From YouTube

From NME:

Ron Asheton, the guitarist and bassist with The Stooges, has been found dead today (January 6). He was 60. Asheton was found at his home in Ann Arbor this morning, according to police. A cause of death is yet to be confirmed, although initial reports suggest that Asheton died of a heart attack.

 Ron Asheton MySpace
 Ron Asheton Wikipedia entry

You guys remember The Darkness, right? Well, according to the same hype machine that caught wind of their meager talent and ridiculous personalities and blew them way out of proportion before their first album dropped (NME), there has been talk of a Darkness reunion. However, relationships within the band have never recovered since Justin’s retreat into Betty Ford: Justin and brother/guitarist Dan Hawkins are not in good standing with each other, and the fact that Dan and drummer Ed Graham are suing the band’s management over missing cash makes this all the more crippling. There are also no known attempts to contact Frankie Poullain, their original bassist, who walked away during the recording of One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back. In fact, the only reason it’s even being mentioned is because some rich festival guy has an offer on the table.

Regardless of how flimsy this "news" is, allow me to go ahead and join the massive preemptive wave of "please gawd, no." Don’t even think about it, guys. Cheeseball cock rock with Quiet Riot guitars, inappropriate hair, and a nasally douchebag lead singer is on the outs, and the irony that fueled the adoration of gold-crusted one-pieces and piercing falsettos is nowhere near recharged. Even the Kings Of Leon got haircuts, followed by their first record in the Billboard Top 10, and their music isn’t even accidentally humorous (or amusing at all, for that matter). Give it at least another lifetime. Besides, the remains of The Darkness already reformed as Stone Gods, and Justin is currently pimping a comical new band called Hot Leg. It’s best for everyone if you just admit your five minutes is up.

From YouTube:

From the New York Times:

Eartha Kitt, who purred and pounced her way across Broadway stages, recording studios and movie and television screens in a show-business career that lasted more than six decades, died on Thursday. She was 81 and lived in Connecticut.

The cause was colon cancer, said her longtime publicist, Andrew E. Freedman.

 Eartha Kitt official website
 Eartha Kitt Wikipedia entry
 Eartha Kitt IMDB entry

From YouTube:

From Davy Graham’s official website:

It is with great sadness that we have to announce that Davy passed away on the 15 December 2008 from a seizure at home after a short battle with lung cancer. Davy will be missed by those of us who loved him. The many fans who came to see his last concerts gave him much joy and satisfaction and was something he drew great strength from.

http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/folk-legend-davy-graham-dies-86/

 Davy Graham official website
 Davy Graham Wikipedia entry

Like most print publications right now, Rolling Stone has been hurt by the recession. Late last year, RS made some layoffs at its New York City staff — which included Kyle Anderson, Melissa Maerz, an assistant, and a fact-checker — and it also closed its Detroit and San Francisco offices. Lester Bang wanna-bes beware: cross your fingers with the hopes that post-graduation jobs will exist in the magazine world.

Meanwhile, Wenner Media plans on re-vamping Rollingstone.com with the chief digital officer from Reader’s Digest. Can’t wait to see how that turns out.

From YouTube:

From Rolling Stone:

Famed jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died yesterday in Los Angeles, more than a month after suffering a heart attack. He was 70. In a career in jazz that spanned 50 years and more than 300 recordings, Hubbard collaborated with musicians like Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, just to name a few. “He influenced all the trumpet players that came after him,” said Wynton Marsalis.

 Freddie Hubbard official website
 Freddie Hubbard Wikipedia entry

 Big Ears Festival. Not the greatest fest name; however, the lineup includes Fennesz, Michael Gira, Philip Glass, Anthony and the Johnsons, and Matmos, with more to be announced. The festival will take place February 6-8, 2009, in, get this, KNOXVILLE. Yeah, Tennessee in the house... Thank God something cool is finally happening by me. Ya’ll bitches can buy tickets at the Big Ears Festival official site.

 I have no idea who this band is, but it’s totally awesome: Apparently, the front woman of Italian band Soul Cry knifed the band’s 16 year-old guitarist for fucking up during rehearsal. Cristina Balzano, aged 19, is being charged with attempted murder. Damn, Gina.

 The Arcade Fire are releasing a film, pretentious-speak for a fuckin’ live DVD. Miroir Noir, which is frog for “Black Mirror,” will be digitally released on December 15, 2008 on the official “film” website, while DVD formats will be available sometime in 2009.

 The Langerado Music Festival lineup reads like the “$5.99 and Under” bin at a local record store. Shit like Snoop Dogg, Thievery Corporation, Slightly Stoopid, Pepper, a bunch of shit I’ve never heard of, and then a bunch of hip stuff (The Virgin’s, ya’ll!). This ‘nilla festival is going down March 6-8, 2008 in Miami at the Bicentennial Park. You can buy your $120+ ticket at the official website.

 Waxploitation will release Causes 2, a compilation featuring LCD Soundsystem, Devendra Banhart, My Morning Jacket, Gnarls Barkley, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, and a bunch of others. Causes 2 will be released in March 2009, and all the proceeds go to benefit Darfur.

Well, kids, that’s all I got for this week. Later, ya’ll.

