“Microsoft is said to be releasing a limited edition, Joy Division Zune featuring an adaptation of Peter Saville’s pulsating cover art from the band’s Unknown Pleasures debut. The launch is meant to parallel the June 10th release of the Joy Division DVD” (don’t worry, it’s just a mock up from Engadget)

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Slate’s Jody Rosen attempts to argue that Amy Winehouse isn’t just another celebrity train wreck, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Yes, Winehouse got her shit together long enough to eke out a via satellite Grammy performance on Sunday, but whether that good behavior sustains is far from conclusive. I mean, she was just […]

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Joe Queenan has an amusing piece in the Guardian today about what to do with over-the-hill rock stars. The impetus for his musings stems from the impending 50th birthdays of Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Prince this year. Rock/pop music is the only genre where age becomes an irreversible stigma, whereas in, say, Blues age is […]

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I’m probably the last remaining carbon-based life form that has not heard a single note of Vampire Weekend’s newly released debut. Even this humble blog has been fairly resistant to the charms of this latest in a long succession of bands of the moment, so I feel like I’m among friends. As for the rest […]

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Ringo’s recent walking out on Live with Regis and what’s-her-trash for trying to make him cut his new song short reminded me of another time Ringo asserted his bad-ass-ness. I once saw Ringo on The Arsenio Hall Show way back when. And Arsenio, curled up like a gay praying mantis and being the smug douche […]

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As a longtime Magnetic Fields fan, I am, of course, anticipating the new album, Distortion, which comes out next week on Nonesuch. I’m, perhaps, even more intrigued than usual given the wildly differing takes on Stephin Merritt’s new production fetishes. I’ve heard “Three Way”, a surfed-up haze of feedback instrumental, save for some ecstatic shouts […]

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So Trent, he of NiN fame, recently blogged the results of his “post-In Rainbows” Saul Williams Niggy Tardust experiment with the name-your-own-price record release concept. Poor Trent is disheartened, it seems. He says that 28,322 people paid $5 for it and about 154,449 just downloaded the album. No idea how many snagged it off of […]

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