As is generally known (or, rather, less tidily: "as is known by a number people with whom I've discussed the matter in great or small detail, which number is rather greater than the number of people with whom I've discussed, say, the Canucks' chances this season"), I get bent out of shape when people start yammering about the RIAA, or about how Hilary Rosen is the Wicked Witch of the West or something instead of a person who went on to work for the Human Rights Campaign. The whole good guys/bad guys dynamic really sticks in my craw, because it's pointless, and reductive, I think. I can get pretty worked up about it. Only then the RIAA does something like this, and sane people the world over wonder: what the hell are you guys thinking? Haven't any of you actually used a computer to listen to music? Didn't it occur to you, the first time you listened to something in streaming audio, that streaming audio is the cuddly fuzzy harmless grey-and-white kitten of online music distribution? Didn't anybody ask whether wagging the finger at a well-loved singer and songwriter, one whose longtime boosterism of music he loves has done our industry much good over the years, might not be, how to put this gently, totally moronic? What, exactly, is your overall goal?
(story via Boing Boing)

We went out to a sports bar last night to catch the Taylor-Hopkins rematch, whose late rounds were just as tense and dramatic as you've come to expect from Hopkins. It'll be a shame to lose him, though he really should retire — he's 40 years old, which is too old to keep getting punched in the head — since he's one of few boxers working who's more interested in chopping his opponent down like a tree than in crushing him with one blow. He also has a great backstory, and his quips are press gold. If you aren't at least somewhat charmed by his bio's list of likes and dislikes ("Westerns, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies, Dirty Harry, Roman gladiator movies, Hercules movies, science fiction"), especially in light of what he wears into the ring, then you are probably past charming.

Meanwhile, via Bedazzled, as potent a defensio of indie rock as there's ever been: the Verlaines' "Death and the Maiden," here augmented by cuddly bunnies. The bassline, the lyrics, the haircuts, the recovering sneer. There've been instances of a wider gulf between the greatness of a band and the acclaim with which it met, to be sure. Just not many, and few so glaringly obvious.

Listen, there are people who think this whole reviewing-music idea is total bullshit. Shocking, I know. But tonight I felt just the faintest hint of an reminder that such people have something of a point, even if they cribbed it from a dog-eared copy of The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde. Here's what happened: a month or two ago I was getting together a bunch of records I hadn't heard during 2005, trying to make sure I hadn't missed anything major, since my year-end list for Decibel was already two weeks overdue. I got my grubby little mitts on about twenty discs from various sources and I sat down in front of the stereo.

Finally got around to listening to the advance of the new Destroyer album that Merge was kind enough to send along. I'm not going to write a big ol' analytical spot-the-conceit piece about it or nothin'; there'd hardly be any point. I just want to say: 1) it's pretty clearly Bejar's best work since Streethawk, and 2) it may well be better than Streethawk, though you'd probably wanna give it six months or so before you went and made any pronouncements quite so grand. Whether you do or don't choose to exercise that restraint, though, I hope you'll take as much pleasure as I do in seeing an artist like this so riotously back on his game. Your Blues was good enough, sure, but This Night, whatever its uses as a sheep-from-the-goats tool, was rather beneath Bejar's talents. I worried that he'd peaked early. Rubies, though, is straight gravy, virtuoso lyricism and weightless melodies from ceiling to floor. With practically every exaggerated phrase, Bejar invokes poetic traditions unknown to all but the most sunken-eyed MFA students; everybody will claim they know what he's talking about, and almost everyone will be lying. The groove, meanwhile, is too irresistable for mere words. Fucking bravo.