Jess Harvell’s piece on The Misfits’ relationship to New Jersey earlier this week sparked some debate from out-of-state residents over which musicians deserved to be elevated to bard status as far as their respective homelands went. I wouldn’t try to speak for all of New York, because, well, doing so would be just silly (plus I think that as someone who still calls Rockland County “upstate” from time to time I’d be disqualified from that particular panel by anyone living north of the Bronx). But I do have one nominee for Long Island’s most mythical artist… and it’s not Billy Joel. More »

Some things to read while lamenting the fact that you didn’t get tickets to Al Fest…


• The Red Hot Chilli Pipers. I guess the extra “l” is for extra lawsuit protection—pity they couldn’t take a similar tack with peoples’ ears. [Official site; HT (?) Ned Raggett]


• Jay-Z’s hatred of Autotune has been great for business, says Antares Audio Technologies VP of marketing Marco Alpert. “We make no value judgments on how people use our product… it’s a tool to be used by the people who buy it, and we’re happy when consumers find new uses for it.” That includes blowing it up in music videos, FYI. [Bits] More »

I really, really wish that I liked “Get Sexy,” the first single from the Sugababes’ forthcoming attempt to Break Big In The States (Finally), a bit more than I do, because all I can see are weird references to the girls being bound and confined in the song’s attendant video. Like on the chorus, the setting of which brings to mind parallels the Spinal Tap scene where Derek Smalls gets trapped in a cocoon—perhaps a sly way of commenting on being trapped into having to regurgitate Right Said Fred verses for the purposes of grabbing fickle American ears? Clip after the jump. More »

The video for Van Hunt’s “At The End Of A Slow Dance” is coming out some three years after its parent album was released, but who said timeliness was the most important thing when it came to consuming pretty good music? Especially during the waning hours of a Friday? This track is certainly getting me revved up to head on out of here. Also, I will give a big shiny gold star to the first commenter who can correctly identify the Internet-beloved band that this song reminded me of a lot. Clip after the jump. More »

Well, despite my best efforts, that rumor about Kanye West campaigning to be King Of Pop in the wake of Michael Jackson’s passing really took off, thanks to our hypermediated, hyperconnected world being mostly devoid of fact-checkers. So the story finally, inevitably reached Kanye himself today—via Wendy Williams’ radio show—and he posted his thoughts on the whole thing to his blog: More »

Before Simon Cowell was an obscenely paid, tart-tongued TV personality, he was a hungry young Englishman who wanted to make it big in the music business. Which is why, in 1982, he appeared on Top Of The Pops dressed up as Wonderdog, a canine who barked along with a dance track called—what else?—“Ruff Mix.” Sure, it was probably easier for him to stay in character with a gigantic dog-mask over his head, but he does stay in character, which must have contributed somewhat to its reaching No. 31 on the UK singles charts. Clip (which has the hallucinogenic veneer of a VHS tape that’s been molding away in a drawer for the past 27 years) after the jump. More »

Nestled among the kid-centric covers of “Boom Boom Pow” and “1-2-3-4” on the forthcoming 16th (!) installment of Kidz Bop is a song called “LOL”—and no, it’s not a Trey Songz cover. It’s by Sinai Rose, and it sounds kind of like a lost Lil Mama track, with attitude all over the place, a super-distorted guitar that sounds lifted right out of Rebirth, and a chorus that turns the old “cell-phone interference” excuse into a directive to text, not talk. Also: lots of acronyms, some of which I can’t decode for the life of me. Is our children learning? Find out, after the jump. More »

Oh, this doesn’t sound very good: “RealNetworks, the majority owner of the Rhapsody online-music service, said credit-card rejections lowered subscribers in the second quarter. … Rhapsody subscriptions fell to 750,000 at the end of the period from 800,000 in the prior quarter, trimming music sales 8 percent.” Related: A recent poll of credit-card users in which 14% of respondents reported that their limits were lowered, while 33% had their credit ceilings raised. [Seattle Times via Fark] More »

The house in northern Vermont that served as a rural hideaway for Trey Anastasio, the rehabilitated leader of the reunited Phish, is up for sale. The five-bedroom, four-and-a-half bath, 3,926-square-foot estate, located about 20 minutes outside of Burlington, sits on 259 acres and has dramatic views of Mount Mansfield and Camel’s Hump, two of the highest peaks in Vermont. Asking price: $1,699,000. And there’s a wetbar! More »

From a review of the performance-art piece Why Won’t You Let Me Be Great!!!, which is about Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak and which had the man himself in attendance last night: “The evening became tense and uncomfortable when notorious (and buck-naked) performance artist Ann Liv Young confronted Kanye personally, shouting that she didn’t think 808s was his best work, all the while grinding barbeque pork into her naked crotch (and then eating it). We all know Kanye is no stranger to confrontation and controversy, so perhaps Liv Young was paying tribute to that?” Trying. So. Hard. Not. To. Make. A. “Special Sauce.” Joke… [MTV] More »