An awesome little project, via Danny:

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.
3. The third picture in Flickr's Interesting Photos From The Last 7 Days will be your album cover.
4. Use your graphics programme of choice to throw them together, and post the result.

Just in case you think that the US is going to enter a glorious phase of civil rights reformation if the Democrats get elected next year, check it out:

Today’s Inside Higher Ed reports on the effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to require colleges to take more direct action in fighting “campus based digital theft” of movies and music. File sharing, popular even when I was in college in the late 1990s, is by all reports going on in epic proportions on today’s campus. The speed and unfiltered nature of campus computer networks is largely responsible for making this possible, and the fact that so many young adults are connected in one place makes it part of the culture on campus. Simply put, it’s easy to trade music, or even whole, fairly high-definition movies and TV shows, with your friends on campus and beyond.

As a Canadian, I don't have a congressional representative but maybe you do. Here's a message from Pandora's founder Tim Westergren that showed up in my e-mail today:

I'm writing today to ask for your help.  The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora.  The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all.  Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters.  I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception.  As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians.  The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential.

I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

Lefsetz:

• Hip-hop will not come back.
• Video has moved to the Web.
• Singles are death.
• The cost of production has gone down, irrevocably.
• The major labels will lose market share.
• The credible acts of tomorrow will not sell out.
• Music is not cool.
• Doesn’t matter what you think of music, its image hasn’t been tarnished, it’s been TRASHED!
• People have tuned new music out.
• Music should be paid for.
• People only want to see stars.
• Melody never goes out of style.

Also this quote:

As for modern music like Justin Timberlake, that’s seen as a vehicle to bump bodies in the club, it’s not something you want to listen to on the stereo at home.  And until that desirable listening experience comes back with new music, and people haven’t changed, they still want it, kids still sit in front of their computer or fall asleep with their iPods to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, we’re fucked. 

CBC reports:

The Police reunion tour will begin May 28 in Vancouver and include at least two other Canadian dates, the band announced Monday.

[...] Toronto's Air Canada Centre on July 21 and Montreal's Bell Centre on July 25 will be among the arena and stadium venues for the tour, the first since they disbanded in 1984.

[...] Other confirmed shows for the spring-summer tour include the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee and Madison Square Gardens in New York, as well as in Seattle, Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, New Orleans and St. Louis.

The tour will continue this fall with dates in the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and France, and is expected to continue in Mexico, South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

When do the tickets go on tour?

Via Joey, here's last night performance of The Police (previous writings) on the Grammys:

Nice rant by Lefstz Letter:

But no, we’ve got to give the award to the act with the brand name.  This would be like giving the Oscar to…"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men’s Chest".  It’s RECOGNIZABLE, it’s just not CLASSIC!

[...] "Not Ready To Make Nice" is ubiquitous on the coffee tables of baby boomers who want to impress their liberal friends, fuck, it probably doesn’t even make it into the CD player.

Nor did it make it on to people’s iPods.  It wasn’t even in the iTunes TOP FIFTY!  It was number 61, yup, that’s my definition of a hit.

[...] Oh, we know why the Dixie Chicks won.  Because nobody RECOGNIZED the rest of the nominees, they went for the name around longest, which they were FAMILIAR WITH!

I bet not even ten percent of Grammy voters know who Danger Mouse is, never mind Cee-Lo.  So, they shouldn’t have been allowed to VOTE in this category.  You don’t search for and reward excellence by turning over the decision-making reins to CHIMPANZEES!

When Boosh is a distant memory, in a decade or two, who'll remember the Dixie Chicks song that won at the Grammys in 2007.

Andy Ihnatko says "avoid the loony Zune":

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," said Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. "So it's time to get paid for it."

Well, Morris is just a big, clueless idiot, of course. Do you honestly want morons like him to have power over your music player?

Then go ahead and buy a Zune. You'll find that the Zune Planet orbits the music industry's Bizarro World, where users aren't allowed to do anything that isn't in the industry's direct interests.

Take the Zune's one unique and potentially ginchy feature: Wi-Fi. You see this printed on the box and you immediately think "Cool. So I can sync files from my desktop library without having to plug in a USB cable, right? Maybe even download new content directly to the device from the Internet?"

Typical, selfish user: How does your convenience help make money for Universal? No wonder Doug despises you.

No, the Zune's sole wireless feature is "squirting" -- I know, I know, it's Microsoft's term, not mine -- music and pictures to any other Zune device within direct Wi-Fi range. Even if the track is inherently free (like a podcast) the Zune wraps it in a DRM scheme that causes the track to self-destruct after three days or three plays, whichever comes first.

After that, it's nothing more than a bookmark for purchasing the track in the Zune Marketplace. It amounts to nothing more than free advertising.

