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New CD Album Releases, 7-22-2008: Miley Cyrus, Nine Inch Nails, Black Sabbath box, U2 re-issues
 Not a lot exciting in the range of new music. Probably the best bet in the big leagues is Breakout. This is the first Miley Cyrus album under her own name, rather than alter ego Hannah Montana. I'll confess that I dug "See You Again." So maybe there'll be something groovy here as well.It appears that Trent Reznor at this point keeps a mic around and eats beans. Give the beans a couple of hours, turn on that mic, and an hour later - voila! That would explain, for starters, the multiple CDs of Ghosts, which along with the Year Zero set make this the fourth Nine Inch Nails CD of this year. I've never been much impressed with any of his songs. Plus, he bears culpability for bringing the idiotic Marilyn Manson to prominence.  But after hearing Johnny Cash sing "Hurt," I've had to give him at least some grudging respect. Another good thing though, he's happy to give the album away for free download, though the physical release also contains a bonus DVD. You can DOWNLOAD The Slip for free from the official band website.Listening to The Slip, I'm figuring it's worth about what I paid for it. This is basic formulaic industrial rock. "Industrial" rock means basically that it's heavy and mechanistic, largely lacking in the nuance of human performance. Put differently, this is the opposite of funky. Plus, there are no noteworthy melodies or catchy hooks of any kind. Did I mention that this dude sponsored Marilyn Manson? I'm not real big on standup comedy albums, for starters because mostly even pretty good ones you wouldn't want to listen to more than once. But if there's a comic working today to whom I might give multiple listens, it would be Christopher Titus. His newest preversion of all things decent is Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding.  Top of the re-issues this week is U2. Their first three albums, Boy, October and War are out in special two disc editions with bonus songs and demos and re-mastering personally overseen by the Edge. Obviously, this was the beginning of a legend, so you can't very well go wrong here. War is probably the best one album they ever made.The Rules of Hell is a five CD Rhino edition Black Sabbath box set. It contains the entire output of the Ronnie James Dio led version, from 1980 - 1992. This includes the albums Heaven and Hell (1980), Mob Rules (1981), Live Evil (1982 -two CDs), and Dehumanizer (1992). Here's the listing of this week's new album releases, courtesy AMG: Black Kids Partie Traumatic Ag/Columbia New Wave/Post-Punk Revival, Indie Rock  David BowieLive in Santa Monica '72 EMI Pop/Rock, Glam Rock, Album Rock, Hard Rock, Experimental Rock, Prog-Rock/Art Rock, Proto-Punk CSS Donkey Sub Pop Indie Electronic, Indie Rock Miley Cyrus Breakout Disney Teen Pop, Dance-Pop Nine Inch Nails The Slip Null Corporation Industrial Metal, Alternative Metal, Industrial, Alternative Pop/Rock U2 Boy [Deluxe Edition] Island/Interscope/Universal College Rock, Album Rock, Post-Punk, Pop/Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock Paul Weller 22 Dreams Island British Trad Rock, Pop/Rock, Singer/Songwriter The Avett Brothers The Gleam II Ramseur Progressive Folk, Alternative Folk, Progressive Country, Alternative Country Black Sabbath The Rules of Hell Rhino/Warner Bros. Album Rock, Heavy Metal Bodies of Water A Certain Feeling Secretly Canadian Indie Pop Buffalo Killers Let It Ride Alive Indie Rock, Neo-Psychedelia Burning Spear The Best of Burning Spear [VCT] Virgin Political Reggae, Roots Reggae Candlebox Into the Sun Silent Majority Alternative Pop/Rock, Post-Grunge Broken Social Scene Presents Brendan Canning Something for All of Us... Arts & Crafts Indie Rock, Post-Rock/Experimental Eliza Carthy Dreams of Breathing Underwater Topic Contemporary Folk, British Folk, Contemporary Singer/Songwriter Gloria Cheng Piano Music of Salonen, Stucky & Lutoslawski Telarc Modern and Contemporary Piano Music Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Deja Vu Live Reprise/Wea Pop/Rock, Folk-Rock, Singer/Songwriter Chris Difford The Last Temptation of Chris Airline/Stiff Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Singer/Songwriter Dr. Dog Fate Park the Van Pop Underground, Indie Rock, Indie Pop Gustavo Dudamel Fiesta Deutsche Grammophon Modern and Contemporary Orchestral Music Trevor Dunn Four Films Tzadik Experimental Rock, Original Score, Film Music, Soundtracks Helena Espvall/Masaki Batoh Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh Drag City Alternative Singer/Songwriter, Neo-Psychedelia, Indie Rock Faun Fables A Table Forgotten Drag City Acid Folk, Neo-Traditional Folk, Indie Rock, Folk-Rock, Goth Rock ¡Forward, Russia! Life Processes Cooking Vinyl Indie Rock Noel Gourdin After My Time Epic Contemporary R&B, Neo-Soul Antony Gray Brahms: Late Piano Works ABC Classics Romantic Piano Music Buddy Guy Skin Deep Silvertone/Zomba Modern Electric Chicago Blues, Electric Chicago Blues, Chicago Blues, Modern Electric Blues Hell Rell Black Mask Black Gloves Babygrande East Coast Rap High Places 03/07 - 09/07 Thrill Jockey Indie Electronic, Indie Pop Benji Hughes A Love Extreme New West Alternative Singer/Songwriter, Indie Pop Janis Ian Best of Janis Ian: The Autobiography Collection Cooking Vinyl Contemporary Folk, Folk-Rock, Singer/Songwriter Individuals Fields/Aqua Marine Bar/None Power Pop, New Wave, Jangle Pop Syleena Johnson I Am Your Woman: The Best of Syleena Johnson Sony Legacy Neo-Soul, Contemporary R&B, Urban Angelika Kirchlager My Heart Alone: Favorite Opera Arias and Duets Sony Classical Romantic, Post-Romantic and Modern Opera Arias Shannon Lee Introducing Shannon Lee Telarc Baroque, Romantic, Post-Romantic and Modern Violin Music Jon Peter Lewis Break the Silence Cockaroo/Adrenaline Pop Idol, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock Low vs Diamond Low vs Diamond Epic/Red Indie Rock Mars Mars LP No More No Wave Maria Muldaur Yes We Can! Telarc Folk-Blues, Acoustic Blues, Jazz Blues One Day as a Lion One Day as a Lion Anti Rap-Metal, Alternative Metal, Post-Hardcore Original Soundtrack The Rocker Columbia Film Music, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Hair Metal, Soundtracks, Heavy Metal Pacific! Reveries Pacific/Dolores Indie Electronic, Swedish Pop/Rock, Indie Pop Stephen Pearcy Under My Skin Airline Hard Rock Pepper Pink Crustaceans and Good Vibrations Law Alternative Pop/Rock, Third Wave Ska Revival, Contemporary Reggae, Punk-Pop The Rumble Strips Girls and Weather Universal/Island Indie Rock  Bon ScottEarly Years 1967-1972 See for Miles Hard Rock, Acid Rock, Pub Rock, Psychedelic Shaggy The Best of Shaggy Virgin Ragga, Club/Dance, Dancehall, Contemporary Reggae, Reggae-Pop Christopher Titus Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding Comedy Central Standup Comedy, Observational Humor Peter Tosh Best of Peter Tosh [VCT] Virgin Political Reggae, Roots Reggae Ike Turner Classic Early Sides 1952-1957 JSP R&B, Jump Blues, Electric Blues  U2October [Deluxe Edition] Island/Interscope/Universal College Rock, Album Rock, Post-Punk, Pop/Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock U2 War [Deluxe Edition] Island/Interscope/Universal College Rock, Album Rock, Pop/Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, Post-Punk Various Artists Bluegrass: Independent Label Sides 1951-1954 JSP Bluegrass, String Bands *********************** MILEY CYRUS IS HANNAH MONTANA   For starters, I'm obviously a racist. You can tell it because I used B Hussein Obama's middle name. That's pretty much evidence enough in some quarters. But if pronouncing his whole legal name is racist, then what about this image from The New Yorker and cartoonist Barry Blitt?First, that's a beautiful image. Mr Blitt boiled a whole bunch of impressions, misimpressions, suspicions, blind internet rumors and just all round crazy conspiratorial nonsense into one beautifully detailed image. I just love how many layers of meaning come out of this one image, all the ways it was intended vs how it will be purposely or accidentially misinterpreted by others. For starters, the basic intent of the magazine and cartoonist is fairly obvious and clear, and just as they will explain it if you ask: They are satirizing and mocking right wing and conspiracy nut types for their ridiculous and unfounded harsh opinions about Michelle and Barack Hussein Obama. That's pretty straightforward. Pretty much everyone seems to get that point, but some good liberals still object, on grounds that maybe the hicks won't get that they're being mocked and take it at face value. In short, we're smart enough to understand, but this image is bad because the hicks might not be hip enough to get it. Then there's the Obama campaign, which gets to pretend at being hurt. Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree." John McCain had to get in on clucking his tongue a bit as well. McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said: "We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive." But then, McCain's people have probably the most legitimate excuse for wanting to go out of their way to not be associated with any of this. All of the offended parties get the joke, but then so do most of us red state crackers. I haven't seen any indication that anyone did not get the satirical intent of the damn picture. But what's interesting to me in all this is how this image seems to substantially innoculate the Obamas from a lot of serious and in some cases totally appropriate criticism or skepticism. Anyone who has concerns or objections to the Obamas that could even be broadly characterized to fit within that caricature of racist rightwing paranoia is, well, a dirty rightwing racist. Consider to that end the image of Barack dressed as a Muslim. Obviously Barack Obama is not a practicing Muslim. He's an avowed Christian, whatever you may think of the pastor that brought him into the fold. You're pretty much of an idiot if you insist on thinking that he's a super secret Muslim, or took his oath as senator on a Koran. Shut up already, damn. But then there are lots of perfectly reasonable and relevant concerns and uncertainty about Barack Obama's religious beliefs. Does he believe in American exceptionalism, as do most people, or what. He's got close Muslim relatives, and apparently spent at least a little time in mosque growing up - not that there's anything wrong with that. But how much does he really believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? With his Muslim background and non-believing left wing intellectual mom and his elitist Ivy League degrees, he mostly comes across as an aloof sophisticated multicultural secularist carefully mixing in some half-assed extremely watered down black preacher shtick for the boobs. After all, religion is something that poor dumb misguided bitter voters cling to, as he famously said in the San Francisco "bitter" remarks. For better or worse, you know that Dubya really does believe in Jesus - but does Barack really believe that Jesus rose from the dead? Does Barack really believe in Christ, or is he a secular Ivy League multiculturalist who would view Islam as an equally valid and beautiful cultural expression? Answers to questions like that seem quite valid and relevant to me, things that might well would impact how I might vote. I would NOT be inclined to look favorably on a US presidential candidate who would see such equivalence. This of course makes ME the goat, one of them there racist conspiracy mongering nutjobs like they made fun of on that famous cover of The New Yorker. (Do you remember The New Yorker? This is a story about The New Yorker.) See how that works? All kinds of perfectly reasonable questions and objections get bunched together in disrepute, all package-dealed into ridicule with the most ridiculous possible uninformed opinion that sounds the least bit like it. Likewise, I'm sure that Michelle Obama has never literally burned a US flag. But she sure does manage to come off sounding pretty anti-American at times, with complaints about America being "mean" and only ever being proud of America as an adult when they began voting for her husband for president. I don't know that those comments from the missus would be a major determinant of my vote, but those harsh words for her countrymen do weigh a point or two against Barack for choosing a person with such views as his soulmate. This of course makes me equivalently ridiculous as those dumb rednecks they satirized at The New Yorker who insist that Michelle is burning flags and such. Plus, there's the stupid people who think the Obamas are black radicals, who think Michelle Obama is some Angela Davis character, like depicted in The New Yorker. Man are they dumb. That presumably includes particularly everyone who for some crazy no doubt dishonest reason want to hold Obama's association with Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers against him. So here I am, the goat again. (Hey, that could be my epitaph.) Ah well, might as go all the way: IS BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA THE ANTI-CHRIST? Enquiring bitter minds want to know! NPR feels the big little people's pain
 Alright, granted that I'm a rightwing nutjob, so perhaps I'm just taking things all wrong. Nonetheless, this stupid little NPR story is getting on my last little nerve.It's the sad story of an Ohio family facing hard 2008 economic times. "Nunez and most of her siblings and their spouses are unemployed and rely on government assistance and food stamps. Some have part-time jobs, but working is made more difficult with no car or public transportation." The current national unemployment rate is only 5.5% - but really, how can people be expected to get transportation and go to work if the government doesn't give them cars or at least sufficient mass transit. Plus, the guvment needs to provide me with an alarm clock, or else how would I know to get out of bed? But the thing that almost got my goat was the business about their grocery shopping. See, the money's tight and now they can't afford decent groceries. No meat. However, then there's a picture of a couple of these women - but they're not starving. Now, the good Lord knows I'd be the last person to mock someone for their weight. Weak metabolism is a bitch. The real poo-licking thing though is the last sentence of the story, reconciling the incongruence of their big waists with their complaints of poverty. "So they cut back on expensive items like meat, and they don't buy extras like ice cream anymore. Instead, they eat a lot of starches like potatoes and noodles." See, they're big and fat because the guvment won't give them enough food stamps (in addition to subsidized housing) to buy good food, so all they can do is bloat on cheap starches. Somebody needs to drink a big ol' glass of shut the hell up. To make the obvious point, for the same money as yucky potatoes and noodles, you could just as well be thriving on much more nutritious beans and rice, with some simple cheap end of fruits and vegetables. How expensive are bananas and carrots? Stephanie Lenz vs Universal Music Publishing Group
A mom named Stephanie Lenz is my newest hero. In February, she posted a little 30 second home video for family and friends to YouTube of her toddler son learning to walk with Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" blaring in the background. Universal Music Publishing Group sent her a cease and desist letter demanding that she pull down her little home movie. But David responded to the corporate Goliath with resistance, and a lawsuit. Ms Lenz refused to be intimidated by the suits, and is getting support from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She wants not only to be allowed to show her blurry bitty little home movie to family, but for the copyright cartels to consider possible copyright violations on a case by case basis for whether any particular usage might be allowable fair use before they go slinging threats and lawsuits. Apparently, Universal lawyers are arguing that it would be too much burden on copyright holders to consider each individual use. They apparently believe that it's only fair to shotgun threats and sic lawyers on anybody with any wisp of a use of copyright material, and expect housewives to pay for lawyers to justify their home movies. If these corporate thugs put half as much energy into making better products and creative marketing as what they put into intimidating schoolkids and housewives, maybe the recording industry wouldn't be so totally in the dumpster. DVD Review: TV Funhouse
