APRIL 12. Redscroll Records Opens. Mark it on Your Calendars.

Redscroll will be to Wallyworld what Metropolis is to the Northwaste Corner -- which is to say, the hub. The center. The everything.

CBGB Closes. In Other News, Punk Has Sucked For Years.

Sigh.

If not for Kitty Kitty Bang Bang, I might never have seen the crusty, poster-slathered inside of CBGB. And now it's gone. Check out Yahoo News' article on its final show:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061016/ap_en_mu/music_cbgb_finale

I like that Patti Smith and members of Blondie were there to close it out.

But I gotta tell ya: Hilly Kristal? I'm not a fan.

Don't let the fluff in this piece fool you. Kristal let this happen. To some degree, he even wanted it to happen. CBGB's last gasp as a culturally active institution was sometime back in the '80s, if not earlier. Since then, it's pretty much just been a t-shirt. Kristal never really grasped the cultural significance of his own venue or its meaning in the birth of punk -- he merely wanted to make a buck. So when it began to look like CBGB was going to bite the dust a few years ago, he immediately started talking about moving to New Jersey or Las Vegas. He didn't understand that it wasn't the name CBGB, or the awning, or the logo that made CBs important -- it was the space.

It was the disgusting, awkwardly-shaped, piss-infested, sounds-like-shit space. It's a space only a punk could love. It's a place you can only enjoy if you don't give a fuck about anything, drink hard, and prefer physically intimidating your crowd over performing for them. Kristal, ever clueless, recently said, “For some reason, they want us here. I don’t know why it matters to them, but it does.”

[Read more of that interview here. It's excellent.]

As the interview makes painfully clear, Kristal does not care about the space. It was filled with numerous code violations (a big no-no after the Great White show fire in RI); he didn't pay his rent; he's long viewed the place as an instution to museumify, rather than a living place that can transform music and culture.

CBGB is dead. Long live CBGB.

Tupac: Robbing Men of Their Boners and Women of Their Conjugal Bliss, Even From the Grave

Now I've seen it all.

The Associated Press (killing local reporting since 1846) offers up this report about a lawsuit between civil rights activist C. DeLores Tucker and two Philly newspapers. At issue? "Her dispute with the estate of slain rapper Tupac Shakur," according to the article.

What did that naughty Tupac do? He rhymed "Tucker" with "motherfucker." Oh SHIT!

But wait -- the shit has only begun to fly. According to the AP article,

"Tucker had sued Shakur, alleging, among other things, that her husband, William Tucker, had suffered loss of 'consortium' because of the emotional distress brought on by Shakur."

Oh yes. Consortium. If you think that sounds like some kind of awful Freudian metaphor for something, award yourself one point. Baby, Dictionary.com gives us this legal definition:

"The legal right of husband and wife to companionship and conjugal intercourse with each other."

So let me get this straight: a so-called activist is suing a newspaper for mischaracterizing a Tupac lyric which was so scathing that it prevented her husband from getting a hard-on?

I've got one word for ya:

By the way, have any of you seen the movie Tupac: Resurrection? (Thanks, Olympia, for sending it my way.) It's interesting in the way Born Into Brothels is interesting, which is to say that if you peel back the cutesy, crowd-pleasing surface, there are some very ugly monsters lurking underneath. The selling point is that it's told in "Tupac's own words," and indeed it's compiled from a number of interviews and monologues. But a careful listener will hear that many times, Tupac's speech is spliced together from several different interviews, often in mid-sentence! His speech, his life -- they're so heavily edited to put a positive spin on a man who was one of the most internally embattled characters of his day. By the end of the film, Pac is basically being cast as a black Jesus figure, a patron of the arts, and a sensitive gentleman who only occasionally ran into trouble with the press and the law. It's no coincidence that the film was made by Tupac's mom, Afeni Shakur. You can just see her pulling the strings the whole time.

Guess she had to get him back for "Dear Mama" some way or another.

Your iPod is a Nazi.

Macworld Daily News

Monday - June 12, 2006

Inside Apple's iPod factories
By Macworld staff

Apple's iPods are made by mainly female workers who earn as little as £27 per month, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday yesterday. The report, 'iPod City', isn't available online. It offers photographs taken from inside the factories that make Apple music players, situated in China and owned by Foxconn.

