BY JAMES DOOLITTLE If only the fine folks over at Jump the Shark weren’t so television-centric, they’d assuredly recognize that these last few weeks marked a bevy of downtrending “career defining moments” in the lives of hip-hop royalty…and Lansdale’s own Dwight Grant, whose run-ins with Johnny Law are more on point than anything birthed from his creative loins, if only sitcomish by design.Then again, considering how formulaic and rote hip-hop careers have become, why the hell aren’t they TV shows? * JIGGA WHAT? (Tuesday, 9PM – FOX): Beyonce questions Jay‘s manhood after Rocawear loses naming rights to the clothing line […]
INSTA-REVIEW: 5 Things You Should Know About Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band At The Wachovia Center Last Night
1. I’m not going to say that the Boss and his legions are getting old, but tonight’s audience could have been the world’s largest focus group for Boniva and his and hers Cialis. Bada-BING! 2. You can tell it’s early in the tour, as the set list is still in flux and the sound mix had a few creaky moments. And in case you were wondering, Bruce is the only man alive who can still get away with the Rock Vest. It’s forever amazing that there’s one guy in the house who can get an even bigger crowd response than […]
WORTH REPEATING: No Moss On Rolling Stone
In the new Hot Issue — not to be confused with last week’s Best Of Hot Issue or the 100 Hottest Hot Issues issue before that — Rolling Stone declares us smoked habanero HOT, as in they would ‘do’ us, best we can tell. Also they talk to the The Teeth and find out Spank Rock lives in a…wait for it…warehouse. Man! Is that a roll of Certs in Jann Wenner’s pocket or is he just really, really glad to see us? HOT SCENE: Just try to live like this in New York: Peter McDavis, bassist for rising Philadelphia indie […]
EARLY WORD: Dear Prudence…
Won’t You Come Out To Play?
WORTH REPEATING: Born In The USA
The Boss on 60 Minutes, in a segment that airs Sunday: In the interview, Springsteen points out the direction in which the U.S. is going, by his estimation. “I think we’ve seen things happen over the past six years that I don’t think anybody ever thought they’d ever see in the United States,” says Springsteen. “When people think of the Unites States’ identity, they don’t think of torture. They don’t think of illegal wiretapping. They don’t think of voter suppression,” he tells Pelley. “They don’t think of no habeas corpus,” he says, referring to the people being held by the […]
RIAA Wins $222,000 Downloading Suit Against Mom
In the first lawsuit over file sharing to make it to court, a jury ordered a woman who record labels claimed illegally shared songs to pay the labels $222,000. The lawsuit, filed by the Recording Industry Association of America, the record label lobbying organization, accused Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old mother of two, of sharing more than 1,700 songs on the now defunct peer-to-peer file sharing network Kazaa. The suit contended that Thomas violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by distributing songs for free that belonged to the record labels. ABC NEWS: Look Out School For The Blind, Your Next! ARS […]
THE MONKS: Transatlantic Feeback
WIKIPEDIA: Who Are The Monks?
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
A QUIET NIGHT IN WITH: The Mekons, World Cafe Live, Tuesday Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER If you ever crunched the numbers on rock stardom, you would ask yourself why anyone bothers trying. Sure, there will always be that one-in-a-million talent that, whether through luck or lightning caught in a bottle, will shoot human cannonball-style into the rarefied heights of immortality. But for most it is a life of minor-key daily indignity, a soft but uninterrupted hell of winnowing expectations and diminished returns that will bring them all the fame of philatelist and all the riches of a […]
TONIGHT: Destroy Your Safe And Happy Lives…
Before it is too late! Mekons, tonight, World Cafe Live! [painting by JOHN LANGFORD]
AUTHOR, AUTHOR: 13 Things You Are Not Supposed To Know About Daniel Handler, AKA Lemony Snicket
1. Mr. Handler is answering these questions while sipping his second Blanton’s in his posh room at the Four Seasons. 2. Mr. Handler plays accordion on the new Magnetic Fields album, Distortion, due out in January. He will be touring with the band on the West Coast. 3. Mr. Handler only bothered to learn to play the accordion so he could pick up chicks. “When I was coming up it was during that brief time in rock history when no keyboard whatsoever was cool, and that’s the only instrument I played. I really, really wanted to be in a band, […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Letter From Bogota
Keith Richards and Andrew Loog Oldham at the Blue Boar Motorway Cafe, along the M1 between London and Birmingham, 1963. By Philip Townsend; never before published. JONATHAN, INTERESTING WRITE-UPS. YOU’VE ALMOST MANAGED TO GET AS FAR AFIELD AS I INTEND TO. WHILST DRIVING BACK FROM THE JUNGLESIDE TODAY IT OCCURED TO ME, AS REGARDING KEITH’S MEMORY ON ” SATISFACTION”: THE FELLOW HAS GOT SO MUCH MORE OF A STONES RECORDING MEMORY BANK TO TROLL THROUGH FOR RECALL. BEST, ANDREW LOOG OLDHAM SO PLZD TO SEE THE BRUCE S. TOUR IS FAIR PRICED AND WILL SAVE AMERICA(NS) ONCE MORE. I PLAN […]