Music

I've never watched any reality TV shows, except a few minutes here and there when one of them was on right before another program I wanted to see.

Via Fark, one of the great moments in entertainment history, William Shatner performing -- I guess that's the right word -- "Rocket Man" at a science fiction convention. It happened 30 years ago today.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=DvQwXOCKNLY]

Happy birthday, one day late:

1949: The 45-rpm record is introduced by RCA. Can rock 'n' roll be far behind?

[ . . .]

OK, I take it all back. Neil Young's "Southern Man" is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius compared with John Mellencamp's attempt to find meaning in Jena:

An all white jury hides the executioner's face
Is this how we are, me and you?
Everyone needs to know their place
And here we thought this blackbird was hidden in the flue

Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Take your nooses down

Forget O.J. and the stalking astronaut and the tasered college-student jerk, entertainment-news junkies. I have a Courtney Love bulletin:

Courtney Love wants to launch her own perfume but is worried nobody wants to smell like her.

The former Hole singer - who has battled drink and drug addiction - wants to lay to rest her rebellious image and reinvent herself before she brings out the signature scent.

My current hero:

(CBS4) FORT LUPTON, Colo. Violaters of the city of Fort Lupton's noise ordinance were in for a big surprise this past Friday. The city's judge sentenced citizens who have been busted for being too loud to 1 hour of listening to unpopular or unusual music.

In a courtroom with mostly young adult offenders, Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" played loudly on a boombox.

Woody Guthrie is one of my musical heroes, but he was, alas, a hard-core Communist. "This Land Is Your Land" was not a sentimental song of  American idealism; it pretty much presented the Stalinist view of land and property. Many leftists who came of age in the 1920s and 1930s, it is said, became party members or avid followers of the Soviet Union out of some misguided sense of collectivist altruism. For many, this was true.

Unfair! We get Mellencamp at the coliseum, but Bloomington gets:

 Rock icons Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello will perform Oct. 19 at Indiana University as part of homecoming week celebrations.

Bummer. Being angry won't solve anything. I shall try to be amused.

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone? You also don't know how special something was until you're overwhelmed with it.

The major effect of the digital revolution is the gradual disappearance of the middlemen. We no longer need retail stores when we can order anything online. We don't need, alas, newspapers or other paper products when we can read everything on the Internet. Goodybe, too, to libraries and movie theaters. Today's disappearing act: not just CDs, but the record companies that produce them: