David Byrne explains the future of the music biz...

tons of excellent points here. the basic premise is that the era of the "record label" is pretty much pushing up daisies. good riddance, i say...

is Radiohead trying to rip off it's fans???????

at the risk of turning this blog into a "Radiohead" blog...it seems that questions are being raised about the band's motives...

In an interview with U.K. trade publication Music Week, Hufford and Bryce spoke at length about the downloadable version of Rainbows and how it plays into the larger plan of releasing a physical copy of the album in stores next year.

"In November we have to start with the mass-market plans and get them under way," Hufford told the magazine.

"If we didn't believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD, then we wouldn't do what we are doing," Edge said.

it's all too technical for me, because my ears aren't what they used to be, but apparently the confirmation email for the order announced that the download would be offered at 160 kbps, when their entire back catalog was available at 320 kbps...

"Radiohead has such delicate music that requires detail and depth of sound. ... I for one CAN tell the difference between 160 and 192," responded one commenter. "[With] 160 you can't hear the finer details that make Radiohead so great. I have lost a bit of respect for Radiohead for this. I would never make people pay for 160. They may as well just stream stuff off MySpace."

Radiohead becomes economists' favorite band

because, it's like an experiment, y'know? and they'll be able to compile data...interesting read over there at the popmatters blog...

thanks to KJ for the tip..

Radiohead's new album to be available for FREE download

...that is, unless you want to pay more. you will have to pay the credit card handling fee.

will this kill the recording industry? that remains to be seen, but it sure does shake up the traditional business model.

you can pre-order it here.

i hope this catches on. i've thought for years that the CDs i've been buying are waaaay too long, and i suspect it's because the artists feel a need to justify the price. with this model, they can get to the point, and drop the filler.

plus, the record companies SUCK, BIG-TIME. i remember the 80's, when record store people would try to convince me of the superiority of the compact disc, even to the point of claiming that they were indestructible..."hey, you can toss these things around like frisbees".... well, we all know that was a load of B.S. and the prices they charge for these things? give me a break. not to mention the jewel cases break if the wind blows on 'em. the cardboard cases are a little better, but they get trashed just like vinyl album covers, but at least with vinyl the album art is at least FULL-SIZE.

"We're sorry you tried to kill our kids"

i've been wanting to touch on this, because i think it's a great illustration of how screwed up the world is.

i can't believe Mattel is actually apologizing to the Chinese people:

Mattel was forced to deliver a humiliating public apology to ‘the Chinese people’ on Friday over the damaging succession of product recalls of China-made toys that the US toymaker has announced in recent months.

In a carefully stage-managed meeting in Beijing with a senior Chinese official, which, unusually, was open to the media, Thomas Debrowski, Mattel’s executive vice-president for worldwide operations, read out a prepared text that played down the role of Chinese factories in the recalls.

the washington post has a more "nuanced" take on the apology...sez that china interpreted mattel's statement in an unintended way...

meanwhile, china's war against the rest of the world continues:they're trying to kill our babies with cribs.

it's so disheartening for me to look at all of this and maintain any faith i might have at all for the future. when our corporations have to figuratively bend over and kiss Chinese ass when it's not any fault of theirs, we have to wonder who's got who by the balls. at what point do we have to just say NO to cheap products & cheap labor? i work for a huge multinational company right now who is outsourcing things to mexico like crazy...and we don't make toys. we make things which could be deadly if manufactured improperly.


previously on NGNG...the chinese plot thickens.

bin Laden's video pitch to the left..

the mainstream media are calling this a "rambling" message, but if you've ever read any of the transcripts released by al-queada, it's pretty much par for the course. actually, it's less rambling than usual, because the usual sermon to us infidels contains huge helpings of Koranic wisdom, and not so much "political science".

bin Laden makes his appeal to the american left in many ways:

1. Bush's attack mode on the "religion of peace" has eroded our standing in the world:

"Since the 11th, many of America's policies have come under the influence of the Mujahideen, and that is by the grace of Allah, the Most High. And as a result, the people discovered the truth about it, its reputation worsened, it's prestige was broken globally and it was bled dry economically, even if our interests overlap with the interests of the major corporations and also those of the neoconservatives, despite the differing intentions."

..a little dig at "Big Oil", perhaps?

2. The Mainstream Media carries the water for Corporate America:

"And for your information media, during the first years of the war, lost its credibility and manifested itself as a tool of the colonialist empires."

(they must ONLY get FOXnews in Tora Bora or wherever the hell he is...)

3. Iraq is a "civil war":

"And thus, what is called the civil war..."

notice that not even bin Laden acknowledges that the situation is indeed a civil war..

4. The sins of the white man's past will always dog us in the present.

reacting to a statement by Richard Perle to the effect that if we leave Iraq, we'll face a holocaust:

"I say, refuting this unjust statement, that the morality and culture of the holocaust is your culture, not our culture....The holocaust of the Jews was carried out by your brethren in the middle of Europe...The genocide of peoples and their holocausts took place at your hands: only a few specimens of Red Indians were spared, and just a few days ago, the Japanese observed the 62nd anniversary of the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by your nuclear weapons."