 In a long and distinguished career, Robert Smigel has been among other things a writer for Saturday Night Live and Conan O'Brien. This includes creating the immortal Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog and the Saturday TV Funhouse cartoon shorts on SNL. Those cartoon shorts provided the basis for the short lived Comedy Central series TV Funhouse, which aired a total of eight episode in 2000 and 2001. These have now been released on DVD. I caught a couple of these at the time, and thought them fairly amusing. They're actually considerably more impressive now, watching them all carefully on DVD. They really filled out and expanded the idea a lot from the SNL shorts - without using any of the SNL characters, best I remember. For one thing, they didn't use The Ambiguously Gay Duo - the most popular SNL creation.  There's really a lot of thoughtful writing meat on these faux kiddie show bones. They get stuff working in multiple simultaneous directions. I particularly liked the faux-50s educational film on "Overcoming Bowel Movements." It's got a lot of clever details as a parody of the educational film style. But it's also an ideas-level critique of supposed moral concerns involved in telling kids not to masturbate. They argue quite colorfully and imaginatively that telling people to deny or feel ashamed of the biological urge to masturbate is about as dumb and untenable as telling people to resist defecating.The basic setup of the series had the relatively subtly perverse human host Doug showing up in costume for some theme of the day, only to find himself abandoned by the Anipals puppets, off for their own depraved debaucheries in Tijuana or Atlantic City. Special credit for creative perversion goes to the "Christmas cheer" episode. Turns out that "Christmas cheer" (which of course the Anipals lacked) was a drug, a chemical that they could get from the host's spinal fluid, which they boiled down to a powder and snorted. Doug's willingness to repeatedly subject himself to pain and abuse for the Anipals benefit was probably the strongest direct manifestation of his perversion.  Probably the best episodes were the Safari Day and Astronauts day episodes which the Anipals spent in Atlantic City. Robert Goulet was priceless as drinking buddy and wise confidant to the Anipals, trying to warn Chickie off of falling in love with a chimpstitute. This also includes a great guest starring role for Triumph, the most near to character development I've seen for him. Plus, he has a great song about humping an "Underage Bichon." There's more excellent Triumph action in bonus features, especially his contribution to a Rob Reiner roast. Perhaps partly this show didn't take off because a fair amount of it went over people's heads, even with the constant poo jokes and such. But also, the show was really dark in tone - far darker than the Simpsons or even South Park, the obvious points of comparison. Might have just been too evil for most people to watch. Watching eight episodes of this back to back was almost too dark even for me - but it sure was funny. Harry Shearer's supposed gotcha video on Laura Ingraham
 So Harry Shearer came up with a nine minute compilation of maybe 30 or 40 bits of Laura Ingraham between takes and show prep on her short-lived Fox News show Just In. He posted this video on his MyDamnChannel website as if it were apparently funny. Apparently this was supposed to be embarassing or some type of cause for ridicule. Shearer doesn't say much about it, but some Boston Herald bloggers describe it as a "meltdown." Having watched the video though, this seems pretty clearly to be purely a wishful expression of malice from ol' Monty Burns for someone whose viewpoint he doesn't like. I watched for nine plus minutes, waiting for the melting down, yelling and cussing and having some kind of fit. But there's nothing anywhere on the tape remotely like that. Even with the magic of editing to get just the most inflammatory few seconds from many hours of production time, there's no flame. She doesn't raise her voice at any time. There's no yelling, cussing, nothing like that. Everything in the video looked like she was behaving totally professionally. She was obviously frustrated in parts with stuff being screwed up that she needed to do the show. Shouldn't she be? Perhaps some of y'all of more tender sensibilities could enlighten me as to what it was she did in this tape that was inappropriate. New CD Album Releases, 7-15-2008: Passing Strange cast album, Randy Travis, John Mellencamp, Dark Knight soundtrack
 The big deal this week for cool folks comes from the most distinguished composer Stew, The Negro Problem incarnate - and now a Tony award winning Broadway composer and star. The original Broadway cast recording of Passing Strange is out this week. Did I mention that Stew won a Tony for this musical, and was nominated for six others? Spike Lee is filming the show for some kind of movie presentation.It is an autobiographical tale of the young middle-class boho tripping across Europe. There are fairly many artsy pop music styles here, but early on I'm particularly taken with "We Just Had Sex." It's some kind of light samba or mambo or such, a very catchy and carefully non-chalant by-the-way about how it's no big deal that the characters have just had three way sex. Brother Stew is one of the greatest songwriters working today. If you don't know Stew, you don't know jack. Download "The Big Game", one of his best songs for free. Also, here are a couple more outstanding recent Stew songs: DOWNLOAD: Pastry Shop An excellent melody informing a particularly good and understated anti-war sentiment DOWNLOAD: Black Men Ski An outstanding arty pop song  Randy Travis has Around the Bend. That voice is as good as ever. He makes a nice, light fiddle hoedown out of "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright." Hearing his delivery here made me notice what a surprisingly nimble and bouncy touch he can get out of that deep voice.Life Death Love and Freedom is the newest from our Hoosier hometown hero John Mellencamp. Love the homeboy, but the Little Bastard really hasn't written a song that anyone really needs to hear in at least a decade. The fading of talent isn't so awful. He wrote "Lonely Ol' Night" and "Love and Happiness" if he never wrote another song. But even as one of his biggest fans, I get more disgusted by the year with his increasingly dishonest self-righteous malice in dumb crap like this slanderous "Jena" song. The less interesting his tunesmithing gets, the more supposedly profound his lyrics become, and the more pronounced his need to establish his cheap sense of righteous superiority over his neighbors. Nothing I'm hearing on this album does anything to change that outlook. Here's the listing of this week's new album releases, courtesy AMG: David Banner The Greatest Story Ever Told SRC/Universal Motown Dirty South, Southern Rap, Hardcore Rap, Gangsta Rap Dirty Pretty Things Romance at Short Notice Mercury Indie Rock The Hold Steady Stay Positive Vagrant Indie Rock, American Trad Rock, Rock & Roll Nas Nas Def Jam Political Rap, Hardcore Rap, East Coast Rap, Hip-Hop Claudio Abbado Marches and Dances Deutsche Grammophon Marches and Dances for Orchestra Bajofondo Mar Dulce Vibra Electronica, Tango Don Braden Gentle Storm Highnote Post-Bop, Modern Creative Daedelus Love to Make Music To Ninja Tune Indie Electronic, Experimental Techno Foreigner No End in Sight: The Very Best of Foreigner Atlantic/Rhino Album Rock, Arena Rock, Pop/Rock, Hard Rock  Frankie Valli & the Four SeasonsThe Motown Years Hip-O Select Pop, Doo Wop Delta Goodrem Delta Decca Adult Alternative Pop/Rock Gossip Rework It Backyard Indie Rock, Garage Punk, Lo-Fi The Grascals Keep on Walkin' Rounder Contemporary Bluegrass, Progressive Bluegrass Honeybus Story Deram Psychedelic Pop, British Psychedelia The Imagined Village The Imagined Village Real World Neo-Traditional Folk, Alternative Folk, Worldbeat Jet Black Stare In This Life Island Post-Grunge, Hard Rock Gunar Letzbor Wenzel Ludwig Edler von Radolt: Viennese Lute Concertos Challenge Classics Baroque Music for Lute and Ensemble  John MellencampLife Death Love and Freedom Hear Music Pop/Rock, Roots Rock The Music Strength in Numbers Polydor Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock Trio Wanderer Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du Temps Harmonia Mundi Modern Chamber Music Original Soundtrack American Teen Almost Gold Soundtracks, Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Contemporary Singer/Songwriter, Singer/Songwriter  Original SoundtrackThe Dark Knight [#1] Warner Bros. Original Score, Soundtracks Original Broadway Cast Passing Strange [Original Broadway Cast] Ghostlight Musicals, Cast Recordings Rehab Graffiti the World [Universal Republic] Universal Republic Southern Rap, Rap-Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock  Randy TravisAround the Bend Warner Bros. Contemporary Country Twilight Sad Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did Fat Cat Indie Rock Unkle End Titles: Stories for Film Surrender All Electronica, Ambient Breakbeat, Trip-Hop, Alternative Dance Various Artists From the Valleys: The Best of the Welsh Choirs ABC Classics Welsh Choral Music Cedar Walton Seasoned Wood Highnote Post-Bop Wild Beasts Limbo, Panto Domino Indie Rock Ace Young Ace Young Pazzo/Fontana Dance-Pop, Pop Idol, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Club/Dance ----------------------------- Randy Travis  Wall-E: The wicked scare tactics of a cute robot
