Notice, I said "probably". I'm sure there's still pockets around the globe where this is still a huge part of culture but on the whole I imagine (notice I said imagine) it's considered a past way of life.

From Billboard.com: Metallica Taking Fans Inside New Album Sessions Metallica Jonathan Cohen, N.Y. As the September release of its first album in five years draws near, Metallica has launched the Web site "Mission: Metallica" to offer fans a wealth of exclusive content and teasers of new songs. A preview clip shows the band recording and clowning around in the studio. Fans who sign up will be eligible to "win backstage passes to every show this summer," among other special offers. "Mission: Metallica" also has a "platinum" level, entitling fans to a copy of the new album delivered on street date, weekly "fly on the wall" video clips, contests to travel to shows and/or Metallica's San Francisco compound, live show downloads, ringtones and more. It is unclear what, if anything, the services will cost. Metallica will be on the road this summer in advance of the as-yet-untitled album, beginning Wednesday (May 14) with a show at Los Angeles' intimate Wiltern Theatre. A European run begins May 28 in Chorzow, Poland.

Believe it or not I still don't own Archives. Unfortunately I don't think it's still available or if it was even ever available on CD. I do remember it on vinyl though.

I especially like this one, a reminder of a time when people would hang out at the local country store. And to think, there's probably an entire generation out there that will never know of such times (at least through personal experience). One of my favorite places (even though I didn't know it at the time) was a store on the coast of NC where we would hang out with my Dad in the wee hours of the mornin' shooting the shit with the old fisherman before we boarded the boat to head out deep sea fishin' for the day. Fourth of July 1939 near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Rural filling stations become community centers and general loafing grounds. Cedargrove Team members about to play in a baseball game. More photos here.

All the World's A Stage was my first Rush album back in the 70s and definitely a good one. I really should pick it up on CD at some point.

Joan Baez?

As one of the handful of Tift fans here you might be interested in this.

For me, it was Love It To Death, Killer, School's Out and Muscle of Love. While I think it's absolutely wonderful that another generation of teenagers grew up on Alice, I can't say I ever cared much for Poison or any of his other songs from that time period.

Thanks for the article, that was a good read. Try this link for the NY Times piece: http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/trave...?pagewanted=all

Bruce Springsteen does it all of the time (or quite a bit of the time), same for the Drive-By Truckers.

Neil Young gets new honor -- his own spider LOS ANGELES (Reuters Life!) - Iconic singer and songwriter Neil Young has had an honor bestowed upon him that is not received by many musicians -- his own spider. An East Carolina University biologist, Jason Bond, discovered a new species of trapdoor spider and opted to call the arachnid after his favorite musician, Canadian Neil Young, naming it Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi. You can read the rest of the article here.

Has Neil Young Miscalculated His Fan-Base? by Paul Cashmere photo by Ros O'Gorman Neil Young is making a massive mistake by limiting his forthcoming Archive collection to Blu-Ray. For someone who has put his audience first for more than 40 years, Young is risking alienation of epic proportions by placing his fan-base below technology. To read the rest of the article click here.

I loved the article myself but I found it immediately suspect since there was absolutely no mention of The Drams (formerly known as Slobberbone). If it weren't for Slobberbone I would have never heard of Denton. Slobberbone Slobberbone's website The Drams (SXSW 2007) The Drams website The Drams on MySpace

If you check out some of the box sets I mentioned you're bound to find some stuff you like. I just think the 80s gets a bad rap (especially on this board where so many seem caught up in the music of the 60s and 70s). I like Plant's 80s output but like several artist of that time period, the production techniques (ie, the drum machine) are very telling of the time and immediately date the music. That said, there was also the "roots" music movement of the time period where those type of production techniques were eschewed in favor of more traditional methods. Again, there was so much more going on in the 80s than just New Wave and Hair Metal; I think there's something there for most everyone to love whether it be punk, reggae, roots rock, the blues revival, the Paisley Pop movement, etc.

