The U.S. government performs lots of useful services besides blowing things up and collecting taxes, among them issuing reports on every imaginable thing. Among them is the International Religious Freedom Report (submitted to the Congress by the Department of State in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom …

Fischerspooner are at the forefront of the “electroclash” movement, if in fact it is a movement. You can experience some of their musical retro-futuro synth-pop for yourself here. I am burbling down the frothy analog stream that is “The 15th” as we speak. Now “Emerge” is blurping and scurrying around …

With Oliver Stone’s Alexander (click for trailer) lurking on the filmic horizon, this interview from Archaeology magazine with the film’s chief historian Robin Lane Fox (pictured above with star Colin Farrel) – who teaches Greek and Latin literature, Greek, Roman and early Islamic history at Oxford, AND who appears in …

Okay, as a non-video game player and music video skeptic I am not the target audience for this, but am I insane to think this is the most pointless, pandering nonsense in the history of pointless pandering nonsense? Do we need remade versions of videos with the characters and environments …

As Tom Johnson mentions in his very fine review of the “new” Tears For Fears, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, Arista Records was scheduled to put it out in April, but dropped the ball amid reorganization, the merger with Sony Music, and the ouster of Antonio “LA” Reid from the …

Power to the people – right on. Another online protest, and this one I am behind 100%. As I mentioned rather vehemently here, the ruling against NWA for violating copyright in the use of a three-note UNIDENTIFIABLE sample from Funkadelic’s “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” is a disaster. Downhill …

An apt little lesson on the music biz: our Mark Hasty wrote a very fine post (see below) on young singer-songwriter Bonnie McKee on July 9, when her album was scheduled for a July release. Well, in the middle of the Warner Music Group shakeup, the album didn’t come out …

In what could be called a post-hip-hop musical development, sampling, looped beats, and the blending of organic and inorganic musical sources are still the sonic and creative foundation, but a folky, singer-songwriter vibe has evolved over the last ten years or so with such practicioners as Beck, Arrested Development, G. …

If I were not an educated, reasonably articulate, pushy asshole who is willing to get on the phone and browbeat these vicious leeches, this could easily have been me at various points in my life, including a credit crunch situation we had not all that long ago: In a six-year …

The nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2005 were announced yesterday: Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five are among the nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — the first rap artists to get that distinction — joining U2, Randy Newman and the …