Wall-E is an ugly movie on multiple levels. It is literally ugly to look at. It is ugly in it's philosophical vision, and it's worse than ugly in the heavy handed way that it seeks to propagandize young children through fear.  But first things first. Wall-E is a cute but very lonesome animated robot, an intergalactic trash compactor all alone on Earth on a centuries long cleanup project with only a cockroach for company. Who wouldn't root for poor rusty, plucky Wall-E? There's a very nice love story with new arrival Eve. The animators are obviously good students of ol' Walt Disney and the way he could anthropomorphize anything. There's a great deal of skill in the very human and highly emotionally communicative expressions of the robot couple. This jumped out particularly at the point where an injured and repaired Wall-E temporarily lost his human soul, and acted momentarily as only a robot. But the cute robots are just there to suck little children in to be manipulated and frightened by this increasingly ugly apocalyptic environmental religion. The evil Buy n Large corporation has utterly destroyed and abandoned Earth, covered in an endless thick nasty sea of trash. (To which piles we can add the marketing detritus from this movie, such as the cheap rubber watches handed out to young movie goers at the theater - or literally billions of other pieces of similar Disney junk. Not to worry: Wall-E will be around to clean them up in a few hundred years.)  For starters, this premise makes the movie largely visually ugly to look at on a basic aesthetic level. The Earth half of the movie is set in a trash dump, carefully engineered to be particularly unappealing - even for a trash heap. You're not scaring the kids properly with the threat of ruin if you make their trash dump Earth look like a fun place to play. Plus, rather than cute bunnies and squirrels, Wall-E's only companion is a cockroach. Yuck.But the huge floating permanent vacation cruise spaceship on which all the humans have been living for 700 years is truly a far uglier vision of hell. They have little robot cleaning agents keeping things antiseptically clean, but any normal person would rather die than live in the kind of ugly sterility portrayed here. Then you get to the really ugly part - the actual "humans" in the ship. They're all tooling around on floating motorized Barcoloungers. It wouldn't even occur to any of these grotesquely fat sacks of mindless consumer appetite to walk even a few steps. Besides being a grotesquely misanthropic slander of our species, the trash-Earth, sterile spaceship and most especially the hideous excuses for humans are highly unpleasant. Is this really a vision fit for impressionable young children? One might reasonably be offended by the ridiculous slander against, basically, American capitalism. In this version, it's nothing but a stupid and shortsighted corporation. They are the only government around. Without some Al Gore running things, naturally the people have no more sight or gumption than to destroy the Earth and their own bodies through sloth and mindless consumption. This is truly one of the ugliest and most contemptible images of humanity that you could conjure up. I would certainly rather be represented by the regular cheesy leftwing images of evil, bloody imperialism. Just in passing, note what a complete disconnect there is between Wall-E versus any kind of real capitalist American behavior. For one thing, it's not Americans doing the prime trashing of the planet. Rich Americans and Europeans have been at some pains to clean things up and preserve their homes and property - partly because being wealthy means they can afford to. It's not rich Americans and Europeans doing most of the trashing. To the extent that the planet is getting abused, it's mostly third world dictators and their desperate, starving subjects. Also, why would the greedy Buy n Large corporation rescue and maintain these useless consumer pods? These "humans" do nothing but consume. They're leeches on the corporation as presented here. Capitalism is about producing and creating so that you will be able to consume. There's nothing like that in the world of Wall-E. The ship seems to be nothing but a giant floating welfare state. But enough about their cheesy ideology. I don't much care about cheap messages in art. Overlook that. A pretty good percentage of children's programming in particular is loaded up with cheap feel-good multicultural it's-a-small-world-after-all crapola. Yeah, yeah. I suppose I risk looking like a narrow-minded fuddy-duddy, unable to appreciate art because of some reactionary anti-environmental ideology or such like. Fine, take these comments as you will. But my objection is NOT primarily about having a "liberal" message. I'm mostly content to appreciate the good in a piece of art, and trust people to think through things for themselves. But I do object to manipulating children through fright for any stupid ideology, purposely rooting unnecessary fear to fester down in their young souls. I don't much appreciate when evangelical yahoos go scaring six year old children with stories about hellfire and brimstone. It's bogus and wicked when some Pentecostal schmuck scares little kids out of their wits with threats of hellfire - and it's no nicer when the Disney Corp puts out apocalyptic nonsense like this. Altamont nostalgia at Hollywood Loser
 A capture from a police video on the evening news? Knife wielding maniac on a rampage!Nope, it's just Al Barger, fashion model. I'm modeling an Altamont t-shirt from Brother Alexander and his Hollywood Loser fashion line. He got interested in advertising with me because he digs my section on the famous Rolling Stones Altamont concert, and of course the infamous knifing death of young Meredith Hunter at the hands of the Hell's Angels. Heller party.  This image of the Woodstock dove with a knife through appeals to every Eric Cartman lovin, hippy hatin' bone of my body.I'm just saying that one of these Altamont t-shirts would make a great gift for any dirty hippy what you nonetheless have to try to be friends with. Also good for the all-round knife wielding maniac on your Christmas list. Next year will be the 40 year anniversary of the official end-of-the-sixties party, the Altamont Festival. Get ahead of the nostalgia curve. Jump over and buy a damned t-shirt. Don't make me come looking for you.  HELL'S ANGELS ALTAMONT PHOTOS, PAGE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18   Rolling Stones 1964 General Images Collection, page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Rolling Stones 1964 The Big Beat 2 3 4 5 Houston Chronicle publishes Harris County employee salaries
I'm right pleased to see that taxpayers in Texas, and particularly in Harris County get to see how much they're paying to all of their individual employees -by name- on the various public payrolls. The data gets down to the level of salary and overtime by employee. The Texas Public Information Act makes such information publicly available. The Houston Chronicle has done the very admirable and not very sexy (and thus more admirable) work of publishing all of this information as a searchable database, and providing some analysis. Their main story accompanying this mostly addresses issues of overtime pay for various law enforcement officers. This seems interesting partly on the basis of the economic inefficiency of understaffed departments paying overtime rates, but just as much for the obvious likely job performance implications of overworked cops - who already tend to be in particularly stressful jobs. I haven't seen anyone objecting to any of this information being published, but it seems likely that someone will. The most obvious thing would be perhaps some public employees union objecting on privacy grounds. I do appreciate someone not liking everybody being up in their bidness, but I pre-emptively reject any such suggestion regarding government payrolls. Indeed, we should do something like this on all levels covering all government employees. Salaries are by rights an issue between an employer and employee. It's none of my business how much Bill Gates pays his staff. It's their money, not mine. But the salary of a cop does concern me, as I am the employer. I certainly should have the right to know what I'm having to pay these people. This is not just a question of our rights as citizens, but employee salary information is critical in doing our due diligent duty as citizens. We need to know where exactly the tax money is going. Otherwise, how can we properly judge what we even want our politicians to do on our behalf? This could cut in a lot of different directions. Of course, everyone knows that school teachers are horribly underpayed - at least supposedly. But really, manipulable statistics aside, how much is that local second grade teacher Miss Jones actually being payed? Might not look quite so bad as the teachers union caterwauling suggests. Perhaps more useful, exactly who all do we have on payroll in the non-teaching