Tag: Music

Weirdest Thing on Twitter Ever

Today I learnt that in 1995 Iggy Pop reviewed Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for peer-reviewed academic journal Classics Ireland pic.twitter.com/a6dTtlqRer

— Hannah Rose Woods (@hannahrosewoods) January 3, 2021

Incongruous


This is Iggy Pop

Did you know that Iggy Pop was published in a peer reviewed journal? 

Not kidding.

He reviewed Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

I always knew that Pop was “eclectic”, but this is WAY more eclectic that I could possibly imagined.

Equally surprising is that when I did a Google search for peer reviewed articles published by Flaming Lips front-man Wayne Coyne, there is nothing.

In fact, I did a rather extensive series of searches, and could find no other Rock and Roller with a peer reviewed article.

Go figure.

My Family Just Got Tickets to the Defend The Majority Rally Featuring Vice President Mike Pence in Augusta Georgia

We aren’t going, so if someone wants to download the PDF and go in our place, you can download the PDF here.

You can also get a ticket at Evenbrite for yourself. It’s free. 

My suggestion is that if you go, you wear a K-Pop T-shirt, and when Mike Pence walks onto stage, start chanting, “How’d you launder the Saudi kickback money, Vice President Pence.”

Clearly, Young Skywalker Has Completed His Training

This is not just the best response to the debates, it’s the best possible response to the debates:

That debate was the worst thing I’ve ever seen & I was in The Star Wars Holiday Special.

— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) September 30, 2020

That being said, Weird Al Yankovic is a pretty close second:

It’s actually pretty impressive that he got together a song based on the actual event in such a short time.

Responsible Performers, How Do They F%$#Ing Work

There are performers out there live for their live shows, and whose fans also live for their live shows.

If you were to ask someone to name a band that fits this criteria, the first band most people would list would be The Grateful Dead.

The second band that comes to mind is Insane Clown Possee, and they just canceled this year’s ICP gathering to protect their health.

Good for them. Lord knows that this cannot be cheap for them:

It’s a bummer to have to report on all the stuff that’s getting postponed, which is why it brings us no joy to add this to the sadness pile:

Stale News Break… pic.twitter.com/IeYQwOMjr9

— Insane Clown Posse (@icp) April 22, 2020

The annual Gathering of the Juggalos is canceled until 2021 due to the coronavirus. While that shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point, it’s worth talking about what this does to the Juggalos. For the unfamiliar, the Juggalos are a group of people united in their love for the band Insane Clown Posse and discount soda. Over the years, and in response to the FBI’s unfair gang designation, they’ve taken a Fast & Furious “It’s all about family” approach in describing their group.

………

This festival is quite a big deal to the Juggalo community. They don’t waste time trying to bring it to New York or Los Angeles, instead choosing the Midwest as its hosting grounds like a trailer park Coachella (Not an insult BTW). That makes it even more impressive that The Gathering has been able to land some of the performers it has over the years (Ice Cube ain’t cheap.).

………

What’s of note here is that Juggalos tend to be blue-collar (or no collar) workers. The same type of people you may have noticed getting crapped on extra hard by current events. So while we really couldn’t give a shit about some rich silicon valley douche missing out on this year’s Burning Man, this kind of hits a little different.

The Gathering of the Juggalos is an independent event — they don’t have corporate sponsors telling them that they have to cancel anything. It seems like they’re genuinely doing this out of love for their Juggalo family. The tweet from ICP leaves us with a final uplifting message from Fred Fury, “You can’t replace what you mean to our team. Without you, tell me where the f%$# we’d be?”

(%$# mine)

This is f%$# load more concern for these people than their employers would ever show.

Today in Boneheaded Rent Seeking

The EU Court of Justice has ruled that rental car companies do not have to pay a license fee for the public performance of music when they rent a car, even though every car made today has a radio, and the drivers could theoretically play music on the radio.

These sort of outrageous claims are the rule, not the exception, because there are no penalties for attempting to promulgate this bullsh%$:

Performance Rights Organizations (PROs), sometimes known as “Collection Societies,” have a long history of demanding licensing for just about every damn thing. That’s why there was just some confusion about whether or not those with musical talents would even be allowed to perform from their balconies while in COVID-19 lockdown. And if you thought that it was crazy that anyone would even worry about things like that, it’s because you haven’t spent years following the crazy demands made by PROs, including demanding a license for a woman in a grocery store singing while stocking the shelves, a public performance license for having the radio on in a horse stable (for the horses), or claiming that your ringtone needs a separate “public performance” license, or saying that hotels that have radios in their rooms should pay a public performance license.

