In a word: bullshit. You obviously haven't been around here long enough to get to know me very well or you would know it isn't a case of trying to get the last word in. I simply disagree with the notion that R.E.M. suddenly took on a "classic rock tilt" following their work with John Paul Jones on four songs from Automatic For the People. If so, I simply don't hear it. They are much more steeped in influence via Patti Smith, Television, the Cramps, the Sex Pistols, the Velvet Underground, etc. than anything even remotely resembling "classic rock". If there's any hint of vintage rock n' roll in their sound it was there long before that album and it's not of the "classic rock" variety, it would be more of the artists they used to cover in concert leading up to being signed by I.R.S. which would be more like your 60s garage bands as represented on compilations like Nuggets.

What does any of this have to do with your statement that R.E.M. took on a "classic rock tilt" after working with John Paul Jones on Automatic for the People? Not a damn thing as far as I can tell.

It's not a guess, the Eagles are most definitely vehement supporters of many liberal causes. Don't let their association with Wal-Mart fool you, that's just another example of Henley's hypocrisy. Same for Mellencamp. A few years back he scrawled "this machine kills fascists" on his guitar in honor of Woody Guthrie; thing is, he misspelled "fascists". The least he could have done was get that part right. Earlier this year when Mellencamp (an Edwards supporter) learned John McCain was using his songs Our Country and Pink Houses as part of his campaign, he asked him to stop: Mellencamp Asks McCain to Stop Using Tunes Neil Young was a supporter of Ronald Reagan but he otherwise is left-leaning as well.

Just because R.E.M. signed to Warner Brothers doesn't mean they suddenly became "commercial". They were previously on I.R.S., an subsidiary of A & M so in essence they were already involved with a major label. Has their musicianship improved over the years? Of course it has, that happens when you play music for a living. In one breath you admit to not knowing what albums some of R.E.M.'s songs are on, in the next you say you know an "awful" lot about R.E.M. I gather you don't know enough to lend any credence to your statement that their music suddenly took on a "classic rock tilt" with Automatic for the People, not to mention your assumption that if they did, that John Paul Jones working on the string arrangements for four songs somehow had something to do with it. You may hear a "classic rock tilt" to their music beginning with Automatic, I don't. The biggest giveaway that you're obviously not very familiar with R.E.M. was your statement about not knowing they are alternative or that they are credited with pioneering the genre. Even their most casual fan is most likely well aware of the fact that R.E.M. pretty much put "college rock" on the map.

It's the article GetTheLedOut mentions in the post below from the first page of this thread. It was posted on the old board but I don't think it has been posted here.

Not sure about Seger but the Eagles and Mellencamp are definitely liberals.

Pretty cool video up now of an interview Ryan did with Bob Mould: Bob Mould Interview