The Mail visited some of these factories and spoke with staff there. It reports that Foxconn's Longhua plant houses 200,000 workers, remarking: "This iPod City has a population bigger than Newcastle's." The report claims Longhua's workers live in dormitories that house 100 people, and that visitors from the outside world are not permitted. Workers toil for 15-hours a day to make the iconic music player, the report claims. They earn £27 per month. The report reveals that the iPod nano is made in a five-storey factory (E3) that is secured by police officers.

Another factory in Suzhou, Shanghai, makes iPod shuffles. The workers are housed outside the plant, and earn £54 per month - but they must pay for their accommodation and food, "which takes up half their salaries", the report observes.

A security guard told the Mail reporters that the iPod shuffle production lines are staffed by women workers because "they are more honest than male workers".

The report also explains that the nano contains 400 parts, and that its flash memory is the most expensive component. The report looks at several salient components of the nano, and describes the product as a reflecting the global way business works today. This is because the iPod nano contains parts developed by technology companies from across the planet.

Apple is just one of thousands of companies that now use Chinese facilities to manufacture its products, the report observes. Low wages, long hours and China's industrial secrecy make the country attractive to business, particularly as increased competition and consumer expectations force companies to deliver products at attractive prices.

You can comment on this story in the Macworld UK Forum.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=14915

The Team is Back in Play

Queercore fans, rejoice -- our leaders, Team Dresch, have reunited and are touring intermittently. They just finished a brief stint in Washington and NYC, but be on the lookout for more dates in the future.

What the fuck is queercore, you ask?

Well, my fellow fans of punk and hardcore: if you've never heard of Team Dresch, you're not just missing out on one of the first bands to herald the mid-90's hardcore/punk blend that Propagandhi and Glassjaw would go on to popularize. You're also missing out on the band that single-handedly made "queercore" a national underground movement. While Bikini Kill spearheaded the riot grrrl movement (and have no doubt that the two movements had MUCHO in common), Team Dresch was opening doors for queer kids who wanted to rock all across the nation.

These dykes make Pansy Division look like the shit band they really are.

OMGZWTFBBQ????!!!11 BUSH DID SOMETHING GOOD?!

This just in from The Advocate's copy editor extraordinaire, Traci Neal:

On May 17, 2006, President Bush signed into law the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 ...

... Another group of taxpayers that will benefit from the Act are certain musically inclined individuals. Beginning in 2006, the Act provides that the sale of musical compositions or copyrights in musical works created by the taxpayer’s personal efforts is treated as the sale of a capital asset. This means gain from the sale will be subject to the more favorable capital gains tax rate (15 percent maximum) instead of ordinary income tax rates (35 percent maximum).

Great news!

On a separate but related note, I would STRONGLY RECOMMEND to all my friends who are local, professional musicians that you consider using an accountant to help with taxes. There are deductions specifically for performing artists that you can take advantage of; you may even be able to deduct mileage and band-related expenses. Independent accountants around these parts usually charge around $75-$100 to prepare your tax returns (as opposed to the conglommo-H and R Block fuckers, who cost more), but it may save you far more than that in the long run. Drop me a line if you want to talk more about it; I've had a great experience with my accountant and I'm never filling out those damn forms again.

New Smashing Pumpkins On The Way?

I'm back from the convention, and more deranged than ever!

Peep: http://www.smashingpumpkins.com/

New SP, huh? I have mixed feelings; Billy is clearly flailing about without other musicians to indulge his increasingly shitty compositions. First Zwan nosedived -- to be honest, I never even understood what people liked about them -- and then didn't he release some atrocious solo album? And meanwhile Jimmy Chamberlin, all cleaned up and totally high on life, released this AMAZING solo jazz-rock album just filled with crackling, explosive drumming. And James went on to work with A Perfect Circle, which somehow seems so appropriate for him (I would still love to see more of his dark side). And D'arcy was supposed to be just chilling on her farm with her weirdo P-USA husband. So when I hear they're together again after the hot-and-cold crapshoot that was Machina (and the wonderfully rebellious but low-quality Machina II) I get scared: namely because their old material has such intense personal relevance to me, and every crappy song they write since then is just, like, a puppykick.

But you know what? I like the nervous tension of not knowing what's going to happen. It's one of my favorite feelings, whether I get it from flirting, watching movies, or following bands.

Eliot Spitzer, You're My Hero

A lot of people (including me) rant and rave about how control of the media has been taken away from the people, and no longer represents their interests.

Here's proof.

I've been tracking the radio payola scandal for a while now, and this is another big-yet-obvious revelation. According to this Yahoo News article, Sony and Warner have already agreed to big-money settlements, and today Universal did as well.