Five years ago, we wrote about another such crazy demand — a PRO in Sweden demanding that rental car companies pay a performance license because their cars had radios, and since “the public” could rent their cards and listen to the radio, that constituted “a communication to the public” that required a separate license. The case has bounced around the courts, and finally up to the Court of Justice for the EU which has now, finally, ruled that merely renting cars does not constitute “communication to the public.”

A reevaluation, and a roll-back of implicit and explicit subsidies related to IP needs to happen sooner, rather than later.

Adding to the List of They Who Must Not Be Named

I’ve never written about him before, but I need to add Kanye West to my list of they who must not be named, after he announced that he is changing his name to, “Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West”, and that he will run for President in 2024.

Normally, my list has exception for people who run for office, but in the case of Kanye, Imma let you finish, but unless you actually win a caucus or a primary, you are out of here.

Kanye West is now on my list of my list of They Who Must Not Be Named:

Kanye West knows what’s going to put him in the Oval Office in 2024 — he’s reaffirming his plans to run while revealing his platform and a name change … a huge one.

………

Ye also complained about Forbes’ reluctance to label him a billionaire and announced he’ll change his name to “Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West” … just to stick it to the outlet. 

 As near as I can tell, this is not some sort of performance art for a mockumentary.

Facial Recognition, How Does It F%$#ing Work?


The ICP Song Miracles, where the lyrics for the title come from

It appears that Juggalo makeup prevents facial recognition software fail:

Last year, Ticketmaster and LiveNation invested in a former military facial recognition company, with the hope that the technology could be used to both strengthen and speed up event entry. If that prospect thoroughly creeps you out, here’s a simple life-hack to defeat Big Brother: become a Juggalo. In a revelation that is sure to freak out the FBI, Insane Clown Posse’s passionate fan base have unintentionally unlocked the secret to thwarting facial recognition.

It turns out that Juggalos face makeup cannot be accurately read by many facial recognition technologies. Most common programs identify areas of contrast — like those around the eyes, nose, and chin — and then compare those points to images within a database. The black bands frequently used in Juggalo makeup obscure the mouth and cover the chin, totally redefining a person’s key features.

I’m considering wearing the makeup in my day to day life.

Nope, No Racism Here: Republicans in Maine Are pro Confederacy

The great state of Maine has adopted a new state ballad, which I guess is in addition to the state song.*

It honors the 20th Maine volunteer infantry regiment, which is best known for saving the Union at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg.

It appears that some Republicans in the state are objecting, because they feel that the song is insufficiently considerate of the sensitive feelings of the traitors on the other side:

With Governor Janet Mills’ signature today, the “The Ballad of the 20th Maine” became Maine’s official state ballad.

The stirring anthem recorded and performed by the band The Ghost of Paul Revere tells the story of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which fought for the Union Army under General Joshua Chamberlain in the American Civil War. The regiment is best known for its brave defense of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863.

………

The bill to enshrine the ballad was sponsored by Rep. Scott Cuddy (D-Winterport) and passed without objection in both chambers. It did see some initial opposition in the legislature’s State and Local Government Committee, however, where two Republicans raised objections that the song’s unabashedly pro-Union message may be unfair to the South.

“I find it a little bit, we are united states, we are not Union, we are united states. And I find it just a little bit – I won’t say offensive but that’s what I mean – to say that we’re any better than the South was,” said Rep. Frances Head (R-Bethel) during a May 1st public hearing on the bill.

“I am a lover of history and especially a lover of the civil war period and regardless of what side people fought on, they were fighting for something they truly believed in,” said Rep. Roger Reed (R-Carmel), who specifically praised Confederate General Robert E. Lee. “Many of them were great Christian men on both sides. They fought hard and they were fighting for states’ rights as they saw them.”

Let me translate:  “Great Christain men,” means let’s keep those n*****s from getting uppity.

………

Reed eventually voted in favor of the ballad legislation. Head voted against it.

They may represent a minority position, but the statements of these Republicans show just how far the Myth of the Lost Cause, a systematic effort to rehabilitate the racist legacy of the Confederacy, has spread. These objections were raised in Maine, which contributed a largest number of Union soldiers in proportion to its population of any state.

