R.I.P. Lux Interior (1946-2009)

He's done gone down to lonesome town for good. Condolences to his widow.

I wanna leave a happy memory when I go,
I wanna leave something to let the whole world know,
That the rock n' roll daddy has done passed on,
But my bones will keep a rockin' long after I've gone,

Roll on, rock on, raw bones,
Well, I still got all the rhythm in these,
Rockin' bones,

Well, when I die don't you bury me at all,
Just nail my bones up on the wall,
Beneath these bones let these words be seen,
"This is the bloody gears of a boppin' machine"!

No Retreat, No Surrender ... But I'll Keep The Check

Bruce Springsteen has been browbeaten into apologizing for releasing a low-priced greatest hits album for fans. Waitaminute, what?:

In an interview with Sunday's New York Times, Bruce Springsteen says he shouldn't have made a deal with Wal-Mart. This month, the store started exclusively selling a Springsteen greatest hits CD.

Some fans were critical because Springsteen has been a longtime supporter of worker's rights, and Wal-Mart has faced criticism for its labor practices.

Springsteen told the Times that his team didn't vet the issue as closely as he should have, and that he "dropped the ball on it."

By "criticism for its labor practices", the AP story means means that Wal-Mart is nonunion and has successfully opposed all efforts to change that. It's one of the reasons why its prices are low.

Yeah, working at Wal-Mart ain't so great but shopping there, especially in a recession, is good for a lot of people. According to one of Barack Obama's own top economists, Wal-Mart's low prices save poor and middle-income consumers about $50 billion a year on food alone. That's not even counting the savings they make on everything else Wal-Mart sells. And that's money those people wouldn't have if the unions and left-wing activist groups had their way.

So basically Mr. "Troubadour for the Common Man" is saying: "Look, I'm sorry I, a multi-millionaire rock star, inked a deal with a company that makes it possible for poor people to feed and clothe themselves in which those same people only have to buy one of my crappy albums rather than 6 or 7 to create a decent playlist. It won't happen again." You'll notice, though, there was nothing in his statement about, you know, going back on the deal or giving the money away or anything like that.

Fucking hypocritical asshole.

The Man Who Sold The World?

Is an aging 70s glam rocker behind the world financial meltdown? The UK Daily Mail investigates:

He's always been a trendsetter. But could David Bowie have caused the latest fad sweeping the nation - the credit crunch?

It may sound like a ridiculous question, but it's not as mad as it seems. Even when it comes to finances Bowie leads the way - and back in 1997 he did something called 'securitisation'.

He thought: 'I have a lot of money coming in over the next ten years from my back catalogue, but I'd rather have the cash now and not have to wait.'

He produced some bits of paper - Bowie Bonds - and said: 'Whoever buys these gets my royalties.'

It meant he no longer had the money coming in but instead had a lot up front. His investors were guaranteed a decent income. It was a good deal all round.

And the banks were catching on to the idea. They thought: 'We have billions out there in mortgages which are going to pay us back very slowly. Why don't we sell those and get the money now?'

So the banks started doing what Bowie had done - in a big way.

It was a complete rebuilding of what a bank does. Normally, a bank borrows from people like you and I, then lends it out.

But now the bank was lending the money - and selling the loan on elsewhere.

Read the rest here.

And you mocked the people who said rock n' roll was the Devil's music? Well, who's laughing now?

A Friend Of The Devil Is A Friend Of Mine

I had never, ever heard of Hal Kant, who died on Oct. 19 at age 77, but after I read his obituary, I became a huge fan. He was the Grateful Dead's longtime lawyer and corporate general counsel. He was the one, more than anyone else, who turned that band of smelly socialist hippies into an extremely lucrative corporate machine. As the Dead's Bob Weir told the L.A. Times, Kant, a lifelong Republican, was a "dear friend," who was "most instructive to us.":

"He oversaw every aspect of their business, whether licensing, touring, trademarks, merchandise or Garcia getting busted for drugs," said Jonas Kant, a music lawyer and a senior vice president at Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

"They were known for being a free-loving, peace-loving band, but he helped them run everything like a structured business," he said.

Kant, who accompanied the band on various tours, "did all of their recording and music publishing agreements," his son said. "He was renowned for being very much ahead of his time in terms of protecting the artists' and songwriters' rights."

Kant ensured that the master recordings of the Grateful Dead's music would be owned by the band, his son said. He also enlisted an Oakland law firm to handle enforcement of the band's trademarks.

He was smart in how he did trademark enforcement. He convinced the band to let fans tape performances and trade them. That helped to build the group's loyal fanbase without hurting sales of their own albums. Yet Kant did hit the actual businesses that infringed on the band's trademark. The Times article includes this great bit about how Kant brought Ben & Jerry's to heel:

When Ben & Jerry's ice cream produced a new flavor, Cherry Garcia, in the early 1990s, McNally wrote in his book, the company did so without even discussing the idea with Garcia. Although Garcia was unconcerned when it was first brought to his attention -- "At least they're not naming a motor oil after me, man," he said -- Kant convinced him that the issue should be addressed.

