Dead brings downloads back to life
Well that was brief. It looks like The Grateful Dead has listened to the backlash from their fans and decided to let the Internet Archive host live concert recordings after all.
Band spokesman Dennis McNally said the group was swayed by the backlash from fans, who for decades have freely taped and traded the band’s live performances.
“The Grateful Dead remains as it always has — in favor of tape trading,” McNally said.
He said the band consented to making audience recordings available for download again, although live recordings made directly from concert soundboards, which are the legal property of the Grateful Dead, should only be made available for listening from now on.
Is it me or is that last sentence confusing as hell? I have a feeling that it’s just a clueless AP writer confusing the term “listening” with “purchase.” I can see how they’d make that mistake. If that’s the case, it’s basically what I said yesterday. But I’m not sure what the Dead’s soundboard policy was. Some bands allow limited access to the soundboard for taping. I don’t know if the Dead was one of them. If they allowed fans to tap the soundboard, it would still be a fan recording, and probably no different legally than if a fan brought his tape rig into the concert. I think that what this really means is that live soundboard recordings made by the band are not legal for sharing. That’s perfectly normal.
After all the shoddy reporting is sorted out, the fact remains that the band is a swell bunch of guys for allowing taping and trading. It helped build the community among the fans, even if the fans are smelly hippies.
DIY ethic and beautiful music
Damien DeRose, aka Peasant, is a 20-year-old musician with something to say and the drive to succeed in saying it. I first met Damien on Myspace, when I started my most recent productions company, world-at-large.productions. I was looking for singer/songwriter types for a showcase I wanted to do and Damien sent me his first CD, “Sow and Scatter”. It didn’t wow me, but I thought his sound would be well-recieved at the showcase I was putting together, so I gave him a call. Continues after the jump »
Well shiver me timbers, it’s a sequel!
The only thing better than all these holiday movies are all the trailers for next summer’s big budget blockbusters that appear with them. Yahoo! has the trailer for Disney’s latest theme park ride to become a movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
It doesn’t look terrible. In fact, it looks pretty much like more of the first one. The original wasn’t the best movie ever, but Johnny Depp is infinitely entertaining as Captain Jack Sparrow, and Keira Knightley is hot beyond hot. The squidbeard guy in the trailer looks really cool, but I can’t help thinking that I’ve seen him somewhere before.
Unfortunately Keith Richards won’t be making an appearance, as was originally planned, but while it’s always fun to laugh at the Rolling Stones, I don’t think he would have contributed much to the movie.
They’re filming this one and a third one simultaneously, so you can expect even more swashbuckling in 2007.
Less Oprah, more Uma
Yup it’s been awhile, but Bonnie Raitt will finally make a return appearance to “Late Show with David Letterman” tonight on CBS at 11:35 p.m. ET.
Wait. My bad. I mean Oprah. Oprah Winfrey will be making HER return appearance to “Late Show with David Letterman” tonight. I always get those two mixed up.
As a result, the Earth will stop rotating on its axis for 20 minutes.
It’s been 16 cold years since the two appeared together on a Letterman talk show. Back then, Dave was still on NBC and actually cared about his job, while Oprah was going through the latest fad diet I’m guessing. Continues after the jump »
ArmaGit-R-Dun!
This nicely sums up what I think of the whole ‘Blue Collar’ comedy movement.
Though Cross, like always, comes off as a little high-falutin’, he addresses the idea that “Larry the Cable Guy tells it like it is” with a clarity and intuitiveness that few have taken to the situation as of yet. This is something that a lot of people that defend him fail to understand: it has more to do with the idea behind what is said than what is actually said. How can someone, whose whole act is dedicated to being a character - essentially a living lie - be the voice of honesty?
From time to time we look towards media for truths, and the argument could be made that it is just the same as listening to something you hear in a song or film as the truth, but I don’t agree with that. There is another factor at large here: that Dan Whitney takes his character and makes him live amongst us, while we KNOW that characters in a film are just that. Because of this people take a greater weight to what he says than if he was just some guy they saw in a Jeff Foxworthy TV show. There is a difference between the way they use language, and sadly, Whitney makes himself out to be a bit of an ass with his half-informative rant.
I would honestly like to see a debate between these two. A real debate, discussing the real ideas that go in to what is written and what they choose to present when they take the stage. Not in some perverse hope that Whitney would make an ass of himself and Cross could be carried off to the Lower East Side on the shoulders of his hipster fanbase, because I don’t want to see that happen. I know for a fact that Whitney is a nice guy. I just think he’s (incredibly) misguided.
