Damien Rice Wins Shortlist

Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice's debut album, O, won the third annual Shortlist Music Prize at a ceremony last night at the Wiltern Theater in in Los Angeles.

O was selected from a list of ten albums that also included Bright Eyes' Lifted or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, Cody Chesnutt's The Headphone Masterpiece, Cat Power's You Are Free and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Fever to Tell.

Rice was on hand to receive the award and also performed. The evening's performers also included most of the nominees: Interpol, the Streets, Bright Eyes, Floetry, the Black Keys and Cat Power. Bright Eyes' frontman Conor Oberst took an on-stage moment to attack media conglomerate Clear Channel Entertainment. "There will be no more real music anymore if we keep letting people shove it down our fucking throats," he said.

The Shortlist contenders were albums with sales of fewer than 500,000 copies and selected by a panel of musicians, filmmakers and critics.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

More Song Stories entries »

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