Photo by John McDonnell-The Washington Post
Thinking the real game of the day was Capitals v. Penguins
Exciting that Ovechkin and Crosby trade leads as NHL scoring leaders while playing against each other in a heated 5-4 come from behind overtime game!
NHL com highlight video
Awesome commentary and comments following The Who’s halftime performance! The best came from the kindergartner in the room:
Ha! That old man is playing guitar!
and
Why is grandpa singing?
Over at Rolling Stone 2000 lines have been drawn. Best Ever or Lip Synced Rubbish?
AJ writes: Unfortunately I wasn’t drinking before that. That stunk! Like I just stepped in something and tracked it all over the house stunk.
Gutterdandy adds: Totally embarrassing performance by these nitwits at the Super Bowl. Daltrey flat out CANNOT SING anymore, and he looks like a portly Vegas lounge singer with his bad perm. Townshend looks every bit the grizzled old nonce he is. Truly pitiful. And they had to play all their CSI songs on top of it, for the network that airs CSI. Disgraceful. They stink
Twitter trend #thewho is most hilarious! (#nipplegate too!) Love TheFatBoys Tweet:
If the Who’s Roger Daltrey’s titty pops out I am leaving the stadium now!
Nah dudes! It was Townsend flashing the flesh! Can I claim the term bellygate?
The Will.i.am My Generation remix brings us back to twenty ten.
Pluses (if necessary) the show’s production was extraordinary and Pino Palladino on the bass is never a bad thing and yes, I’ll take some RAF logo’d cymbals thank you!
PPS-Oh yeah, during the Hawks v. Blues game on Saturday I heard the organist grind out We Will Rock You. Hilarious and awful!
With a 30 second advertising spot going for $3 million, it’s clear that the SuperBowl is the biggest TV event of the year.
The WhoDat? on sports entertainment…
Pete Townsend of The Who speaking to Billboard:
The band’s halftime show will feature a “compact medley” of their greatest hits, most of which debuted five decades ago.
“We’re kinda doing a mash-up of stuff,” he said. “A bit of ‘Baba O’Riley,’ a bit of ‘Pinball Wizard,’ a bit of the close of ‘Tommy,’ a bit of ‘Who Are You,’ and a bit of ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.’ ”
The band will segue from one hard-rocking song into another, attempting to appeal to their older base while also keeping younger folks entertained with the high-energy, hooks-only song sampling. “It works — it’s quite a saga, A lot of the stuff that we do has that kind of celebratory vibe about it — we’ve always tried to make music that allows the audience to go a bit wild if they want to. Hopefully it will hit the spot.”
Brought to you by the fine folks at Bridgstone Tires (NYT)
This year, the Who is headlining the show, a curious choice because the band has not released an album of new songs in four years and its first farewell tour was in 1982, before many people who will be watching the game were born.
and in the Wall Street Journal:
In some ways the graying of the halftime acts reflects the fleeting phenomenon of cultural consensus. Gone are the days when people more or less agreed on Elvis Presley (the impersonator Elvis Presto, halftime XXIII) or even Michael Jackson (XXVII). So the shows dig deeper, hoping headliners from the past have acquired at least some cross-market appeal.
BAH! I’m such a H8R! Music and sports… an obvious collaboration, and the courts and the U.S. Senate too, of course. ScrewDat!:
As far as trade marks for WhoDat are concerned, that’s Sal and Steve Monistere. Steve recorded the Who Dat chant in 1983, and using that chant, he recorded the original “Who Dat” single with members of the Saints offensive line and singer Aaron Neville (photo of the original single above). Then, together, the Monistere brothers immediately embarked on one of the most ingenious marketing campaigns in sports history. And the Who Dat Nation was born.
Will Bridgestone/CBS/NFL own rights to The Who medley? Do artists earn royalties when their music is played in arenas?
80% of PRO Artists Never Receive a Single Broadcast Royalty – Ever!
WE WILL ROCK YOU
BMI press release.
“We Will Rock You” has accumulated more than 3 million U.S. radio and TV feature performances from 1977 through the first quarter of 2009. BMI calculates that one million performances of a song (averaging three minutes in length) represents 5.7 years of continuous airplay. Using this formula, the U.S. radio and TV performances of “We Will Rock You” equal more than 18 years of continuous airplay.