jobs? Just how much are we paying that guidance counselor, and are we getting that much actual good out of them? Even if they don't particularly make a lot of money, is Mr Mackey actually doing the public $27,536 worth of good? Should we just flatly eliminate the job position, and send him off into the private sector? We need numbers for that. Beyond more well known and understood jobs like teachers and cops, what exactly are we paying this under-assistant deputy of public transportation $36K a year to do? On the other hand, it might really look bad to see how little some of our people are paid. The public might well look at such numbers and think that firemen really are grossly underpaid. Besides that, they might look at overtime numbers and demand that the city hire more staff. Public reaction to employee salary information could cut many different ways. The underlying point is that the employers, ie taxpayers, need the maximum information to make informed judgments. The more specific budgetary information publicly available about public finance, the better decisions we will be capable of making. Just as important, we could use much more analysis and reporting in the press of such numbers to help sift the important or egregious problems - or to help reflect that we're really getting a good bargain in some quarters of public service. This seems particularly ripe terrain for print media, an area of reporting in which they would have a natural advantage over television. The Houston Chronicle for one deserves praise for their effort here. Others should follow their lead. Ann Coulter on Jesse Helms
 I never entirely knew what to think of the recently departed Senator Jesse Helms. He wasn't particularly a libertarian, but all the right people hated him. It's hard not to love the person whom all decent liberals for a generation thought was Satan incarnate.Also, his active support of Ronald Reagan in the 1976 primary against a sitting president gave him a critical victory that set him up as the 1980 frontrunner. That seems somewhat important. On a policy level, I appreciated very much his tenure running the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mostly, I appreciated his critical and highly non-deferential attitude towards the United Nations. He was certainly a good steward of our national sovereignty.  All decent people ie liberals truly hated every last thing about Jesse Helms, but racism has always been the trump card. He was an opponent of some Civil Rights legislation at the time, which doesn't sound so good - though there might be other reasons than hating black folks why someone might oppose the legislation. But it's not like he was in the Klan like Robert Byrd. His own hiring practices and personal attitudes seem to have been reasonably progressive. Ann Coulter, of course, thinks that Jesse Helms hung the moon, and wrote him a beautiful and loving obituary. She relates one interesting little anecdote that seems to be at least a counter example to the stereotype of Helm's supposed "racism" In January 1963, a decade before Helms would run for office, he editorialized about Harvey Gantt, the first black student to be admitted to Clemson University in South Carolina.  New CD Album Releases, 7-8-2008: Del McCoury in Moneyland, Beck, and Willie Nelson teams with Wynton Marsalis
 Country music revisits the Dust Bowl this week with the multiple artist concept album Moneyland, re-connecting country music with new and old recordings of songs with themes of economic populism. The album is framed with vintage FDR fireside chats. There are a couple of cuts with Merle Haggard, and also Emmylou Harris singing his "Mama's Hungry Eyes." Best of all, we get four cuts with Del McCoury. Somehow, McCoury has managed to shoehorn in a country version of "When I'm 64." This seems like pretty much of a stretch conceptually to the idea of the album, but I'm sure glad of it. Turns out that Paul McCartney wrote a classic bluegrass song. Who knew?Probably the biggest commercial deal this week is Modern Guilt by Beck. It is currently #2 at Amazon. The biggest point of interest to me is that it was produced by Brian Burton aka DJ Dangermouse, half of Gnarls Barkley. Burton's sound palette is not particularly a stretch for Beck, but he's about the best in the business with it. The samples at Amazon sounded pretty good, but probably more for the general production sound rather than anything in the compositions. But that might be subject to further consideration on hearing the full songs. Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis recorded Two Men with the Blues live at the Lincoln Center on January 12 & 13, 2007. They mostly did old jazz and blues standards, including "Caldonia," an old Louis Jordan favorite of mine. It's not really that much of a stretch for Willie Nelson to play jazz. Even doing country music, his vocal inflections in particular often sound pretty jazzy. What I'm hearing sounds pretty hot. This would definitely be worth a couple of good listens. Here's the listing of this week's new album releases, courtesy AMG:  BeckModern Guilt DGC Alternative Singer/Songwriter, Neo-Psychedelia Albert Hammond, Jr. ¿Como Te Llama? Red Ink Indie Rock Billy Joel The Stranger [2CD Deluxe Edition] Sony Legacy Album Rock, Pop/Rock, Soft Rock  Willie Nelson/Wynton MarsalisTwo Men with the Blues Blue Note Standards Abe Vigoda Skeleton PPM Indie Rock Albatros Ensemble Nino Rota: Improvviso Stradivarius Modern Chamber Music Bad Religion New Maps of Hell [Deluxe Version] Epitaph American Underground, Hardcore Punk, Punk, Alternative Pop/Rock, L.A. Punk Chiara Banchini Giuseppe Tartini: Sonate a violino solo; Aria del Tasso Zig Zag Territoires Classical Vocal and Chamber Music The Baseball Project The Baseball Project, Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails Yep Roc Jangle Pop, Alternative Pop/Rock, Folk-Pop Black Ghosts The Black Ghosts Southern Fried Indie Electronic, Electronica The Capstan Shafts Fixation Protocols Rainbow Quartz Indie Pop, Lo-Fi Chromeo Fancy Footwork [Deluxe Edition] Vice Indie Electronic Diplomats of Solid Sound Diplomats of Solid Sound Featuring the Diplomettes Pravda Deep Funk Revival Donna the Buffalo Silverlined Sugar Hill Jam Bands, Alternative Folk, Americana, Contemporary Folk, Zydeco Isabelle Faust Faure: Sonates pour violon & piano Harmonia Mundi Post-Romantic Chamber Music Jean Grae Jeanius Blacksmith Underground Rap, Hardcore Rap, Hip-Hop Eddy Grant The Very Best of Eddy Grant: The Road to Reparation Island/Mercury Contemporary Reggae, Reggae-Pop, Urban, Club/Dance, Pop/Rock Vladimir Horowitz Horowitz In Hamburg: The Last Concert Deutsche Grammophon Classical and Romantic Piano Music Kerli Love Is Dead Island Alternative Pop/Rock Leila Blood, Looms and Blooms Warp IDM, Electronica Little Jackie The Stoop S-Curve Neo-Soul, Urban, Alternative Singer/Songwriter, Hip-Hop Maroon 5 It Won't Be Soon Before Long [US Deluxe Edition] A&M/Octone Pop/Rock, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock  Del McCouryMoneyland McCoury Music Contemporary Bluegrass, Bluegrass, Traditional Bluegrass Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Have Another Ball! Fat Wreck Chord Punk-Pop, Punk Revival, Comedy Rock Melvins Nude with Boots Ipecac Alternative Metal, Heavy Metal Mighty Mighty Bosstones Medium Rare Junket Boy Alternative Pop/Rock, Ska-Punk, Third Wave Ska Revival Mika Miko 666 PPM Punk-Pop, Indie Rock Opiate for the Masses Manifesto Cma Goth Metal, Alternative Metal Dennis Russell Davies Philip Glass: Waiting for the Barbarians Orange Mountain Contemporary Opera Original Soundtrack Weeds: Music from the Series, Vol. 3 Lions Gate TV Soundtracks, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Contemporary Singer/Songwriter, Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Comedy Rock Johnny Osbourne Truths and Rights [Deluxe Edition] Heartbeat Roots Reggae, Dancehall, Lovers Rock Ratatat LP3 XL Indie Electronic, Indie Rock, Indie Pop Ron Sexsmith Exit Strategy of the Soul Yep Roc Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative Singer/Songwriter, Contemporary Singer/Songwriter Patti Smith/Kevin Shields The Coral Sea TBC Experimental Rock, Poetry Son, Ambulance Someone Else's Deja Vu Saddle Creek Indie Pop, Indie Rock Street Dogs State of Grace Hellcat Punk Revival Sunny Day Sets Fire Summer Palace IAMSOUND Indie Pop, Twee Pop Telepathic Butterflies Breakfast in Suburbia Rainbow Quartz Indie Rock, Neo-Psychedelia, Pop Underground Vancougar Canadian Tuxedo Mint Punk-Pop, Indie Rock  Various ArtistsLife Beyond Mars: Bowie Covered Rapster New Wave/Post-Punk Revival, Indie Electronic, Tribute Albums, Club/Dance Doc Watson Americana Master Series: Best of Doc Watson Sugar Hill Traditional Folk, Traditional Country, Old-Timey Whitechapel This Is Exile Metal Blade Death Metal/Black Metal, Grindcore Saul Williams The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust Fader Label Hip-Hop, Underground Rap, Poetry, Political Rap Edgar Winter Rebel Road Airline Boogie Rock, Hard Rock, Blues-Rock New CD Album Releases, 7-1-2008: G-Unit, Vanessa Hudgens, My Chemical Romance, Star-Spangled Songs
