Yearly Archives: 2004

Do good rock bands turn sucky pop songs awesome? Yes, yes they do.

Behold Gil Mantera’s Ultimate Party Dream‘s deliriously wonderful cover of Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me in hi-fi mp3.

Michael Jackson paid out approximately $25 million to settle a civil suit by a boy who accused him of molesting him in 1993.

Jeez-us kee-rist!

Courtney Love keeps smacking people and getting sued.

Ouch!

Prince is suing a guy who’s suing him for allegedly siccing the Prince Bodyguard Army? on the guy a while ago.

Does that even make sense. Is the above sentence properly punctuated? I have no idea. What I do know is that these are trying times, my friend. Trying times. Where’s Durst Watch when you need it?

From the looks of things, everyone who went to last night’s Darkness concert loved it.

Mr. Jobs makes the announcement. AOL teams with Apple to promote it. Unfortunately, the Euro-iTMS has “limited tracks” from independent artists…

Yes, it’s every bit as horrible as it sounds. Survivor creator Mark Burnett will be producing the reality show (scheduled to air in 2005) which follows INXS through the audition process of finding a new frontman.

Rock Star will differ from other TV talent shows in that the winner will not be chosen entirely by viewers. Instead, hopefuls will work with the band and music industry professionals, who will assess their performances. (full story)

Catbirdseat points out that Spoon two new Spoon demo MP3s on their official site.

Full details here. First Reagan, then Ray Charles, now Beulah.

When everyone buys their legitimate copies of the new Beastie Boys album, don’t go expecting to copy it onto your iPods or computers because it won’t work. Apparantly the band has added some digital rights managemen allowing the CDs to not play in your computers.

The Beastie Boys’ new CD, To the Five Boroughs, has DRM on it that prevents you from ripping it or making a copy for your car. I got the MP3s last week — it’s a great album — and was going to buy the CD while I’m in the US this week, but now I think I’ll just erase the MP3s and not bother. If the Beasties wanna treat me like a crook, I don’t want to be their customer.

Note that the only thing that this DRM is doing here is pissing off the honest fans who want open CDs; the DRM on the CD didn’t stop my source from making me a set of MP3s. In other words, if you plan on listening to the new disc on your iPod or laptop, you’re better off downloading a copy made by a cracker and posted on Kazaa — if you buy it in a shop, you’re going to have to go through the lawbreaking rigamarole of breaking the DRM yourself. (full story)

Discuss this thing here, in our message board.

In other news, did anyone else notice the G I G A N T I C FBI symbol and warning on the back of the new Sonic Youth album, warning us about not copying the record? There’s a smaller one on the PJ Harvey album, too.

I am thinking that maybe we should just not have any album artworks at all, just a barcode!! The RIAA can also sell different versions of an album. “This CD Only Plays in Car Stereos” and “This CD Only Plays in Walkmen” and “This CD Only Plays in 1996 Boom Boxes.” WHILE WE’RE AT IT, I hope the RIAA can develop technology that makes the CD self destruct after one listen.

That will make everything better in the world.

UPDATE: Some people are saying this DRM is not on the US and UK releases, while others have said they’ve purchased US versions and they’re not working in computers. So stay tuned on this one.

Ryan Adams shut down his website last month to mark the end of Friends. However, NME has just reported that the site is back up in some fashion. Click to ryan-adams.com where you’ll find a photo of a jukebox and 13 song titles that, when clicked, play. These recordings have never been properly released though Adams enthusiasts probably have heard most of these songs as they are on the widely-spread “Exile on Franklin Street” bootleg.