Author Archives: robert duffy

NEW YORK TIMES ON THE STROKES, ONE YEAR LATER

“Which is to say the Strokes are a better band than they were a year ago, maybe even more of a band, in the way that all sorts of ”brotherhoods” in the city — and not just firemen — seem tighter now. One rap that the members of the Strokes have had to endure is that they grew up privileged (in Upper Manhattan, mostly) and met at one or another private school and can’t possibly be, you know, authentic. But class got a little more complicated in New York after the trade center dead were tallied and described, and rock ‘n’ roll was never about authenticity anyway but about the contingencies of place and time, identity and pose, inspiration and drive. Who knows for how long, but for now, in New York, and not only in New York, the Strokes are for real.”

Read the full story here.

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I’m back from my quick vacation in Chicago. Great great times. Saw Victoria Williams, Ghost and El Guapa. All put on amazing shows. Should I move there one day? Maybe.

THE WAR ON TERRORISM IS DOPE

Hip hop strikes again:

“In an effort to be sure we are as cutting-edge as possible with our on-screen persona, please refer to this slang dictionary when looking for just the right phrase,” reads an internal Headline News memo obtained by the Daily News.

“Please use this guide to help all you homeys and honeys add a new flava to your tickers and dekos,” the memo continues, referring to the graphics that appear on the busy Headline News screen.

Read about it here.

FIVE ZILLION ELVIS FANS CAN’T BE WRONG

Elvis, Elvis, Elvis.

Congratulations, you’ve just hit #1 on the charts again. In the United States and 500 other countries. Read about it here.

Beck’s new record came in at number eight, so all isn’t wrong in the world. Right? RIGHT?

Look, I don’t have a problem with people buying Elvis. Good for him. Heck, I just bought the new Rolling Stones compilation, 40 Licks. I know what nostalgia is all about. I just wish that all these people that went hog wild over The King would check out some music that was made in the last 10 years. Is that too much to ask?

AXL ROSE ANNOUNCES TOUR
So Axl Rose and his new musicians who make up Guns N’ Roses have announced their fall tour. Now, maybe two months ago, I would have been really excited about this. Not today.

I’ve waited for a GNR reunion. I didn’t care who was in the band, to be honest, as long as Axl was in it. A guy who wears a KFC bucket on his head is now playing lead guitar? Fine, I don’t care! Vanilla Ice on drums? Bring it. As long as Axl was gonna be singing, I was going to be a happy little boy.

But then, GNR played the MTV Music Awards earlier this month, and all of these thoughts of rocking out to GNR live vanished. Their MTV performance were terrible. Axl was old, tired, and weak. All of my love, all of my anticipation of this tour, came crashing down faster than an Izzy Stradlin and the Ju Ju Hounds record.

Did this performance on MTV kill what could have been a reunion tour bigger than Springsteen and the E Street? This, I wonder.

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OH Columbus, my journal covering the Columbus Ohio music scene, continues to evolve into a beast of its own. I am scared of it.

Can’t Stop the Columbus Rock
Give this a click and read about my six nonstop hours of rock and roll in Columbus the other night. Special appearances from Queens of the Stone Age, Manda and the Marbles, Trail of Dead, and more. GO!

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On my way home from work yesterday, the radio station played “Loser” from Beck. Man, what a long way he’s come. Who would’ve known that the same guy would give us such a piece of perfection, “Sea Change”? It just goes to show you never can tell… Maybe one day Lifehouse or Limp Bizkit or even Britney Spears will make your favorite record.

The Good Ol’ Days: Spin.com
Back in the day, when I was a wee intern at New Jersey Online, I’d spend a good part of my day on Spin.com, the website for the magazine. They had a bunch of original content, including this one area where they’d write about interesting websites. Me and Charleskid wasted a lot of time on this site.

For most of 2001 and 2002, the site was dead. Nothing new. But today, I decided to see what was doin’, and hee haw! Was I surprised!

Looks like Yahoo! gobbled up Spin’s online service, and has attached it to their other music product, Launch (which is actually pretty good). But this new Spin is pretty clunky and sucky. See for yourself.

Another one gone.

From Neil Gaiman’s online journal:

“I wrote a short story for Tori’s tourbook today. It’s called Pages from a Journal Found in a Shoebox Left in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Louisville, Kentucky. It’s sort of about Scarlet’s Walk (the album, the concept and the story) and it’s sort of about a lot of other things, including the fragility of identity. It’s just a little over a thousand words, but I think it works. I may even put it in the next short story collection.”

While I no longer get excited about new Tori Amos records, this seems pretty cool.

The left rail of this page is going to be a testing ground for some time. I’m playing around with what you can do with the Amazon.com Affiliate Program. Basically, the site gets a teeny weeny percentage of any sales that may happen if you buy something through Amazon after clicking on a link. Get rich quick this is not.

Demolition Derby
Do you think a lot of magazines will use ‘Demolition Derby’ as the title of their review of the new Ryan Adams’ record, “Demolition?” I bet they will.

In the meantime, you can listen to the entire album via Real Audio. Thanks to those fine folks at Netscape Music.

New Beck Album
I was able to get my filthy, dirty little hands on the new Beck album, “Sea Change.” I’ve listened to it over and over again. Can’t get enough of it. It’s more “Mutations” than it is “Midnite Vultures,” but it’s so much more than that. A friend of mine said this about the new record to me via IM the other day: “This new album from Beck is so pretty it makes me sad.”

There’s nothing I could write that would sum up the record better than that one single sentence.