David Letterman (whose team is doing a wonderful job of presenting and narrating his formidable archives) recently posted an amusing anecdote about Prince's first appearance on his show, in December of 1994. It's a fascinating story, because it...

Back in the latter part of the 20th century, a lot of subcultures held onto a concept called "selling out", a nebulously-defined idea based on a negative view of compromising one's values or creative expression in the pursuit of money or,...

Back in 2021, my friend Jesse Thorn interviewed two of my creative heroes, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, for an absolutely indispensible episode of Bullseye. The whole show is incredible, but the highlight for me is at the 47:43 mark: Jesse:...

Though he’s one of the most gifted and important artists to have ever created popular music, Stevie’s legacy as a tireless and fearless advocate for justice may he even more powerful, and is too often overlooked. We should heed every word he says. On...

Recently, a motivated Prince fan created a spreadsheet that attempts to catalog the entirety of Prince's thousands of recordings over the course of his career. Beginning in 1973 as a then-15-year-old Prince taped his first few tracks, and going...

On this day in 2007, Prince won Super Bowl XLI with a soaring halftime performance that climaxed with the skies opening up to honor his guitar solo. It is not just the best-regarded halftime show ever, but was to that point the most-viewed musical...

Duleshwar Tandi, better known these days as Rapper Dule Rocker, is one of the most successful and influential rappers to have ever come out of the Kalahandi district in Odisha, where my family is from. I jumped into his catalog of videos this weekend...

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to watch the most definitive record of Prince and the Revolution at their commercial peak, on one of the biggest musical tours ever mounted to that point. It's to raise funds for the COVID-19 Solidarity...

There could be no more fitting remembrance of Prince than Questlove going deep into his catalog and spinning some of Prince's greatest works into a multi-hour DJ set. Unless Quest did that five nights in a row. Which he did! It was an absolutely...

Even though I watched the medium of podcasting being created since its inception, I'd always resisted a little bit participating myself. I think I just felt more at home in this format, blogging, as that's where I'd found my voice. Well, that might...

With Janet Jackson's (woefully belated) acceptance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it's well past time for a broader reckoning with her place in popular culture, and especially the way she's challenged narratives in pop music. To me, her...

Prince was an astoundingly prolific artist, releasing nearly 40 albums under his own name(s), and thousands of songs for himself and others. His concerts were legendary, spellbinding from arenas to intimate clubs, flooring audiences around the...

Today's most fun new Glitch app is Record Player, which lets you upload a photo, then uses Google Cloud's Vision API to recognize the image and play it on Spotify. It works really well, but the real fun starts when you upload a selfie or a picture of...

I keep having to explain a principle I arrived at a few years ago when I realized the modern conservative movement is grounded almost entirely in a contrived sense of grievance, predicated on a false victimhood of its supporters. (That’s not to say...

I struggled for a long time when the nice folks at the Heat Rocks podcast asked me which Prince album I’d want to talk about on their show. Oliver Wang and Morgan Rhodes run an amazing podcast, where every episode is a deep-dive into a classic...

I was delighted to get to talk to Ben Greenman for an episode of “Dig If You Will The Podcast,” his series in honor of his book “Dig If You Will The Picture”. We go deep into Prince’s influence on transforming the music industry, and if you like it,...

With the recent availability of nearly all of Prince’s catalog on the most popular streaming services, it’s a great time to (re?)discover the breadth of Prince’s incredible body of work. The full scale of Prince’s music is probably too much for any...

Red Book, Yellow Book, Green Book Stay within the lines. The Red Book There’s a specification that Phillips published in 1981, for optical digital encoding of audio. They teamed up with Sony to create the standard, and by the following year hardware...

Today, P.M. Dawn exists as a faded memory for most music fans, if they’re remembered at all. But Attrell Cordes made songs like nothing that came before. Beautiful, sweeping melodies paired with lyrics of regret, remorse, heartache and profound loss....

When Prince’s first greatest hits collection was released, Prince made private comments as a guide for the liner notes. Later briefly posted on his website thedawn.com in 1996, Prince’s comments have been lost for the last 20 years, but now provide a...

