Thursday tunes

I just discovered this indie rock band from LA. They are Foster the People. Check 'em out....

Censorship rears its ugly head

There seems to be a rash of infantile government censorship sweeping North America. They're removing the N-word from Huck Finn and now the dumb Canadians, based on a phone call from one activist, are banning the song Money For Nothing by Dire Straits.....

From TheSpec via MichelleMalkin -- The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has ruled that Dire Straits’ 1980s hit Money for Nothing is too offensive for Canadian radio.

The ruling, released Wednesday, was in response to a complaint against St. John’s radio station CHOZ-FM. The listener complained that the word faggot – which appears three times in the song is “extremely offensive” to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Since nothing of interest is going on up there in the great white north, the government censors have a lot of idle time to cause trouble for everybody, or did the 25 year old song just now get released in Canada? Just because civil people don't use the N-word or the Fa-word, doesn't mean that society must be scrubbed of every thing some aggrieved minority finds mildly offensive.

Whatever, at least one radio station in Edmonton is protesting by playing the song, unedited, non-stop for an hour. Here's the video for your own protest of solidarity. Turn up your speakers and see if any of your office mates get upset.

Tuesday PM tunes

Who knew the Ukulele was cool?



I think I like this Ukulele cover of "Gravity" better than the original and this guy's clearly less of a douche than John Mayer. Better music - less douchey. It's like a two-fer.

What's in Ed's iPod?

I know it's a drag languishing in your tiny cubicle, barely able to keep from stabbing your annoying office mate who reeks of BO and the Indian food he had for lunch. And you're listening to tired Muzak tracks over crappy office speakers as you pretend to work on another spread-sheet your ass of a boss gave you. And you're probably wondering where it all went wrong and you're questioning every choice you ever made.

Join the club.

Here are some bands that I've been grooving to that'll help get you through the soul-crushing disappointment and despair......

Silversun Pickups

Echo and Bunnymen

Lissie

Radiohead

Broken Bells

Edwyn Collins

These tunes won't fix your life but they'll take a little of the edge off.

Monday Morning Music from Paper Route

I just discovered this band from Nashville. If you dig Joe Jackson and World Party, you'll like these guys.....

Friday morning tunes

This is Gaelic Storm. They're an up-and-coming Celtic rock band. We got to see them perform a lot on the recent Sailing Southern Ground cruise. Check it out.....

Justin Bieber and her new single

I'm sure everybody knows who Justin Bieber is by now. Her songs are very popular I'm told. Over at Gawker.com, they wondered what it would sound like if you slowed one of her songs down by 800%. It's actually far more listenable than the original.....

J. BIEBZ - U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

You can't outrun the long arm of the Internet

The artist now known as Prince or whatever he's going by this week, is famously hostile to the Internet and the misuse of music that the ubiquitous, digital format allows....

Prince has taken his war against the Internet one step further by shutting down his official website. His battle began in 2007 when he famously announced his intention to file lawsuits against eBay, YouTube and the Pirate Bay for the misuse of his music. Ever since he has banned such sites from using his music in any fashion and refused to work with legal paid-for options like iTunes, 7Digital or eMusic.

His new album is his 27th release and may be distributed via Warner Brothers in the US – but there will be no downloads available in the world.

Correction! There will be free downloads available in the world approximately 5 minutes after the first CD gets sold. It'll be anonymously copied and uploaded to any one of a hundred illegal music distribution sites on the Internet for anybody to grab. You can't beat the Internet or defeat the criminal geniuses who can strip music from any mode and distribute it free world wide in mere seconds.

What's in Ed's iPod?

With all the political turmoil, environmental tragedy, national upheaval, and impending war between the Koreas, it would be nice to have a few minutes of solitude and peace with which to recharge your batteries and gain a little perspective. And you're probably thinking.....

"That Ed sure seems to have it all together as trouble swirls around him. I wonder, what is his secret to inner harmony that allows his reflective, thoughtful deliberation on the topics of the day?"

Well, I'd like to say it's meditation or yoga or a healthy vegan diet but, I don't believe in any of that crap. I just listen to decent music on my iPod. Here's what I've been jamming to lately.....

The Strokes

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Editors

Smashing Pumpkins

Vampire Weekend

Iron and Wine

Download(legally of course) some cuts from these bands and start your journey to personal calmness and introspection.

Hall and Oats....a couple of tools!

Since when did Daryl Hall and John Oates decided they were relevant again....

The Arizona Diamondbacks announced Monday that Daryl Hall and John Oates canceled their post game concert scheduled for July 2 at Chase Field because of their personal stance against Arizona's new immigration law.

If your career has fallen to the point that you are playing gigs after baseball games, perhaps turning down that paycheck for ideological reasons isn't such a bright idea.

This dude's in the wrong band

In case you haven't seen it already, this might just be the greatest drum performance of all time. It's like on his way to play at a frat-house heavy-metal gig, he took a wrong turn and ended up at the Finklestein bar mitzvah and thought, what the heck?

Deployed soldiers.....just chillin'

As a late tribute to the soldiers for Memorial Day, I borrowed this from my favorite website, Moonbattery....enjoy!

