Quartz City

The New York Times reports thtat Natalie Merchant is the latest artist to walk away from a major label deal and instead sell directly over the net.

File sharing. Crap bands. Monolithic major labels. What else is killing music? Bad recording – specifically CDs that are too loud. An article at prorec.com looks at the problem.

So you can guess that it was with much anticipation that I awaited my first real listen to the band?s newest CD, “Vapor Trails”. Reviews heralded this album as one of the hardest-rocking Rush albums in some time, with a strong focus on guitars, powerful drumming, excellent bass work, and some of the best songwriting to come from the band in years. And, in listening to the CD, I found all of these things to be true. This is easily my favorite collection of Rush songs in years, maybe decades. It’s incredible work and I earnestly hope it reflects a new and sustainable direction for this great band.

However there was one fact that the reviewers had all left out: this CD sounds like dogshit.

Unfortunately I suspect that Schadenfreude Interactive is a prank site. But damnit, I want to play Cthulhu Karts!.

Sheesh, I scored a perfect 25 correct out of 25 on the Guardian’s Work/IQ test, which gives me a cash/coefficient of 10 – “It’s official. Your IQ is significantly more powerful than the average for your salary bracket. Demand a pay rise while you still have your faculties.”

Scrubbles points out this massive collection of 4AD cover scans. Damn near the whole catalog… Bask in the v23 glory.

Nice photograph of the Southern Sierra and Owens Valley (my old tromping grounds!) as seen from the International Space Station.

Flipped on CNBC World this morning and the first thing I hear is the world market scoreboard described as a “Wall Of Fear” followed by the news crawl mentioning the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Djindjic.

Good morning indeed…

UPDATE: The BBC reports on the European market slide. Choice quote:

And Germany is now in the grips of a market downturn worse than it suffered in the Great Depression, calculations at investment bank Merrill Lynch have revealed.

“There’s one word for it – carnage. It’s horrible,” said Richard Wright, at brokerage GNI in London.

The BBC reports

Jewish settlers are offering special “terror tours” of the West Bank and Gaza, in which tourists will be trained to fire weapons and participate in mock fights with Arab militants.

The four-day excursion will include aerial tours of “terrorist” enclaves and a chance to sit in the cockpit of a fighter-plane capable of delivering nuclear bombs.

“There’s a lot of the ‘wow’ factor, like going up in an army helicopter and firing machine guns,” organiser Jake Greenwald told BBC News Online, “but it is also aimed at training people in how to deal with a terrorist situation”.

Mr Greenwald said it was also a way of attracting thrill-seekers to Israel at a time when tourism is suffering because of the violence with the Palestinians.

The Pioneer Press has a nice story about the Vertebrats and their classic power pop song “Left In The Dark”

…just realize that you could be in Heavy Seas. A mind-croggling collection of photographs of big waves and heavy seas taken from tankers, drilling rigs, etc. I’m in awe of the topmost photograph of a 100 foot wave getting ready to blow out a 2″ thick glass porthole.