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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Never one to shy away from political haughtiness of his own, folk-punk troubadour Billy Bragg has chimed in on the Morrissey “not a racist” PR scandal via The Guardian’s editorial pages. Bragg lightly slaps Morrissey for stirring up drama when the former Smiths singer knows good and well everything he said was caught on tape. Morrissey [...]

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Frieze Magazine (future issue for Jan 08) features a back and forth between Ann Powers, chief pop critic for the Los Angeles Times, and Simon Reynolds discussing the past year in music, from feminism to the handcrafted underground.

That’s certainly a more positive angle on the state of (women in) pop. Perhaps what really pains me [...]

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To complete the circle, somewhat. A while back I asked if anyone had ever heard Eno’s Music For Airports playing in, well, an airport. Pat, lacking access to a specific Music For Airports playing airport, decides to bring Music For Airports with him to an airport of his choosing.

I figured that I could [...]

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Prince is an asshole. I’ve never heard of a celebrity who made it so difficult to be a fan. He won’t even let his fans call themselves fans. They’re “fams.” Now he’s threatening to sue said “fams” for posting pictures their tattoos if they bear his royal likeness. What a cock. I realize Prince has always restricted access [...]

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Win Butler of Arcade Fire wrote a lucid and unpretentious letter in response to Sasha Frere-Jones’ controversial piece that ran in The New Yorker recently regarding race and indie rock. Butler accompanied his letter with an audio response mp3, which included samples of Arcade Fire’s music to support his points:
“Being as I am in [...]

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I honestly can’t complain too much about this arbitrary list of the 11 best Joy Division songs, even with some unsurprising balkers making some noise. I’d probably jumble the order around a bit, while, perhaps, swapping out one or two selections, but, overall, it’s nothing to get a Joy Division fan’s dander up. Control opens [...]

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Something like 75% of Condé Nast’s most venerable publication’s readership - the always studious, perpetually thorough The New Yorker - doesn’t even live on the island they’re reading about. (Shit, I live worlds apart in Columbia, South Carolina and still can’t bring myself to cancel my subscription.) When it comes to art, music, theatre and [...]

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Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty’s Babyshambles have collaborated on a new song. Just being in the same room with these two people at the same time would in all likelihood cause any innocent bystander to imbibe heaps of illegal substances, while indirectly catching a contact high of considerable measure. By some miracle, Winehouse, Doherty, and his bandmates [...]

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A formula has been developed by a senior lecturer in mathematics at England’s University of Southhampton to determine and process “the ethical and aesthetic implications of any one instance of the pervasive blurring of the lines between rock and advertising. The formula kicks out a number that could be used to determine just how much [...]

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Despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews for In Raindbows, Radiohead’s seventh studio album, MTV has evidently scoured the Internet to try to find some negative reactions to the much-hyped download. The negativity stems from the bitrate at which Radiohead allowed In Rainbows to be encoded. 160 kbps is considered sub-par by any remotely educated audiophile’s standards, but with a download [...]

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Simon Reynolds clearly understands Joy Division’s music, mystery, and cultural significance, as evidenced by his impressive review of Anton Corbijn’s biopic, Control, in yesterday’s New York Times. In fact, there are few other writers I’d want to read on the subject:
“Yet there’s one crucial factor mentioned in Touching From a Distance that ‘Control’ strangely ignores: [...]

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I understand the desire to move forward as a band, so if you’re going to try to be around for multiple decades it only makes sense to experiment wildly. I just don’t know that the transparent use of a flavor-of-the-month producer is the way to go. Madonna hops on the whatever’s hot train every time [...]

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I realize it’s some times shitty to be in a touring band. You don’t really make that much money, unless your selling out stadiums the world over. Everybody’s downloading your album, so your CD’s just collect dust at the merch table. But, artists are supposed to have it rough. My sympathy only extends so far. But [...]

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