Archive for December, 2009
198 bands and solo artists, 66 posts, nearly five months of listening, debating and voting, and finally here we are. We ask you to give them another listen, think critically about what it means to be a great band instead of merely a favorite band and cast your vote for the winner of the Tournament of Rock – Legends. Your contestants: first, the winners of the Budokan region, #2 seed The Rolling Stones. Their opponents, winners of the Fillmore region, #2 seed Pink Floyd.
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 Disgraced former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who was convicted of two charges related to betting on NBA games (some of which he worked as an official), is out of prison, pimping a new book and telling his story to 60 Minutes and ESPN. What he’s saying, and who’s backing him up, has to be giving NBA Commish David Stern a king-hell case of the nightsweats.
We’ll stipulate up front that the witness has a credibility issue. Full story »
 Legacy wants to be more than a novelized comic book: Packaged as a hardcover with a spiffy dust jacket and a promising premise, the novel suggests something that transcends stereotypical comic book shoot-em-up.
But it quickly becomes apparent that the book is not the general-audience thriller it appears to be. Instead, Legacy is the pitch-perfect comic book-as-words. There’s no genre-busting, no in-depth character study, no lyrical prose—nothing that would help it transcend the realm of fanboys. Instead, author Thomas E. Sniegoski writes with both knuckles bare, conjuring derring-do and all-out action on page after page.
At just over 200 pages, Legacy makes for a quick read, particularly since the text is light and the paragraphs are short. It’ll be an entertaining two hours, too—for readers who like comics. Full story »
 Big surprise, I’m going with Bach rather than Handel in this category. He seems like the obvious choice, and in this case you can’t argue with it–the opening alone is one of the most joyous bits of music ever written, and the whole piece is stunning. Owning this work is not discretionary. You’d have to include Handel’s Messiah in this group as well (which people seem to normally trot out at Easter, even though it was written as a Christmas work), and a bunch of the works of Heinrich Schütz, who studied with Monteverdi, and wrote a whole gaggle of lovely late Renaissance pieces, ranging from individual songs to entire concertos, and who has several striking Christmas pieces, including an oratorio. But Bach, who also wrote a whole slew of Christmas cantatas and other Christmas pieces, pulled out the stops on this one. My favorite version is the one on on EMI classics, with the Academy of Saint Martin in the fields, the Kings College choir, and a bunch of hotshot soloists who actually blend well together, for a change– Elly Ameling, Janet Baker, Robert Tear, and Dietrich Fischer-Diskau. But of course it’s no longer available, although you can still track them down through Amazon. Ameling in particular is amazing. She also did a wonderful Christmas album about 20 years ago with Thijs van Leer, who was (and still is) with the rock group Focus. This album, obviously, is also out of print, since I’m recommending it.
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Still stuck on ideas for a clutter-free holiday gift? Think about supporting your local zoo, museum, or botanical garden.
The world would be a much poorer place without the work of these institutions, whether that work is preserving fine art or wildlife habitat or educational outreach. However, there isn’t much that can be done without financial support. Consider giving a gift of membership. Typical membership benefits include free admission for a year and a guest pass or two, sometimes a bit more. You’ll need to check out the local community, and don’t overlook some of the smaller, less flashy places.
Here in Denver, not only do we have the Denver Zoo, Denver Art Museum, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, but you’ll also find Denver Botanic Gardens, Butterfly Pavilion, Colorado Historical Society, Denver Firefighters Museum, Wings Over the Rockies, and many more. What’s in your area?
Meet one of my favorite new discoveries of 2k9 – Gossip. I’m still trying to parse everything that’s going on here – seriously, they’re described as “punk,” which they certainly are, but they’re also maybe the best indie party dance band I’ve heard since The B-52s. I’d never have thought you could slam everything from The BellRays to Paula Abdul to Kate Pierson to Yaz to Duffy together and make it work. But somehow, that’s exactly what Beth Ditto and company have done.
Expect to hear more when my year-end “Best CDs of 2009″ list drops here in a couple of weeks.
