EDITOR’S NOTE: Anybody in a band should read this tragicomic dispatch from former Too Much Joy frontman Mike Quirk about the bizarro universe of major label accounting. The piece is called My $62.47 Royalty Statement: How Major Labels Cook the Books with Digital Downloads, but this end note about predatory lending practices of the royalty system is a good place to dig in. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. A word here about that unrecouped balance, for those uninitiated in the complex mechanics of major label accounting. While our royalty statement shows Too Much Joy in the red with Warner […]
CHINESE DEMOCRACY: Just Sayin’
ASSOCIATED PRESS: All in all, it’s hard to imagine how Woods could have handled the whole affair worse, but don’t look for any exodus from Wood’s stable of corporate backers. Tiger is too good, too dominant, too telegenic and his transgressions, to use his word, are too minor, to scare off the big companies. Not surprisingly, Nike, like his other corporate partners, is offering its unconditional allegiance to Woods, who is arguably the company’s most important athlete. “Nike supports Tiger and his family. Our relationship remains unchanged,” the Beaverton-area company said in a statement. Forbes estimated earlier this year that […]
BOOKS: John Brown Was A Slavery-Hatin’ Man
OBIT MAG: A hundred and fifty years ago yesterday, John Brown rode to the gibbet. He wore a black hat, coat, and pants, white socks, and red slippers. Unlike the wrathful, wild-eyed intensity for which he had become famous, Brown’s demeanor was the same as it had been during his trial and imprisonment: unflappably calm, courteous, and even courageous. His composure belied the crimes for which he would forfeit his life: treason, insurrection, and first-degree murder. He walked to the center of the gallows, thanked his jailer for his warmth and hospitality, and waited quietly while his executioners placed a […]
RAW FOOTAGE: Allen Iverson’s Trail Of Tears
He’s back, baby!
TONIGHT: No Sleep ‘Til Stonehenge
Back in 2002, Greg Weeks, a recent transplant folker from New York and a dead ringer for Woody Allen in Sleeper, together with Brooke Sietinsons, Ophelia-voiced Meg Baird and a revolving cast of red-eyed weird beards, formed the Espers, a strummy collective of whispery acid-folk that evokes sugar-plum visions of woodland fairies doing the maypole dance around Stonehenge. Last month the Espers released their third album, the aptly-titled III. As ever, the band’s warm wigwam of sound evokes blood-sugar-sex-magik rituals celebrated by the hangman’s lovely daughters on misty moonlit moors. In other words, this is what flowery noontides sound like […]
THAT’S COMCASTIC: Cable Giant Buys NBC Universal
[Photo by Vincent J. Brown] NEW YORK TIMES: After nearly nine months of negotiations, Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, finally reached an agreement on Thursday to acquire NBC Universal from the General Electric Company. The deal valued NBC Universal at about $30 billion. The agreement will create a joint venture, with Comcast owning 51 percent and G.E. owning 49 percent. Comcast will contribute to the joint venture its stable of cable channels, which includes Versus, the Golf Channel and E Entertainment, worth about $7.25 billion, and will pay G.E. about $6.5 billion in cash, for a total of $13.75 […]
MATT TAIBBI: Obama’s Big Sellout
ROLLING STONE: In “Obama’s Big Sellout”, Matt Taibbi argues that President Obama has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway. Rather than keeping his progressive campaign advisers on board, Taibbi says Obama gave key economic positions in the White House to the very people who caused the economic crisis in the first place. Taibbi also points to the ties Obama’s appointees have to one main in particular: Bob Rubin, the former Goldman Sachs co-chairman who served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. Click above for Taibbi’s video breakdown of his […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Top 5 Things You Should Know About Josh Ritter At The TLA Last Night
1) No one has ever been happier about playing in his own band. From the moment he literally bounces onstage, Josh Ritter is positively ebullient, grinning ear to ear like he can’t believe he stumbled into this group of musicians. He prances around the stage, his odd brown ’fro and unbuttoned collared shirt looking slightly familiar, though you can’t quite place why or where. 2) Sure, he digs into his catalog, but it’s mostly a night for new songs. Ritter just finished recording his latest album, due sometime around April, so he presents them mostly in their young form. “These […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
HEY, JOE LIEBERMAN: What Part Of ‘The American Public Wants A Public Option’ Don’t You Understand?
REUTERS: Most Americans would like to see a “public option” in health insurance reform but doubt anything Congress does will lower costs or improve care in the short term, according to a poll released on Thursday. The survey of 2,999 households by Thomson Reuters Corp shows a public skeptical about the cost, quality and accessibility of medical care. Just under 60 percent of those surveyed said they would like a public option as part of any final healthcare reform legislation, which Republicans and a few Democrats oppose. MORE CBS NEWS: During the 2008 elections, Joe Lieberman attended the Republican National […]
CINEMA: The Magnificent Anderson
THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX (2009, directed by Wes Anderson, 87 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC One hates to agree with such braggadocios bluster but yes, that Mr. Fox is quite fantastic. Director Wes Anderson (known for creating painstakingly mounted neurotic whimsy like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited) takes an unexpected artistic left turn into perhaps his most satisfying film to date. One thing even Anderson’s critics concede is that he has a knack for quaintly-detailed set design, so setting him loose in the hand-crafted world of old-fashioned figure animation is truly a match made in Heaven. […]
MUST SEE TV: Apocalypse NYC
With a Gershwin soundtrack.
CENSUS: Honey, I Stopped Shrinking Philadelphia
DAILY NEWS: Good news, Philadelphia! After decades of population loss, the city has stopped shrinking, according to revised Census Bureau estimates delivered to the city earlier this week. On Monday, the city received a letter from the Census Bureau raising the 2008 population estimate by about 93,000. In October, Philly challenged the bureau’s 2008 estimate of the city’s population, which the bureau had set at 1,447,395. It was the first time that the city had challenged the bureau’s estimates since a challenge program began earlier this decade. The new estimate of Philadelphia’s ’08 population is 1,540,351 people, 4,220 higher than […]