Sounds like a U.S. Military torture method.
In the February 8 edition of ESPN Magazine, Seth Wickersham interviews Queen’s Brian May.
May woke up with the stomp-stomp-clap beat rolling around in his head. To accompany that big rhythym, he sat down and wrote depressing lyrics that described, as he says now, “the futility of man.”
One of the most famous songs ever, the sports anthem of our generation, took all of ten minutes to compose.
I love Wickersham’s closer:
We’re the ones who need the power of music to form a community because, let’s face it, our games aren’t enough anymore. We’re constantly tweeting or texting or checking our fantasy teams or staring at the shiny new stadiums that distract from the action.
There’s an online wager going now to wether or not a member of The Who will smash a guitar during the halftime show? I give that 10:1 odds. It’s pretty much Townsend™ brought to you by Bridgestone.
Much love for the master Gil Scott-Heron
Me and the Devil. Combine Gil, downtempo/dubstep, skeletons and skateboards= DOPE!
New album I’m New Here coming Feb.9 . GSH’s first record in over 15 years.
And what is the word on Gaslamp Killer?
BLOW ME AWAY! His Megamix here is badassed! Also check the tracks at his MySpace site. Shit is DEEP!
Interviewed over here at BLEEP the Killer really slays me:
Where did the name “The Motherfucking Gaslamp Killer” come from?
i remember one of the first gigs i had in the gaslamp district, when the hottest girl in the whole club approached me and told me that i was ruining her night. whats new. reminds me of high school, minus the tiny paycheck i got at the end
More:
What has made you take this direction with your music, and what inspires you?
i learned the ways of the world by banging my fucking head against a brick wall every day
and this:
If you could make your ideal music group of musicians, producers, singers, MCs, etc, etc (dead or alive) – who would it be?
Jimi Hendrix / Erkin Koray / Bernard Purdie / Malcolm Catto / Herbie Hancock / Lonnie Liston Smith / Les Claypool / Thunder Cat / Gonja Sufi / Beth Gibbons / Miguel Atwood Fergason / L. Subramniam / Todd Simon / Pharoah Sanders / Dorthy Ashby / Richard Wright / & ME!
The man is my new hero (oh and Tom Ford too!)
Also, I’ll be spinning tonight on WORT. 10-11 pm.
Photo by Jef Poskanzer via Flickr
Letter of the day from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll. You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.
Best, Satan
Read the comments? Maybe not, but this is good:
Posted by granma4peace. Congrats Lily on a very clever letter
but you’re forgetting the first part of what Pat said, which was that the devil agreed to free the Haitians from the French who had brutally enslaved them for many years. THAT was the big payoff that Satan delivered, Lily. He apparently made no agreement that included the centuries AFTER he freed them from slavery. Actually, it took many years of brutal fighting by the Haitian rebels before they were able to break the yoke of slavery and drive the French off the island. Haitians suffered many more casualties in the fighting than did the French but Napoleon lost so many of his troops he decided the price was too high and gave it up as a lost cause. At that point he decided he’d had enough of the new world and sold the Lousiana Purchase to the U.S.
And then this. BWAAAA!
Posted by cheiron55401. Satan?
I thought he played hockey for the Boston Bruins?
(Andre Ringuette/NHLI via Getty Images)
Closing March 1st, 2010.
Found this tidbit in their site “History” section:
Very quickly, word spread through the Midwest that Smart Studios was the place for independent punk and skateboard bands like Tar Babies and Killdozer to record their music.
Hmmm… I remember dragging Bob Mould up there in Smart’s old space and kinda muddling through a bunch of sessions. I don’t think Bob and Butch had the same esthetics at the time, they were both totally into the power pop, just from different sides of the record isles. Seems like we were the guinea pigs for their first 1/2″ eight track sessions and we lost tracks and flubbed overdubs routinely. We probably tracked 16 songs over two 12″ EPs. Neither of those records sold more than a 1500 units.