An Indie Scene That Comes With a Texas Twang in Denton Mark Graham for The New York Times The Boxcar Bandits at Hailey’s, a popular club in Denton, Tex., a city that is a new hotbed of indie music. There are more than 100 local bands. By LIONEL BEEHNER WITH its Piggly Wiggly markets and dusty pawnshops, the Texas college town of Denton does not look the part of a Woodstock in waiting. A Romanesque courthouse juts out of the central square, as in that fictional town in Back to the Future. And whenever the local college football team plays at Fouts Field, the entire town seems to put on Mean Green T-shirts. But wander into the Panhandle House, a barnlike recording studio on North Locust Street, and you’ll find Midlake, a five-person band whose music the British newspaper The Guardian has called “a dreamy concoction of Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and the Yardbirds.” Actually, the band is ensconced in the dingy storage room next door, which they have turned into a makeshift shrine to the 1970s — patchouli incense, wood paneling and vintage vinyl — that befits their retro three-guitar sound. You can read the rest of the article here.

Up through my high school years and into the early 80s I was pretty heavy into hard rock but my tastes started to shift (again) once I first heard R.E.M., the Replacements, U2, the Alarm, and local bands like Let's Active, the db's, the Spongetones and others. That said, I still love Zep (duh), Sabbath, Foghat, Van Halen and most of the other music I grew up listening to in the 70s. By the time Cinderella, Poison, and that whole pretty boy hair metal thing hit I had completely lost interest in that type of music. In fact, I can't think of a time when I was ever a fan of hair metal.

Killer is one of the very first records I ever bought back in the early 70s (if not the first record) but I've never seen Alice in concert. He was at the HOB in Myrtle last year but for reasons beyond my control, I was unable to make it. Hopefully I'll get another chance sometime in the near future. At this stage I've seen most of the artists in concert that I grew up listening to (even if it took over 20 years or more to do so), Alice is one of the last holdouts.

Not to generalize but quite a few clerks in indie stores come across as "pompous". In case you haven't seen it (or read the book by renown author Nick Hornby) I suggest checking out the movie High Infidelity which does an outstanding job of capturing the typical indie record store feel. You need to get beyond the fact that record store clerks are going to ask you for help because in most instances that's simply not the case. Plus, you seem to be sending mixed signals. On the one hand you're complaining that they won't ask you for help, on the other you say, "I'm pretty much never looking for something specific, especially when I go into the indie store." So, why are you complaining? It sounds to me like you just aren't accustomed to the indie record store shopping experience and are more familiar with shopping in big box stores. Speaking just for myself, I much prefer the indie store shopping experience. I'll talk a pompous, yet knowledgeable clerk over a clueless fuck who has to look everything up on the computer any day of the week. I do understand your dilemma about the organization of the vinyl section. Thankfully, the indie I usually shop at is organized but I'm sure that's not the case everywhere.

If you're used to shopping in the big box stores where folks are trained to ask you for help and that's what you're accustomed to, I wouldn't expect someone at an indie store to ask you for assistance. In fact, I can't think of an instance right off hand where one of them ever asked me for help. If I'm looking for something specific and I'm not there to just browse I ask the person behind the counter for help, I wouldn't ever expect them to ask me. Again, this isn't a big box. As for the store being empty, there's a very good reason for that, indies are going out of business at an alarming rate for a variety of reasons. I also don't know about the employees being "lazy" just because they don't ask if they can help you. In an indie store you have to be proactive and ask them for assistance. Again, if you're looking for something specific you're better off to ask the clerk for help rather than sifting through an endless array of vinyl. Personally, I love browsing but if I'm in a hurry I either call ahead or ask for help as soon as I enter the store.

