Another great release from ’90 under the contemporary folk umbrella (see Amy Correia) – and covering some of the same rootsy terrain as Steve Earle – is Bolsa de Agua from Austin’s Gourds. They throw in the veritable kitchen sink, drawing from bluegrass punk, Tex-Mex, roots rock, Cajun, western, and …

While I was rooting around in the year 2000 thinking about Steve Earle’s Transcendental Blues, I ran across another great record from that year that hasn’t received enough attention, Amy Correia’s Carnival Love. Correia, the daughter of a barber from the small town of Lakeville in southeastern Massachusetts, kind of …

Chad Orzel posted a super cool mix tape last week with comments (of course, this is Blogcritics) and one of the songs on the tape was Steve Earle’s “I Can Wait.” I was very disappointed with Earle’s latest, Jerusalem, but Chad’s post reminded me how much I love Transcendental Blues …

Second Potter video flies out of stores: “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” worked its magic on the home video front, selling more than 6 million VHS and DVD combined units nationwide in its first day in release, according to several industry sources. While Warner Home Video executives declined …

Pretty good symbol of James Taylor’s sophisticated bucolic appeal: A bridge over Morgan Creek immortalized in one of James Taylor’s songs soon will bear a plaque naming it for the singer. On April 24, the bridge built in 1987 on U.S. 15-501 South, a mile from Taylor’s boyhood home, will …

An Oxford house J.R.R. Tolkien lived in 85 years ago has sold for $1.1 million, $80,000 more than the asking price – dude has some FANS: Tolkien lived in the historical, seven-bedroom house with his wife, Edith, in 1918, while working at The Ashmolean, Oxford’s museum of art and archaeology, …

New study finds surprising number still in another century: More than half of nonusers said they don’t want Internet access or don’t need it, a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found. It’s not just a matter of not being able to afford a computer or a …

Sony decides its application for a trademark on the term “shock and awe” for its PlayStation videogames unit isn’t worth the criticism: There have been press reports to the effect that Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has filed a trademark application for the …

One of the complaints against media coverage of the war is that saturation coverage leads to a sense of impotence: all of this stuff is going on and I can’t do anything about it. The ability, or at least the simulated ability, to take action may explain the war game …

Madonna’s disembodied voice enquires of file sharers, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” as they try to download a copy of her “American Life” single via Kazaa or other sharing services. But Madonna isn’t only thwarting file sharers: companies trying to launch legitimate online music services are asking …