I’ve been struggling to find words to express how I feel in the week since Prince died. He’s obviously the artist that’s had the most impact on my life, and was in many ways the lens through which I processed the rest of pop culture and artistic...

After talking to a friend about how Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” is so romantic if you just focus on the strings, bass and vocals, I was inspired to mix down the tracks to feature just those elements. anildash · A little less rocking with...

Sometimes I get an idea in my head and I just can’t let it go. For a few months, I’ve heard this nagging sound in the back of my mind, asking me to revisit Amadeus, one of my favorite films ever. Because who among us hasn’t heard Jeremih intone,...

0:00 — 0:10 In the summer of 1983, Wendy Melvoin was just 19 years old. She’d flown halfway across the country from Los Angeles for her first professional gig as a guitar player, joining her girlfriend Lisa Coleman in the band where Lisa had been...

After at least 15 years of debating whether I should spend money on this, I recently took the plunge and acquired one of my most-desired Prince collectibles. Added to my collection: 3.5" floppy given to press when Prince changed his name....

[11:05pm] Well, that’s a wrap. It’s hard for me to say how that ranked as a New Girl episode, but it seemed the narrative of the show may have been subordinated to getting Prince some good lines. That being said, the little man certainly acquitted...

Every great career in rhythm and blues leads only to heaven or hell. The path to hell is obvious: From Sam Cooke gunned down to James Brown leading a multi-state police chase to Sly Stone strung out on crack and living in a van to Whitney Houston’s...

Despite his obviously profound impact on popular culture, Prince has generally not been the subject of nearly as much academic study as his peers such as Michael Jackson, his influences like James Brown, or even contemporary hip hop acts from Biggie...

Ten years ago, my friend Andre had been experimenting with an instant messenger bot that sent out news headlines; Up late on a Saturday night I got a message that stopped me cold: A link to MetaFilter with the simple headline Singer Aaliyah Killed in...

Everyone claims to be at the Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell: And yet, this venue has no mayor! THE BLOGOSPHERE IS FACT-CHECKING YOUR ASS, Das Racist! As you might expect, Foursquare shows some delightful results if you check the venue “On A...

Though he was arguably the most popular solo artist of all time, one of the great joys of being a serious Michael Jackson fan is that some of his best work is remarkably obscure, even after he had already achieved legendary status. For example, after...

This was probably the one clip of Michael Jackson I wish everybody had...

Jay Smooth, “Please stop calling everyone and their mother ‘The First Rapper’“: U-Roy may be one of rap’s predecessors, and among the influences that laid the foundation for rap, but he did not invent it…any more than Jocko Henderson, Gil Scott...

A lot of folks seemed to like the Little Red Riding Hood video I linked to the other day, so I thought I’d reach way back into the archives (anybody still hanging around who was reading this site in 2000?) and dig out an old favorite. Behold, “Video...

I’m a fan of The-Dream, the producer-turned-singer who was born Terius Nash and is responsible for pop gems ranging from Rihanna’s “Umbrella” to Mariah’s “Touch My Body”. His solo albums have been genuinely entertaining and well-produced, a fact that...

My friend Nick is good at answering the questions I didn’t even know I wanted to ask. For example, how many electrons per song on an iPod? At approximately 4 minutes per song (Apple’s average), we can play through 150 songs in 10 hours (far less...

Thanks to a nice reminder from Ginevra, and a motivational post by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I got around to gathering up some videos I've been meaning to share. Obviously, Barack Obama's made some fairly explicit references to Sam Cooke's "A Change is...

Major labels function with the assumption that 90 percent of artists they sign are going to fail — that should have been a red flag for everybody. I mean that’s a bizarre business model in any arena. But particularly in the cultural arena, the idea...

We saw Mary J. Blige. It was like a 2-hour motivation speech interrupted by some fantastic ass-shaking songs. I laughed, I cried, I want to see it...

One of the most frequent questions I get when I talk to people who are unfamiliar with social media on the web is, “Who writes all these blogs or Wikipedia? Who has the time?” The answer, at least in this case, is me. People who are skeptical about...