 This has to be about the least interesting batch of new releases of the year to date. The main big release is the five years in the making sophomore album by 50 Cent protege G-Unit. Right from the title, T.O.S.: Terminate on Sight indicates the mindless and musicless thug posturing of the long played out gangsta rap nonsense.My Chemical Romance has a live CD/DVD combo The Black Parade Is Dead!. One might find them (or their fan base) kinda cheesy, but at least a couple of these songs are pretty good - if you can separate them in your mind from the goth shtick. This Vanessa Hudgens chick was an early star of the Disney High School Musical franchise. Identified is her second album. She's got a big tour and a couple of movies coming out this year, so there's some expectation that she's gonna blow up big. We'll see about all that. For your 4th of July consideration, Star-Spangled Songs: America's Greatest Hits sounds kinda groovy. The two discs include a George Cohan medley, John Philip Sousa, "America" from West Side Story, and "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Also for your holiday listening, you might dig some of the MoreThings free patriotic country music downloads. Here's the listing of this week's new album releases, courtesy AMG:  Alkaline TrioAgony & Irony Epic Punk-Pop, Punk Revival Earlimart Hymn and Her Shout! Factory Indie Pop, Indie Rock G-Unit T.O.S.: Terminate on Sight G-Unit Hardcore Rap, East Coast Rap Vanessa Hudgens Identified Hollywood Teen Pop, Dance-Pop John Mayer Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles Columbia Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Pop/Rock, Blues-Rock C-Murder Screamin' 4 Vengeance Tru/Asylum Dirty South, Southern Rap, Hardcore Rap  Johnny CashOriginal Greatest Hits Time Life Rockabilly, Traditional Country, Rock & Roll, Country-Pop Culture Culture and Deejays at Joe Gibbs: 1977-1979 VP Political Reggae, Roots Reggae James Harman Two Sides to Every Story Black Top Modern Electric Blues Jim Jones & Byrd Gang M.O.B.: The Album Asylum Hardcore Rap, East Coast Rap, Gangsta Rap Rex Lawson The Aeolian Company NMC Compositions and Arrangements for Pianola  Los Lonely BoysForgiven Epic Roots Rock, Tex-Mex, Rock & Roll Lydia Mordkovitch Lydia Mordkovitch Plays Bacewicz & Enescu Chandos Modern Chamber Music Van Morrison Veedon Fleece [Bonus Tracks] Polydor Album Rock, Blue-Eyed Soul, Pop/Rock, Folk-Rock, Soft Rock, Singer/Songwriter My Chemical Romance The Black Parade Is Dead! Reprise Emo, Punk-Pop, Alternative Pop/Rock  Willie NelsonStardust: 30th Anniversary Legacy Edition Sony Legacy Outlaw Country, Progressive Country, Traditional Country Robert Spano Puccini: La Boheme Telarc Post-Romantic Opera John Storgards Kalevi Aho: Symphony No. 12 "Luosto" [Hybrid SACD] BIS Contemporary Orchestral Music Tickle Me Pink Madeline [CD/DVD] Wind-up Alternative Pop/Rock, Emo Various Artists Star-Spangled Songs: America's Greatest Hits Sheridan Square Patriotic Orchestral and Band Music *********************** VANESSA HUDGENS WALLPAPER  Heller, Eugene Robinson, Dred Scott
Thank Rand for the SCOTUS decision in Heller this week, in which for the first time in two centuries plus, the Supreme Court specifically recognized that the Second Amendment "right of the people to keep and bear arms" in fact recognizes keeping and bearing guns to be an individual right of the people. This is a pretty obvious point by, say, reading the constitution, but very controversial. Seems like such a thing was not ruled on for most of US history most likely because it was largely assumed as a basic point. It's not like the words are really, legitimately confusing - nor the basic point of guaranteeing the rights of individuals the means of their own defense, from whomever. But there's great sentiment against guns in many quarters of the modern world (some of it perfectly reasonable), and lots of folks ready to grab people's guns - for the good of the people, of course. Since the left-wing types who are the main advocates of gun control/banning tend to like spinning the text of the constitution as a "living document" anyway, many of them (including the government of the District of Columbia whose gun ban was just overturned) came up with the less than clever point of pretending that the "well regulated militia" clause at the beginning meant only a government army had the right to bear arms. It seems pretty clear from the document, however, that the point there would be exactly the opposite - that the people have to have a right to keep guns exactly in order to keep the military regulated. Justice Scalia didn't go into that aspect specifically in the decision, mostly speaking of the less radical sounding general idea of self-defense, but that's what the founders wrote. Thus, I was particularly pleased with the reluctantly supportive reaction to this Heller decision from Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. He's a good liberal who believes that "The practical benefits of effective gun control are obvious: If there are fewer guns, there are fewer shootings and fewer funerals." This leads him to this statement that speaks very well of his basic intellectual integrity, "This case, for me, is one of those uncomfortable situations in which my honest opinion is not the one I'd desperately like to be able to argue. As much as I abhor the possible real-word impact of the ruling, I fear that it's probably right." Thank you, Brother Robinson. That kind of honesty is the most basic foundation for democratic debate and governance. He even argues for some idea of the constitution as a living document - while also recognizing that at some point the words do actually MEAN something. "But I also believe that if the Constitution says yes, you can't just blithely pretend it says no. Yesterday's decision appears to leave room for laws that place some restrictions on gun ownership but still observe the Second Amendment's guarantee. If not, then the way to fix the Constitution is to amend it -- not ignore it." Exactly. Thank you. The Heller decision overturned a gun ban in the District of Columbia, which is something like 90% black. Thus a gun ban there is largely an attempt at keeping black people from having guns - even if it's a law passed by black lawmakers elected largely by black voters. It's like they don't trust themselves with weapons. On a tangential note then, these gun rights were part of the Supreme Court's argument in the infamous 1856 Dred Scott decision which specifically affirmed that Negroes were absolutely NOT included as people or citizens under the US Constitution. Per the SCOTUS decision, obviously black folks were not intended to be understood as "citizens" of the US. Otherwise, it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State. Of course, the scary Negroes and scary everybody else already have guns. Thankfully, we appear now to be moving towards guaranteeing equal rights to the law abiding and pro-social citizens of all colors. New CD Album Releases, 6-24-2008: Ry Cooder, Motley Crue, Marc Ribot
 Ry Cooder has a new album I, Flathead. Personally, he's always been one of those artists that I feel like I should dig more than I ever actually have. This album is the culmination of a "California trilogy" with some story concept of representing California of the 1950s. This frankly sounds more like an academic research project than an album of pop songs. Still, Ry's got skills and he's a Serious Artiste. He's generally worth hearing. Plus, he's got a groovy "Pinko Boogie."Saints of Los Angeles comes from the Motley Crue. They'd have to develop a lot more personality than they've ever shown to get up to the level of being Spinal Tap. Beyond that, these well-into-middle-age delinquents sound particularly silly singing about how they'd rather be "Face Down in the Dirt" with a bullet in the head than have to go to school! Well, that'd probably do about as much good as sending these idiots to school and wasting some teacher's vocation trying to teach them to write neat. Here's the listing of this week's new album releases, courtesy AMG:  Ry Cooder I, Flathead Nonesuch Western Swing Revival, Honky Tonk, Norteno, Mariachi, Roots Rock, Country-Rock, Rock & Roll Alejandro Escovedo Real Animal Back Porch/Manhattan Alternative Singer/Songwriter, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock Sigur Ros Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust XL Post-Rock/Experimental, Dream Pop Three 6 Mafia Last 2 Walk Columbia Hardcore