Just Some Random News...

Apparently album sales fell about 7% in 2005, hitting their lowest numbers in 9 years. I'd feel bad about this, except (a) the music industry continues to release and promote really shitty music, and (b) I personally decided not to buy about 7% of what I'd hoped to buy by abstaining from purchasing anything with "copy protection" on it. Of course, the industry will probably react to the revenue downturn by blaming mp3's and file-sharing and continuing to push copy protection and other anti-consumer schemes, rather than realizing that maybe they should stop catering to the lowest common denominator and release some decent music...

...Despite the Sony copy protection fiasco, other companies are apparently undeterred in their efforts to screw the people who actually pay for the cd's the industry releases. Some interesting reports about the version of Coldplay's X&Y being sold in India, in which the liner notes caution that the cd probably won't play in most devices on the market (and returns will not be accepted... something you won't know until after you've opened the cd and read the liner notes!). Coming to the U.S. soon? Better line up the lawyers...

(Incidentally, as this marks the first time I have ever referenced Coldplay on this Blog, let me state for the record that I'd been pretty content to let them permeate popular culture without ever registering on my radar screen, but my 9-year-old son played me a couple of their tracks recently, and they were distinctly... non-sucky. Not something I'd buy, mind you, but surprisingly unobjectionable. Just saying.)...

...Sad news for lovers of sunshine pop (ugh, that sure sounds incongruous, but I'm too lazy to retype)... Barry Cowsill, original member of the Cowsills, the not-exactly-legendary band of kids & their mom who, though probably best remembered for supposedly being the inspiration behind the fictional Partridge Family, actually had some great songs, was found dead in New Orleans. He'd been missing for several months, and was apparently a victim of Hurricane Katrina. (Heckuva job, Brownie!) For those of us not entirely embarrassed by the genre, it's hard to deny that songs like "The Rain, The Park & Other Things" are pretty dang nifty, even 35+ years later. Plus, they had that one really bizarre album full of Biblical songs, IIxII, which really ought to be issued on cd by Sundazed or some other retro label one of these days...

...And, finally, Pat Robertson continue to be absolutely, 100% batshit. Isn't there some way to put him out of his misery? For his own good?