• Simberg mentions Lileks making fun Andrew Sullivan on Hugh Hewitt
• Hewitt interviews Sullivan
  
• Sullivan says he has lots of fun, runs 80's videos
• One such video: We built this city
• Wikipedia entry on Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Starship
• Wikipedia entry on Grace Slick
  

Where we find out:

Slick's longevity in the music business helped her earn a rather unusual distinction: the oldest female vocalist on a Billboard Hot 100 number one single. "We Built This City" reached #1 on November 16, 1985, less than three weeks after her 46th birthday.

Jebus, rock and roll is a vicious game -- we're all washed up by the time we're in our mid-40s? Ah well. Even more amazing:

Her record stood for 12 years, but was ultimately broken by Cher, who was 53 in 1999 when "Believe" hit number one.

I thought Cher was in her 80s?

From Slate:

There may also be deeper differences. If the Internet were not a bookstore, or tubes, but rather a red-light district, YouTube would best be imagined as the hotel, and Napster, well, the pimp. YouTube, like a hotel, provides space for people to do things, legal or not. It's not doing anything illegal itself, but its visitors may be. But Napster, everyone more or less now admits, was cast as the pimp: It was mainly a means of getting illegal stuff. Right or wrong, we seem to accept the benign vision of YouTube as an entity which, unlike Napster, was basically born as a place to showcase stupid human tricks.

Rex Murphy editorializes:

The story is almost big enough to drown out the news that U2, the famous Irish band, has moved some of its assets from Ireland to the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a very favourable tax rate, even better than Ireland, which for artists is already a tax haven of unimaginable indulgence. U2 is of course Bono's band, Bono, the Stephen Forbes business partner and the greatest scold of "rich" governments on the face of the earth. Bono was the man who nagged Paul Martin in public for Canada's not giving enough for African debt relief, but then Bono, friend of Bill Clinton, consort of the princes of the world, World Economic Forum attendee, gazillionaire, nags everyone about Africa.

He even read the riot act of Liberal outrage to his own government because the Irish government, like Canada, was slack on debt relief for Africa. Uriah Heap with groupies. Bono and his multimillionaire band-mates have hauled their songwriting business out of Ireland because Ireland has modestly upped the tax levy on artists making over half a million a year. So he wants Ireland to give more of its taxes to help poor Africa, but he, Bono, wants to pay less taxes to Ireland.

[...] Bono said he was crushed. Well, I guess the "Make Poverty History" front-man has less trouble with inconsistency and hypocrisy when it's his bank account and his band-mates' bank accounts that actually take the hit.

[...] This guy has been lecturing whole continents for decades — he's the self-declared pope of poverty — about Africa, but now hauls part of his empire from his home country to Amsterdam. Lecture us no more, Mr. Bono. A tax haven is not a pulpit. Amsterdam is not an African village. However, all is not lost. Maybe Bono will adopt someone. Let us pray, let us all pray it's Madonna. They deserve each other. For "The National", I'm Rex Murphy.

Bono is just doing the same as the rest of us are trying to do: minimize taxes paid. He does this by moving his corporations to Amsterdam; we do it by voting for governments that don't pledge to give our money to Bono's pet causes.

Here are some things I should have guessed were possible:

• How to convert Last.FM radio into MP3s on your computer
• How to do the same with Pandora

Butters:

I’ve got something in my front pocket for you
Why don’t you reach down in my pocket and see what it is
Then grab onto it, it’s just for you
Give a little squeeze and say, ‘How do you do?’
There’s something in my front pocket, There’s something in my front pocket,
There’s something in my front pocket”

Here's the video -- you may want to avoid the second half if you don't like gore:

• CBC‘s Andre Mayer has a interesting interview with Stewart Copeland about his new movie Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, Sting, Andy Summers, U2 and so forth.

I don’t know if John’s trying to start a meme, but here’s all the songs on my computer that are exactly 3:30 in length:

• A Tribe Called Quest – Oh My God
• Agent Orange – Tearing Me Apart
• Billy Joel – Christie Lee
• Charlie Parker – Star Eyes
• Dada – Scum
• DJ Boom Boom – Spin Spin Sugar (SneakerPimps)
• Fastball – G.O.D. (Good Old Days)
• Foo Fighters – For All The Cows
• Grapes Of Wrath – Try
• Harry Belafonte – Man Smart (Woman Smarter)
• Hayden – Bad As They Seem
• Headstones – Pretty Little Death Song
• INXS – Tiny Daggers
• Iris Dement – My Life
• John Prine – A Good Time
• Kate Bush – Between A Man And A Woman
• Kate Bush – Sat In Your Lap
• Local H – Eddie Vedder
• Lucinda Williams – Metal Firecracker
• Maria McKee – The Way Young Lovers Do
• Marilyn Manson – I Put A Spell On You
• Matthew Good – In Love With A Bad Idea
• Mudhoney – Living Wreck
• Nine Inch Nails – Please
• Pearl Jam – Porch
• Pearl Jam – Satan’s Bed
• Phil Collins – A Groovy Kind Of Love
• Prince – Escape
• R.E.M. – Perfect Circle
• Rage Against The Machine – Testify
• Rush – For What It’s Worth
• Sarah McLachlan – Into The Fire
• Sarah McLachlan – Shelter
• Shaggy – Finger Smith
• Sloan – C’mon C’mon (We’re Gonna Get It Started)
• Sonic Youth – Androgynous Mind
• Spandau Ballet – The Freeze
• Steppenwolf – Born To Be Wild
• Steve Earle – Snake Oil
• Stranglers – Golden Brown
• The Beastie Boys – Intergalactic
• The Cure – Lovesong (Acoustic Version)
• The Grapes Of Wrath – See Her Go
• The Psychedelic Furs – Love My Way
• The Tragically Hip – Fully Completely
• The Tragically Hip – Summer’s Killing Us
• The Who – When I Was A Boy
• Universal Honey – Upfront With You
• Van Halen – Jamie’s Cryin’
• Various Artists – Chicane Feat. Maire Brennan Of
• Yes – Long Distance Runaround
• Marilyn Manson – I Put A Spell On You

That’s 52, in case you’re counting. Yes, I have a lot of crap on my computer. The top five played are In Love With a Bad Idea, Scum, C’mon C’mon, Fully Completely and Tiny Daggers, which I will note includes three Canadian bands, one alternative band that should have been known a lot better and something terribly conventional.

Technical note: I used iTunes to make a playlist of the 3:30 songs, exported the song list, messed around in a spreadsheet to get exactly the columns I wanted and then back into a text editor for formatting.

Final note: the Phil Collins amid Billy Joel tunes are from my wife’s meagre collection, not mine! Really. No it’s true…

John Gushue writes:

On March 9, 1987, U2 released The Joshua Tree, by far their biggest album, in terms of sales and ambition. I was working in Ottawa at the time, and I recall how one of the downtown music shops had covered all of its walls with posters. (I remember also talking with a friend about the sensation that U2 was no longer just “our” band, but “their” band… how fickle fans can be. We should not have been so surprised; it was obvious from Live Aid that U2 was intending to dance on a very big stage, and the Joshua Tree only proved it.)

The Joshua Tree was, as I recall, the last great album I bought on vinyl. In fact, I held off buying a CD version for many years, and – in true snobbish style – felt that the moody opening of Where The Streets Have No Name ought to be played through a stylus, to get the real effect.

Vincent Gogan and I had the first two copies of The Joshua Tree (on CD, no purists we) in Newfoundland. We went to A&A in the Village Mall and when the store opened made the staff go to the back, open the shipping box and give us copies—and they only had 3 in total! Clueless losers—it wasn’t quite “their” band yet. In October of that year, John McDonald, Doug Elliott, and I flew to Toronto to watch see the show.

Weird to think that was 19 years ago.

I was going to write a post about how C#m 9–11-11–9-0–0 is my new favorite chord, but I just tuned my guitar to GGDGBD and I’m in love.

Pandora is a personalized web-based music player. You create “radio stations” by entering songs or artists you like. It then plays songs (in a Flash based player) that are somewhat similar to the song you selected. You can shape the playlist by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to the selections it has made for you.

Colby Cosh gives Pandora a lukewarm review—”Not as crushingly disappointing as other services like it”—but I’m fairly impressed.

Here’s my comments:

• It is really like a radio station in one key way: you can’t go back and revisit a song you’ve already played or move around within a song. You can pause the station, which is nice. I assume these restrictions are due to copyright laws.
• You have to give a US zip code to register. I’m sure you all watched TV in the nineties, so this shouldn’t be too challenging.
• It’s too bad it’s not more of an HTML/AJAX interface than a Flash one. I’m always finding myself slightly taken aback with maneuvering through the system
• I’ve found a few interesting artists which I hope to revisit later, but…
• … Pandora really needs the concept of an “audio thumbnail”, something like a twenty second clip at lo-fi, for the favorites list. Names of artists I’ve never heard of doesn’t really help me that much
• It would be nice (in the future) if they could link to the artist’s website. I know this is somewhat difficult.
• It would be nice (in the future, when there’s an official Canadian version) if they could link to Amazon.ca, since that’s where I buy my CDs from
• I find myself trying to outguess the AI, which means I’m probably not fairly rating things thumbs up or thumbs down. This may not be a problem for you. It would be nice if there was a feature to intelligently and automatically split a radio station into multiple copies if there’s multiple competing styles.

I hope to delve into more techno/eurotrash music. I’m basically listening to bands that 75% sound like the Skydiggers.