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Another spectacular, amazing, eye-opening career retrospective from James Brown, the man with a shitload of nicknames: “Soul Brother Number One,” “the Godfather of Soul,” “the Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” “Mr. Dynamite,” and every one of them earned in 50, yes I said 50 years in showbiz. All the …

On his fence-mending tour of the nation last week Attorney General John Ashcroft said librarians were “hysterical” about the U.S.A. Patriot Act. PW Daily reports: During one speech, he said, “Do we at the Justice Department really care what you are reading? No. The law enforcement community has no interest …

Who could possibly make suicide bombs seem so benign? Who can make jihad seem like a carnival? Who could make a religion steeped in controversy give you a giggle. Allah, that’s who. I think this classic satire on the Christian “Footprints in the Sand” is perhaps the most effective weapon …

Kevin Ayers’ The Confessions of Dr. Dream is a lost classic, a spunky amalgam of pop and rock styles (recorded at Air in ’74) filtered through Ayers’ avant-sensibility and sung in his startling bass, sounds remarkably modern even today. “Day By Day” opens the album funkily, with Hine on clavinet …

Formed in 1981, Belgian industrial group Front 242 helped pioneer aggressive electronic “body” music throughout ’80s with Skinny Puppy and Ministry. Front 242 produced two of the genre’s most important albums (Front By Front, Tyranny For You) and arguably, the genre’s most important single, “Headhunter.” The machine-only Front 242 sound …

The focus of the most recent trade collection of Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor series, Unsung Hero (Dark Horse), may initially throw readers coming to Pekar’s comics from the currently released American Splendor flick. Instead of the autobiographical thoughts and travails of Cleveland’s most famous file clerk, Hero recounts the Vietnam …

Pat Collier was a member of the Vibrators, one of the earliest British pop-punk bands in the late-’70s. As the ’70s became the ’80s Collier turned to recording, owning and operating the Greenhouse Studio in London, and over the course of working with dozens of young bands he developed Collier’s …

With guitars and their wielding very much on my mind, I tossed the new Chris Duarte Group (Duarte, John Jordan – bass, Ed Miles – drums) CD on the player and let it rip, er romp. Romp is the hairy, Band O Gypsies-clad, Austin-based fret-feeler’s fourth album, and if you …

Is it the bloated, gaseous, anti-American dissembler Michael Moore or the bombastic, pompous, flag-wrapped and imperious Bill O'Reilly?

Senator Sam, Republican from Kansas, cuts through the copyright industry jibber-jabber and strikes a blow for consumer rights, due process, and privacy. He sees the DMCA for what it is, and the proposed “broadcast flag” on digital television as an affront to consumer rights. His press release on the matters …