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/books/re...html?ref=review Frontman By LIZ PHAIR BLACK POSTCARDS A Rock & Roll Romance. By Dean Wareham. Illustrated. 324 pp. The Penguin Press. $25.95. Dean Wareham performing with Luna at the Village Underground in New York, 2001. Rahav Segev Freddie Mercury once said, "I want it all and I want it now." This appetite might aptly be called the rock 'n' roll disease, and Dean Wareham seems to have caught it. Or is in recovery. Or is somewhere along the road. Part confessional, part unsentimental career diary, Wareham's "Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance" reads like good courtroom testimony: to the point, but peppered with juicy and unsolicited asides. Dominick Dunne would make sure his seat was saved before excusing himself to use the restroom. Wareham is a respected cultural figure who cut a wide swath through the '90s independent music scene both in America and in Europe, fronting such beloved bands as Luna and Galaxie 500 (though, in the case of Galaxie 500, this frontman status was deeply contested by his bandmates, accelerating the group's eventual demise, which is captured hilariously in an anecdote at the beginning of the book). He portrays himself as a surprisingly unsympathetic character. He visits a prostitute. He makes people angry. He follows girls home after the show. He snorts coke. No apologies are made because this is, after all, a rock 'n' roll autobiography. Late nights, a lot of drugs, a little infidelity (well, maybe not just a little, but I won't give away the ending) — that's par for the course, right? His honesty is challenging and humbling. Yet, for an egghead (Wareham is a graduate of both the Dalton School, the progressive and prestigious Upper East Side preparatory academy, and Harvard) with an elective reading list to rival Art Garfunkel's (Thomas Mann, Mark Twain, André Malraux, Nietzsche, to name a few), he seems perfectly happy to partake in whatever recreational opportunities come his way, with enviable disregard for the consequences. Guilty? Not guilty? What are we as a jury to think? The facts, at least, are straightforward enough. Thanks to what must have been meticulously kept tour diaries, a rich harvest of the who, what, where and when of Wareham's past makes up the bulk of his story. The heyday of alternative music was a heady time, and Wareham was at the heart of it. After the big business of arena rock trampled through pop culture in the 1980s, with its smoke pots and high ticket prices, a fresh crop of homegrown bands espousing the D.I.Y. ethos, culled from the underground punk scene, suddenly came into vogue. A countercultural wave with roots in political and social activism swept the nation, culminating in the enormous success of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. These self-proclaimed nerds conquered the world for a time, making up in originality and earnestness what they lacked in glitz and swagger. It is the arc of their ascendancy and, at the end of the decade, inevitable decline that is documented so vividly in Wareham's prose, from the point of view of an authentic creative force within this world. Born in New Zealand in 1963 into a middle-class family, the second of four children, Wareham recalls a passion for music at a very young age, when he formed definitive opinions about records before he was even old enough to date: "My father ... brought home Nina Simone's `Here Comes the Sun,' wherein Nina covers George Harrison and Bob Dylan and the Bee Gees, and delivers what I consider to be the greatest recorded version of `My Way.' Joe Cocker's `Cocker Happy' was also a favorite, with his stellar version of `With a Little Help From My Friends,' which he did far better than the Beatles." The author is nothing if not a connoisseur. But Wareham's real gift is his ability to capture the minutiae of daily life in a rock 'n' roll band and somehow make it universal. It's as if a curtain were brushed aside and we all got to go backstage and experience the lives of those who ran away to join the circus: we ride in buses, drive in vans, count T-shirts, bicker with our bandmates, play shows, get courted and booted by record labels, make albums, fall head over heels and, throughout, rub elbows with countless influential artists of the day, crisscrossing the globe in tour trajectories so overlapping and incestuous it makes you want to call in a band traffic controller just to keep all the names straight. Filled with humor, Wareham's memoir is fast-paced and memorable, peopled with characters you could find only in the music industry. There is Kramer, the irreverent producer/sound man/bass player who pals around with Dean and the band during a few Galaxie 500 tours. An avid stoner who records brilliant records at warp speed, Kramer is prone to jumping onstage during a set whether or not he is invited. His playful pranking endears him to Wareham, but falls flat with the rest of the band. The friendship between the two men echoes that of Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton in "The Sun Also Rises," with Kramer as the oft-quipping Bill, and Dean, the taciturn Jake. But not all the subplots in "Black Postcards" are so happy-go-lucky. One particularly unforgettable story involves the rags-to-riches-to-rags-again tale of a high-flying A & R executive at Elektra named Terry Tolkin, whose musical discernment never translated into the other areas of his life. Riding around in limousines, showing up late to work, throwing outrageous parties for artists and charging it all to the label, the surprisingly likable Terry finds himself on shaky ground as a corporate realignment threatens to squeeze him out of a job: "If he had signed just one platinum act, all would have been forgiven. Instead he gave them Luna, Stereolab and the Afghan Whigs." Things go from bad to worse, until "Terry had lost his wife, which he pretended not to care about. Now he had lost his job. ... Six months later he was working at a gas station in New Jersey, changing oil and brake liners by day, snorting heroin by night." One of the things "Black Postcards" does so well is shatter the illusion that rock 'n' roll is all fun and games. Things pile up. The weight of the accumulated past begins to take its toll. Wareham fights to stay engaged in his creative efforts, sometimes at the expense of the stability of both his family and his band. Sick of rumors, sick of disgruntled fans, bad hotels, bad gigs, he may be writing down his remembrances partly to set the record straight. But his supreme interest is clearly and purely music. It is the scaffold on which he hangs most of the feelings and fragments included in the book. Even his writing style has a rhythm to it: passages move rapidly back and forth between incident and impression, creating a kind of (I'm not kidding) rock 'n' roll. If the writing suffers from a tone of detachment throughout, the author is well aware of it. In fact, the long journey to inhabit the present is the book's crowning sentiment. Comparing himself with his young son, Wareham tells his therapist about his struggle to be in the here and now: "`Jack has this incredible ability to enjoy the moment,' I told Bernie. `He's always smiling and laughing and having a good time, while I'm sad about the past and worried about the future. ...' "`You're pissing on the present.' "`What?' "`If you have one foot in the past and one in the future, then you're pissing on the present.'" The day of reckoning comes when Wareham is forced to face a crossroads of his own making. Having just left his wife, he sees his son out with the nanny on the street but cannot approach him because he cannot find the words to explain why he will no longer be living at home: "I gathered myself and walked down Crosby Street, through SoHo, across Canal Street and back to my studio, where I rolled on the floor and sobbed again. Strange sounds came out of my throat, from deep down inside — guttural, primal noises that I didn't know were in me. But they were there." Liz Phair's albums include "Exile in Guyville," "Liz Phair" and, most recently, "Somebody's Miracle."

