As we celebrate Bob Dylan's 69th birthday, we are reminded there are many things we don;t know about this enduring, yet mysterious American Icon. Can you determine which of following Dylan fun facts is really true?

A) He is a third degree back belt who once studied under Chuck Norris.
B) He was originally cast to play the husband in "Roseanne" but lost the part to John Goodman because the producers "wanted someone a little chunkier.".
C) His boyhood dream was to be a publicist for a major record label..
D) He has nine grandchildren and a bumper sticker on his car that says "World's Greatest Grandpa."

For 69 Things You Didn't Know About Bob Dylan go here. Use the comments section to add your own real or imagined Bob-Fact. .

8:05 PM :: Comments (2)

Ah, December, that magical month when normally pleasant-looking building are hidden behind garish holiday Christmas decorations, slow-moving tourists and shoppers clog the streets, and you can't turn on the radio or enter a store without hearing the same dozen Christmas holiday songs on endless repeat. True, some of these songs are quite catchy, but it is asking too much to hear something new? The most recent addition to the holiday canon is Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You, and that's 15 years old now. It seems unlikely that a new tune will ever be added into the rotation.

And yet, every year artists across the musical spectrum release more holiday albums, confident that, even if these songs will have no lasting impact on the culture, they will at least make some money. This year's more interesting options include Chirstmas In the Heart, Bob Dylan's much-discussed benefit album; A Cherry Cherry Christmas, a mix of reissues and new releases in which Neil Diamond tries to erase all the goodwill he built up with his recent Rick Rubin-produced albums; Joy To the World: A Bluegrass Christmas, one of those releases where the title tells you everything you need to know; If On a Winter's Night, Sting's take on old English carols; and Midwinter Graces in which Tori Amos abandons her attraction to sin in favor of some reimagined carols.

And yet, as artists like these search ever more desperately and futilely for some new take on Christmas song – the Bluegrass Christmas is one of over a dozen such albums from the last decade alone – with the exception of Diamond's cover of Adam Sandler's Chanukah Song, they continue to ignore the open field that is Hanukkah music. Is there no hope for this holiday that owes its prominence solely so that Jewish children can get some presents in December? Is there not one of us who will come forward to save future generations from having to rely on the Dreidel Song as the token Hanukkah entry thrown in among the standard noels? (Novelty songs, like the LeeVee's Hanukkah Rocks don't count.)

Or perhaps, since it was Jewish songwriters who created the Christmas classics, some nice goyim will come along and bless us with a nice Hanukkah song? Well, our prayers have been answered, in the form of Senator Orrin Hatch who has written – though thankfully does not sing – a new song titled "Eight Days of Hanukkah."

The Times describes this as "A Senator's Gift to the Jews, Nonreturnable" – which leaves open the hope that we might find a way to regift it – but it's more than that, as Jonah Jeffrey [Oops - Ed.] Goldberg notes in the article that introduces this musical shonda to the world:

"Hatch said he hoped his song would be understood not only as a gift to the Jewish people but that it would help bring secular Jews to a better understanding of their own holiday. "I know a lot of Jewish people that don't know what Hanukkah means," he said. Jewish people, he said, should "take a look at it and realize the miracle that's being commemorated here. It's more than a miracle; it's the solidification of the Jewish people."

That's one interpretation. Another, that Goldberg addresses, is that Hanukkah commemorates the victory of religious zealots over liberal reformers:

One of contradictions of Hanukkah—an unexplored contradiction in our culture's anodyne understanding of the holiday—is that the Maccabee brothers were fighting not for the principle of religious freedom but only for their own particular religion's freedom. Their understanding of liberty did not extend even—or especially—to the Hellenized Jews of Israel's coastal plains. The Maccabees were rough Jews from the hill country of Judea. They would be amused, if they were capable of amusement, to learn that their revolt would one day be remembered as a struggle for a universal civil right.

