single, etc) with the same bonus tracks for much cheaper.

And be sure to give that idiot on Ebay a good swift kick in the shins. How much you wanna bet he simply pre-ordered them from said unnamed retailer?

MAY 3: COMMITTED'S OPENING WEEKEND

Bad news on the movie front.

Okay, first off - "Opening in Select Cities" is supposed to mean more than just New York and Los Angeles. Usually when it just opens there, they say "Opening in NY and LA". Thanks, Miramax. Apologies for my part in the misinformation.

Second, Committed's opening weekend was not good. Granted, it was only playing in six theaters. But it drew a measly $2,000 per theater.

In movie returns, that's horrible. That damned Flintstones movie pulled $3,700 per theater, and it was playing in 3,000 theaters. And that was considered somewhat weak.

Limited release movies are supposed to pull more per theater than big budget films, which makes this low return that much worse.

Who's to blame? In my opinion - Miramax gets most of the credit. They haven't really promoted this movie at all. Reviews of the movie have been largely mixed - but that damned Flintstones movie was outright panned and it drew a larger audience.

I can't speculate what this means. But, hopefully, it'll push Miramax to work on promoting it a little more.