Big Mac Big Mess

boingboing/Stuff.com: Devo sues McDonald's

The Spud boys are taking the golden arches to court over copyright infringement over their use of the group's legendary dome helmets. Just protecting their brand, of course. Something the Mayans are unable to do.

I suppose they'd prefer that if the DEVO-brand is to be destroyed, they'll do it themselves:

Girl Talk: Now stealing business plans

Greg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, just released his new album Feed The Animals in the same way Radiohead released their last album. Pay What You Can.

As much as I love this new trend, the whole thing feels like amateur night at the Pig and Whistle. And what's the other saying? Oh yeah, you get what you pay for.

No Nine Inch Nails multi-track files were used in the making of the album. That would be too easy.

Here's the Mr. Gillis pulling the intellectual property equivalent of a bank robbery (according to Jim Prentice, anyway):



Thanks to Adam for the heads up on this one.

"Get to the working overtime part!"

I had the supreme honour of interviewing Randy Bachman for VoicePrint yesterday. Let's just say he's not a fan of piracy and downloading.

I wasn't really nervous at first, it was probably all the coffee, but once he started talking my brain just went into "Holy shit!" mode. I hope it isn't that obvious in the interview. It'll be airing for Canada Day and I'll post a link soon as it's up.

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Not just one of the greatest Canadian songs, but one of the greatest ever: Here's The Guess Who with "These Eyes"

Polaris Long list announced

Is it that time of the year already?

The list of Polaris Prize finalists, Canada's most prestigious indie music award, has been announced. Solid list, but while they're at it, why don't they just nominate the rest of the albums, too?

2008 Polaris Music Prize Long List
(alphabetical)

The Acorn - Glory Hope Mountain
Attack In Black - Marriage
Black Mountain - In The Future
Born Ruffians - Red, Yellow and Blue
Buck 65 - Situation
Basia Bulat - Oh, My Darling
Cadence Weapon - Afterparty Babies
Cancer Bats - Hail Destroyer
Caribou - Andorra
City And Colour - Bring Me Your Love
Constantines - Kensington Heights
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
Destroyer - Trouble In Dreams
Fred Eaglesmith - Tinderbox
Kathleen Edwards - Asking For Flowers
Christine Fellows - Nevertheless
Gatineau - Gatineau
Hayden - In Field And Town
Veda Hille - This Riot Life
HILOTRONS - Happymatic
Holy Fuck - LP
Islands - Arm's Way
Karkwa - Le volume du vent
Corb Lund - Horse Solider! Horse Soldier!
The New Pornographers - Challengers
Pas Chic Chic - Au Contraire
Sandro Perri - Tiny Mirrors
Plants And Animals - Parc Avenue
Ghislain Poirier - No Ground Under
Protest The Hero - Fortress
Justin Rutledge - Man Descending
Sadies - New Seasons
Shad - The Old Prince
Socalled - Ghetto Blaster
Stars - In Our Bedroom After The War
Tegan And Sara - The Con
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band – 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons
Two Hours Traffic - Little Jabs
The Weakerthans - Reunion Tour
Wintersleep - Welcome To The Night Sky

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Of course, the nominees are all fun and games, but for the third year in a row, Yours Truly has been left off the jury list.

Begin your letter writing campaign here.

Hip pop

The other day I was eating lunch at Tim Hortons and seated beside me were a couple of young kids and their mother. The kids were talking about their favourite songs and rappers, suggesting names to each other.

"50 Cent!"
"Chris Brown!"
"Lil Wayne!"

Umm... excuse me? Lil Wayne? These kids couldn't have been more than 10 years old! I am certainly anti-censorship, but I think mama should at least be aware that her kids are being exposed to a song with these lyrics:

"Sh, sh, she lick me
Like a lollipop, lollipop"

"I ain't never seen an ass like hers
That pussy in my mouth
Had me lost for words"

Of course it all makes sense when you check the top of charts - Lil Wayne is #1. Even the smallest and most vulnerable of ears are going to come into contact with this malt sugar concoction.