5. The Democrats' seizure of Congress was a mandate to end the war in Iraq.

"...the vast majority of you (americans) want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning..."

bin Laden's explanation for this is that the corporations/big money supports the entire political process in a democratic system of government, so the politicians have to do what they are told by their corporate masters. this, by the way, explains Vietnam, and also the JFK assassination (the corporations were fearful that Kennedy would try to abort the Vietnam effort, so they had him killed).

i highlighted "Democratic" above because bin Laden is savvy enough to know that's what the Democrats like to be called when used in conjunction with "Party".

6. Noam Chomsky knows what he's talking about.

"This war was totally unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. and among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic and on the manufacturing of public opinion is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn't like those who give advice."

Which is why, he goes on further to explain, mass anti-war demonstrations are futile...because Bush won't listen.

7. Global Warming is a bigger threat than terrorism (and it's caused by corporations).

"...It has become clear that they (corporations) are the real tyrannical terrorists. In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations..."

he also feels our pain in the current "mortgage crisis"...


So, bin Laden was doing pretty good up until that point. i can picture my liberal friends saying "y'know, he's making a lot of sense here". Then, in my opinion, he overreaches and makes his pitch for ditching democracy and replacing it with Islamic rule, and then COMPOUNDS this overreach with the argument that, under Islam, you PAY NO TAXES. Hey, Osama...you blew it.

Now, about that beard...


UPDATE 9/9/07: since i made this post i see that this same theme is making the rounds all over the internet. this is an alarming development to the Soros/Clinton funded "ThinkProgress" media-watchdog site. their especially enraged about NYT columnist David Brooks' comments on PBS (video at thinkprogress).

which direction will evolution take us?

i was just breezing through glenn reynold's excellent instapundit.com, and i came across this link: "Lack of hand skills", by blogger wacky hermit.

i work in manufacturing (i partially build MRI machines). as this post i've linked to wonders...what's happening to our society's ability to fix things? the products we buy, even this brand new HP laptop i'm using, are ultimately disposable without even a second thought. things that used to be a major purchase are now discarded at the slightest hint of a problem.

in Michael Moore's 90's tv series, "TV Nation", one segment focused on his hilarious effort to get some CEO of one of the big three auto companies to come downstairs from his office and change the oil of one of his cars. i think what made this uncomfortably funny to most of the TV audience was that they themselves would be not at all comfortable with performing this same task, with or without the spotlight of the TV camera. this is MY theory, btw...i COULD do it, and HAVE done it before, but there is always a HUGE question in the back of my mind: "am i going to fuck this up and ruin this car?". PANIC ALWAYS sets in.

anyway...so, in the 90's we learned that we were moving to a "service economy", whatever THAT means. "manufacturing" jobs were a vestige of a bygone era, one supposes somewhere between the "robber baron" phase and the present. these "service" jobs, as far as i could perceive, were never defined. in my opinion, they were the "talking points" explanation to explain the dissappearance of manufacturing jobs due to the implementation of the NAFTA agreement in the 90's (which, in effect, caused me to change my party affiliation from Democrat to Libertarian...i mean, if you're gonna be a member of a party who doesn't look out for you, shouldn't you at least go with the one who's HONEST about it?). hmmm...service jobs...i can't seem to identify many. are they restaurant workers? yes. retail employees? yes, i think they qualify. bank tellers? more and more replaced by ATMs. telemarketers and/or company telephone help people? more and more replaced by Indians. the service jobs that remain in the US are the ones where people have to come in and deal with someone face-to-face. hardly ANY of them require skills a trained monkey couldn't perform. except, of course, if we're dealing with those who deal in capital investments...who live in a world so far removed from the "reality" which our public education (a.k.a. "government schools") prepares us for that most people shy away from it, except through generic approaches such as 401K plans. most people have NO CLUE how the price of a gallon of gasoline is determined (it's commonly accepted as fact that it's a "BIG OIL" price-fixing conspiracy, even though the actual profit margin earned by oil companies is a pittance compared to what the local, state, and federal government's tax take on the profit is...WITHOUT DOING A DAMN THING TO EARN IT).

about a month ago, my girlfriend bought a couple of rocking porch chairs from Target. the assembly was pretty easy...it took me about an hour or so to throw them both together. about a week ago, one of them started to recline backwards to the point where it was almost backbreaking. we both just stared at it, and proceeded to bitch about Target and how "everything you buy is shit nowadays". today, as i was drinking a cup of coffee and almost pulled a neck muscle falling backwards in the chair, i decided to turn the thing over and check it out. feeling the nuts, i noticed that all eight were loose. did i forget to tighten them when i assembled them? i don't know. maybe. i doubt it. was it my fault that they were loose? well, how can i blame anyone else? granted, they are pre-fab chairs with assembly instructions in multiple languages which can only be interpreted loosely, but...FUCK. i'm a goddamn COLLEGE GRADUATE and i assemble some machines which sell for A MILLION DOLLARS APIECE. these two pieces of SHIT put my girlfriend back maybe a COUPLE HUNDRED BUCKS. i KNOW i tightened those fucking bolts!!!!!!!!!