Rap, Southern Rap The Anniversary Devil on Our Side: B-Sides and Rarities Vagrant Indie Rock, Emo Babyshambles Oh What a Lovely Tour [CD/DVD] Astralwerks Indie Rock, Garage Rock Revival Jessie Baylin Firesight Verve Forecast Contemporary Singer/Songwriter, Alternative Pop/Rock  Be Your Own PetGet Damaged XL Noise Pop, Indie Rock Big Blue Ball Big Blue Ball Real World Celtic Fusion, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Afro-Pop, Worldbeat Big Brother & the Holding Company The Lost Tapes Airline Blues-Rock, Psychedelic, Acid Rock Paul Bley About Time Justin Time Improvisation, Post-Bop, Free Improvisation  BlondieParallel Lines [CD/DVD] Caroline Dance-Rock, American Punk, New York Punk, Pop/Rock, New Wave, Punk Cajun Dance Party The Colourful Life XL Indie Rock, New Wave/Post-Punk Revival Camper Van Beethoven Popular Songs of Great Enduring Strength and Beauty Cooking Vinyl American Underground, College Rock, Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, Jangle Pop Mark Chesnutt Rollin' with the Flow Lofton Creek New Traditionalist, Contemporary Country Choir of the 21st Century Philip Glass: Another Look at Harmony - Part IV Somm Contemporary Choral Music Cute Is What We Aim For Rotation Fueled by Ramen Emo, Punk-Pop Eric Darius Goin' All Out Blue Note Smooth Jazz, Contemporary Jazz Anthony David Acey Duecy Soulbird/Universal Republic Neo-Soul, Contemporary Singer/Songwriter Dwele Sketches of a Man Koch Contemporary R&B, Urban, Neo-Soul Elephant9 Dodovoodoo Runegrammofon Jazz-Rock, Progressive Jazz, Prog-Rock/Art Rock G. Love & Special Sauce Superhero Brother Brushfire Alternative Pop/Rock, Blues-Rock, Alternative Rap The Grip Weeds Infinite Soul: The Best of the Grip Weeds Wicked Cool Neo-Psychedelia, Pop Underground Hercules & Love Affair Hercules & Love Affair DFA/EMI Left-Field House, Club/Dance, Post-Disco, House Warren Hill La Dolce Vita Koch Smooth Jazz Billy Idol The Very Best of Billy Idol: Idolize Yourself Capitol Album Rock, Pop/Rock, Hard Rock, Dance-Rock, New Wave Hope Koehler The Lass from the Low Countree Albany Modern Vocal Music and Folk Song Arrangements Amos Lee Last Days at the Lodge Blue Note Neo-Soul, Contemporary Singer/Songwriter, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Folk-Pop P.W. Long God Bless the Drunkard's Dog Southern Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, Blues-Rock Love as Laughter Holy Epic/Red Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock Edwin McCain Nobody's Fault But Mine Saguaro Road American Trad Rock, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock Michael Nyman Band Michael Nyman: Six Celan Songs; The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi MN Contemporary Vocal Music Motley Crue Saints of Los Angeles Masters 2008/Motley Records Pop-Metal, Hard Rock, Hair Metal, Heavy Metal, Album Rock Original Soundtrack The Wackness Jive/Zomba Hardcore Rap, Hip-Hop, East Coast Rap, Urban Original Soundtrack Wall*e [Soundtrack] Disney Original Score, Soundtracks Danny Paisley & the Southern Grass The Room Over Mine Rounder Bluegrass, Progressive Bluegrass, Neo-Traditionalist Country Liz Phair Exile in Guyville [Deluxe Edition] ATO Indie Rock, Lo-Fi, Alternative Pop/Rock RZA as Bobby Digital Digi Snacks Koch Hardcore Rap, East Coast Rap Reckless Kelly Bulletproof Yep Roc Alternative Country-Rock, Alternative Country Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog Party Intellectuals Pi Recordings Avant-Garde Jazz, Experimental Rock, Noise-Rock Shinedown The Sound of Madness Atlantic/WEA Post-Grunge, Alternative Metal Various Artists Curt Cacioppo: Ancestral Passage MSR Classics Contemporary Chamber Music Various Artists Eccentric Soul: The Tragar & Note Labels Numero Southern Soul, Soul Various Artists Wagner: The Great Operas from the Bayreuth Festival Decca Romantic Opera Watermelon Slim & the Workers No Paid Holidays Northern Blues Contemporary Blues, Folk-Blues, Country Blues, Electric Country Blues, Electric Blues, Modern Acoustic Blues, Acoustic Blues The Watson Twins Fire Songs Historic Americana, Alternative Country, Indie Rock New CD Album Releases, 6-17-2008: Coldplay, Judas Priest, Mick Hucknall
First off, the #1 album in the country and biggest new release comes from Enemies of the People Coldplay, with their Viva la Vida album, produced by Brian Eno. It is exactly for the avoidance of corruptions of the purity of the essence of our bodily fluids through such awful albums as this that Coldplay must eventually face The People's Justice via a visit to Camp Mimi. Some think Mariah Carey is public enemy #1, but some of us believe that it is Coldplay. Having heard most of the album, I couldn't identify a single hook. That is just as well, cause there's nothing in any of these songs that I'd really WANT to remember. Some of it comes out as your typical pitiful poopie-lickin' Coldplay piano ballads. The ones where you could more hear the Brian Eno electronica stuff pretty much sound like imitation generic Radiohead. Why paying customers would rather listen to this when they could be just as easily listening to, say, the sound of nails scraping across a blackboard, I haven't a clue. Ever lovin' Judas Priest are back this week with their 500th album Nostradamus. Listening to it, some of this stuff would be an embarassment to Spinal Tap. Nigel Tufnel would feel foolish singing some of these lyrics. The epic title song establishes that Nostradamus was an all time heavy metal badass, among other things the hand of fate and the voice of God. This album ain't much but the manly charge of it definitely rates it more listenable than Coldplay. Mick Hucknall of Simply Red makes an interesting move with Tribute to Bobby. For his first official solo album, he has recorded a tribute album covering the repertoire of his soul-singing hero Bobby "Blue" Bland. Here's the listing of this week's new album releases, courtesy AMG: Coldplay Viva la Vida Capitol Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock Katy Perry One of the Boys Capitol Teen Pop, Pop/Rock Silver Jews Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea Drag City Alternative Country-Rock, Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock Dennis Wilson Pacific Ocean Blue [Legacy Edition] Sony Legacy Pop/Rock Wolf Parade At Mount Zoomer Sub Pop Indie Rock Adem Takes Domino Indie Pop, Alternative Folk Tha Azure Ensemble Invisible Curve New World Contemporary Chamber Music Basses Reunies Francesco Geminiani: Sonates pour violoncello avec la basse continue Alpha Baroque Chamber Music Blood Raw My Life the True Testimony Def Jam Southern Rap, Gangsta Rap David BowieLive in Santa Monica '72 EMI Pop/Rock, Glam Rock, Album Rock, Hard Rock, Experimental Rock, Prog-Rock/Art Rock, Proto-Punk Chicago Stone of Sisyphus: XXXII Rhino Pop/Rock, Adult Contemporary Jason Falkner Bedtime with the Beatles, Vol. 2 Adrenaline Pop Underground, Indie Pop, Chamber Pop, Alternative Pop/Rock From Autumn to Ashes Live at Looney Tunes Vagrant Screamo, Power Metal, Emo Kathy Griffin For Your Consideration Sony Standup Comedy Kelly Harland Long Ago and Far Away: Kelly Harland Sings Jerome Kern Origin Vocal Jazz, American Popular Song Rebecca Lynn Howard No Rules Time Life Retro-Soul, Pop-Soul, Contemporary Country, Country-Rock, Blues-Rock, Rock & Roll Mick Hucknall Tribute to Bobby [CD/DVD] Rhino Blue-Eyed Soul, Adult Contemporary Jersey Babys Jersey Babys: The Music of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons for Kids Rhino Lullabies Judas Priest Nostradamus Epic New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Album Rock, British Metal, Heavy Metal, Hard Rock King Khan & the Shrines The Supreme Genius of King Khan & the Shrines Vice Garage Rock Revival, Garage Punk Gladys Knight & the Pips Claudine/Pipe Dreams Shout! Factory Pop-Soul, Funk, Soul Chante Moore Love the Woman Peak Urban, Contemporary R&B My Brightest Diamond A Thousand Shark's Teeth Asthmatic Kitty Dream Pop, Indie Rock NOMO Ghost Rock Ubiquity Experimental Rock, Jazz-Funk, Modern Creative, Funk, Jazz-Rock, Dub, Afro-Beat, Kraut Rock The Notwist The Devil, You + Me Domino Indie Electronic, Indie Rock The Offspring Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace Columbia Alternative Pop/Rock, Punk Revival Fabrizio Ottaviucci Terry Riley: Keyboard Studies 1 & 2; Tread on the Trail Stradivarius Contemporary Piano Music Quartetto Savinio Cherubini: Complete String Quartets Stradivarius Classical Chamber Music Quattro Mani Kindred Spirits Bridge Contemporary Piano Music Original Score Get Smart [2008 Score] Varese Sarabande Original Score Ponytail Ice Cream Spiritual! We Are Free Indie Rock, Post-Rock/Experimental Prima J Prima J Geffen Dance-Pop, Urban Reggie and the Full Effect Last Stop: Crappy Town Vagrant Screamo, Indie Rock Rehab Sittin' at a Bar Epic Rap-Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, Southern Rap Diana Ross Everything Is Everything [Bonus Tracks] Hip-O Select Motown, Soul Sebadoh Bubble & Scrape Sub Pop Indie Rock, Lo-Fi, Alternative Pop/Rock Teddy Thompson A Piece of What You Need Verve Forecast Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Contemporary Singer/Songwriter Tilly and the Wall O Team Love Indie Pop 2 Pistols Death Before Dishonor Republic Hardcore Rap Dan Tyminski Wheels Rounder Neo-Traditional Folk, Contemporary Bluegrass, Traditional Bluegrass The War on Drugs Wagonwheel Blues Secretly Canadian Indie Rock New CD Album Releases, 6-10-2008: Emmylou Harris, Alanis Morissette, Walter Becker