Spin Magazine’s piece covering the rise and fall, and perhaps second rise of D’Angelo has been lingering in my mind for weeks. As you might expect, I was a fan of D’Angelo’s from the start. And that’s true even though I was clowning him when he got...

I’ve been a fan of The KLF since I was a teenager, and just last week was reminded of one of their most amazing stunts. This is just the first of a five-part video showing the entire “Burn a Million Quid” documentary, and I think you don’t get to see...

Dedicated readers will recall me obsessing over and over-analyzingAuto-Tune in pop music earlier this year. It is, then, my pleasure to report that, thanks to the inestimable Sasha Frere-Jones, Auto-Tune analysis has gone legit. Behold, no less an...

As I had guessed, I’ve already had someone threaten to unsubscribe from my blog due to the publication of this week’s Snoop Dogg research. But I’ve had twice as many people say that they loved it, so I won’t let this blatant bullying censor this...

Beginning with our exploration of Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction”, we wandered into the history of vocoders, talkboxes, and the most nefarious of voice manipulation technologies, Auto-Tune. But it’s hard to express just how delightful horrible it...

One of the things that makes Snoop’s “Sensual Seduction” video so compelling is his outstanding use of vocal effects. Let’s take a closer look, shall we? In the video, Snoop makes liberal use of a breath tube on his keytar, an obvious homage to the...

Now that his single Sensual Seduction (a.k.a. Sexual Eruption) is in the Top 10, it’s official: Snoop Dogg can see the future. First, let’s pause to watch the best video in the history of anything, ever. (The song is about four minutes long, so...

Today’s Blog of the Year Pick: Ill Doctrine. Put simply, Jay Smooth’s Ill Doctrine is the best video blog on the web. (At least the best one that’s in English.) As you’d expect from the founder of hiphopmusic.com, Ill Doc starts from a base of...

Many of my nerd friends are all excited about Portal, Valve’s brilliant reworking of Narbacular Drop. I’ve only played about five minutes of the game myself, but have had a lot of thoughts about it, so at the urging of some friends, here’s a couple...

The Donors Choose Bloggers Challenge that I wrote about a few weeks ago is almost over, and that means you only have a few days to help support the Notes for Class Challenge, an effort to help fund music education programs that have been proposed by...

Put these in your browser, and shake well. Facebook apps are not a long tail. So says Chris Anderson, who oughtta know. The tougher question is: Since the recent changes to app distribution on Facebook’s platform, will there ever be another popular...

I’ve gotten a lot of really good questions (and some fantastically generous donations!) about the Donors Choose blogger challenge I wrote about yesterday, but by far the most common is “what should I do?” There are a lot of options, so let me make it...

Ranjit has made his robots play Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”, and in the comments reveals that apparently he can just throw any MIDI file at them and have it rendered in this unique theremin-and-clanking-noises arrangement....

Alan Leeds, one of my heroes and our greatest record of the living history of funk music, offers a warm remembrance of Bobby Byrd after Byrd’s passing last week. Well worth a read, especially to understand that every great sidekick had the potential...

Speaking of Timberlake, that brings us inevitably to Timbaland. After the fawning over Rick Rubin in the New York Times, it’s amazing that there hasn’t been a similarly high-profile profile of the best producer working in pop music today. Until then,...

We just finished watching HBO’s broadcast of Justin Timberlake’s FutureSex tour, which I (unsurprisingly) quite enjoyed. It seems like he’s done a good bit since his last tour to incorporate his strong live band and his rapidly improving chops on...

I’d intended to post a correction to this NY Times story’s recounting of the history of blog book tours, but was pleased to see that my friend, and intermittent blogger, Jason Kottke has already done the legwork. For my part, here’s Greg Knauss’ post...

In the New Yorker, Bruce Wagner tries to live my life: The performance began at two in the morning and took place in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was amazing. I was so close to Prince that I was injured during the six-and-a-half-hour...

In the New York Times, Jon Pareles gets it exactly right: Prince’s priorities are obvious. The main one is getting his music to an audience, whether it’s purchased or not. “Prince’s only aim is to get music direct to those that want to hear it,” his...