Monday morning drive music

Even on a Monday morning, World Party can get you up a little bit.....

What's in Ed's iPod?

I know you people are sitting in your cramped, 4x6 cubicles, pecking mindlessly away on your computer, trying to finish that stupid spread-sheet your boss wants yesterday, as your four-eyed, lecherous office manager who wears a tie with a short-sleeved shirt that's one size too small, looks accusingly in your direction. And you're asking yourself, "Man, where did my hopes and dreams go and who did I piss off to end up here? Life is too short for this! If it weren't for the misery, hopelessness, and despair, I'd have no companions at all. I need a distraction from all this. I wonder what Ed's listening to that'll help me out?"

Well, life's not as hard as all that but, it can be soul-sucking from time to time. So, here's my current play-list featuring some old and new from the alternative side:

Sonic Youth
Modest Mouse
The Cure
Silversun Pickups
Pixies
The Killers

If you check these bands out and put some of their stuff on you iPod, I'm sure things will start to look up for you. Thanks for asking.

Tuesday Morning Drive Music

This is one of my favorite bands...World Party

Nutty environmentalists want to control everything

I hope everybody had a merry Christmas and contributed greatly to their personal carbon footprints through excessive fire-place burning and the conspicuous consumption for which we Americans are infamous. That said, as unhappy as eco-kooks probably are with our waste, it seems they're upset at our music also....

AUSSIE rockers AC/DC could have to cancel a sold-out concert because their big sound poses a danger to rare birds.

Animal rights campaigners are threatening legal action if the veteran band goes ahead with a gig planned for Wels airport in Austria in May.

Hans Uhl of BirdLife said birds nesting in the area at the time would be threatened by anthems such as Highway To Hell and You Shook Me All Night Long.

"The second biggest colony of curlews in Upper Austria and various other ground-nesting birds must not become endangered," Mr Uhl said.

They're just a bunch of uptight busybodies who resent lots of people having a good time doing something, anything, that can't be considered "communing with nature". That's the problem with liberals, as long as you're engaging in activities approved by them it's OK but, don't dare exercise your freedom to enjoy life by listening to music of which they don't approve.

Rock on Brian and Angus, Rock on!

Shameless plug

As some of you may know, my brother-in-law Chris Fryar is the drummer for the Zac Brown Band. They were nominated yesterday for three Grammy's...one for New Artist, one for Country Album, "The Foundation", and one for vocal performance by a duo or group....cool!

That's Chris in the front left.

Adam Lambert's on the fast-track to obscurity

Talentless, reality-show creation Adam Lambert shocked the TV audience with homo-erotic performance then, stupidly accused complainers of discrimination....

During the closing act, the openly gay singer simulated sex on stage with a back-up dancer and kissed a male musician on the mouth.

Lambert told US network CNN that the kiss was "in the moment".

ABC said the number of complaints was "moderate". The show's producers have declined to comment.

Lambert, who performed his debut single For Your Entertainment, said that if people had been upset by his performance that it is a "form of discrimination and it's too bad".

It's a little soon in Lambert's "career" to be resorting to hyper-sexual performances and accusing critics of discrimination. If he has any talent, which he might, it gets washed away with the in-your-face homosexuality of the performances. Say what you want about the sexual hypocrisy of Americans but, TV audiences are just not ready for the mainstreaming of prime-time, gay smooching and simulated oral sex. When you're already, in your first major performance, resorting to shock-value to get people to notice you, and then cry discrimination when people don't like it, I doubt you'll be very long-lived in the music industry....thankfully for the rest of us.

Crotchgrab-apalooza at the AMA's

Why are musicians so obsessed with their own genitalia that they feel the need to constantly touch themselves during performances? In case you missed it, here's dimwitted hack, Janet Jackson doing her impersonation of her pervert brother....better grab a vomit bucket....



Is it just that they know their music is shoddy and second-rate so they resort to gross hypersexualization to get the cretins in the crowd fired up? This is prime-time TV. Kids are watching for heaven's sake! As if seeing artist after artist fondle themselves wasn't disgusting enough, we had to listen to flaming jackass Perez Hilton make vulgar "jokes" about anonymous sex in the men's room backstage....I almost wretched.

In case you didn't realize it, the only musicians that don't hold their genitals on national TV are the country music stars. They aren't yet contributing to the debasement of polite society. Except for the country acts, last night's show was entirely unwatchable.

Former Police front man and dingbat Sting, gave an interview recently during which he felt compelled to comment on American politics (care of Hotair)...

“We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.”

What a silly, English boob he turned out to be! Like virtually all Europeans, Sting is jealous of America's wealth, power, and influence in the world. He sees his own continent dying because of apathy, political correctness, and decadence and his only recourse is to attack the country, which by comparison, makes his look ridiculous. When the hostile, Muslim hordes finally take over Europe in about 50 years, if not sooner, his children will be thankful there are "stupid, callous sons and daughters of [sic]American abundance" to bail them out once again.

I've always been a big fan of Sting's music but, it becomes harder and harder to separate his music from his politics when he insists on opening his yap to tell me that I'm stupid and callous.

He should stick to making music or acting in Dune sequels.