There is great pleasure in shopping at an independent music store. One can read the tastes of one's music community by parsing its selection; one can join that community by talking to clerks and going to the shows and listening to the radio stations they recommend. Mass media stores are not like that; they are…

Blu-Ray, Physical Media Retailers, and the Fog of Convenience
I recently made the jump to high definition television and home video, and the difference between high definition and DVD is absolutely astounding to me. Studios seem to think it's necessary to gussy up BD packages with attention-hogging graphics and…

You're absolutely right. And R.E.M.'s muted jangle-pop sound was tremendously influential on the overall developmental arc of independent/alternative music. No band can ever be irrelevant whose work is encoded in the DNA of three decades of descendants, regardless of how apparent their traits are in those descendants.

How about just saying that their first five albums, and Automatic for the People, are front-to-back masterpieces that stand together as one of the greatest peaks in the history of the album?

Heard the Title Track Recently on College Radio…
It was remarkable. If the rest of the album is half as good, it will be in the year's top 50. If it's just as good, the top 10.

Yeah, I traveled to New York for the express purpose of seeing At Dawn live, mostly because they never play "X-Mas Curtain" anymore, and I love that song.

I agree that It Still Moves is a bit long, especially in the back half. I'd give it an A-.

I just know from Noel's Twitter that he takes an iPad with him, and from experience that 3G and GPS make finding decent food a whole lot easier.

I've finally managed to whittle down fast food consumption to the bare edge of long-distance travelling. But the next-to-last time I had fast food, I spent the subsequent morning throwing up. There are good restaurants in (almost) every town. In the age of GPS and 3G, there's little excuse for not finding them. You…

Here's what you should do. On March 12, buy two tickets to their show here in Lexington. Go in having never heard the band before, and see what you think when it's over.

My Morning Jacket's live show belongs in the top tier of those of any band performing today. You HAVE TO see them live.

Oh, and Winchester, they're playing here in Lexington next month.

I'm with my state-mate Winchester on Evil Urges. It's not the masterpiece Z or At Dawn is, but it's a damn good record. The worst song is probably the title track, and the breakdown in it is just incredible. Joe Fuckafelli's production is shit, though- all the instruments are roughly the same volume, and Jim James's…

It is from these "hygienes" that The Force emanates.

Tim and Eric are something like the Zappa of comedy. Sloppy, brilliant, mildly psychotic, and always trying to make a point loudly. If you like it, fine. If you don't, fine. They're not trying to make a studio tentpole.

In my opinion, Burn After Reading is the finest satire of Washington culture ever committed to film. It should play on a loop on the Capital rotunda.

95% or more of the art/commerce produced in both and all other media is likely always going to be shit.

The question is whether the movie really needed to feature God and the devil working menial jobs for a vast and ominous corporation. Of course it didn't. But that doesn't really hurt the movie one bit, because the entire thing's crazy enough that it fits the tone of the film.

The Big Lebowski is easily their best comedy, I think, and sits beside Fargo as their greatest satire of American culture. After it, I'd place Burn After Reading. Then O Brother, Where Art Thou. Then Hudsucker. Then Raising Arizona. Then, there'd be a ginormous fucking canyon. On the other side of that canyon is The…

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/f…