LATEST ADDITIONS

I thought I'd really begin where I always begin: with my band's first album. As I've said before, I know this thing better than I know most anything else. From the creation of a song like "50 Bullets" &#151; sitting on my bed and turning a simple four-note riff into a complicated and violent four-minute explosion &#151; to the recording process, marred by uncomfortable, late-night drives from Clifton to New Brunswick where <a href="http://www.versioncity.com/">Jeff Baker</a> fooled around with tape reels and watched lazily as we somehow came up with fourteen tracks that we could only almost perform &#151; drunk on Budweiser and stuffed on fried chicken and tired, so damn tired &#151; I know this thing. I know this amazing and ambitious and awful album better than I know most anything.

Audiophiles are lucky when it comes to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, especially when you consider the embarrassment of riches that are the Shostakovich String Quartets. If you dig LPs, there are two essential batches of complete recordings: the Borodin Quartet and the Fitzwilliam Quartet. On CD, there's the fabulous <I>live</I> edition by the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//musicrecordings/671/">Emerson Quartet</A>, rendered in superb sound by Da-Hong Seetoo.

These animated Nissin Cup-O-Noodle ads are great! Almost makes me want to buy some just to say thanks.

Parts is parts you say? They don't make 'em like these any more.

Rules? We don't need no rules! Oh, you mean these are <I>our</I> secret laws? Nevermind.

If we were late, we didn't care. An elevator showed us out onto a floor where people gathered round a table blanketed in champagne and wine. We made our way, and caught attention.

Here's an article from <I>USA Today</I> about vendors selling fully loaded iPods on eBay. Is this a legitimate fair use issue? My gut reaction is no&mdash;if vendors were selling loaded iPods for market value or used value, it might not trip my BS detector. But when you are charging several hundred bucks extra for the 11,000 songs you've loaded on the iPod, it seems to me that you've crossed that fair use line in the sand&mdash;we've established what you are and now we're just negotiating price.