Diane Lane is the most beautiful woman in Hollywood.

Fact.

I feel obliged to post if only because it won’t be February 29th again for four years.

It’s also 70 and sunny here in Richmond so I’m not going to waste any more time here inside at this computer.

Catch you guys another day.

I’ve been playing the heck out of this at night. The soft guitars and quiet vocals make this a terrific sleepytime album. I wasn’t a big Mojave 3 fan, but when Jack Rabid made Sleeping On Roads a Top 40 pick 2 years ago I felt that it would be worth a try.

I really like the Nick Drake-ish vibe running through the whole thing. It’s easy-listening, in the best possible way.

GreyTuesday.org

Tuesday, February 24 will be a day of coordinated civil
disobedience: websites will post Danger Mouse’s Grey
Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI’s
attempts to censor this work.

Get it here.

DJ Danger Mouse created a remix of Jay-Z’s the Black Album
and the Beatles White Album, and called it the Grey Album.
Jay-Z’s record label, Roc-A-Fella, released an a capella
version of his Black Album specifically to encourage remixes
like this one. But despite praise from music fans and major
media outlets like Rolling Stone (“an ingenious hip-hop
record that sounds oddly ahead of its time”) and the Boston
Globe (which called it the “most creatively captivating” album
of the year), EMI has sent cease and desist letters demanding
that stores destroy their copies of the album and websites
remove them from their site. EMI claims copyright control of
the Beatles 1968 White Album.

Danger Mouse’s album is one of the most “respectful” and
undeniably positive examples of sampling; it honors both the
Beatles and Jay-Z. Yet the lawyers and bureaucrats at EMI
have shown zero flexibility and not a glimmer of interest
in the artistic significance of this work. And without a
clearly defined right to sample (e.g. compulsory licensing),
the five major record labels will continue to use copyright
in a reactionary and narrowly self-interested manner that
limits and erodes creativity. Their actions are also
self-defeating: good new music is being created that people
want to buy, but the major labels are so obsessed with
hoarding their copyrights that they are literally turning
customers away.

This first-of-its-kind protest signals a refusal to let
major label lawyers control what musicians can create and
what the public can hear. The Grey Album is only one of
the thousands of legitimate and valuable efforts that
have been stifled by the record industry– not to mention
the ones that were never even attempted because of the
current legal climate. We cannot allow these corporations
to continue censoring art; we need common-sense reforms
to copyright law that can make sampling legal and practical
for artists.

Consider my vote cast.

I got mine. Get yours.

This is my new favorite song.

This is my annual best-of-what-I-bought mix. I invariably miss something worthwhile (Basement Jaxx’s Kish Kash), or forget a cool cd that I bought (Gang Starr’s The Ownerz) so please forgive the omissions.
It’s a two-disc egg-stravaganza: the first is all about the guitars and the second disc is about the beats. Understandably, most of the songs are from the albums on my Best of 2003 list.

DISC ONE
1.No Trust – The Black Keys
2.She Kissed Me (It Felt Like A Hit) – Spiritualized
3.Hearts of Oak – Ted Leo/Pharmacists
4.Bright Future in Sales – Fountains of Wayne
5.All for Swinging You Around – The New Pornographers
6.Languor In The Balcony – Aislers Set
7.Sometimes I Remember – Pernice Brothers
8.De-Da Dementia – Kingsbury Manx
9.Young Pilgrims – Shins
10.I Want To Be The Boy to Warm Your Mother’s Heart – White Stripes
11.You Have Yet To Win – Holly Golightly
12.Coastline- Frank Black and the Catholics
13.Hackensack – Fountains of Wayne
14.Pinstripes – Kingsbury Manx
15.Time Will Tell – Holly Golightly
16.Molly’s Chambers – Kings of Leon
17.Get Your Hands Off My Woman – The Darkness
18.The Hardest Button To Button – White Stripes
19.So Says I – Shins
20.I Get Along – Libertines
21.I Believe In A Thing Called Love – The Darkness
22.The High Party (solo) – Ted Leo
23.El Sol – Zwan

DISC TWO
1.Fell In Love With A Boy – Joss Stone
2.Hey Ya! – Outkast
3.Trick Me – Kelis
4.Up Rock – Diverse
5.Ghettomusick – Outkast
6.Milkshake – Kelis
7.Chubb Rock Can You Please Pay Paul The $2200 You Owe Him (People, Places And Things) (feat. Chubb Rock, Wordsworth, MF Dooom)- Prince Paul
8.Cold Call – Lyrics Born
9.Explosive feat. Lyrics Born – Diverse
10.Not Tryin’ To Hear That (feat. Guru, Planet Asia) – Prince Paul
11.Make Room (feat. Mally G, Erick Sermon, Sy Scott) – Prince Paul
12.She Lives In My Lap (feat Rosario Dawson) – Outkast
13.Happy Valentine’s Day – Outkast
14.Ev’rythang – TTD
15.Please Set Me At Ease – Madlib
16.Funky Blue Note – Madlib

Carmelo to LeBron for the oop on the fast break. Sick. It’s criminal that neither of these guys is on the All-Star team.

Hopefully there will be photo online soon. I’ll post that if I see it.

*update* 5 minutes later- ‘Melo to LeBron again for another oop.

It’s #83 on The List, so here is a catch-up edition of Music I Bought. It’s going to look like a lot, but January is a big shopping month for me. It’ll taper off as the year goes on.

This is just a list of buys and it’s mostly for my own reference. I’ll do individual write-ups as events warrant.

Saturday Looks Good to Me’s “All My Summer Songs”, “3 Song e.p.” (which is terrific), and a 7″ who’s name I can’t remember at the moment
Basement Jaxx’s “Kish Kash”
Chops’ “Virtuosity”
Elbow’s “Cast Of Thousands” (which is getting a lot of attention at home)
Dizzee Rascal’s “Boy In Da Corner”
Courtney Love’s “America’s Sweetheart”
The Coral’s “Magic and Medicine” with bonus disc “Nightfreak and the Sons of Becker”
The Bens’ “The Bens e.p.”

Love it. Seriously. I’m a fan of electronic music, in general, but dance music sometimes puts me off. I don’t really get into divas wailing over synth loops. Kish Kash minimizes the wailing and is nothing but a treat from start to finish. It’s all super-danceable and upbeat so it’s cool to listen to with the kids. This has been in the morning commute rotation for the last 2 weeks.

Highlights include: “Right Here’s the Spot” which could almost be a remix of Prince’s “All the Critics Love U In New York”. It’s got someting from the bassline of the Chemical Brothers “Get Yourself High”, too, I think. Regardless of the parts, the whole track is smoking hot.
The other song I have to play every time I put the disc in is “Cish Cash”. It features Siouxsie Sioux and a sweet, sweet groove.

I’m bummed I didn’t get to this in 2003 when it came out. I know it made a bunch of year-end top 10 lists and it certainly might have made mine. It would have definitely made it onto my Best of 2003 mix.