As recounted by McNally, Kant told Garcia: "They will name a motor oil after you if you don't confront this, Jerry. You'll have no control over your name at all."

Garcia finally told Kant, "If it bothers you, go ahead."

"In the next few years," McNally wrote, "Jerry would have no problems in spending the large sum of money he'd earn thanks to the letter Kant wrote" to Ben & Jerry's.

Kant's story gets even better. According to the Wall Street Journal, Kant was also a Nixon administration appointee on a porn commission:

His background in psychology led him to work as director of the Legal and Behavioral Institute in California. While there, he was co-author of "Pornography and Social Deviance," which summarized the findings of President Richard Nixon's Commission of Obscenity and Pornography. To the president's consternation, the panel recommended decriminalizing pornography.

He must have enoyed the research. He later produced some soft-core porn himself:

In 1983, Mr. Kant was producer of porn star Marilyn Chambers's first non-skin flick, "Angel of H.E.A.T.," an exploitation film so slight that that it may have created the straight-to-video category. "They wouldn't let me watch it while they filmed in the backyard," says his son, Jonas Kant, an entertainment lawyer for Sony ATV Music Publishing.

If all of that wasn't cool enough, Kant spent his later years as a world-ranked poker champion:

[He] known on the circuit as Dead Man Kant, puffing on long cigars. "Maybe it's a function of my personality," he said. "But I can't forget the beats [losing hands]. The winners? I can't remember them."

By the time he had won the Pot-Limit Omaha category in the 1987 World Series of Poker, he had given up most of his legal work outside of the Grateful Dead, as the band ascended.

And in the perfect ironic capper for all of this? He thought the Dead's music sucked too:

Musically, Hal Kant wasn't so devoted to the Dead. When it came to touring spectacles, he preferred Wagner's Ring Cycle.

So, he made millions teaching 60s radicals how to love capitalism, defended and made pornography and then retired to a life of playing and winning at high-stakes poker. How can you not love this guy and mourn his passing?

So here's to Hal "Dead Man" Kant, a true American success story. Rest In Peace, dude.

How Do You Say Ace of Spades In German?

If the whole heavy metal thing doesn't work out Motorhead's Lemmy might want to make a switch to fashion consultant:

Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister, former Hawkwind member and the longtime singer/bassist/wart-wielder of metal legend Motörhead, has pissed off some Germans by wearing a Nazi hat for a photo shoot for a German newspaper. Such displays of Nazi paraphernalia are illegal in Germany, and an official investigation has reportedly been launched into the situation.

Lemmy offers this flame-fanning response: “I’ll tell you something about history. From the beginning of time, the bad guys always had the best uniforms. Napoleon, the Confederates, the Nazis. They all had killer uniforms. I mean, the SS uniform is fucking brilliant! They were the rock stars of that time.” Then he defends himself against claims of racism just a wee bit dubiously by adding, “Don’t tell me I’m a Nazi ’cause I have uniforms. In 1967 I had my first black girlfriend and a lot of more ever since then.”

I'll be generous and just suggest that decades of headbanging have taken their toll.

The Hardest Working Dead Man in Show Business

Death Row records was sold this week to some faceless company called Global Music Group. The label that defined hip-hop in the 90s fell on hard times thanks to the legal woes of its owner, Suge Knight.

So what does the new owner get?

[T]he Tennessee based-indie took immediate ownership of the label’s entire catalogue, including 20 unreleased records by the late Tupac Shakur.

20 fucking albums? Tupac has already been more prolific in death than he was in life and he's still got 20 more albums ready to go? Wha?

Back in '98 or so a friend told me he thought Tupac had faked his death because he was still releasing albums. I laughed at him. I wouldn't do that today.

High Fidelity versus Compressed Music

I posted on this before and got lots of angry comments from iPod fans but now I am emboldened by a comprehensive Rolling Stone article on the subject.

The gist of it is that current music releases are being engineered to sound good on iPods, not stereo systems, as most buyers today listen through their computer or their iPod.

...today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."

As a high fidelity partisan, I applaud the efforts of brilliant deceased Jeff Buckley's mom to force his record company to resist the low-fi MP3 craze and instead produce real, good-sounding music:

In 2004, Jeff Buckley's mom, Mary Guibert, listened to the original three-quarter-inch tape of her son's recordings as she was preparing the tenth-anniversary reissue of Grace. "We were hearing instruments you've never heard on that album, like finger cymbals and the sound of viola strings being plucked," she remembers. "It blew me away because it was exactly what he heard in the studio."

To Guibert's disappointment, the remastered 2004 version failed to capture these details. So last year, when Guibert assembled the best-of collection So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley, she insisted on an independent A&R consultant to oversee the reissue process and a mastering engineer who would reproduce the sound Buckley made in the studio. "You can hear the distinct instruments and the sound of the room," she says of the new release. "Compression smudges things together."

DC Dispatch: Bob Mould's New Act

Bob Mould, the former frontman of Husker Du, is a US punk rock legend.

So what is Bob Mould doing now? Well, he is living in DC, came out as gay and now DJ's the wildly popular monthly Blow-Off party at the 9:30 club.

