THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

2006 was the first full year that I'd been cut off from the music retail teat since 1990, but somehow I managed to go here and there, from one state to another, and see some shows. Some were magnificant, some fell into the "just a show" category, but here's how the year shook out: The National / The Cloud Room [Intersection, Grand Rapids 3.23] Electric Six [Magic Stick, Detroit 4.1 Editors / Stellastarr* [Magic Stick, Detroit 4.13] Coachella Music & Arts Festival [Empire Polo Field, Indio, CA 4.29/4.30] Secret Machines [Magic Bag, Ferndale 5.14] Movement: 06 [Hart Plaza, Detroit 5.29] Intonation Music Festival [Union Park, Chicago 6.24/6.25] Gnarls Barkley / Peeping Tom [State Theater, Detroit 8.7] Steely Dan / Michael McDonald [DET Energy Music Theater, Clarkston 9.2] Lindsey Buckingham [Emerald Theater, Mt. Clemens 10.22] Mobius Band / Baby Dayliner [Intersection, Grand Rapids 10.23] Electric Six [St. Andrew’s Hall, Detroit 11.4] Aside from the usual...

I visited Arizona twice in three months way back in 1996. I saw one of the biggest forest fires I'd ever seen when I was there in May of that year, but I've never seen something like this: And this is happening in America , gang. The first of what I'm sure will be many more to come. (And I, for one, welcome our new climate change overlords.)

David and Stephen Dewaele are the brothers that comprise the electronic pop group Soulwax , but they also have made a name for themselves over the past decade as mash-up pioneers 2manydjs . Instead of releasing another compact disc approximating their lively and ass-shaking (and quite funny at times) live set, they decided to create a multimedia project called Radio Soulwax. Now available as an iPad app, Radio Soulwax offers hour-long thematic mixes, set to some of the entertaining visuals that often accompany their live shows. It's the next best thing to being at one of their shows, and my iPad is happier for it. (I'm currently listening to & watching coverversioncovers, including an insane riff on Falco called "Rock Me Jerry Lewis" followed by a disco version of "Tubular Bells." Some sweet shit.)

What's that first number up there in the title? That's the amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion. NPR has a nice article articulating the specifics, but I'm sure that most people can look at that number and gag, without ever reading a word of the details. And when it's juxtaposed with the fact that one-quarter of kids in the United States -- hence, the other number -- are currently living in poverty, it's even more nauseating, as this recent piece from 60 Minutes articulates: And after my afternoon viewing of the recent HBO documentary on Ronald Reagan , it's pretty clear to see how we got to this humanist disaster, but not so clear as to how we find a way off this rough and twisting road towards something even worse. Extricating ourselves from imperialistic overreaching and reorienting towards humane treatment of American youth (a "pro-life" argument were there ever one) is an impossi...

First off, when it comes to song lyrics, never trust the internet. We have Wikipedia for a shit-ton of factual information, but why is there no Wikipedia for song lyrics? Must we continue to rely on the misheard masses giving us five different takes on the lyrics of "Jet Airliner" or "Purple Haze" or whatever? But I digress. "'B' Movie" is the last track on Gil's 1981 album Reflections . It features some interesting covers of songs by Marvin Gaye and Bill Withers, but "'B' Movie" is an original that harkens back to his late-'60s spoken word beginnings, but with a sweet-ass late-'70s groove. And the lyric is as sadly true today as it was back then, at the dawn of the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The fog of time has been relatively kind to Reagan, but back in '81, Reagan's advancement of corporate greed and the conflation of fundamentalist religion and conservative politics devastated the lives of millions o...

Even though I haven't reviewed albums for over a year, I'm still on a lot of press release mailing lists, with my inbox flooded with email after email of overwritten descriptions of why the band that the PR firm is promoting is superlative, unique, transgressive, and so forth. The main reason for these press releases, of course, is that the historical channels for music promotion have shuttered -- the radio stations play generally meaningless aural vapor bought and paid for by major labels, the record stores are rarer to find than hair on the top of my head, the television performances produce nary a blip in the public consciousness -- leaving nothing but the small micro gesture, one person trying to reach another. You tell me if this works. Read the following press release below for a new band called Jealousy, sample the music, and decide for yourself if this model works. Because if it doesn't, what does the future hold for professional musicians w/r/t the models of the pa...