News Ticker: Lady Gaga, Forecastle Festival, Steve Miller Band, Herb Ellis

• A pair of old songs featuring a pre-Fame Lady Gaga will appear on an upcoming childrens' audio book titled Portal in the Park. Idolator reports the tracks, recorded with Melle Mel, accompany Cricket Casey's story about a boy who has crazy adventures after falling through a portal in Central Park.

• The Flaming Lips, Spoon and Widespread Panic are all confirmed for Louisville, Kentucky's Forecastle Festival. The ninth annual fest goes down July 9th.

• The Steve Miller Band plan to release two new albums — both sets of covers — Billboard reports. Bingo!, due this year, includes tracks by B.B. King and Jimmie Reed that Miller calls "a party record."

• Jazz guitarist Herb Ellis has died at 88 of complications from Alzheimer's disease, the AP reports. Ellis performed with the Oscar Peterson Trio and contributed standard "Detour Ahead" to the jazz canon with his Soft Winds trio.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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