But not knowing all the details of the historical event that Hanukkah commemorates is different form not knowing what Hanukkah means; which is, of course, whatever you want it to mean. One of the many advantages Hanukkah has over Christmas is that we don't have millions of self-appointed experts and thousands of songs, movies and TV shows telling us how to properly observe the Festival of Lights. We are free to commemorate a great victory or merely note a minor miracle; to celebrate the Maccabees or to skip over their involvement; or – my preference – to just gather with friends and family to light some candles and eat and drink to excess. On second thought, we don't need any new Hanukkah songs; they'd only ruin the party.

7:51 PM :: Comments (11)

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon.

Rules ands Tips

Last Week's Winners

WINNER
"Look on the bright side. With all the tears of our laid-off colleagues, I created a great salt water pool."-- Richard H

HONORABLE MENTIONS
"It's your wife's Today sponge. I'm going in to try to find my buddy's car keys."--gary

"I don't know who draws this shit, but my snorkel is gonna fill my lungs up with water, and you're wearing a double-breasted pullover. Totally fucking lame."--MAtt

CERTIFICATE OF ATTENDANCE
(New category: Anti-Caps that shamelessly reference judges and/or contest.)

"For my next trick, I will judge last week's anti-caption contest! . . . Ha ha! Just kidding! That would be insane! I'm actually just going to dive into the piranha pool."--Joshua

I guess the jig is up. No, I'm not actually working for the Daily Show. I've been away from the blog working on my form to enter the diving competition at the Christian Olympics.-- The Confidence Man

"I'm sorry, but after I referenced Bob Dylan, my innards AND the Anti-Cap Contest in one sentence, I decided to end it all. Or, take a dip. Either way." --Tim H

"Last one in is an al in la!"--Kathy H

9:19 PM :: Comments (84)

The AP indulges in some fancy footwork -- I guess you could call it self-censorship -- in its efforts to explain why Adam Lambert maybe didn't win last night's little talent competition.

There was also the Danny Gokey factor. Gokey made it to the top three before he fell out of the contest, leaving his supporters up for grabs. "After the third one leaves, you wonder where do the votes go from that third contestant," Paula Abdul said backstage after Tuesday's singing showdown.

Allen seemed the likely candidate for those viewers' affections, for on- and offstage reasons. Allen and Gokey, 29, of Milwaukee, were downright conservative when compared to Lambert's elaborate staging and wardrobe choices. Allen is a married college student — his wife was often on hand to root for him — and has worked as a church worship leader. Gokey, a recent widower, is a church music director.

Lambert, 27, of Los Angeles, brought measured rock flashiness — daring, not freaky — with songs including "Whole Lotta Love," the first-ever Led Zeppelin tune on "Idol." He's largely kept his personal life under wraps, saying "I know who I am" when asked about it.

Earlier this week, Allen said he hoped the outcome wouldn't be decided by "having the Christian vote."

"I hope it has to do with your talent and the performance that you give and the package that you have. It's not about religion and all that kind of stuff," he said.

That's funny, the gays also think it has to do with the package that you have. Anyway, from now on when someone is half-closeted, I'm going to call it the Danny Gokey factor.

This contorted effort to come close to explaining something without actually doing so has as much in common with journalism as American Idol performances have with music. It doesn't even seem necessary. One could avoid "outing" Lambert by reporting not that he's gay but that people voted against him because they think he is. And if the AP really believes that enough people watching the family-friendly American Idol are aware that Lambert is or might be gay for it to influence the outcome of the voting, then surely reporting that in an article about the show would not be revealing something that people don't already know. Indeed, the allusive explanation of the "Danny Gokey factor" only makes sense if people know what it means. It's unnecessarily coy for those who get it and unacceptably non-explanatory for those who don't.

