Random Friday – Movement In The Atmosphere Edition

Have not played the random shuffle game ((the rules are simple, shuffle your music by song, play the first x=number songs, list ’em)) in a while, so here’s what came this afternoon. Note this is more than 10 songs, the smart playlist I used is made for creating CDs to play in a car

Which Rock Star Will Historians of the Future Remember?

Chuck Klosterman wrote an interesting essay, with a subject my inner rock historian appreciates: who will be the John Phillips Sousa of rock music, as viewed by students 300 years in the future? What artist will stand in for the genre itself? Will it be The Beatles? The Rolling Stones? Elvis Presley? Or Bob Dylan? Or someone else entirely?

Neil Young Album Le Noise and iPad app

“It evolved from being solo acoustic into being solo electric,” Young tells Billboard.com. The singer-songwriter says that after a few acoustic songs were initially recorded, he pulled out “The Hitchhiker,” an autobiographical song Young first wrote around 1975, and began working it up for “Le Noise.” “Then I thought to myself, ‘This is definitely going to be better electric than acoustic”

New U2 Album No Line on the Horizon

Much like All That You Can’t and Atomic Bomb, which were largely recorded with their first producer, Steve Lillywhite, this is a return to the familiar for U2, but where their Lillywhite LPs are characterized by muscle, the Eno/Lanois records are where the band take risks, and so it is here that U2 attempts to recapture that spacy, mysterious atmosphere of The Unforgettable Fire and then take it further. … Apart from a stilted middle section — “Boots,” the hamfisted white-boy funk “Stand Up Comedy,” and the not-nearly-as-bad-as-its-title anthem “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”; tellingly, the only three songs here to not bear co-writing credits from Eno and Lanois — No Line on the Horizon is all austere grey tones and midtempo meditation.

Netflixed RocknRolla

As Roger Ebert concludes: “RocknRolla” (which is how they say “rock and roller” in the East End) isn’t as jammed with visual pyrotechnics as Ritchie’s “Lock, Stock and Smoking Barrel” (1998), but that’s OK, because with anything more happening, the movie could induce motion sickness. It never slows down enough to be really good, and never speeds up enough to be the Bourne Mortgage Crisis, but there’s one thing for sure: British actors love playing gangsters as much as American actors love playing cowboys, and it’s always nice to see people having fun.

Bookmarks for October 3rd

Some additional reading October 3rd from 09:28 to 18:09: SuperSonicSoul on Economic Meltdowns, Stadiums, and NBA Owners – "The time has come for this country to quit subsidizing billionaires on the backs of taxpayers. If stadiums were such a great investment – as owner after owner tells city after city… Read more“Bookmarks for October 3rd”

Yankees screw New Yorkers

City and team: It’s not true The report, by the Assembly Corporations, Authorities and Commissions Committee, which Brodsky chairs, also says the city promised the stadium project would create 1,000 permanent new jobs in order to win approval for massive public subsidies, and that the actual number of permanent new jobs being created is 15.

…In this case, Mayor Bloomberg (and Rudy 9-11 before him) and the Yankees made all sorts of grandiose claims that the stadium would be a boon to the economy, and of course, it isn’t, and won’t be much different than the previous stadium, other than making more money for the owners.

Another Green World

I attempt to examine the confluence of ideas at a certain time in a certain place in the 1970s, and how these notions helped to shape the form of three records, all released in 1975: Another Green World, Discreet Music, and Evening Star. … The first, as Eno himself has pointed out, is that only five out of the 14 tracks on Another Green World have words, but that listeners tend to perceive the album as a “song record,” not an ambient record.

Fake Franchise

Lets see, off the top of my head (salary data from hoopshype ): Kobe Bryant ($19.4 Million) Jermaine O’Neal ($19.7 M) Kevin Garnett ($22 M) Allen Iverson ($20.1 M) Stephon Marbury ($20.1 M) Shaquille O’Neal ($20 M) Tracy McGrady ($19 M) Steve Francis ($16.4 M) Antawn Jamison ($16.3 M) Paul Pierce ($16.3 M) Ray Allen ($16 M) Michael Redd ($14.5 M) Pau Gasol ($13.7M) Joe Johnson ($13.5 M) Mike Bibby ($13.5 M) Zach Randolph ($13.3 M) Lamar Odom ($13.5 M) Rashard Lewis ($15.6 – not sure if this is his new contract. Still he was second highest paid member of a horrible team, the Seattle/Oklahoma Sonics) plus as reserves: Jason Kidd ($19.7 M – though Kidd might be worth max money, if only he could make a jump shot) Dirk Nowitzki ($16.3 M) Some of these fellas did make the 2007 playoffs true (8 of these 20, but none got further than the first round.