Federal authorities have reduced the copyright-infringement charges against Kevin “Skwerl” Cogill, who posted nine tracks from Chinese Democracy on his blog back in June, to the misdemeanor level in anticipation of the trial starting on Tuesday, according to Wired‘s Threat Level blog. There are also rumors that Cogill may strike a deal with the Feds; the prosecutor charged with the case declined to say if that was part of the reason why the charges were reduced, although Threat Level’s look at the difference between the felony copyright-infringement statute and its misdemeanor counterpart may hold a key:
The occasionally reliable NME reports today that Simon Cowell is kicking around the idea of purchasing England’s venerable Top of the Pops brand, which was largely abandoned by the BBC in 2006. While even the idea of a television show on a major network featuring “live” music from chart-topping acts (and nationalized health insurance) fills me with this-side-of-the-ocean jealousy, I have to wonder what a Cowell-captained TOTP would look like.
In a rather awkward exchange with E! Online, Joaquin Phoenix announced his decision to pack up his acting and head back to his new first true love, music. You know, the music that he’s loved to play ever since he learned how to strum the guitar for Walk the Line three years ago. It’s a hallowed path that young Phoenix takes, one blazed by the likes of Russell Crowe, Johnny Depp, and Keanu Reeves, not to mention his siblings River and Rain. And as you remember, all of them were beloved by millions for their music. Welcome to the biz, Joaquin Phoenix! It’s a great time to climb aboard this ship!
I ain’t gonna front: I am one of those too-old-for-this idiots who takes Halloween very seriously. To be fair, Athens is Halloween Bonkers: Every single person in town gets dressed up, from the frat boys to the homeless to the bitter, bitter townies. Like everything in my life, I treat it as a competition, and I usually do aight in terms of costumes. I’ve been a smashing Elton John a couple of times (unfortunately, there is a resemblance). I’ve been the Brawny Paper Towel Man and Robert Smith, and once, I was Pikachu in a costume made for eight-year-olds. Pikachu hid nothing that night.
In case you missed my impromptu live-blogging of the Beatles/MTV/Harmonix press conference: The Beatles catalog has been licensed by MTV and Harmonix for use in a video game that’s coming out late next year, and as of right now, the title will be a standalone game that will not bear the Rock Band brand. Harmonix noted its reticence toward doing Rock Band standalone products during the press conference and referred to this product as a “journey” through the Beatles catalog, from Please Please Me to Abbey Road. I guess they are taking it chronologically by recording date. (Or maybe they all just hate Let It Be.)
Those of you who haven’t bleached the last season of American Idol from your brains yet may remember Josiah Leming, the weepy Conor Oberst-y contestant who lived in his car in the weeks leading up to his audition and who got cut from the top 24 in favor of that former boybander who wore a wig in an effort to be “rock.” Well, things worked out OK for Leming in the end: He got snapped up by Reprise, and his debut album for the label is scheduled to be out sometime early next year… at least, if the Idol producers don’t drag him through a contractual loophole that forces him to be turned down by 19 Entertainment before he can do anything else. Because apparently humiliating him once wasn’t enough! Oh, and did I mention that his mom is dying of cancer?
A lot of you out there have probably heard about the sweaty, dayglo, incessantly referential shows put on by the apocalypse-anticipating laptop-slinger who goes by the stage name Girl Talk. You might be wondering, “Are these shows for me? Would I have a good time? Where would I keep my wallet and keys during the parts of the show where everyone in the audience takes their clothes off?” We sent Molly McAleer to two Girl Talk shows in Los Angeles this weekend in hopes of bringing our readers a field guide of sorts to their shows. After the jump, the fruits of her labor.