I should say that I don't in the least care who won. I don't watch the show myself and have never heard either of these gentleman sing until today when I watched a bunch of clips out of curiosity. I get that the appeal of the program is the game show aspect and not necessarily the performances, but holy crap the performances suck. Yes, several previous Idolers have gone on to make great pop music, but I'd rather file my ears off than watch the show itself. Any program that actually rewards someone for doing this to a Bob Dylan isn't going to get me on board. (Take that, Fox!)

10:06 AM :: Comments (5)

Now live: the full video for the Mark Ronson remix of Bob Dylan's Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine).

The video is fun, though like most Dylan tributes, it leans more heavily on nostalgia than the man himself has ever has. The music remix is.... OK. Mostly it left me wanting to listen to the original again.

Not much is really sacred update: Commenter Chris notes that one promotional gimmick for the new CD set allows users to write their own message on the cards from the Subterranean Homesick Blues film. Here's his smart, caustic version. And my juvenile but totally more viral one.

No success like failure update: So I got to thinking, what's the most subversive thing you could do with this? I came up with this and this. Post your best (or worst) efforts in the comments.

8:58 PM :: Comments (21)

Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes's impressionistic biopic I'm Not There. Even better: David Cross as Allen Ginsburg.

I'd say she captures him pretty well. The just-released official trailer has brief clips of the other five Bobs. Hard to say at this point whether the movie will be brilliant like Velvet Goldmine or just a fascinating mess like Masked and Anonymous (which despite what you may have heard is worth a rental, and not only for the amazing music).

Update: Best YouTube user comment: "what the fuck?... Tell me anyone is gonna be able to whach that without thinkin... 'thats a fuckin chick playin a dude!'. the director or casting person should be shot.... by a chick dressed as a dude"

3:47 PM :: Comments (2)

No one really wants to imagine is an earth entirely without people. What we groove on is imagining an earth with only one person, ourself. Last person on the planet stories are an age-old staple of speculative fiction, and with today's special effects, they're getting easier to visualize all the time.

Alan Weisman's new book, The World Without Us is something a little different: speculative non-fiction. I haven't read it, and don't necessarily plan to — seems to me like all that environmentalism might kill the buzz of an otherwise cool story — but I did get a kick out of these animations showing the world (i.e., New York City) being reclaimed by nature. Only question: where are the damn dirty apes?

[Via VSL]

11:20 AM :: Comments (6)

It looks like there's a new trend in music videos for lazy dino-rockers. String together a bunch of old clips so it looks like you -- or other people -- are singing the new song. I'm not complaining, mind you. Both of the recent videos to do this are pretty great. First Bob Dylan's Thunder on the Mountain and now U2's Window in the Skies. Dylan's is the better song by far, but the U2 vid is the more clever and technically proficient. Watch 'em both and see what you think. Has this been done before?

The Dylan video debuted on Slate as part of a contest: "identify the year in which each piece of footage was shot" and win a guitar. I wasn't on top of this quickly enough to realize, but I'm willing to bet almost anything that Slate fucked up. Identifying the year in which the footage appeared is easy enough for Dylanologists, but when it was shot? For instance, take image 7, a still from the video for Cross the Green Mountain, the theme song for the 2003 film Gods and Generals. Did Bob shoot his scenes for the video in 2001, when the film was shot? In 2002, after it wrapped? Or in 2003, just before it was released? I have no idea, and I'll be shocked if Slate does. Stay tuned.

As for the U2 song. I've become more interested in this band over the past year as I've become aware of the strange place they hold in the Christian pop subculture. In some circles they are totally embraced as contemporary christian music. But there are some radio stations, churches, etc. that will play cover versions of U2 songs by artists on CCM labels, but not the original versions of those same songs. Meanwhile, when I bring this up with non-evangelicals, they're often totally stunned, having had no idea that U2 is a Christian band. Or they'll say, "Sure, the band members are Christians, but the music is not Christian rock" (meaning, "It can't be, because it's too good/complex"). Maybe you have to know what you're listening for, since it's true that U2 rarely invokes Jesus by name, but other than that, they're not exactly hiding. Window in the Skies, to take only the latest example, is about as explicity Christian as you can get.