I don't mean to sound like some kind of PMRC nut, but there should at least be some sort of minimum age requirement for hearing lyrics about how Mr. Carter's braces-on-vagina formula is leaving him at a loss for words... at least he was raised well - "Don't talk with your mouth full!"

But it's not just the pop charts - Lil Wayne impresses the hell out of indie-rock snobs too.

Here's the hilarious video, which reminds me of the part in Saturday Night Fever at the start... or is it Grease... where there's that montage of getting ready to go out. It's the same thing. The video also features some idiot on top of the stretch-Hummer-limo playing the guitar. The guitar is not in the album cut, and probably should have stayed out of the song, as it sounds shabby. It's not mixed well.
I wonder if Lil Wayne paid off a drug debt by putting the guy in his video. That must be it.

New copyright law: links do the talking

boing boing
CBC
Toronto Star
National Post

Complete with the usual spin & accompanying ideology-specific photos!

Isn't anything sacred?

There's still tickets remaining for My Bloody Valentine's reunion tour stop in Toronto, September 25th. At first that almost sounds weird, except for the part about the show being at one of the worst concert venues in the city, Ricoh Coliseum. I'm not sure who the band hired to plan this tour, but they should consider firing them immediately.

I think I'll skip out on this one, and leave one of my favourite albums, Loveless, where it belongs, headphones & stereos.

If you haven't heard of the band or the album, it's probably time you caught up with the rest of the cool people on the planet and gave the album a listen. If you're into British rock, shoegazing or music that takes you into a dream, there's no excuse to have missed them!


Loveless @ Wikipedia
-Not a bad article, especially since most of the entry was taken from the excellent 33 1/3 series.


A Master's thesis on My Bloody Valentine? [Wired music blog]


My Bloody Valentine - Soon

That's me in the corner

If the me from now told the me from five years ago that I'd be at an R.E.M. concert and actually enjoying myself, I'd have punched me in the face and offered up a quip like "Gee, I guess everybody does hurt", or "What's the frequency now, bitch?"

Luckily, I don't have a time machine and I'm fully entitled to changing my mind on the subject. That being said, last night's show at the Molson Amphitheatre was pretty good at best. My friend Bill scored the tickets, and after realizing The National and Modest Mouse were also on the 'bill', it became a no-brainer.

The openers were solid, and the crowd was actually appreciative of the bands and showed the due respect. I think Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse wants to be Frank Black very, very, very badly... "then God is seven!!! then God is seven!!!"

A bit of rain started to come down between sets, or as I like to call it, "beer run", but it all cleared up before the Hall of Famers took the stage. R.E.M. makes four Famers live for me, including Santana, Prince and Bowie. It's interesting to consider that I've seen those four only after they were inducted... somewhere down the road a bunch of bands I've seen will be inducted and I can say "I saw them in their prime".

Oh, wait, U2 is also in the Hall. I keep forgetting, I wonder why. Make it five. And I did see them before they were inducted, though the Elevation tour can hardly be considered their prime.

Back to R.E.M., Ben Rayner wrote a terrific article about the show... I didn't notice the rainbow, but that would have been a perfect time to play "Everybody Hurts", which they didn't play! How do you not play that song during a rainstorm! I don't even like that song and I wanted to hear it in the rain!

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Here's the setlist, grabbed from an R.E.M. fan site message board

These Days
Horse To Water
What's the Frequency Kenneth?
Drive
Man-Sized Wreath
So Fast, So Numb
Ignoreland
Accelerate
7 Chinese Bros.
Hollow Man
Bad Day
Houston
Electrolite
Living Well
The One I Love
Final Straw
Until The Day Is Done
Let Me In
Begin The Begin
Animal
Orange Crush
I'm Gonna DJ

Encore:
Supernatural Superserious
Losing My Religion
Second Guessing
Fall On Me (with Johnny Marr)
Man On The Moon
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So no "Radio Free Europe", no "Everybody Hurts", no "Nightswimming", but on the plus side, "Orange Crush", "The One I Love", and "Losing My Religion".