From their 2009 release, Music for Men, this is “Heavy Cross.”
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Perhaps it says something about perceived influence at the present time, or maybe it just means that people like listening to Pink Floyd more than they do The Who (although the producers of the CSI franchise would surely take issue). In any case, the results of our second semifinal are in, and I don’t think anyone is terribly surprised. Results: #2 Pink Floyd 65%; #3 The Who 35%.
On Monday morning the Grand Final will commence.
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THE DEPROLIFERATOR — This year the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to President Obama on spec, if you will. In other words, it was a show of faith that he’d not only follow through on his nuclear disarmament plans, but launch other peace initiatives.
Of course, despite the monetary award, the prize doesn’t contractually bind the recipient to a specified course of action. Still, one can’t help but wonder how the president’s decision to inject a fresh infusion of troops into Afghanistan, a country already on life support, can be reconciled with his status as a Peace Prize winner. (Yes, I know about Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat.) Full story »
by Christopher Michel
If I could, I’d shake Rupert Murdoch’s hand.
Although Murdoch is not exactly my favorite person in the media, his efforts to curb the parasites killing the hosts … I mean, the Web sites providing free news content … have gained some headway.
Google has announced it will offer some concessions in the ongoing battle of Web sites reposting work produced by other news agencies. Now, news agencies will be able to control the number of articles Internet users can view for free.
Thank the journalism gods. Full story »
 Ah, finally. Medieval Christmas music is by far my favorite category, since this is what I listen to most of the time. Being in London helps, because whenever I used to go on a business trip to Frankfurt or Munich I would hit the record shops, and Germans tend to go a little gaga at Christmas anyway. I usually try to get there in December to hit the Christmas markets, but wasn’t able to this year, sadly. Anyway, there are dozens and dozens to choose from. Picking from the ones that I own alone is tricky. But the past several years (if my iPod table of music listened to is any indication), what I have been listening to most is a simply wonderful disc from a group called Ioculatores, called Fro Fro. Just magic. They have several other albums out as well, all from Raumklang records, and all worth acquiring if you’re interested in medieval music. If I had to reduce my collection to just one Christmas album, this would be the one. It captures the magic and mystery of Christmas more elegantly than any other album I can think of, although there are many that come close. Again, there is little on this album that a modern American listener would associate with Christmas—but that’s the point.
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Gonna try something different Full story »
Update: A complete transcript of the encounter with Wessel and Monckton can be found at the Guardian environment blog.
According to Kevin Grandia at DeSmogBlog, climate disruption denier Lord Monckton was talking with a number of youths when he was approached by a couple of other youths he recognized from the Americans for Prosperity event that was temporarily taken over by youth climate activists yesterday. When he was asked to shake one of the activists’ hand, he responded
No, no. I’m not going to shake the hand of Hitler Youth. I’m sorry.
The activist in question, Ben Wessel, is Jewish, and his grandparents escaped the Nazis. Furthermore, Monckton’s remarks yesterday could have been considered intemperate as they were made in the heat of the moment. That Monckton would repeat the charge today when he’s not being shouted over suggests that he truly believes the youth activists to be equal to the Hitler Youth. Full story »
 No one saw this coming: The sudden demise of Editor & Publisher, the long-revered, trusted, occasionally insouciant, experienced watchdog of the newspaper industry. The Nielsen Company said Thursday it would shutter the publication. Some wags had thought financial considerations would kill off the monthly print edition but leave the vibrant online edition functioning.
But, no. After a tradition of reporting on the reporters dating back to 1884, E&P is done. And that’s sad, because the careful inspection of the media industries by a longtime, experienced staff led by editor Greg Mitchell has ended. Mitchell, who took over as editor in 2002, had revived a publication that had become moribund and almost irrelevant. To much criticism, he killed E&P as a print weekly and reintroduced it as a monthly. But his master stroke was diving headlong onto the Web, where E&P has prospered, at least in terms of timely analytical coverage of the industry.