The rule has been disproved
The stone has been moved
The grain is now a groove
All debts are removed

As for whether Bob is still a Christian, well, that's a whole other post.

12:06 PM :: Comments (18)

I recently spent a weekend in a house with XM radio and nearly got hooked enough to consider paying the $12.95 a month. Then I get home and read in the Times that anyone can listen to dozens of XM stations for free on AOL Music.

Unfortunately my favorite station — Frank's Place — isn't one of them (though AOL offers a non-XM SinatraStyle channel). But Deep Tracks is. Deep what? Don't bother with it most of the time, unless you still like classic rock. But on Wednesday at 10 AM ET (with encores on Wednesdays at 12 AM, Fridays at 6 PM, and Sundays at 8 AM and 8 PM) Deep Tracks is the place to listen to Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. That's right, XM is giving away its best programming for free, so you don't even need bootleg downloads or desperate workarounds. The new tech bubble is even better than the last one.

One caveat: The sound quality blows. 16kpbs? Are you kidding me?

[Via VSL]

3:47 PM :: Comments (0)

The best thing to happen to radio in the last, oh, fifteen years or so, is Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour on XM. If you're not opposed to a little file sharing, you don't even have to subscribe to XM to hear it (sorry, but an hour a week is not worth $99 +$12.95 a month). Just about the only problem with Theme Time Radio Hour is waiting a whole week for the next one to air.

So to fill the gap, I created Un-themed Time Radio Hour on Pandora. The idea behind Pandora is that you tell it which artists and songs you like, and it adds other songs that fit that "music genome," and as previously discussed here, it works pretty well, if not perfectly. For the U-tTRH channel, I entered every artist Bob has played on his show so far. Or at least, every artist Pandora knows, which, given Bob's vast collection of obscure music is only about 75% of them.

For that reason among others, U-tTRH doesn't actually sound much like TTRH, a show that very much succeeds on its human touch (to maintain some integrity, where Bob chose a song by an artist with a wide range of styles, I entered just that song, instead of the artist's name). But it's still a great collection of Bob-approved (Bob-friendly? Bob-tolerant?) music that will give you a taste of the real thing if you've never heard it, or serve adequately as methadone if you're already at TTRH junkie.

This link should open a Pandora player with my shared station already embedded in it. If you're not registered at Pandora, you'll have to do that. It's free and worth it.

While you're there, I also recommend Cure for Bed Bugs' Teen Pop Mega Hyper Sugar Set, in case you get sick of all that old-timey authenticity.

2:29 PM :: Comments (3)

The New York Times tries hard to find someone who will object to Bob Dylan's latest obscure borrowings, this time from Civil War poet Henry Timrod on several tracks from his new album Modern Times (a masterpiece, by the way).

As I argued the last time around (in a post Christopher Hitchens called "deft" and "objectively pro-terrorist"), there's really no scandal here, no matter how many Albuquerque middle school Spanish teachers you have on your side.

I also note with amusement the argument that Bob crossed a line by being too erudite for most of America, because “plagiarism wants you not to know the original, whereas allusion wants you to know.” Is it Bob's fault that the rest of us have never read Timrod? How many people knew that Whitman poem I dug up last time? For that matter, the Times charts a Timrodism in a song called Spirit on the Water, without noting that the title of that song and its opening lines ("Spirit on the water/Darkness on the face of the deep") are equally "stolen." I'll generously assume this goes unsaid because in that case the source is so familiar. But it's at least possible that those liberal elites at the Times are no more familiar with the Bible than they are with Henry Timrod.

8:56 AM :: Comments (6)

Forgive me if this meme is played out, but having done my share of casting the I Ching in college (and Magic 8 Ball before that, though I draw the line at chicken entrails) I couldn't resist the Magic Shuffle, wherein the shuffle function of your MP3 player provides answers to pre-selected faux-deep questions.