So I was there Saturday morning at 11:45, one of the very few people who showed up to see his new film, Circle of Friends, at the Lincoln Theater yesterday as part of the DC Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. He introduced the film and played a solo set after it. I could never have imagined such Bob Mould intimacy for $10 when I was 20 and loved "Sorry Somehow." It was fun. Anyway, if you are a fan check out gay happenings to see him in a small setting.

George Michael Cutting Back on Pot

Keeping on the pot themed Monday, pop singer George Michael is trying to limit his marijuana consumption. Story from Reuters

Are iPods Ruining Music?

I never listen to my iPod because I find that compressed music sounds bad. Jazz, my favorite genre, sounds especially bad. Now it turns out that in addition to serving up poor quality sound, the popularity of the MP3 format is actually creating poor sound.

Those who work behind-the-mic in the music industry -- producers, engineers, mixers and the like -- say they increasingly assume their recordings will be heard as MP3s on an iPod music player. That combination is thus becoming the "reference platform" used as a test of how a track should sound. (Movie makers make much the same complaint when they see their filmed images in low-quality digital form.)

But because both compressed music and the iPod's relatively low-quality earbuds have many limitations, music producers fret that they are engineering music to a technical lowest common denominator. The result, many say, is music that is loud but harsh and flat, and thus not enjoyable for long periods of time.

More here from WSJ (sub only).

Ted Nugent Gets Even More Annoying Than He Was in the 70s

Even in the 70's Ted Nugent was annoying. He had that one big hit, and I keep confusing it with a Kat Stevens song and he became a Muslim convert. What they have in common!

The WSJ editorial page, in a new low, gave him a platform to espouse his views on drugs and the 60s. [Subscription only]

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the so-called Summer of Love. Honest and intelligent people will remember it for what it really was: the Summer of Drugs.

Forty years ago hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," which was the calling card of LSD proponent Timothy Leary. Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco.

Fuck The Police

The rock/pop band The Police finally realizes that they suck, their one good song forever branding women named Roxanne as whores notwithstanding. If you're a Police fan, a woman named Roxanne, or the boyfriend of a woman named Roxanne, feel free to put nasty comments in the comment section.

The singer in the Police jumps like a "petulant pansy," the drummer is making a "complete hash," and who knows what the guitarist is doing? Notes from a bitter critic? Actually, it's a disarmingly frank concert review from the aforementioned drummer of the newly reunited rock trio.

[...]

"This is unbelievably lame," Copeland wrote of Wednesday's show at the GM Place arena. "We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea."

"It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we're The Police so we are a little ahead of schedule," he said.

Copy, Copy, Copy

I've always been sceptical of intellectual property rights, largely because property rights only make sense when there's exclusivity. If you own your car, that means I can't. In contrast, if I copy your music CD onto my computer, you still have your CD. Copying something is by definition not stealing it. Downloading a song off the Internet onto my iPod is no more stealing than downloading a good cooking recipe into my Blackberry. Or repeating a joke I heard on Comedy Central. This is why I get upset when the record industry goes after young people. It is outright thuggish to threaten college students with lawsuits for downloading something freely available on the Internet. Thuggish. A case in point.

At first, Sarah Barg thought the e-mail was a scam. Some group called the Recording Industry Association of America was accusing the University of Nebraska-Lincoln sophomore of illegally downloading 381 songs using the school's computer network and a program called Ares. The letter said she might be sued but offered her the chance to settle out of court. Barg couldn't imagine anyone expected her to pay $3,000 — $7.87 per song — for some 1980s ballads and Spice Girls tunes she downloaded for laughs in her dorm room. Besides, the 20-year-old had friends who had downloaded thousands of songs without repercussion....But Barg's perspective changed quickly that Thursday in March, when she called student legal services and found out the e-mail was no joke and that she had a pricey decision to make.

Barg is one of 61 students at UNL and hundreds at more than 60 college campuses across the country who have received letters from the recording industry group, threatening a lawsuit if they don't settle out of court....Barg's parents paid the $3,000 settlement. Without their help, "I don't know what I would have done. I'm only 20 years old," she said.

The best way to fight this thuggery is by downloading lots of songs off the Internet. As many as you can. If RIAA had it's way, you would have to pay $25 to them every time you sang Happy Birthday. And just humming a song in the shower would cost you $5.

Who Wants Their MTV Anymore?

A Boston Globe article charts the sad decline of MTV into almost complete irrelevance. When the network was first launched in 1981 very few cable channels carried it and young music fans so desperately wanted to see this seminal channel that "I Want My MTV" became a populist scream. That slogan was so infused into the culture that Sting sang an "I want my MTV" back-up vocal on a Dire Straits song. My friends and I, in high school, were so desperate to watch MTV play videos like Madonna's Borderline or David Bowie's China Girl that we would on a Saturday night take the train to Penn Station in New York as they had one tv in the Amtrak waiting lounge that played MTV.

Ten years from its birth, the network was developing its bad habits of featuring mindless reality shows and spring break idiocy, but it still had some good music programming left. One night in 1991 I was watching its one good show, 120 Minutes. That night I saw Nirvana debut "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and that was the last time that MTV caught my attention.