Archive for the 'Opinion' Category

Jon Stewart spears Rove, Bill O’Reilly and Dick Morris over McCain VP Pick

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Hilarious! Wonderful double standard exposure. And as Jon says “In defense of Dick Morris, he is after all a lying sack of shit…”

Amazon launches SoundUnwound, a new music site

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

I’m not certain that the world needs a new music site but this one looks interesting as it is user-driven. Amazon and IMDb have teamed up to bring us SoundUnwound. A quick search of ‘Gang of Four’ brings perfunctory results but here’s where the tail can wag the dog - if I become a member [...]

music think tank - please buy my record

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

I came across the music blog music think tank last night and found an essay by Rhodri Marsden entitled Please Buy My Record: The Futility of Flogging Music. [Flogging is an English expression for selling.] I encourage all musicians to give it a read. Here’s an excerpt -
One thing that nearly all my bands [...]

Lil Wayne, a milli, deconstructing hip hop’s groove

Friday, August 29th, 2008

I’m always interested in what Sasha Frere-Jones has to say about music, especially hip hop, as he has a great knack at being clear and concise in his overviews. I recently read his take on Lil Wayne’s single A Milli. That’s the link to the whole piece but here’s the relevant clip -

“Lil [...]

FBI arrests man for streaming Guns and Roses tracks

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

If this is just a PR stunt by Axl Rose’s handlers I have a feeling that the public image of the RIAA will once again be badly damaged. The story here doesn’t even make sense. It appears that a takedown notice was sent to Cogill in June and the songs were removed. Cogill was [...]

When Your Album Sucks - admit it

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

Jon Wilde has some hilarious insights into why artists fail to talk about their shitty albums until it’s time to release a new one. His best example is Joss Stone talking about her album -
She waited until the release of her third album before conceding that its predecessor, Mind Body & Soul, had been “half-assed”. [...]

Memo to RIAA - Smarten up and Learn from Garfield

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

In a mashup culture all manner of digital and graphic goodies get mashed. Mashup artists run along a tightrope that is pinned at one end by copyright law and the other by fair use doctrines. There is no safety net not even under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [DMCA]. If a copyright holder feels her [...]

Why Do You Run a Music Blog?

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

I had a lot of fun last night playing with Boy Eats Drum Machine at the Wonder Ballroom, my first bass outing in a while. Dat’r, The Xploding Boys and Caves were the other bands on the bill reinterpreting classic songs from The Cure and Talking Heads. Dat’r re-imagining music from Talking Heads’ Remain In [...]