You must have missed the part where I said, "if someone thinks some bass player from the past is the best of all time that is wonderful...". Again, you misconstrue my words. It was just an observation, not a condemnation. If it makes you feel better to think you were insulted, go right ahead and feel that way. All I'm saying is that there's been some very worthwhile bassists since the 70s.

Like I said, you have a way of reading stuff into things I've said that were never my intention. Again, that was merely an observation and if you look back through the thread and see the names listed you'll see it's a fairly accurate one. Like I said, it's all well and good if someone thinks some bass player from the past is the best of all time but there have been some very prominent and talented bassists since then.

You read much more into my statements than I ever say, especially in this case. I merely made an observation, I didn't say anyone was wrong or that my opinion was superior. If someone thinks some bass player from the past is the best of all time that is wonderful, I just think it's telling that more people didn't name more current bass players. Now, see what meanings I never intended you can twist those words into.

I would be trying to contact someone via the Plant/Krauss site, they're the ones that are responsible for sending out the pre-sale password.

Tift Merritt gets a second chance on her third album City lights and Another Country Tift Merritt and Zeke Hutchins live lightly. The couple's 265-square-foot apartment in New York's Greenwich Village resembles the dorm room of a college freshman with immaculate taste and Francophile tendencies. It's pouring and cold outside, but the white-walled room is bright. A white leather couch, with two watercolors of Parisian street scenes resting on its back, claims half of a wall. Four dozen bottles of San Pellegrino sparkling water sit atop a refrigerator, and six cans of La Sueur early peas rest on a small set of kitchen cabinets. Beneath the lofted bed, a long desk holds two laptop computers, several dozen travel, photography and art books, and a modest collection of CDs. Rock bands share space with jazz and blues musicians. Tift Merritt moved from Raleigh to NYC to rebuild her career—on her own terms. Photo by Christian Hansen "Good thing we're a bunch of minimalists," Merritt says in humble welcome, flashing her subtle Southern smile. Beside the door, a corkboard hangs lined with to-do lists, idea sheets and a map of the world. One memo mentions finding a manager, producer and label, but the more telling note reads like a songwriter's tip sheet or a summation of the record Merritt just finished. The dogmas "Beyond Genre," "Tell a Story" and "Be Original" are scrawled into small boxes, and Merritt has written notes beneath each point: Norah Jones and Feist beneath the first, and "Good Business Sense vs. Too Arty" beneath the second. "The crazy board was invented when we were drunk. We made a lot of lists and a lot of plans, and we did a lot of thinking," says Merritt. "It's important to focus where you're going on your own. And it's also important to have crazy dreams. ...That's why I've kept that crazy board." Merritt and Hutchins have played music together since the winter of 1997, when they met while taking two American Studies classes at UNC-Chapel Hill. They both started college late: Merritt, raised in Raleigh, moved to Wilmington after high school to wait tables and to play music in restaurants. Hutchins, raised in Durham, had been touring in his rock band, Queen Sarah Saturday, since high school. He convinced her to bring a cassette of songs she'd recorded in New York to class. Two days later, he was crammed in her kitchen playing drums. They've mostly been together ever since. You can read the rest of the article here.

There would have been lots of good additions but I feel it is a nice start. According to the liner notes the compilers (one of whom is David Gans of The Grateful Dead Hour) weren't always able to use the versions of the songs they wanted due to copyright restrictions. And in some cases, the only versions available were on vinyl so the quality when transferred to CD weren't always the best. Still, a damn good compilation and a very worthy addition to any Grateful Dead fan's record collection.

Mike Collett-White, Reuters Procol Harum founder Gary Brooker today (April 4) won his court battle over royalty rights to the band's most famous hit, the 1967 song "A Whiter Shade of Pale." In 2006. London's High Court awarded former keyboard player Matthew Fisher 40 percent of the copyright of the track, which has sold an estimated 10 million copies worldwide, after he successfully argued that he wrote the organ music to the song. Brooker appealed, and today, judge John Mummery said that while Fisher should be credited with co-authorship of the seminal track, the fact that it took him 38 years to take the case to court meant he should not benefit financially. "Matthew Fisher is guilty of excessive and inexcusable delay in his claim to assert joint title to a joint interest in the work," Mummery said in his judgment. "He silently stood by and acquiesced in the defendant's commercial exploitation of the work for 38 years." Fisher described the appeal court's ruling as "peculiar."