I beg to differ. I believe it was a very good time for music. Some people look back at the 70s and all they remember is disco. Some look back at the 80s and all they remember is what was on MTV. Neither are very good indicators of music from either time period. And, as much as I may enjoy watching them, I also blame those I Love the 70s/80s/90s shows that air on VH1, especially the one that featured commentators that said "the jocks in high school liked The Who, the stoners liked Zeppelin". Some people that simply don't know any better will watch some bullshit like that and take it as fact. Back to the 80s, it was a very vibrant time period for music with the popularity of New Wave (not all of it was the type of shit featured on MTV), reggae, roots heavy bands like some of the artists I previously mentioned such as Los Lobos, the Long Ryders, Lone Justice and many, many others. If you like psychedelic music you would probably also be interested in the Paisley Pop explosion that happened during this era with artists such as the Bangles, the 3 O'Clock, the Long Ryders and many, many other bands. Quite a few of these artists are featured on a very excellent collection from Rhino Records called Children of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era - 1976-1996 (a sequel to the original Nuggets collection). If you're interested, you can read more about it here. Then there were the artists that are often credited with giving birth to the "alternative" movement such as R.E.M., the Replacements, the Cure, U2, etc. Many of them are well represented on yet another excellent Rhino collection called Left of the Dial: Dispatches from the 80s Underground. Again, if you're interested in learning more you can do so here. In other words, if you think all there was to the 80s was a bunch of synth heavy bands with questionable hairstyles on MTV and hair metal, there was a hell of a lot more to the 80s than that. I would say it's second next to only the 60s for such a creative time in music history when nearly everything had a chance at some sort of airplay whether it be college radio, mainstream radio or music television (not just MTV). All this and I haven't even touched on the Hardcore scene (which is very well depicted in the American Hardcore DVD) and how Stevie Ray Vaughan pretty much single handily kick-started the blues revival. The 80s "not a good time for music"? Hardly....

To each their own. I was just never a fan of the synth heavy MTV friendly bands of that time (or of what would later become known as "hair metal"). I was much more a fan of artists like R.E.M., the Replacements, Guadalcanal Diary, Let's Active, the db's, Lone Justice, the Long Ryders, Los Lobos, Stevie Ray Vaughan, U2, etc. back then as well as reggae artists such as the Mighty Diamonds, Peter Tosh, the Itals, David Lindley and El Rayo-X, etc. Many of the New Wave and Hair Metal bands struck me as transparent and superficial. It was just never my thing.

Click here for a link to Raleigh, NC News & Observer music writer David Menconi's On the Beat blog for a short piece about the Drive-By Truckers. Within that article you'll find other links, including one to a new interview with Patterson Hood.

More accurately, I'm simply not a fan. My girlfriend has attended many shows with me of artists she's not particularly a fan of so the least I can do is go see Duran Duran with her. Way back in the 80s I was working at a college radio station when artists like Duran Duran, Soft Cell, the Human League, Men at Work, the Replacements, R.E.M. Flock of Seagulls, U2, etc. first broke through so at least I have a tolerance for them. I even liked Hungry Like the Wolf for a few seconds back then but mostly I've never really been a fan of their music. If you had asked me back then if they would still be around in 2008 (much less attending one of their concerts), I would have told you no. I also recall saying much the same thing to my hair metal friends about the likes of Bon Jovi and Poision back in those days. Who knew they'd still be going strong (well, at least Bon Jovi) all these years later.

I don't even consider Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship or Starship (the moniker they cut We Built This City under) to be the same bands so I wouldn't consider White Rabbit to be a Jefferson Starship or Starship song. In several "worst song ever" polls I've seen We Built This City come in at number one and rightfully so.

Agreed. They sound like a real assmonkey. If I go into a Borders or Barnes & Noble it is usually to look for books and magazines (B & N is also where I scored the Rolling Stone Cover To Cover collection a few weeks ago for $25 [it normally goes for $125]). That's not say I never peruse the music selections there either as you can sometimes find some stuff on sale but if I'm in a city big enough to have a B & N or a Borders that sometimes mean they're also big enough to have an indie store so I prefer to shop there. The exception being the new Tift Merritt which was offered as an "exclusive" (meaning it came with a bonus disc you can't find anywhere else) at B & N when it first came out.