Happy Birthday James Brown: the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest Working Man in Showbiz, Soul Brother Number 1, Mr. Dynamite is 70 years young today (although some reports have him as old as 75, but who’s counting?): “It’s been seven decades alive and over five decades onstage, and I still …

Hunter S. Thompson got married: Surprise surprise, eh? It was done with fine style and secrecy in order to avoid the craziness and drunken violence that local lawmen feared would inevitably have followed the ceremony. I know nothing about planning even the simplest wedding, nothing at all, and neither does …

A panel of experts convened by Entertainment Weekly have dubbed the Zelda series of video games the best ever: The “Zelda” series is a chronicle of heroic adventures in fantasy lands; the latest game, “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker,” features a character named Link who sails the seas …

Seeking to utterly alienate millions of customers, and enter into a real tech war with enraged geeks, the RIAA is sponsoring research into methods to debilitate file sharer’s computers: The record companies are exploring options on new countermeasures, which some experts say have varying degrees of legality, to deter online …

Ancient socialist, peacenik, and folk legend Pete Seeger has recorded a new version of his Vietnam War-era protest song, “Bring Them Home” (seems kind of moot about now) with help from Steve Earle, Ani DiFranco, and Billy Bragg. I would expect nothing different from Seeger, who at 84 is as …

On June 26 author J.K. Rowling will be interviewed on the stage of London’s Royal Albert Hall by comedian Stephen Fry, who has narrated the Potter audiobooks, before reading from the new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and will then answer questions from children: Competition for a …

Courtney Love placed full-page ads in the Village Voice and L.A. Weekly recruiting rockin’ babes for her live band: The ad says, “Women required for International Rock Revolution. Join Courtney Love’s touring band and get famous, see the world.” “Must play bass or guitar (really play), and look like a …

For their first concert in the US after the Great Controversy, would the Dixie Chicks be booed, cheered, boycotted, ignored, or celebrated? At least for 15,000 in Greenville, SC, the controversy appears to be over: A sold-out crowd cheered, clapped, danced and sung along during the Dixie Chicks’ summer tour …

Ukraine is the Blackbeard of copyright violators: The United States on Thursday issued its annual list of countries with the worst record of protecting copyright material and other intellectual property, again identifying Ukraine as the worst culprit. [worse than the 98% music CD piracy rate of Peru?] The U.S. Trade …

The first DVD for digital high-definition computer and television monitors: The two-disc DVD contains one standard DVD of hit 1991 Schwarzenegger movie, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” for playback in a normal DVD player. The second disc, however, contains a high-definition version of the movie to be played on a computer …