Misguided all the way to the bank, but hey, can’t win ‘em all.
Please, don’t stop there!
So it looks like Matt LeBlanc’s reign of terror MIGHT be coming to an end. As reported by the AP, “Joey”, the show that made us all search for hemlock, is being (at least for now) removed from the airways.
This hopefully is just the first step. As it says in the article, they are likely going to bring this show back on Tuesdays or something. Please, write your congressman! Write to NBC and tell them no! This show should dissappear forever.
Matt LeBlanc will bear much of the blame, but it is really not his fault. When you have an ensemble cast, choosing who to spin off is tough. The most obvious thing is, DON’T CHOOSE THE DUMBEST MOST ONE-DIMENTIONAL CHARACTER!
Now I’ll admit, when I first heard Frasier was getting his own show, I was like, “What? Norm is funnier!” But I was a little kid, and honestly, can you picture a show just about Norm? What could you do with that character? He could find another bar, I suppose. Then he would drink beer… in a place where no on knew his name? Seriously, the characters to build a show around should be halfway intelligent, so you can have good stories built around them. Multi-dimensional characters always work better than one trick ponies.
So good bye Joey…for now.
Saint or Sinner?
Scott Stapp was recently invited to co-host Spike TV’s “Casino Cinema”, one of the 10,000 movie shows that plays a movie and break for vignettes that center around some theme, in this case gambling. (I personally prefer TBS’s “Dinner and a Movie”, but that’s probably due to the fact that I am a fat guy and really REALLY like to eat!) Turns out that Mr. “Arms Wide Open” Stapp likes to hit the bottle… and hard.
Maybe rocker Scott Stapp - former front man for the very pious Christian rock band Creed - was possessed by Satan when he showed up for a taping of the Spike TV show “Casino Cinema” on Tuesday afternoon.
According to multiple sources on the set, the 32-year-old Stapp appeared intoxicated when he arrived at the show’s upper East Side studio and proceeded to terrorize hosts Beth Ostrosky and Steve Schirripa, the producers and the crew members alike with his boorish and vulgar antics on- and off-camera.
Porn stars
- The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
- Vancouver band bares it all in their latest effort, a tasty slice of indie pie.
- Buy it on Amazon
- Download it at iTunes
The New Pornographers’ Carl Newman must be a cool guy to get drunk with in a bar.
Judging by the way he experiments with his music – employing an ever-growing lineup of talented musicians and a bevy of instruments ranging from guitars to pump organs and e-bows – I bet there’s not a pick-up line he hasn’t used, or wouldn’t at least consider. And if you’ve ever been around this type of personality, you know how interesting it can be, successful or not.
Twin Cinema, an impressive mélange of quirky songwriting and unusual musical arrangements and harmonies, is The New Pornographers’ latest CD and Newman’s grandest figurative attempt at picking up the hottest babe in the joint.
Luckily for him (and us), he scores.
Luscious ‘Lost’ lushes lose licenses
Associated Press is reporting that police in Hawaii nabbed ‘Lost’ actresses Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros on drunken-driving charges.
Michelle Rodriguez, who plays Ana Lucia, and
Cynthia Watros, who portrays Libby, were arrested in separate cars within 15 minutes of each other in Kailua after they were spotted weaving on Pali Highway, which connects Kailua and Honolulu, police said. Both women failed field sobriety tests, they said.Watros was arrested at 12:05 a.m. and Rodriguez at 12:20 a.m., according to police records.
Lay off the road sodas, kids.
Video game violence isn’t just for kids anymore
For those of you that can’t get enough of the government legislating good parenting, finally there’s some good news.
I was reading today’s “Daily Variety,” and I noticed… oh wait, for those of you who don’t know, that’s the newspaper to all of us soulless Hollywood hacks. Anyway, there was an article about video game violence. It seems that Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman are trying to get legislation moving that would make it illegal to sell video games rated M or AO to minors. I knew that M stands for “Mature”, but I had to look up AO to find out what it stood for. You can see for yourself here. I was wrong in my guess of “About Orgasms.”
These days, the violence portrayed in video games has become fairly realistic, at least compared to the good old days. In modern games you can take pleasure in shooting innocent bystanders, watch them writhe in agony, and then finish them off, still finding time to sleep with prostitutes. I guess the lawmakers feel that this is not something kids should be seeing as part of their play time. Continues after the jump »