Nice little collection here if you can put your hands on a copy. Unfortunately it went out of print not long after it was released. 1. Rain And Snow Obray Ramsey 2. Mama Tried Merle Haggard 3. Iko Iko The Dixie Cups 4. Samson & Delilah Rev. Gary Davis 5. Big Railroad Blues Cannon's Jug Stompers 6. El Paso Marty Robbins 7. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue Bob Dylan 8. Spoonful Charlie Patton 9. The Red Rooster Howlin' Wolf 10. The Promised Land Chuck Berry 11. Don't Ease Me In Henry Thomas 12. Big Boss Man Jimmy Reed 13. Turn On Your Love Light Bobby "Blue" Band 14. Morning Dew Bonnie Dobson 15. Not Fade Away Buddy Holly 16. Goin' Down This Road Feelin' Bad Woody Guthrie 17. I Bid You Goodnight Joseph Spence

Graham Parker and the Figgs Songs of No Consequence

Tift Merritt European Tour Dates 03 MAY: Kilkenny, Ireland @ Kilkenny Rhythm & Roots Festival 04 MAY: Kilkenny, Ireland @ Kilkenny Rhythm & Roots Festival 05 MAY: Maidstone, England @ Zebra Bar 07 MAY: Swansea, Wales @ Monkey 08 MAY: Bristol, England @ St Bonaventure 10 MAY: Buckingham, England @ The Radcliffe Centre 11 MAY: Edinburgh, Scotland @ Pleasance Bar 13 MAY: London, England @ Green Note, SOLD OUT 15 MAY: York, England @ National Centre For Early Music 16 MAY: Chorley, England @ St. Bedes 17 MAY: New Castle, England @ The Cluny 20 MAY: Berlin, Germany @ Quasimodo 23 MAY: Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso 24 MAY: Haren (Brussels), Belgium @ Toogenblik Club 27 MAY: Stockholm, Sweden @ Nalen 29 MAY: Göteborg, Sweden @ Storan — 30 MAY: Malmo, Sweden @ Kulturbolaget 01 JUN: Lund, Sweden @ Mejeriet Café 15 JUN: Olso, Norway @ Norwegian Wood Festival 01 JUL: London, England @ Bush Hall 02 JUL: Sheffield, England @ Memorial Hall 03 JUL: Nottingham, England @ Rescue Rooms 06 JUL: Charlbury, England @ Cornbury Festival

Thanks to the kind soul who sent me the pre-sale password for the Raleigh show this morning. If I had been relying on receiving it from the Plant/Krauss site I'd be shit out of luck.

That was as planned and calculated as the Sex Pistols themselves. Still, they got a standing ovation for not even appearing.

How did John Paul Jones doing the string arrangement for four songs suddenly lend their sound a "classic rock" tilt? If it did, I certainly don't hear it. When were Chronic Town, Mumur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Life's Rich Pagent, Document, Green and Out of Time ever considered "ordinary"? Hell, they didn't even get played on commercial radio with any regularity until at least Document when they had their first number one hit with The One I Love. I'm not sure how you define "ordinary" but I wouldn't use it to describe any of those records or even R.E.M. in general. Are you sure you're not thinking of another band? To everything else that was on the airwaves when they first came out with the single Radio Free Europe in the early 80s. No, they didn't. In fact, they, along with Neil Young are among the very few artists who have yet to allow their songs to be licensed for commercial use. Years ago when approached by Bill Gates to use It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) for a commercial promoting Windows, they flat out refused millions of dollars for the offer. The Rolling Stones took him up on it though and allowed him to use Start Me Up. Most anyone with any knowledge of music. From some of your comments here I gather you must know very little about R.E.M. When they came out with the Chronic Town EP in the early 80s they pretty much kicked the door wide open for the alternative movement and all that followed (for better and for worse). And you need to do a little research before making such generalized statements about a band you obviously know so very little about. I'm not being aggressive, I'm just calling it like I see it. If you're going to say a band like R.E.M. has a "classic rock tilt", at least be able to back it up with some facts. John Paul Jones doing the string arrangements for four songs on Automatic didn't suddenly cause them to have a "classic rock" sound. "Classic Rock" itself is pretty much a meaningless term anyway.

Here it is less than an hour before the Raleigh pre-sale and I still haven't received a pre-sale password from the Plant/Krauss site. Anyone else?

It would indicate to me that folks don't listen to much music outside of their safety boundaries, in which case I would think they might wanna expand those boundaries being this is already 2008 and all but to each their own. Some like living with their heads buried in the sand.

I've never been a fan of Rotten, the Sex Pistols or even punk rock itself but I've always enjoyed the interviews I've seen/read with him.

Therein lies his charm.