What would you do if you were President for two months and nothing you did mattered? I would probably do exactly what President Bush is currently doing, which is pardon the shit out of a bunch of people for no reason. On November 24, he pardoned former Fugees producer John Forté, during the eighth year of his 14-year prison sentence. In 2000, Forté was caught at Newark International Airport with over $1.4 million in liquid cocaine. He was found guilty on charges of intent to distribute and conspiracy to distribute, and was sentenced to 14 years in low-security federal prison. When asked to comment on his pardon of Forté, President Bush responded, "Who?"

In the years since his arrest, Forté has received support from Carly Simon (for whom he has sung backup vocals and who posted his $250,000 bail) and her son Ben Taylor, who believe that Forté did not receive a fair trial. Also chief among their beliefs is that (contrary to the implication of several tapped phone calls) Forté did not realize that the briefcase he was carrying contained cocaine. Taylor originally met Forté through a cousin who was Forté’s classmate at Phillips Exeter. Remy Ma, still in prison, probably wishes she had gone to college right about now, as fiancé Papoose’s form of advocacy seems to have failed.

President-Elect Obama has declared that one of his first acts as President will be to shoot John Forté with a tranquilizer dart and drag him back to prison so that he may serve out the rest of his sentence, demanding, "Did anyone else read the part about 1.4 million dollars worth of coke?"

From Classics IV’s official website:

Dennis Yost, lead singer of The Classics IV, the 1960’s soft rock group responsible for hit records such as "Spooky," "Stormy," "Everyday With You Girl," and most notably the group’s highest charting record, "Traces of Love," passed away suddenly early Sunday morning, December 7th, in a hospital on the outskirts of Cincinnati, OH with his wife Linda at his side. Dennis was 65 years of age.

Yost, who had been hospitalized in 2005 for a traumatic brain injury sustained after a fall, never fully recovered from the incident, however the cause of death is not believed to be related. A benefit concert, hosted by Jon "Bowzer" Bauman of Sha Na Na fame, was held last year to help raise money for increasing medical costs the Yosts were incurring. Several of Dennis’ musical peers showed up to perform, including Mark "Flo" Volman of The Turtles, The Skyliners, Chuck Negron, formerly of Three Dog Night, and many others.

The Classics IV originally hailed from Jacksonville, Florida, where Yost was raised by his mother Marie Lupato, but recorded all of their hit recordings in Atlanta, GA under the supervision of producer Buddy Buie and Bill Lowery, founder of Lowery Music, Inc. In 1993, Dennis Yost & The Classics IV were inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.

In the mid 90’s, Dennis received a letter of cease and desist, ordering him to stop using the name "The Classics IV" from a lawyer representing a bogus band who had acquired the trademark through other means. Yost sank into a depression as he continued to tour, hopeless that he would ever get the name he helped make famous back, while another group with no original members reaped the profits. Fortunately, in the latter part of 2000, Yost regained ownership of the trademark to "The Classics IV" as part of an out-of-court settlement. A documentary on Yost’s struggles is currently in post-production.

Dennis was the last touring member of the original Classics IV.

 Classics IV official website

Did you know that Steve Jobs used to be a crazy hippy? But then he sold out to The Man and agreed to give away free iTunes downloads if you sign up for the Air Force? True story!

Well, power to the people: the open-source music application Songbird, brought to you by the good folks at the Mozilla Foundation, has finally seen an official release. I think it could steal a serious portion of iTunes’s user base, and here’s why:

 Songbird is customizable. iTunes’s customizability is limited, though there are a number of AppleScripts available, mostly written by a guy named Doug. Songbird founder Rob Lord formally worked on WinAmp, for which plugins and skins abounded, and has brought the same extendibility to Songbird. And since Songbird is open-source, anyone can write an add-on. Already, there exists Last.fm integration, album-art finders, remote control support, and several skins, which these cuties call "feathers."

 Songbird is also a web browser. It’s amazing how often this is useful in conjunction with different add-ons. Not only does the program come with a built-in, tabbed Mozilla web browser, but it also integrates playback from the web seamlessly, allows you to archive media, subscribe to music blogs, and search the web for music using a variety of specialized search engines. This video explains it all rather well.

 Songbird is just like iTunes. In spite of its fundamental differences, Songbird still looks and functions very similarly to iTunes. New users, even new users’ parents, will have little difficulty making the switch. One can set Songbird to automatically match his or her iTunes library, should he or she so desire. And Songbird features full iPod support, so don’t freak out.

 Songbird is open source. Mozilla recently announced their one billionth add-on download, so it looks like this open source thing is for real. Songbird will not try to sell you music or hide your name and email address in your music files (TMT News). Unlike iTunes, it will run lossless formats like FLAC and zany-sounding codecs like Ogg Vorbis. And as methods of distribution continue to transform, the software will evolve to accommodate them.

 iTunes sucks worse than ever. Although iTunes was once marketed with the slogan "Rip. Mix. Burn.," version 8 makes it harder than ever to control the compression and encoding of your files (why not just buy songs from the iTunes Music Store?). This version is also the most invasive yet, indexing your entire music library in order to use its new, unimpressive "Genius" function. It even requires a terminal hack just to remove the links to the iTunes Music store.

Songbird still has a few limitations. Playback support on Apple DRM-protected files is buggy and requires a workaround; artists and albums beginning in the word "the" are infuriatingly alphabetized under "T"; and Songbird is a bit heavier on memory than iTunes. But I have faith that these and other limitations will soon be improved upon. Unlike iTunes, Songbird has no ulterior motive affecting its development. Instead, developers will improve Songbird in response to common needs and user complaints. And maybe, just maybe, it might piss off Paul McCartney a little bit.