Why are they paying? Because they've been bribing radio station employees to rotate certain songs more heavily. They've also been engaging in "fraudulent call-in campaigns" to skew a song's popularity.

Some of the Universal artists whose songs were payola'd: Nick Lachey, Ashlee Simpson, Brian McKnight, Big Tymers, and Lindsay Lohan.

ALL SHITTY MUSICIANS.

On the downside, the stuff these labels were giving to radio reps and Program Directors was pretty tame (Yankees tickets, Miami hotel rooms, preferred seating at U2 concerts). I was kind of hoping it would at least be hookers and blow.

More Sketchiness From the Sketchballs at The Webster

As Q-Tip put it on The Low End Theory:

"Music Industry Rule number 4080:
RECORD COMPANY PEOPLE ARE SHADYYYYYYY!"

For our purposes, let's include The Webster Theatre in that assessment.

From a recent post by The Sesha Loop on MySpace:

CD Release show POSTPONED!!
Hey everyone,
In light of some new details in regards to our time slot at the Webster Underground, we are postponing the CD release show and cancelling the Webster show on Thursday. We can't in good faith expect our fans to plunk down 10 bucks to see us perform for *20* minutes without even a guaranteed time slot (could be 6:30pm, could be 9pm...). To those of you that purchased tix through us, we'll be happy to refund em for ya. Instead of paying your 10 bucks to the Webster Theatre, use that money to buy our CD instead--we could use the money more than they can!

In case you didn't know, the Webster's policy re: local/opening bands is NOT TO LET YOU KNOW YOUR SET TIME UNTIL YOU ARRIVE ON THE NIGHT OF THE SHOW. This is because they choose your set time based on how many tickets you sold. (More tix sold = later set time.) Not only is this incredibly unprofessional -- how can bands expect fans to show up if they can't give them an approximate showtime? -- but it creates all sorts of ethical problems. I spoke to both The Webster Theatre's owner and the guy who books local bands there. You can read what I discovered here.

You can listen to and buy The Sesha Loop's CD at: http://cdbaby.com/cd/seshaloop

"Rock and Roll"

...is racist doublespeak for "R&B"!

Looks like I got to BAR just in time.

...because apparently they had a bigass fire there! Which blows, because that place was beautiful. They had all these pretty candles...

Walt from Brass City Records writes:

Dan, got this from Rick at Bar in New Haven

"Hello-
As you may have already heard, BAR nightclub suffered some damage last week from a fire while the building was being re-roofed. Thankfully, no one was hurt. While the restaurant will be up and running before you know it, our Sunday night concert series is on hiatus until we can replace the sound equipment and repair the building. In other words, we're just taking some time to bring things back up to speed and make the night even better than before. Unfortunately that means cancelling some amazing shows that we've worked hard to get:

All shows at BAR have been cancelled until Sunday March 26th.

Again, the pizza restaurant will be operating much sooner than that, but we've got some work to do before we're ready for our Sunday concert series to be up and running. Obviously all Shaki Presents shows that are NOT scheduled at BAR are still on. And no, we were not able to put any of those cancelled shows in other venues (yes, we tried, but it just can't happen).

There will be more news, soon enough, but that is the short of it.
Thanks for your support.
-Rick Omonte
Shaki Presents
BAR nightclub"

sucks because I had heard that Whitehouse was to play in March...

we will start to do shows again when I can get my stage back...right now it's covered with a TON of punk vinyl...gotta get rid of some of it to make room again...

You heard the man -- go buy punk vinyl!

EDITED: At least bad news occasionally has a good bearer.

UPDATE 2/2/06: Brass City is happily NOT closed! Apologies for any confusion. Walt just wrote me to say:

over the holidays we did 3-4 shows...just got in a massive collection of 70's-mid 80's punk vinyl and everything seems to be going well... we did a really great Bludrum show for new years....had one of my xylophones set up. sounded like Capt.. beefheart.

Well, rock on!

Krizta Moon wrote this to me at the beginning of December:

Unfortunately, Brass city went under and closed about a week ago. I can't believe it! I've been going there since I was 14.

Brass City has long been one of the most unique record stores/performance spaces that CT had to offer. It's a huge loss -- especially to the avant-garde music fans who would shop there, not to mention the DIY-kids whose first shows at Brass City taught them how to organize a musical event, use a PA, and not trip over their own wires.

I know Walt, the owner, was having trouble with zoning (he told me the city wanted to demolish his building to put in a new "Transportation Center" that, in our minds at least, seemed better off closer to the current train station). Has anyone spoken to him since/about the closing?