Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
Ed Driscoll posted a piece titled, “What I Admire Most About Rock & Roll Is Its Musical Diversity.” The post, in its entirety: 36 songs, four chords, one video. Just click: (If you’re a musician, it’s a I-V-VIm-IV progression that they’re playing into the ground, but you knew that already, right?) Yeah, it’s been around [...]
Hank Williams died 57 years ago. He was a an inaugural member of the Country Music Hall of Fame (1961) and was voted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He won a Pulitzer Prize yesterday. Hank Williams, the country pioneer who is among the most influential singer-songwriters in music, was given [...]
We all know that computing power and storage have increased exponentially over the last couple of decades but this graphic illustrates the phenomenon very well: As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, my first computer, purchased in 1989, had 640k RAM and an 8 MB hard drive. via John Biggs Most of us carry portable telephones [...]
Time for the Monday OTB Caption ContestTM (AP Photo/Michael Probst) Winners will be announced Thursday PM
Bernard Chazelle explains “the technical part” of Eric Clapton’s classic “Layla.” Played here with an assist from Mark Knopfler, for those in need of a reminder. The intro and chorus follow the progression of “All Along the Watchtower” (i-VII-VI-VII-i, ie here, Dm-C-Bb-C-Dm): one of the most common chord sequences in rock (0:27-1:10). The song is [...]
The British government has devised a novel solution to dealing with online piracy: Disable the Internet accounts of violators. Broadband providers could be forced to suspend their customers’ accounts under proposals announced on Tuesday by the UK government to tackle internet file-sharing. The proposals mark a hardening of the government’s stance against piracy since the [...]
“I know folks think I’m a city boy, but I do appreciate listening to country music. It’s about folks telling their life story the best way they know how.” – President Barack Obama Via Norm Geras, I see that the president hosted Alison Krauss, Brad Paisley, and Charley Pride as part of the White House [...]
Copyblogger‘s Brian Clark has noticed a distinction developing between blogs on the one hand and “social media” on the other. He rightly notes that “blogs were the first modern form of social media” and thus the distinction is artificial. My sense is that, blogs are indeed social media, they’re definitely of a different piece than [...]
A month ago, we debated whether rock music died in 1980. While we decided that it did not, we concluded that it has changed quite a bit since then. Writing at Slate, music critic Simon Reynolds writes of “Grunge’s Long Shadow” and “In praise of in-between periods in pop history” as periods of transition in [...]
In the discussion on my post about whether rock and roll died with John Bonham, commenter Michael makes an interesting point: I was discussing it with my wife over the weekend and she made an interesting observation: there is no longer a “B” side. Her specific point was that musicians often used the “B” side [...]
Stacy McCain contends that, “All great rock music was recorded by the time John Bonham died.” Craig Henry can’t think of any counterexamples and proclaims, “25 September 1980. The real day the music died.” But that’s surely not right? To be sure, there’s merit to this assertion. Van Halen, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Bob Seger and [...]
Taking a page from the Communist Chinese Olympics, the Obama inauguration featured truthy music. Daniel Wakin blows the doors off this travesty in a NYT exclusive: It was not precisely lip-synching, but pretty close. The somber, elegiac tones before President Obama’s oath of office at the inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of Yo-Yo [...]
Jerry Reed, a country guitar player, comedian, and actor perhaps best known for “Smokey and the Bandit” and other Burt Reynolds vehicles from the 1970s and 1980s, has died from emphysemia at age 71. Sony BMG Nashville Chairman Joe Galante called Reed a larger-than-life personality. “Everything about Jerry was distinctive: his guitar playing, writing, voice [...]
Rush Limbaugh isn’t going to have any trouble affording good cigars, having just re-upped with Clear Channel through 2016 for $400 million, including a $100 million signing bonus. And you thought pro athetes got paid a lot. Said to be Limbaugh’s most lucrative deal ever by far, the new agreement runs through 2016 and includes [...]
James Cason, the U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay, has achieved rock star status in that country. Literally. [H]e learned the obscure Paraguayan Guaranà language, recorded a music album of indigenous folk songs and sold 1,000 tickets to a concert in a downtown theater. Now, in the final year of his four-decade diplomatic career, Cason has suddenly [...]
West Point is changing its Alma Mater and most cherished poem to be more gender neutral. The head of the U.S. Military Academy thinks it’s time to replace the “men” and “sons” in West Point’s two most beloved songs with more gender-neutral lyrics. Lt. Gen. Franklin “Buster” Hagenbeck, superintendent of the nation’s oldest military academy, [...]
The Democrats have picked up their second Deep South congressional seat in as many weeks, with Travis Childers defeating Republican candidate Greg Davis by a substantial margin in the special election contest to replace Roger Wicker, now serving as the interim junior senator from Mississippi, in the House of Representatives: The seat had been in [...]
Those attempting to read the Kremlin tea leaves now that Dmitry Medvedev has taken over Russia’s presidency and Vladimir Putin has been bumped over to premier have this to chew on: Dmitry Medvedev may be Russia’s president but Vladimir Putin has kept his place in the Kremlin. When Putin came to his old office in [...]
Tyler Cowen and Alex Massie, an economist and a Scotsman, might seem to be odd sources for advice on American country music but they’ve both written interesting posts on the topic. Neither grew up with the tradition but they found religion and are now offering recommendations for those looking to wade in. Cowen suggests, Hank [...]
Today’s Christian Science Monitor features two profiles of incoming Russian president Dmitri Medvedev. For whatever reason, both emphasize his love of rock and roll. Fred Weir weighs in with “In Putin’s shadow, Russia inaugurates Medvedev: The new president, a savvy lawyer who likes Led Zeppelin, faces rising corruption and decaying national infrastructure.” Not to be [...]
