NOT ENOUGH TCHAIKOVSKY THE MEME OF FOUR: Four jobs you've had in your life: web site producer (x3), author, teacher, grocery sacker (Aspen 1981) Four movies you could watch over and over: WAKING LIFE (Linklater), GODFATHER 2 (Coppola), DRESSED TO KILL (Eddie Izzard), Let it Be (Lindsay-Hogg) Four places you've lived: Boulder, Pueblo, Oberlin, Boston Four TV shows you love to watch: Arrested Development, The Shield, Mr. Show, Larry Sanders Four places you've been on vacation: St. Kitt's, Manhattan, Evergreen, Santa Cruz Four websites you visit … [Read more...]

Journalism Interns at a School of Rock: "Casting calls are going out on college campuses late next month for aspiring Rolling Stone writers who would also look good on MTV and want to become famous, or almost famous..." The New York Times, which knew about the secret wiretaps for more than a year, published because of a reporter's new book, sources say...: "It's possible it plays out in a way that favors the Bush administration too," she said. "We just can't know that yet." Bill Keller Resigns in Shame: "It doesn't make any sense: my tenure … [Read more...]

BOOK OF THE WEEK from SWEDEN, recently featured at Liverpool's Beatles Days, not nearly obsessive enough... TOP TEN PODCASTS Beatlegs John Winn KCRW's Left, Right and Center le show Harry Shearer Media Matters from beautiful downtown Champagne Urbana Democracy Now Amy Goodman Soundcheck John Schaefer On the Media PRI's Studio 360 Kurt Anderson UC Berkeley Princeton Lectures WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR: Doesn't the Blood Rush to His Cheeks? … [Read more...]

New podcast: Complete Motown Singles, broadcast yesterday here in Boston. … [Read more...]

AIN'T NO ONE FOR TO GIVE YOU NO PAIN From the iTunes Celebrity Playlists, this acute remark from the perennially underrated Jeff Daniels: "A great example of why Bonnie Raitt is one of the premiere blues guitarists. By the time she's done playing this song, every guy in the audience is wishing he were her guitar." And you don't need me to tell you, that's Chris Smither song. Even works in a mention of Steve Goodman, cops to a healthy Freddie King complex, and nods towards Stills (with his mouth shut). And then he goes and spoils it all … [Read more...]

NOBODY TOLD ME Steve Knopper on John Lennon, telling my story that a cellist from the Eastman School once told me: "One guy told me this story: He was on the streets in New York City, a truck pulls off and a band is playing on the back of this flatbed truck. And it's John Lennon and his band." Apparently that Bun E. Carlos stuff is news to a lot of people... THANKS FOR THE POMEGRANATES Threepenny Review now has a Reading Room with links to archivals stuff from all stripes. LEWIS LAPHAM Lewis Lapham?!?!?!? … [Read more...]

... to the tune of "Uncertain Times," by the Raveonettes. … [Read more...]

X FOR EYES Bradley's Alamanac has a Chris Brokaw live set from last month... Brokaw was also featured on Here and Now... it's almost like there's a BUZZ... HAWKEYE'S A REPUBLICAN???? Previews for West Wing, the Smits subtext: "Okay, I'll play your Democratic presidential candidate and go live head to head with Alan Alda for sweeps... but I have to play the nicest, most irreproachable Latino Marine ever imagined..." "Okay, I'll play Smits's long-suffering wife, but make sure she's written REALLY REALLY REALLY long-suffering. And I have … [Read more...]

COSMIC DANCER Every so often a song oozes up through shared cultural memories to suggest subcurrents of fate. Last year, Zep's "Goin' to California" bubbled up as though its time had come, even though the ZEP IV (ZOSO) track had never been a single, or even an FM fav. This year it's T Rex's "Children of the Revolution," which crept up through the collective unconscious through soundtracks like Dogtown and Z-Boys. Last summer it got picked up for the football skirmish in MEET THE FOCKERS, at which point Bolan's death-cult "relevance" … [Read more...]

Naturally, a music biopic with vivid and inspired concert sequences gets waylaid by its overwrought script: "Tortured pill freak redeemed by true love." There is so much more to Johnny cash than this, but Phoenix can only suggest. In yet another revelatory turn, Witherspoon is a marvel -- but is that any reason to turn his first wife into a shrew? Go rent Coal Miner's Daughter. Then pick up Legacy's Cash set, hooch posing as digital sound. HARRIET MEIRS The Lost Episodes ONE MORE RIDE As he was handed a copy of this book, Miller told … [Read more...]