How does the world see you?
I'm Beginning to See the Light — Bobby Darin. Better late than never, I guess.

Will I have a happy life?
Don't Explain — BIllie Holliday. I guess that's, "No, but I'm OK with it." Maybe there's something to this oracle thing.

What do my friends really think of me?
So Beats My Heart for You — Tony Bennet. Wow. I would have settled for I Get a Kick Out of You.

Do people secretly lust after me?
The New Pollution — Beck. Sorry, girls, I'm married.

How can I make myself happy?
Can’t Go Back — The Descendents. OK, that's a little eerie. And kind of depressing.

What should I do with my life?
It's All Right/Sentimental Reasons — Sam Cooke. Appreciate wife more. Check.

Will I ever have children?
D'evils — Jay-Z. Oh, so Magic Shuffle has met Milo and Margalit already. Still I'm not sure manaically jumping on the couch necessarily means they're going to grow up to be crack dealers.

What is some good advice for me?
Don't Cry on My Shoulder —Sam Cooke. It's a cold world when your own oracle gives you the brush off. And another Sam Cooke song? That little randomizing problem doesn't seem to be going away.

How will I be remembered?
Bull Rider — Johnny Cash. Sure, but after Brokeback, this could mean anything.

What is my signature dancing song?
Tell it Like it Is — Aaron Neville. Hmm. Never thought of myself as the slow dancing type. Or the fast dancing type, for that matter. Who came up with these questions anyway?

What do I think my current theme song is?
Blue Motel Room — Joni Mitchell. Well, I am doing a lot of travelling these days, and I do miss Gina when I'm away. But somehow I don't think she has any pretty girls hanging on her boom-boom-pachyderm while I'm gone. I don't think.

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Just Like A Woman — Bob Dylan. Guess that answers the Bull Rider question.

What song will play at my funeral?
Brown Eyed Girl — Van Morrison. Apparently I'm going to be buried in a Starbucks. Anyway, I thought we discussed this already.

What type of women do you like?
Everybody’s Smoking Cheeba — The Donnas. Underage stoner punks? I'm taking the fifth.

What is my day going to be like?
You Wanna Get Me High — The Donnas. It's just possible that my oracle, in addition to having a malfunctioning shuffle feature, is pushing an agenda of its own.

So, have I interpreted correctly? Have you tried this too? Let me hear it.

[ 5:20 PM :: Comments (8)

Sirius satellite radio attracted more than 2 million subscribers with its acquisition of Howard Stern, but now that the hardcore fans have all signed up, it's going to have trouble reaching folks like me, who want to be able to listen to Howard from time to time, but don't want to pony up $100 for the gear, plus $13 a month, especially as I'm still not convinced that the rest of the lineup is going to trump my CD collection for those rare times when I can actually sit and listen to music.

The problem is not that I'm willing to go without Howard rather than spend money, it's that I don't have to. Fire up your favorite file sharing program, enter "Howard Stern" and "Sirius" and you'll find that every episode is available for free download to your computer and iPod (including the secret pre-launch test show). In a way it's better than listening live for 45 minutes in the car; over the week, I've been slowly getting through the whole four hours of the first show, one chunk at a time. (It's great, if you're wondering. Howard has a better attitude but is otherwise unchanged. There are virtually no commercials. And Artie is twice as funny now that he can work blue.)

Clearly Sirius is going to have to find a way to offer just Howard's broadcasts for sale (via Audible?) or else people are just going to get them for free and not sign up for the service anyway. I would happily pay a buck or two for a legal download, and so would most folks, if iTunes success is any way to judge. There's already an arrangement to rebroadcast excerpts on pay-per-view, but that's different, since I prefer the radio experience to the TV one (which, if it's anything like the E! show, will focus more on the T&A than on the other, more interesting aspects of the show).

And now I'm looking forward to the Bob Dylan show on XM, though I do hope the files of that on Gnutella have higher sound quality.

