Matador Records is celebrating its 21st birthday -- Matador At Twenty One -- in style with The Lost Weekend at the Palms Resort & Casino in Las Vegas October 1st - 3rd! The iconic label has just announced the final schedule for the fun music weekend in Sin City as well as some last minute line-up additions. The Matablog says Liz Phair, The Clean, Times New Viking, Esben and the Witch, and Perfume Genius will all additionally be on the weekend bill. They also announced the names of the MC’s for the Vegas event: Jeff Jensen, Bob Nastanovich, and WFMU's Tom Scharpling & Jon Wurster, plus a late Friday evening presentation by Austin’s Karaoke Underground.

Understandably when a uniquely located weekend music festival featuring the likes of Sonic Youth, Pavement, Cat Power, Guided By Voices, Belle & Sebastian, The New Pornographers, Superchunk, Chavez, Yo La Tengo, Cold Cave, Fucked Up, Kurt Vile, and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion comes around, the tickets sell out fast. And since tickets went on sale July 9th, around the time it was  blogged about here by Miss Ess, they have been selling incredibly fast. Already all the VIP passes are sold out, but Matador has just announced 50 additional pairs of tickets priced at $250.00 per person that will be available via a public lottery sometime this coming week. The Lost Weekend organizers strongly suggest frequently checking here and here during the coming days for details on these much sought after tickets.

When I was in college I made that common mistake of going out with this guy off and on who kind of excessively fancied himself the "liberated male"...thus, of course, it was at his place where I first heard Liz Phair's excellent Exile in Guyville.

I think I knew from the beginning that "relationship" was doomed by, among other things, his overly self-conscious brand of "feminism." I ended up nabbing his copy of the record though, and I guess I still have it. 

Anyway, I was really excited to hear that Phair will be taking a mini tour and performing the fifteen-years-old Exile in Guyville in its entirety.  Also, on June 24 the record will be reissued with bonus tracks and a DVD about the making of the album. 

Exile in Guyville rawks my face off-- not only is it intelligent, challenging, melodic and kick ass, but it's written and performed by a woman who has been around the block a few times and lived to tell about it.  It's quite cathartic, and even though Phair eventually traveled with the Lilith Fair and all that hairy armpit jazz, this record should not be filed anywhere near those soft, for-women-only-faux rockers like Paula Cole and Joan Osbourne.  No, Exile in Guyville stands on its own two feet as a solid rock n roll record for the masses.

Check out one of the best tracks from the record, "Fuck and Run":