Conventional wisdom says that free music is the future, and the record industry is fighting a quixotic battle even attempting to combat illegal downloading. But one record company exec says we’re all missing the point. “If you could download a loaf of bread free you would. But you can’t, thank God, because otherwise bakers would cease to exist and there would be no bread to download. Then we’d all be dead, and good riddance to us, because we humans are greedy, thieving, conniving bastards, every last one of us.”
Author: sbergman
Remembering The Great Art Mishaps Of Yesteryear
The sculpture that was smashed in a British museum this week is only the latest in a long line of art-related disasters over the years. Who could forget the Cambridge man who tripped down a staircase, taking two priceless Chinese vases with him? Or Steve Wynn putting his arm through a Picasso he’d just agreed to sell?
Booker Judge Feels Your Pain
One of the novelists who’s serving as a judge for this year’s Man Booker prize says that, while she believes the long list of finalists is a strong one, she understands the frustration that always seems to follow the announcement. “The longer the list, the greater the implied insult. Don’t those judges realise how hard you have worked?”
Song Lyrics Getting Scarce In The Age Of Downloading
“In the old days it was easy: you bought your album, put it on your hi-fi and listened to it while reading the lyrics on the record sleeve… But a survey released yesterday shows that we are finding it harder to find accurate song lyrics – and we don’t like it.”
Revenge of the Nerds
Is this the golden age of movies for geeks? “Hollywood’s cyclical nature and the ascendancy of comic book aficionados such as Christopher Nolan, Zack 300 Snyder, and Frank Sin City Miller has seen the nerd return as a highly influential factor in Hollywood.”
Obama Forced To Disavow Rap Song
Presidential contender Barack Obama has strongly condemned a song by rap star Ludacris which refers to President Bush as “mentally handicapped” and also takes shots at John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Obama has met with Ludacris in the past, and praised him in a Rolling Stone interview earlier this year.
Paparazzi Crackdown Coming In Tinseltown?
Officials in celebrity-intensive areas of Los Angeles are looking at ways that they can legally control the activities of paparazzi, who have been blamed for invading the privacy of and even causing physical harm to celebs. One city councilman called the talks “a response to their lack of responsible behavior.”
X-Rays Reveal Lost Van Gogh
“A new X-ray technique has revealed a previously unknown portrait of a woman by Vincent van Gogh, which was painted over by the artist… The powerful X-ray bombardment caused atoms in the picture’s layers of paint to emit “fluorescent” X-rays of their own, which indicated the chemicals they originated from. That enabled a colour map of the hidden picture to be produced.”
Harry’s Back! (Again. Sort Of. For Charity.)
“A collection of fairytales penned by Harry Potter author JK Rowling is to be published to raise money for a children’s charity. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which Rowling first mentioned in The Deathly Hallows, will go on sale on 4 December.”
Collaboration And Acquiescence
Two plays examining the various prominent artists and performers who collaborated with or stayed silent under Hitler’s reign are on show in Chichester, England. “The implied question – what would you do, and when? – strikes keenly, but is not necessarily one we could answer honestly from our safe distance. Would we, like Strauss, acquiesce in the face of threats to our family? Like Furtwängler, continue to believe in the sanctity of our art? Follow Zweig into exile and suicide?”