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 This would be Eya Pueri, by Discantus. Discantus is a French medieval babe group, and the only difference between them and Anonymous 4 is that there are more of them–eight singers, as compared with four. Same era, though, mostly songs from before the 15th century. And while they have toured the US and the rest of Europe, they still haven’t toured anywhere in the UK. But I’m hoping. The group was founded by Brigitte Lesne, who is involved in some other excellent French early music groups as well, particularly Alla Francesca, which is a mixed group, but sadly does not appear to have done a Christmas album yet.
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“Christmas tree a la mode.” That’s how my grandfather, Bill Mackowski, described it to his wife, LaVerne, back in December of 1944.
Bill was stationed in Belgium, part of the 330th infantry regiment of the 83rd Army Division. The world was embroiled in war and, at that
time, the Battle of the Bulge had been raging for a week.
But the night of December 24 was quiet along the front. The men were sitting around, talking about their girls back home, missing their families. “I just kept thinking how foolish most of them were not be married or not to have someone like you,” Bill had written to Verne just a few days earlier, after a similar bout of homesickness had befallen him and his buddies.
It was Bill’s third Christmas in the army. Full story »
Americans for Prosperity (AFP) hosted a speech by Christopher Lord Monckton, a UK climate disruption denier, at Copenhagen yesterday. According to a report on the event at It’sGettingHotInHere.org, there were only five attendees that weren’t AFP employees – until around 50 US youth climate activists showed up, took over the stage, and proceeded to hold up signs and chant “Real Americans for Prosperity are Americans for Clean Energy” from the stage behind Monckton, who continued his speech despite the disruption.
Until he drifted off message and said:
You are listening now to the shouts in the background of the Hitler youth.
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Before I sat down to write this post, I wrote two letters. In many respects the recipients could not be more different from me: George is 14 and Monica is 10. They live in rural villages in Tanzania. They have never left their region, while I’ve traveled all over the world. But the biggest difference is the fact that their families live on less than $1 a day. In fact, a billion of the world’s people are in a similar plight, and fully half the planet subsists on less than $2 a day. I, on the other hand, reside in one of the wealthier communities in the wealthiest nation in the world. But my plenty is making a major difference in the lives of George and Monica, and so can yours this holiday season, for children in similar situations.
While our family sponsors George and Monica on an ongoing monthly basis through Compassion International, organizations that care for the world’s poorest children also benefit from single donations that aid children without sponsors or which support community projects where they live. It can be a delight to give your own holiday gift recipients the chance to choose a gift in their name for a child in desperate need.
World Vision’s online gift catalog is a great portal. This relief, development and advocacy organization works with the world’s most vulnerable children, families and communities in more than 100 countries, to overcome poverty and injustice. Full story »
There’s been some complaint recently about being unable to edit comments, a feature we had until a couple of months ago. We had to take it out because there was a problem following a plugin upgrade, but with further testing, the problem appears to either have been corrected in a later revision or only applicable to how the admin accounts viewed comments for editing.
So we’ve reactivated the plugin. Please let us know if you experience problems with editing your comments so we can investigate further.
Our first semi-final was a tough, hard fought, back-and-forth affair. When the smoke cleared, The Stones had prevailed, and now advance to the Final. The numbers: #2 The Rolling Stones 54%; #5 Neil Young 46%.
In our second semi, the band that invented “Power Pop” (they’re probably more remembered for the “power” part) tees it up with the band that invented atmosphere. Cue: house lights down…
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I love dogs and I love football, so 2007 was painful for me. But the thing that snaps my string beans more than the accusations against a certain professional quarterback, whose comeback is amounting to little, are the statements by a celebrity/cushion, who said dog fighting was a thing that happened all the time in the south. I found that statement puzzling. I lived in Tennessee for 49 years, and was never invited to a dog fight, never heard about a dog fight, and certainly didn’t know there was money to be made at a dog fight. Besides, we all knew that for sheer entertainment, a cat fight was the show of choice. Full story »
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