I distinctly remember smashing Huber bottles into a microphone for demolition sound effects and making the engineers extremely nervous. Certainly the “punk and skate” methods of pretty much one take and done was not what a polished recording studio and team would take a lot pride in. I guess it worked for them though… Tar Babies–>Killdozer–>Nirvana–>u2–>$$$
The best was “co-producing” the Old Skull Get Outta School album in the new(then) 2″ 24 track facility with Vern, and just romping through 20 songs in a few hours. We push record, the boys thrash through a song, playback, J.P. “okay”, Jamie “meh”, Jesse “good.” Done! Mixing went just as smooth- Thank you Steve Marker! I’m sure that is on your list of best production work. “You want Scooby Doo samples?!”
It is kind of a shame, but the music industry is a brave new world. None of my bands could really afford Smart after they hit the big time and went all ProTools. They did offer local band discounts and everyone always seemed very Madison-nice. Along with Merlyn’s, Paradise Records, Club d’Wash and Ocayz Coral, Smart altered the music landscape.
Time to move on! I wish them all the best.
Excellent talk from DJ Shadow at his site. Damns!
WARNING: RAMBLING TIRADE FROM A 37-YEAR OLD TECHNOPHOBE BELOW
Time for a little straight talk, from one reasonably intelligent human being to YOU, the reasonably intelligent reader. As distasteful as it may sound, the fact is that so many of our heroes: Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, The Beatles, whoever you care to name; generated much of their best art in return for financial compensation. If you take away the compensation, guess what…the art stops. For example, how many young rap artists are grinding away these days in New York, trying to get a deal? Not too many, certainly compared to the ‘80s and ‘90s. There’s no allure, no pot at the end of the rainbow. People have been asking for years now, “Where’s the next Nas, the next Jay-Z?” Be prepared to keep waiting…and for music, overall, to keep sucking. Why? Because only bottom-of-the-barrel, embarrassing pop tripe generates enough income to feed the machine. Anything unproven or risky? Nobody’s going to bankroll that kind of ‘experiment.’
and more:
I may not be the best looking dude out there…I may not be the most linked-in, the most prolific, the most successful…but I’ll be god-damned if I’m not up there with the most passionate. If you agree with what I’m saying, that so much music we’re fed is utter GARBAGE that insults the intelligence, then no matter where you’re at…the States, the UK, France, Japan, Canada, Australia, wherever…we’re ALL outsiders, and we owe it to each other to band together and fight for something better. Personally, I’m loving the challenge, and when the time is right, I look forward to reconnecting with all of you.
Read the comments? You should. Pretty good thoughts from fans and detractors alike.
Shadow even responds:
You’ll have to excuse me, I frequently forget that I’m “part of the system/problem.”
I really liked what Jon Pareles wrote in the NYT this past Sunday on the decade in music technology:
The World of Megabeats and Megabytes
For artists of all kinds (with musicians on the front lines) a 21st-century habitat of possibilities and pressures is taking shape — one that demands skills their predecessors forgot or never needed. The art they make can be created, as well as disseminated, faster and more cheaply. But it will also face exponentially more rivals for attention, and many more temptations toward superficiality and sellouts.
I say, give up before you even start, art for art’s sake!
Some really powerful photography from an upcoming book The Ruins of Detroit. Whoah! Take a look.
Photographs by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.
Steidl, 2010. 200 pp., 150 color illustrations, 15×11½”.
Publisher’s Description:
Until the 1960s, Detroit was one of America’s most important cities, a hub of industry with a population of almost two million and a skyline to rival that of any U.S. city. Its buildings were monuments to its success and vitality in the first half of the twentieth century. At the start of the twenty-first century, those same monuments are now ruins: the United Artists Theater, theWhitney Building, the Farwell Building and the once ravishing Michigan Central Station (unused since 1988) today look as if a bomb had dropped on Motor City, leaving behind the ruins of a once great civilization. In a series of weekly photographic bulletins for Time magazine called “Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline,” photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have been revealing to an astonished America the scale of decay in Detroit.“The state of ruin is essentially a temporary situation that happens at some point, the volatile result of change of era and the fall of empires,”write Marchand and Meffre.“Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state.” As Detroit’s white middle class continues to abandon the city center for its dispersed suburbs, and its downtown high-rises empty out, these astounding images,which convey both the imperious grandeur of the city’s architecture and its genuinely shocking decline, preserve a moment that warns us all of the transience of great epochs.
Thanks Carducci for heads up!
