Some days the music business reminds us of that old Tom Lehrer quote: "Political satire became obsolete the day they awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger." It also seems that you can't out-stupid the record industry.
On Thursday, June 28, the US Supreme Court voted 5-4 that manufacturers could impose minimum prices if "they promote competition." The case—<I>Leegin v. PSKS</I>—involved Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc., a California-based manufacturer of women's fashion accessories, which argued that it had the right to set minimum consumer prices on its products to maintain price consistency among the niche retailers it sold to. Those stores, Leegin argued, emphasized customer service, which allowed them to compete with discount retailers that are selling more widely distributed, inexpensive products.
It just goes to show, you never know <I>what</I> lurks in some men's souls. White House press spokesman Tony Snow playing a not-at-all-terrible blues flute. For the video (via YouTube and Matt Yglesias' blog), click <A HREF="http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/06/your_moment_of_…;.
Huckleberry, on the other hand, just brazens it out. <I>What table? Oh, the one beneath me? Are you sure that counts? Well, I was tired of sitting here anyway.</I>
Bagheera, like all cats, is a lawyer. <I>It's not a table, it's a counter, in the sun—in the cattery.</I>
Those <A HREF="http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070428/bob9.asp">rubber duckies</A> oceanographers have been tracking since 1992 are about to make landfall in the UK. Not the first time Old Blighty has been menaced by an armada.
The Jazz Journalists Association, a group of mainly New York-based jazz critics and writers, handed out its 2007 awards Thursday afternoon. Here are the winners, followed in parentheses by the musician that I voted for in each category:
A few things contributed:
"The same acoustic silence, embedded in two different excerpts, can be perceived dramatically differently," writes Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis in an article in the June issue of <I>Music Perception</I>.