I received a chain email last night from a friend who’s a very smart guy (a music professor at a prestigious local university) and frustrated, like most of us, with the high cost of gasoline. Here’s the plan for fighting back: The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down [...]
Dan Martin has some advice for Barack Obama: Listen to some Hank. Barack Obama’s candidacy enjoys broad support and seems to be unified in ways most candidates could only dream of prior to the internet and text messaging age. Obama’s wide support, horizontal networking, and ability to inspire various demographics have thrust him within reach [...]
The Sirius-XM merger is one step closer to fruition. The U.S. Justice Department approved the merger between satellite radio companies Sirius and XM Monday, more than a year after the two companies first announced their deal. In its decision, the Department of Justice had to determine whether an XM-Sirius merger was anti-competitive, or if other [...]
Andrew Sullivan has declared that the “Swift-Boating” of Barack Obama has begun, noting that both Republican operatives and Clinton supporters are piling on over the Jeremiah Wright scandal. He cites a report by The Politico‘s Jonathan Martin that, “A YouTube video mash-up that attacks Barack Obama on issues relating to his patriotism that has rocketed [...]
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has finally resigned. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is resigning following intense pressure to step down because of a prostitution scandal. Spitzer says his resignation is effective Monday. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below. Gov. Eliot Spitzer has decided [...]
The Unfogged gang has three posts in as many days about a wildly popular new blog about which I was previously unaware called Stuff White People Like. It’s the kind of blog only white people could like: a blog about white people written by white people for other white people that makes fun of white [...]
This parody commercial, putting John McCain’s speeches about the war in Iraq into a song a’la the Barack Obama “Yes We Can” video, is pretty funny. It’s already going viral, with quite a number of bloggers in my Google Reader list posting it today. Josh Marshall terms it “Genuinely Hilarious.” Hilzoy and Matt Yglesias merely [...]
Barack Obama won his second Grammy, beating out Bill Clinton and taking the lead over Hillary Clinton in the total lifetime Grammys without having a hit song category. Fresh from their feud on the campaign trail, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama beat Bill Clinton in a contest almost as closely watched as the primaries being [...]
One of my Atlantic Council colleagues forwards a report that David Petraeus is being considered for the Supreme Allied Commander post. A senior Pentagon official said that it was weighing “a next assignment for Petraeus” and that the NATO post was a possibility. “He deserves one and that has also always been a highly prestigious [...]
Kevin Drum reacts with relief to news that “there was precisely zero detectable enthusiasm for a Bloomberg bid” in a meeting yesterday to find a way out of the current partisan climate. I think the error most people make on this subject is being confused about what voters are really tired of. They aren’t tired [...]
Major Andrew Olmsted, a longtime blogger and Army Reservist, was killed in action yesterday when his unit was ambushed. His Obsidian Wings colleague Hilzoy had the sad honor of posting his final blog missive. Her lead-in: Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G’Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to [...]
It would appear that the recording industry isn’t quite done with its years-long project of immolating itself rather than adapt to changing technology. Having apparently determined that the fact that they won some judgments in the course of their quixotic quest against file sharing proves that they were right to engage in it, no matter [...]
Weekend Caption Jam Linkfest. . . and now also Saturday Traffic Jam for those who wish to link. Rodney is going hunting with Dick Cheney. Wizbang is ready to cut and run hop. Bullwinklette has a new version of ‘Musical Spikes.’ Wyatt Earp is on the dance floor. Public Pondering has started to track Santa’s [...]
Legendary stuntman Robert Craig Evel Knievel has died after a long illness at the age of 69. Evel Knievel, the hard-living motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho’s Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69. Knievel’s death was confirmed by his granddaughter, [...]
Slate‘s Fred Kaplan surveys his readers for ideas on improving America’s image around the world. Most of the suggestions revolve around travel and cultural interaction, such as expanding foreign student exchange programs, Fulbright grants, the Peace Corps, and the like. While those things are valuable in and of themselves, their impact on reshaping world opinion [...]
A championship womens’ bridge team went Dixie Chick and are now facing possible sanctions. In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team [...]
House Democrats want to blackmail universities into spying for the music industry or paying them protection money. New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also “alternatives” to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid [...]
The Obama campaign has organized a gospel tour of South Carolina featuring controversial anti-gay activist Donnie McClurkin. A Gospel concert tour organized by the Barack Obama campaign on behalf of the candidate is stirring controversy among some gay activists. The three-day tour through early-voting South Carolina starts this Friday and finishes Sunday with a concert [...]
America’s greatest journalist, Radley Balko, has an excellent piece on why a Clinton II Presidency would differ very little from the Bush II Presidency. For seven years, the left has been up in arms about President Bush’s aggressive foreign policy, his secrecy, his partisanship, and his expansive claims on executive power. It’s odd, then, that [...]
Bill O’Reilly made some, um, interesting comments on his radio show Wednesday that have sparked some controversy in the blogosphere after being highlighted by Media Matters. Here, in context, is what he said. All emphases from the Media Matters transcript: O”REILLY: Now, how do we get to this point? Black people in this country understand [...]
An obsolete language dies every two weeks, a new study reports. When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets together, there’s still no one to talk to. Native Australian Charlie Mungulda is the only person alive known to speak that language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction. From rural [...]
Islamist websites are touting a new Osama bin Laden video — which would be the first in nearly three years — to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. AP: Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden plans a new video to be released in the coming days ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. [...]