12:02 PM :: Comments (5)

XM Satellite Radio has just done the one thing that could get me to go with them over Sirius and Howard Stern: signed Bob Dylan to host a show.

I can't imagine how much money they're putting in Bob's pocket for this venture, but I'm willing to bet that the real appeal for him is that he won't have to do much work. I can't imagine that he'll go into a studio or anything. Most likely he'll come up with a list of songs each week -- or maybe even a master list from which an XM lackey can draw as necessary -- and then pre-record a handful of rambling "essays" to run between them. (Insert inevitable joke about confusing Bob's voice with poor reception here).

Still: Bob Dylan's personal playlist. It's hard to argue with that. Howard, of course, is doing some real work for his paycheck: programming a second 24-hour channel in addition to doing his daily show. Frankly, most of what I've heard about for the spin-off channel sounds silly, but I'm willing to wager anything that his own show is going to be spellbinding. What you'd never know from that New York cover story that reduced him to fart and dick jokes is that Howard is one of the most original entertainers of our generation. Jeff Jarvis got it right in The Nation last year:

Continue reading "Bob vs. Howard" »

2:21 PM :: Comments (4)

I've been meaning to write about the new Dylan documentary for a while, but I got busy, and now Slate's David Greenberg has beaten me to my insight, which is this:

"Dylan, for all his efforts to keep living his life and making new music, remains trapped by our '60s fetish, with even serious, well-intentioned directors like Martin Scorsese complicit. In one scene in No Direction Home, a young folkie, peeved that Dylan has gone electric, sniffs: 'I like his earlier records … but this I just can't stick.' The audience is meant to feel superior to this shortsighted purist, knowing as we do that Dylan was then creating his greatest work. But although the film can offer ironic distance on this stooge, it betrays no awareness that at some level it shares the same blinkered vision."

Had I actually written about this before Greenberg got around to it, I was going to compare "our" smug superiority to those who supposedly booed Dylan at Newport (a myth that the new film apparently encourages despite its having been debunked) to our refusal to even deal -- more than 25 years later -- with the people (i.e., "us," if you're a boomer, which I'm not) who really did boo him at his "born again" concerts. Why is it cool when Dylan challenged people's expectations of him by going electric, but not when he went religious? By making a film that stops in 1966, Scorsese can't even begin to answer that question, or countless others that arise out of Bob's critically neglected middle and late careers.

Related:
Eclectic and insanely great Dylan links.

An iMix of 244 songs mentioned in Chronicles Volume One.

11:30 AM :: Comments (12)

Now Kuchma has gone too far! It's one thing to poison Viktor Yushchenko, but I watched 60 Minutes last night, and the son of a bitch has gotten to Bob Dylan.

3:08 PM :: Comments (2)

Australia and the UK are flipping out over TV commercials for Elle Macpherson's lingerie line, Intimates.

The ad, called "knife fight", opens with a woman standing in Intimates underwear picking up and putting down knives in a kitchen. It then shows two women having a naked knife fight and ends with a woman cleaning blood off the kitchen floor. At no point in the ad can the women's faces be seen.

If you watch the ads you'll see that it's not quite a "naked knife fight," inasmuch as only one faceless woman is naked. The other is wearing a tattered, possibly bloody nightie. Wait, that's worse, isn't it?

Continue reading "The most disturbing thing in a lingerie ad since Bob Dylan" »

5:26 PM :: Comments (2)

This Music Inspired By genre has gotten out of hand. It was bad enough when they started tacking songs onto a soundtrack because there weren't quite enough in the movie itself, but with Songs Inspired By The Passion of the Christ, they've basically put together a bunch of vaguely religious songs that, as near as I can tell, were all recorded well before the film and couldn't possibly have been inspired by it. I suppose you could get tricky and say that "Passion of the Christ" in this album title refers to the original, not the movie, but it's sold as a movie soundtrack, so no. In any case, are people looking for an album of songs to get flayed by? (apparently they are.)

