THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

First off, the shows, winners one and all: Scissor Sisters [Majestic Theater 1.18] Secret Machines / Autolux / Moving Units [Magic Stick 2.3] Bloc Party [Magic Stick 4.1] Coachella Music & Arts Festival [Empire Polo Field, Indio, CA 4.30/5.1] Adult. [Magic Stick 5.6] Electric Six [Blind Pig, Ann Arbor 5.7] The Decemberists [Intersection, Grand Rapids 5.19] LCD Soundsystem / M.I.A. [Majestic Theater 5.20] Kraftwerk [State Theater, Detroit 6.3] Wolf Parade / Anathallo [Intersection, Grand Rapids 10.15] Gang Of Four [House Of Blues, Anaheim, CA 10.21] LCD Soundsystem / The Juan MacLean [House Of Blues, Cleveland, OH 10.22] Now, the memories, such as I can summon them: -- a much smoother Coachella this year [Coldplay! Bauhaus! Wilco! M83! New Order! Gang Of Four! The Arcade Fire! Nine Inch Nails!], leaving from Los Angeles instead of San Diego and staying close to the Indio grounds, although the miracle of consistent Motrin usage is still of...

The 2011 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival may have been my eighth visit to the hot and dusty polo fields of Indio, but there was a first for me this weekend – the first time I hit Friday all by myself instead of with my long-time running buddy Brian Siers – so it stood a bit apart from all the previous extravaganzas. (Of course, one other event helped separate Coachella 2011 from the pack – the brief Saturday night hang-out in the hotel's 24-hour hot tub with a dude who turned out to not have any swim trunks on, which he claimed were “stolen” in some undisclosed fashion.) For other perspectives that include pictures, go here and here and here , but if you want my text take, read on. So as Friday unfurled, I oddly found myself on my schedule, with only myself as company (aside from the estimated 60+K people around me). I started the day with the U.K. band Hurts , and while their manicured synth-pop was catchy enough, they brought to my jaded mind any number of anonymo...

Sometimes, you wake up and just want to bitch about Scientology. And then you remember reading a Dear Prudie letter from Slate a few years ago, back when Tom Cruise took it upon himself to lecture the media on psychiatry, and you realize that you can't state it better than the anonymous M.D. did at that time. So all you can do is pass it on, which is what you do: "After hearing Tom Cruise's ignorant and uninformed rant about psychiatry being a 'pseudoscience,' I had to write. Unfortunately, too many people listen to the opinions of celebrities and take them as gospel. Tom Cruise's irresponsible preaching could harm many people and increase the stigma our society already attaches to those with mental-health issues. I respect your support of the mental-health fields, so I hope this message can get to those folks who need help but are afraid to get it because of people like Mr. Cruise, who have easy access to the media. I am a licensed clinical psychologist curr...

A few years back, I first heard some tracks from Love Axe , the venture for the joint output of Chris Hatfield (ex-Those Transatlantics) and Heath Johnson. In a blank cardboard sleeve with a pinkish marker stain with the band’s name, there was a CD-R with great stuff, a brief taster for (hopefully) a full length to come. So the many months came and went, and I never knew if Chris had kept the project alive or not. Then a few months ago, while trolling the interweb, I came across a full-on release from Love Axe, with all the songs from the CD-R and more, available for sale as a digital release. So I snagged it and gave it a listen, the past and the present colliding in my eardrums. What do I think of it? It’s quite difficult to put a critical lens to the end products of a dude who has provided various states of alcohol-fueled hilarity and muse-fueled creativity for your personal enjoyment. Some of the hardest laughs I’ve had in the past ten years, the kind of laughs where the musc...

How cool is this? Sure, R.E.M. (among others) are going the video album route, but who brings the art like TVOTR? No one. Enjoy.

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