The American Civil War was fought on the issue of slavery. That’s the “state right” that Confederates were seeking to defend. To ignore or elide that history doesn’t just denigrate the sacrifices of our ancestors, but bolsters the resurgent white supremacist movement we’re seeing across our union today.

This is a feature, and not a bug of the modern Republican party and the myth of the lost cause serves their political agenda, even in Maine, where the 20th saved the Republic.

F%$# their bigoted small minds.

*Which is called, interestingly enough, State of Main Song.

My Life is a Lie

I just read that the death metal band Hatebeak, has released its 4th album in 12 years.

That doesn’t make my life a lie.

Neither does the fact that the lead singer is, “Waldo, a 21-year-old African grey parrot.”

What makes my life a lie is the fact that they are a, “Baltimore-based three-man studio project”, involving drummer Blake Harrison, guitarist Mark Sloan, and the aforementioned Waldo.

I have been living in the greater Baltimore area for 18 years, and I have never heard of Hatebeak.

Seriously, here is a a bit of Baltimore performance art that makes John Waters look like Pat Boone, and I was completely unaware.

What is wrong with me?

I could have had these guys play at Natalie’s or Charlie’s B’nei Mitzvah, if I had only known.

2 Face Palms Here

The RIAA is claiming that an ISP is inducing music piracy in court.

It appears that the amazingly high speeds offered by the provider are inducing piracy.  (facepalm 1)

Face Palm 2

The provider that they are accusing of  “dangerously fast” internet?  Charter Communications.

Charter communications is so bad that they WISH that they had Comcast, a company so reviled that it had to take the alias Xfinity.

The music industry is suing Charter Communications, claiming that the cable Internet provider profits from music piracy by failing to terminate the accounts of subscribers who illegally download copyrighted songs. The lawsuit also complains that Charter helps its subscribers pirate music by selling packages with higher Internet speeds.

While the act of providing higher Internet speeds clearly isn’t a violation of any law, ISPs can be held liable for their users’ copyright infringement if the ISPs repeatedly fail to disconnect repeat infringers.

………

The music labels’ complaint also seems to describe the basic acts of providing Internet service and advertising high speeds as nefarious:

Many of Charter’s customers are motivated to subscribe to Charter’s service because it allows them to download music and other copyrighted content—including unauthorized content—as efficiently as possible. Accordingly, in its consumer marketing material, including material directed to Colorado customers, Charter has touted how its service enables subscribers to download and upload large amounts of content at “blazing-fast Internet speeds.” Charter has told existing and prospective customers that its high-speed service enables subscribers to “download just about anything instantly,” and subscribers have the ability to “download 8 songs in 3 seconds.” Charter has further told subscribers that its Internet service “has the speed you need for everything you do online.” In exchange for this service, Charter has charged its customers monthly fees ranging in price based on the speed of service.

That paragraph from the music labels’ complaint merely describes the standard business model of Internet providers. There is nothing illegal about offering higher Internet speeds in exchange for higher prices.
But the labels also allege that Charter’s lax approach to copyright enforcement helped it earn more revenue, in part because piracy supposedly inspired consumers to subscribe to faster Internet tiers.

So basically, they are suing Charter for being an ISP, and they are suing Charter for being too fast.

If I didn’t know the RIAA, I would be convinced that they were punking the judge.

Damn, Peter Tork?

The Monkees’ bass player is dead at age 77:

Peter Tork, a blues and folk musician who became a teeny-bopper sensation as a member of the Monkees, the wisecracking, made-for-TV pop group that imitated and briefly outsold the Beatles, died Feb. 21. He was 77.

The death was announced by his official Facebook page, which did not say where or how he died. Mr. Tork was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare cancer affecting his tongue, in 2009.

There goes another bit of my childhood.

Please Credit Patti LuPone


Patti Lupone Owns This

Newly seated Representative Rashida Tlaib just gave a speech where she said, “We will impeach this Motherf%$#er.”

I appreciate the sentiments, but credit needs to be given to that legend of the Broadway Stage, Patti Lupone, who owns that in the same way that Mary Martin owned Peter Pan, Ethel Merman owned Annie Get Your Gun, and Carole Burnette owns Once Upon a Mattress, Angela Lansbury owns Sweeny Todd, and (of course) how Patti LuPone owns Evita.

Other actors can do the roles, and do them well, but they are standing on the shoulders of motherf%$#ing giants.

Rashida Tlaib, give a shout out to Patti LuPone.

And once, you have done that, impeach the motherf%$#er.