Weirdest part: Of all the many possible Dylan songs that really were inspired by the passion, why choose one that probably wasn't at all?

And don't think contributing to this project gets you off the hook for killing him, Zimmerman.

9:59 PM

Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king. Jon Pareles weighs in on the Dylan "plagiarism" story (adroitly told by Jonathan Eig and Sebastian Moffett in The Wall Street Journal and uncovered by Chris Johnson). Pareles makes the same points I've been making in my own Dylanologist e-mail circles: It's intereting that Bob is inspired by such an obscure source, but what's the rest of the fuss? If he were lifting the words for his own book about the Yakuza, that would be plagiarism, but what he's doing is appropriating images and putting them into new contexts, just as he's long done with the Bible, Eliot, Browning (I've always liked that particular allusion), etc. I'd add that "crediting" his sources in the liner notes would be a mistake. The pleasure of music like this is always discovering influences on your own (or via the Wall St. Journal). Now that word's out, though, I do think it would be nice if he agreed to blurb the man's book. Sean Wilentz, one of the first Dylanologists to fully hash out the meaning of the title Love and Theft agrees with me, and guesses that, "there's at least 5 times more theft on L&T than anybody's figured out yet."

Meanwhile, after hearing that someone suspected that Bob's Cross the Green Mountain, from the Gods and Generals soundtrack is heavily influenced by Walt Whitman's Civil War poems, I ferreted out at least one source.

Bob:
A letter to mother came today
Gunshot wound to the breast is what it did say
But he'll be better soon, he's in a hospital bed
But he'll never be better - he's already dead

Walt:
O a strange hand writes for our dear son—O stricken mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes—flashes with black—she catches the main words only;
Sentences broken—gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.
...
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.
Alas, poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul;)
While they stand at home at the door, he is dead already.

Bring on Masked and Anonymous!

2:46 PM

A few months ago I was almost quoted in a Time magazine story about pirating music, but then there was some sort of war or something and story never ran. Last week it occurred to me, hey, I work for national newsmagazine myself. For those of you who don't subscribe to The Week, here's the Editor's Letter I wrote:

I don't think of myself as a thief. I would never shoplift so much as a pencil. But I am one of the 60 million Americans who download pirated music from the Internet. I've rationalized this a dozen ways. It's not about the money, I've always said. I would happily pay a reasonable amount for the convenience of digital downloads. But the recording industry hasn't grasped that. Instead it tries to make downloading more difficult, suing kids or building anti-piracy measures into music that make it impossible to play when and where I want to. Lectures about stealing from artists ring hollow from an industry that has done artists more financial harm than pirates ever will. A musician friend of mine encourages piracy, saying performers can't be worse off than they are now. "Dismantling the industry-as-it-is can ONLY be a good thing," he says. "Music will never go away, and we're always going to need musicians to make it." He gives his latest album away free on his web site.

Last week, I was forced to put my money where my mouth is when Apple introduced an experimental online music store?the first that doesn't treat customers like criminals. It sells songs inexpensively and lest buyers do whatever they want with them. If you're determined to pirate thousands of copies, you can. Apple is gambling that most people are inherently honest. For my first legal download, I chose a song symbolic of the music industry: Bob Dylan's "Everything is Broken." Is it just my imagination, or does it sound better when you listen with a clean conscience.

N.b., I know "symbolic" is the wrong word in that last graf. It was changed after I signed off on the piece. I originally had "in honor of."

And my more specific thoughts about the Apple Music Store: Great concept, great execution, crappy inventory. If they can bulk it up substantially, this will be legal downloading's killer app. Otherwise, it's back to Gnutella. The only other problem, really, is that the 30-second samples are too short to help you decide if you like a song you've never heard, and they're often of non-representative sections of the song itself, which is dumb. Surely, Apple could rig it so that you're allowed to listen to any song all the way through at least once in streaming version, after which you'd be limited to the 30-second reminder.

5:14 PM