 Emmylou Harris was just this year inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. It's about damned time. All I Intended to Be is the second Emmylou Harris album on Nonesuch, and the #2 seller currently at Amazon.Bill Payne of Little Feat and Dolly Parton are among the associates playing on this album. Brian Ahern produced this. He's a veteran Emmylou producer, responsible for among others Blue Kentucky Girl. Along with her own compositions, she does the Billy Joe Shaver classic "Old Five and Dimers Like Me" and songs by Patty Griffin and Merle Haggard. Circus Money is the first solo album from Walter Becker of Steely Dan in some 14 years, and his second ever. Hey, quality before quantity.  Personally, I tend to be a little skeptical of the cheesy girly psychodrama that Alanis Morissette is known for. Plus, she's apparently writing her diary entries/songs for a recent big breakup. I'm probably just not the target market.Yet for all that, I've been listening to some of this album, and digging it pretty much. I've heard eight songs from this new Flavors of Entanglement, and they all seem to have at least a little of something to them. Some of the arrangements seem somewhat modern rock generic, but "Incomplete" is a nicely forceful wish and prayer. "Citizen of the Planet" is fairly catchy. I don't know if I'll remember this a month from now, but it's striking me as fairly listenable at the moment. Here's the listing of this week's new album releases, courtesy AMG:  Walter BeckerCircus Money 5 Over 12 Jazz-Rock, Pop/Rock, Soft Rock Jakob Dylan Seeing Things Sony Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Singer/Songwriter The Fratellis Here We Stand Cherry Tree/Interscope/Island Indie Rock  Emmylou HarrisAll I Intended to Be Nonesuch Alternative Country, Contemporary Country Joan as Policewoman To Survive Reveal Alternative Singer/Songwriter, Indie Rock Lil Wayne Tha Carter III Universal Motown Southern Rap, Hardcore Rap Alanis Morissette Flavors of Entanglement Maverick Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative Singer/Songwriter My Morning Jacket Evil Urges ATO Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative Country-Rock, Neo-Psychedelia Adele 19 [Bonus CD] Sony Adult Alternative Pop/Rock Afroman Greatest Hitz Live Siccness.net Underground Rap, Alternative Rap, Comedy Rap, West Coast Rap Priscilla Ahn A Good Day Blue Note Contemporary Singer/Songwriter, Contemporary Folk The Bangkok Five We Love What Kills Us Megaforce Alternative Pop/Rock, Hard Rock The Beach Boys US Singles Collection Box: The Capitol Years 1962-1965 Capitol Surf, Pop, Sunshine Pop, Rock & Roll Jiri Belohlavek Martinu: Violin Concerto No. 2; Toccata & due Canzoni Harmonia Mundi Modern Chamber Music Haley Bonar Big Star Afternoon Indie Rock The Boxmasters The Boxmasters Vanguard Psychedelic Pop, Truck Driving Country, Americana, Alternative Country-Rock, Bakersfield Sound, Honky Tonk, Roots Rock, Rockabilly, Country-Rock The Bridges Limits of the Sky Verve Forecast Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock Solomon Burke Like a Fire Shout! Factory Deep Soul, Southern Soul, Country-Soul The Charlatans UK You Cross My Path [Deluxe Edition] Cooking Vinyl British Trad Rock, Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Britpop, Alternative Pop/Rock Gene Clark Silverado '75: Live & Unreleased Collectors' Choice Music Folk-Rock, Baroque Pop, Country-Rock Marcus Creed Bruckner: Mass in E minor; Motets [Hybrid SACD] Haenssler Classic Post-Romantic Choral Music Crusaders Live in Japan 2003 Pra Crossover Jazz, Jazz-Pop, Jazz-Funk Gas Nah und Fern Kompakt Ambient Techno, Techno, Experimental Techno, IDM Jeff Gauthier House of Return Cryptogramophon Free Improvisation, Avant-Garde Jazz, Modern Free, Modern Creative Guillemots Red Polydor Indie Pop, Alternative Pop/Rock Hil St. Soul Black Rose Shanachie Contemporary R&B, Urban Hiromi Beyond Standard Telarc Contemporary Jazz, Post-Bop, Fusion Freddie Hubbard On the Real Side (70th Birthday Celebration) Four Quarters/Times Square Post-Bop James Hunter The Hard Way Hear Music Retro-Soul, Blue-Eyed Soul The Infamous Stringdusters The Infamous Stringdusters Sugar Hill Contemporary Bluegrass Ahmad Jamal It's Magic Dreyfus Jazz Post-Bop KRS-One Maximum Strength Koch Hip-Hop, East Coast Rap, Hardcore Rap Patti LaBelle The Essential Patti LaBelle Philadelphia International/Le Soul, Urban Patti LaBelle Live in Washington D.C. Philadelphia International/Le Quiet Storm, Urban, Soul Love False Start Collectors' Choice Music Garage Rock, Folk-Rock, Psychedelic, Baroque Pop Love Out There Big Beat Garage Rock, Folk-Rock, Psychedelic, Baroque Pop Janiva Magness What Love Will Do Alligator Contemporary Blues, Modern Electric Blues, Soul-Blues Manfred Mann The Hit Man: Essential Singles 1963-1969 Raven Pop/Rock, British Invasion, Pop, Rock & Roll Sergio Mendes Encanto Concord Brazilian Jazz, Latin Jazz, Urban, Bossa Nova, Latin Pop Montgomery Gentry Back When I Knew It All Sony Contemporary Country, Southern Rock, Country-Rock N.E.R.D. Seeing Sounds Interscope Alternative Pop/Rock, Rap-Rock, Urban Carla Olson & the Textones Detroit 85: Live and Unreleased Collectors' Choice Music Country-Rock, Roots Rock, Americana Carla Olson & Mick Taylor Too Hot for Snakes Collectors' Choice Music Roots Rock, Country-Rock, Americana The Orb The Dream Six Degrees Ambient Dub, Club/Dance, Ambient House, Techno, Electronica Svoboda, Mike Phonometrie Wergo Modern Piano Music and Contemporary Vocal Music moderntimes_1800 Sinfonias from the Enlightenment Challenge Classics Baroque Chamber and Orchestral Music Original TV Soundtrack iCarly: Music from and Inspired by the Hit TV Show Sony Teen Pop, TV Soundtracks Pentemple 0))) Presents... Southern Lord Doom Metal, Noise, Post-Rock/Experimental Plies Definition of Real Big Gates/Slip-N-Slide/Atlant Southern Rap, Gangsta Rap Ponies in the Surf See You Happy Darla Indie Pop, Twee Pop Rev Theory Light It Up Interscope Post-Grunge, Hard Rock The Runaways The Runaways/Queens of Noise Raven Hard Rock Sloan Parallel Play Yep Roc Alternative Pop/Rock, Indie Rock Sparks Exotic Creatures of the Deep Lil Beethoven Pop/Rock, Indie Pop Mark Stewart Edit Crippled Dick/Hot Wax Post-Punk, Experimental Rock, Dub, Alternative Pop/Rock Styrofoam A Thousand Words Nettwerk Indie Electronic Supergrass Diamond Hoo Ha EMI Britpop, Alternative Pop/Rock Chip Taylor New Songs of Freedom Megaforce Folk-Rock, Singer/Songwriter, Country-Rock, Americana Tyga No Introduction Decaydance Pop-Rap Various Artists Cash Money Records: 10 Years of Bling, Vol. 2 Cash Money Southern Rap, Hardcore Rap, Gangsta Rap Various Artists Soirees musicales: Songs & Duets by Rossini Hyperion Romantic Vocal Music Martha Wainwright I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too Zoe Contemporary Singer/Songwriter, Alternative Folk, Folk-Pop Shannon Walker Shannon Walker DM Nashville Contemporary Singer/Songwriter, Contemporary Country Tony Joe White Deep Cuts Swamp/Red/Thirty Tigers Pop-Soul, Pop/Rock, Country-Pop, Country-Rock, Rock & Roll Cassandra Wilson Loverly Blue Note Vocal Jazz, Standards, Contemporary Jazz, Modern Creative Roy Wood Wizzard Brew [Bonus Tracks] EMI Pop/Rock, Prog-Rock/Art Rock, Glam Rock Dan Zanes Nueva York! Festival Five Modern Son, Norteno, Merengue, Cumbia, Bachata, Latin Folk _____________________________________ ALANIS MORISSETTE IMAGES    On hateful love
"Even putting a flower in the barrel of a gun is to a certain degree an act of cruelty. If you have someone whose job it is to follow orders and do their duty, and you taunt them for not being able to respond on a human level to an act like that, you're basically just lording your superiority over them. Love can be a hateful thing." -Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America  Prince Rogers Nelson at 50 Happy birthday, old man!  Prince Rogers Nelson was born 50 years ago today on June 7, 1958 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Those Who Know will tell you that he's perhaps the greatest all round musical threat in the modern (ie post-Elvis) era. As a songwriter, arran |
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