Breaking our usual music-only rule (at some point we're probably going to put that rule to a vote, and there's only one of us, and the consensus right now seems to indicate that the rule's days are numbered) to make a request that nobody can probably fulfill. Yet must we cry to the heavens, to the void, to anyone who will listen: please translate this book into English. Somebody, anybody. OK, not anybody. Somebody competent and awesome. Thinkin' maybe of you, Gerald Turner, because you did an awesome job on Europeana, a book so completely rad in all ways that I can't even begin to talk about it. There are enough books by almost any author you can name; "of the making of many books there is no end," etc. But there's only the one by Ourednik in English, and it's not enough at all. Begging you here, translator people. More Ourednik into English. Anything I can do to speed the process, you know where to find me.

LPTJ jumped off the commenting-on-mainstream-popular-culture train shortly after our "Ignition (Remix)" piece, since "Ignition (Remix)" seemed such a clear & genuine high-water mark, after which all American popular culture would surely decline gradually into ruin. And indeed, there hasn't been much since to suggest we were wrong. Most counterexamples you can cite are also going to be R. Kelly songs anyway. (I will still rep for "U Saved Me" all day, and think it could have blazed trails, but like everything else in an accelerated culture, it crested quickly and almost invisibly before vanishing into the swell.) In an abundance of information - in this glut which is if not a permanent reality then at least the one we expect to have with us for a few generations - the soundest strategy is focus. The future belongs to the myopic.

Still, that said, although it pains me, I have to say something about American Idol, and the thing I have to say is a question, and the question is: do you really think people are that stupid? I, personally, do not. The rule change is about one thing only: conversations between the show's producers & industry executives who see, in the show, one of the only bright spots in the business. The judges will rescue people at the behest of labels or production houses who think they can make money off of people whom the viewing public have rejected, or, possibly, in whom they've already invested too much to see them lose. Can I prove this? Let me answer the question with a question: am I fucking Sherlock Holmes? No. Sherlock Holmes is not my type and is rumored to be a selfish lover. So I am not fucking Sherlock Holmes, and I'm not going to find a smoking gun. It just seems obvious what's at work here: other interests. It seems so obvious that it hardly needs proving. "The music business will game any system it thinks it can rig" hardly seems kin to any radio-controlled-planes-hitting-the-towers theories. It seems, to be frank, obvious. Or, to put it another way:

Joshua: Greetings, Professor Falken.
Stephen Falken: Hello, Joshua.
Joshua: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

I want to say, publicly, that I have underrated Charlie McAlister's Sardine in Bastard Suit. For a long time, my position on it was a simple "not as good as Mississippi Luau." And obviously that's true. Nothing is ever going to be as good as Mississippi Luau. That sort of thing comes along once in a lifetime. If an artist actually had two of them in him, how would be even be able to walk around? He wouldn't. The force of that stuff inside him would not be sustainable. He would collapse.

But that doesn't really say anything about Sardine in Bastard Suit, which, as it turns out, after long reflection, is totally excellent. Really totally and completely excellent and long underrated by me. Well, not any more. These songs are great. They're less manic and more depressed than the stuff on Mississippi Luau, but so what? Sometimes we're mellow and depressed instead of hopped up on sweet rum drinks.

I feel bad! I have sold Sardine in Bastard Suit short for too long. At the very least, I ought to have alerted you to its incredible title. Do you expect to run across a better album title in your lifetime? I don't. It's free here, anyway, from the people who released it, one of my favorite tape labels ever. The undersung meet the underappreciated in a battle to the death! I hereby promise not to underrate any Chas McAl stuff that is actually top shelf. Vowed this 13th day of March, 2009, etc., by your faithful and penitent parishioner, etc., John D.