As much as I like vinyl, I think one of the advantages of CDs is being able to listen to an entire album all the way through, uninterrupted. There are some cases where artists use the entire 80 plus minutes available to them but this isn't the case when listening to older albums or when artists make records that are still "vinyl" length such as R.E.M.'s Accelerate from last year. That album was kept to under 40 minutes on purpose to help relive the vinyl experience.

Links to some reviews: Springsteen To Seeger: "You Outlasted The Bastards" Live Review: Pete Seeger's 90th Birthday (The Clearwater Concert) in New York, NY Pete Seeger BDay Concert | 05.03.09 | NYC ..and a couple of YouTube clips featuring Patterson Hood:

It may well be the case, I just don't buy into that. The price of stamps would go up with or without the internet, just like everything else. As I pointed out, what I posted was merely a forwarded email, it wasn't my own personal observation on those under 30.

X are playing here soon and from all reports their reunion shows haven't been coming with the usual trappings and shortcomings so I hope to see 'em.

3 cuts from their upcoming new record have been uploaded to their MySpace site which you can sample here.

For those interested, new Minus Five and Young Fresh Fellows are streaming here.

Does the rise in the cost of postage stamps really have anything to do with the internet? They have always gone up, even before the internet.

Having grown up in the 70s I heard them all over the radio and saw them on the cover of tons of magazines, not to mention all the sell out shows and The Song Remains the Same movie. They definitely weren't some obscure underground band. What set them apart was the mystique that built up around the band as far as refusing interviews and whatnot. Plus, they rarely (if ever) seemed to be featured in any of the "history of rock n' roll" type documentaries I saw back then but they were definitely a huge part of the mainstream rock n' roll scene. These days it's almost sickening to walk into a department store and see "Led Zeppelin", "AC/DC", "Pink Floyd", "Jimi Hendrix", etc. treated as some sort of brand name on t-shirts. Sure, those type of shirts were also available back in the 70s but not on the same level and as widespread as they are today.

Plant is now a a "bluegrass freak"? Last time I listened to it I didn't detect a note of bluegrass on Raising Sand. Jones has worked with Uncle Earl, Sara Watkins and Chris Thile of Nickel Creek and has jammed with the likes of the Duhks at festivals such as Bonnaroo and MerleFest, is he too now a "bluegrass freak"?

I remember some U2 singles from the 80s that played at 45 rpm on side and 33 1/3 rpm on the b-side so they could include two previously unreleased songs on that side of the single. These days even a short record (such as R.E.M''s Accelerate which clocks in somewhere just under 40 minutes) comes as a double album in it's vinyl configuration and plays at 45 rpm (as opposed to 33 1/3). From what I understand that's supposed to be some sort of audiophile thing since it provides better sound quality. That's how I'm guessing the Stairway vinyl single was done so they could fit the entire unedited version on there.

I had this discussion on another board recently but I don't really see the harm in email. I never even wrote all that many letters before but I stay in closer contact with friends these days via email. Still, I probably opt to call over the phone just as much as I always have. The argument was, it takes more time and thought to write a letter since you have to pick out the paper, the envelope and actually handwrite the letter itself. All that is true but the same amount of thought (at least for me) goes into composing the email itself, it's just delivered via the innernut as opposed to the postal system.

It doesn't appear to be the exact thing you're talking about but ever since the advent of the internet and more recently, texting, people (but teens particularly) are writing in shorthand. No harm in that but it's actually caught on and is spilling over into other forms of communication. I posted this in another thread recently but it's worth posting again, it's from an installment from On Point that airs on NPR called Digital Youth.

I haven't heard it yet myself but I understand the new album they've just released with John Doe from X is pretty good. You can sample some tunes on the John Doe & the Sadies MySpace site.

That sort of hype has the opposite effect on me.

I think Radar Gun was probably their biggest and maybe even their only "hit" but they're still making records and touring to this day. They're great live band if ever you get a chance to see them.

I don't think it's really saying we had it "hard" back then, it's just juxtaposing how much things have changed. 20 years from now what we take for granted now will also radically change. I don't download either but it's not really an effort to hold onto my childhood. I just don't feel like investing the time in ripping my entire CD collection to iTunes. I also don't believe in the proliferation of the MP3 as the predominate audio format (but that's another thread entirely). I don't mind folks downloading so it's really some kind of moral standpoint, it's just not something I'm into but with the demise of the CD on the horizon I'm sure I'll have to adapt sooner or later. I even have an iPod Shuffle but I've never used it. I still enjoy going to the library too. I like it for the same reason I enjoy visiting bookstores, I can read for hours and hours and never get bored. I never really got into video games either. I played them and enjoyed them (as far back as the advent of Pong) but it's not something I continued to pursue. Xbox is one of the biggest sellers these days but I don't own one, nor do I have a desire to.

On that subject I recall watching a reality show (I actually enjoyed) on PBS a few years back called Frontier House. Several families had to get by using only means that would have been available to them in the 1880s. After it was over the subject came up of turning the tables. If you could place a family from the 1800s into the present day, how easily would they adapt to cellphones, fax machines, the internet and all of the other technological gadgets we have at our fingertips these days? Would it be equally (or even more) difficult as it was for those families to adapt to an approximation of what it was like to survive in the 1880s? In case you're interested you can read more about Frontier House here. And, I've posted this before but it's worth posting again especially since we're on the subject of how much technology has changed, particularly within the last 20 years or so: Louis CK on Late Night with Conan O'Brien "Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy"

On the subject of Solsbury Hill, a local band named Glass Moon had a hit with it back in the 80s. If you're interested in reading more about them you can do so here. I also didn't realize there are so many covers of it. Back to the topic at hand, happy songs? Anything with a banjo. Sad songs? Any tune about a dog dying.

Yes, this is one of those FWD things but for the most part it's pretty funny (and true).

I have a perfectly good printer and scanner but neither are compatible with OS X so I recently had to invest in a new printer and scanner. After mucho research I went with the Brother laser printer.

No posts in this thread about Plant working with Sonny Landreth yet? Guess it's on a matter of time...

Adam Lambert is teaming up with Sonny Landreth. They're gonna call it Lambreth.

At one point I may have been mildly interested in seeing the Anvil doc but since VH1 Classic shows commercials for it every five minutes I've pretty much lost interest in seeing it all.

That's not a bad place to start but like their other early recordings (Gangstabilly and Pizza Deliverance) it's a little rough around the edges production-wise. Still, it's damn good stuff. For those that are new to the Truckers I usually recommend Decoration Day. It was recorded after Jason Isbell (who has since gone his own way) joined the band and is somewhat more accessible. The Bottle Rockets are kickass as well. So many folks only seem to know 'em from Radar Gun but there's so much more to 'em than that. I still haven't purchased a ticket yet, I just hope it's still not sold out. The last time I saw him (along with his wife Allison Moorer) it was also all acoustic, which I'm guessing this upcoming show will be given the nature of the Townes record as well as the size of the venue. I still don't own Copperhead Road on CD so hopefully when I take the plunge it'll be the deluxe edition. Sadly a lot of folks seem to think he dropped off the face of the earth after Copperhead Road but he didn't. Some of the records he's recorded since then are some of the very best of his career, at least to my ears. Especially El Corazon and Train A' Comin' (the first album he recorded after getting out of prison).