Author Archives: Craig Ness

Whether or not you’re a fan of The Polyphonic Spree…follow this link.

Check out this Beatles video done in flash. The graphics look like a Beatles video game. Or a modern day version of a Peter Max cartoon.

This Thursday at 9:00, PBS airs a documentary on the state of the music industry; specifically how the fat cats’ profits have been spiraling downwards. One dramatic stat: “[Yearly] sales have fallen from $40 billion to $28 billion in just three years”

Thankfully, while sales of shitty music flatten, the good guys are going strong.

More info on the PBS show is here.

A note from Trey Anastasio on Phish’s website:

…we all love and respect Phish and the Phish audience far too much to stand by and allow it to drag on beyond the point of vibrancy and health. We don’t want to become caricatures of ourselves, or worse yet, a nostalgia act. By the end of the meeting, we realized that after almost twenty-one years together we were faced with the opportunity to graciously step away in unison, as a group, united in our friendship and our feelings of gratitude.

Their last shows will be this summer culminating in August with their Coventry music festival in Vermont. Scalpers are rubbing their hands together.

By now, you’ve probably seen the press about the collaboration of Loretta Lynn and Jack White for her upcoming release, “Van Lear Rose.” The pairing came about after “The Whites” dedicated their album “White Blood Cells” to Lynn.

Lynn’s album is released this Tuesday and I just heard some MP3s. I have to say that I’m digging the songs. Given White’s presence on the project, I think this album will easily cross out of the country barrier and into rock territories.

So is this kind of cross-pollination a good thing for music? Sometimes. I thought that Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails was beautiful and adapted perfectly to the feelings of an aging music legend.

And in this case, White is obviously involved out of passion and personal interest in the influences of country and blues as predecessors to rock. He plays guitar on every song and duets with Lynn on a track called “Portland, Oregon.” His bluesy guitar riffs are a perfect background for the dark subject matter of the lyrics — which include songs about death row and the feeling of being a widower.

It’s all enough to make me want to visit my video store and ask them to dust off a copy of “Coalminer’s Daughter” for me.

Download some MP3s and see more about how the collaboration came to be at this link.

The re-launched version of MP3.com is taking shape with a beta site at music.download.com. CNET is calling the new product “Download.com Music.” For now, its only function is for artists to register and submit their music to be considered for inclusion on the site. It looks like it will be a free resource ala CNET’s download.com for software.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out when the public version is launched. In my eyes, a free, reliable, high-exposure online venue for independent and unsigned bands is a good thing.

There’s an active message board right around here.

“Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy canceled a European promotional trip for the band’s new album last week to check himself into a Chicago rehab clinic.

Tweedy has had a long history of migraines, and has unsuccessfully battled them with prescription painkillers. In response to the rehab stint, Wilco’s Nonesuch label has postponed release of the band’s fifth album, “A Ghost is Born,” by two weeks, to June 22.” (full story)

Elliott Smith’s family is selling his studio. Their preference is to sell everything as a package deal to someone who will respect the space and the equipment.

Details are here.

This Sunday, millions of bloated, drunk people will see the RIAA get smeared by a Pepsi ad.

As reported in Signal to Noise, Pepsi will be running a SuperBowl ad to tout its 100 million song download giveaway in conjunction with Apple’s iTunes.

The beauty is that the ad will feature “16 real-life teenagers who were sued by the recording industry for illegally downloading music from the Internet”.

The press release is here.