Here's something I can't understand for the life of me: You pay $90+ for a concert ticket, then spend the whole show watching Michael Stipe through a two-inch screen. I don't get it... I think people need to be re-educated about what a concert is all about. I was there at the concert and this little YouTube clip doesn't bring me any closer to the show, despite the fact I wasn't all the way up to the front.

Good on Mr. Stipe for being cool about the yo-yos in the front enjoying their cell phones rather than the real deal, and still playing up the crowd and being everything you could ask for from a frontman.

My highlight from the show, "Orange Crush":

Playlist of Fame

Maybe it's the rain, but I just had a brainstorm.

Why not make a Smart playlist in iTunes that adds every artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! What a brilliant idea! I should have thought of it sooner... maybe I did, but just didn't bother to do anything about it. Yes, that will be the official story.

Naturally, it's a huge list with some unnatural additions. There are definitely some kinks (not the band... or The Band) that need to be ironed out (not the Sabbath).

For example, the following songs that may not quite be "Hall of Fame" material:

Aerosmith - "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing"
Bryan Adams, Sting and Rod Stewart - "All For One"
David Bowie & Mick Jagger - "Dancing in the Streets"
Any/all Elton John collaborations
Kenny G & Smokey Robinson - "Save the Best For Last"
Madonna - all of her songs
Michael Jackson & Akon - "Wanna Be Startin' Something 2008"
Joni Mitchell & Michael McDonald - "Good Friends"
Glass Tiger & Rod Stewart - "My Town"

I guess it's just proof that all awe-inspiring artists make terrible, horrible, no-good very bad music at some point... but there's simply no excuse for this pop atrocity:



Not only is it a totally unnecessary and frankly offensive cover version, the video is fucking terrible! I thought Bowie was relatively drug-free by the mid-80s, but this video suggests otherwise. By the end of the decade, the Thin White Duke was offering up thin white puke, in the form of "Fame '90". He must really have needed the money. Really, really needed the money. Why else would he slash and burn his first US #1? Don't forget this was after the massive train wreck that was 87-89. Never Let Me Down, Glass Spider, Tin Machine...

Yep, it all makes the "smart" playlist, even the unforgivable Hours.

Now... time to give this playlist a whirl! If only I could solve the Beatles bootlegs dilemma...

Sunday morning, you sure look fine

It's been kind of a Fleetwood Mac day. Here's a couple things I've been listening to, both are among my favourite all-time songs.

Fleetwood Mac - "Dreams"



Here's a Stevie Nicks track that Prince played keyboard on. Awesome song. Around 2:30 or so there's some serious Quincy Jones/Off the Wall guitars that totally break out.

Stevie Nicks - "Stand Back"

11 sleeps!

NXNE

Kanye North

It looks like we've found ourselves someone eager to take on the long-discarded cover-crown of Pat Boone.

Colin Monroe is a Toronto based singer whose new single is an anemic take on Kanye West's brilliant "Flashing Lights". Mr. Monroe's version provides the spoonfuls of sugar to soften the track up enough to sell it to middle school suburbia, the perfect Pat Boone formula: The song retains only the catchy hook, and covers it with a delicious white fudge coating.

Toronto's Yonge & Dundas Square gets served up with a moderate helping of cheese, in the form of a Blade Runner/LSD trip treatment, and an entirely expected "flashing light" motif.

Overall, the video does exactly what it set out to do, because now you know who Colin Monroe is. Who? Exactly.



On the YouTube page, the song is listed as a "Remix", which serves as a solemn reminder of just how stupid people are.

It's not a remix. It's a cover. A remix takes elements from the original and re-interprets them. This is more of a re-marketing.

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Links:

Kanye West - Flashing Lights