Over at HipHopMusic.com, which Jay Smooth has relaunched as a group blog, Brandon Soderberg offers When They Reminisce Over Mixtapes. The same industry that makes millions from “Now That’s What I Call Cherry-Picking Hit Singles! Vol 42” tries to...

As much as we like to blame the RIAA for all the evils of the recording industry, leave it to my man Prince to bring out the best in the execs over in the U.K. And mind you, these are music retailers, not even the people who, despite their...

This one’s sublime: “What’s your favorite kitchen sound?” This one’s the truth, finally. The most eloquent dismissal of User Generated Discontent (or in this case, nominal competitor-generated discontent) yet written: It does, however, drive me nuts...

Sadly, MichaelJacksonForSale.com does not actually let you purchase the King of Pop for your very own. However, it does have lots of interesting memorabilia, and it accepts PayPal, which isn’t real money and so it’s basically like you can get any of...

Details offers a lengthy and fairly credible interview with Justin Timberlake: Timberlake is not a kiss-ass. Selling more than 13 million records has earned him a lot of rope, and he knows that. He relishes battles with his label, Jive, about...

Sasha Frere-Jones bears witness to Prince’s ageless funk in this week’s New Yorker. As much as I admire Prince’s gifts, it’s Sasha’s job I...

So, we talked about Gershwin’s work in inspiring the Rhythm Changes, but his signature work is, of course, Rhapsody in Blue. One of my favorite recent finds is the original recording of Rhapsody in Blue, as preserved by the Internet Archive. From the...

Nate Harrison’s 2004 documentary Can I Get an Amen? on the “Amen Break”, uncovers the story behind one of the seminal breaks of the electronica/jungle/drum-n-bass scenes. Though I’d argue that James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” break is even more...

Always trust the guys at The Smoking Gun to ferret out the good stuff. “Thanks CBS for turning my son GAY.” This, of course, is the substance of one of the complaints filed to the FCC about Prince’s Superbowl...

Do you want links? Because I’ll give you some damn links, I’m not afraid of you! I’m not afraid of NOBODY! Reyhan Harmanci on the third wave of academic study of hip hop: Dominant, a UC Berkeley alumnus who actually attended the much-publicized...

Rip, Mix, and Burn? It’s not new. Contrafact is what they called sampling before there was sampling. You take the chords from a song that the whole band knows, and play your new song on top of it. Familiar but new, and you don’t have to pay...

Most everybody who knows me well knows that I’ve been a fan of Prince for pretty much my entire life. So when casual fans or non-fans hear that Prince is playing the halftime show at the Superbowl this year, they ask me, “What’s up with that guy?” or...

My iTunes library, of about 12,000 songs consisting of 60GB of data, got corrupted today. The MP3 files themselves are okay, but all of the metadata is blown away — playlists, play counts, ratings, and all my little tweaks to song and album...

Sure, everybody’s linking to Ironic Sans’ (admittedly entertaining) Celebrity Patents, since Waxy pointed them out, but did you know Prince actually has a real patent? Patent D349127 is for a portable electronic keyboard musical instrument. But...

To those of us who grew up after his artistic heyday, James Brown is some combination of legend, influence, icon, and inevitably, caricature. So on the day we find out about his passing, I thought I’d point out some examples of what an amazing...

Microsoft has just launched the Zune, which will be one of the most popular digital music players ever made, and could have been considered a wild success as a result. Instead, the device has been inevitably and irrevocably compared to Apple’s...

Earlier this year, the New York Philharmonic started distributing some recordings of their works through the iTunes music store. On its own, that’s not a particularly revolutionary achievement; These days, it seems downright obvious. But what’s...

A little more than two decades ago, popular music was under fire by Tipper Gore’s PMRC, the Parents’ Music Resource Center. Tipper was aghast at popular music’s coarsening of the public discourse, especially because a young Karenna Gore had played...

This is the first post in a series where I’m pointing out some nice little touches that take up less than a 100×100 pixel square on a screen. Today’s is the Nike Plus site. Nike Plus is the product of Apple’s partnership with Nike to produce an...

For a long time, I’ve been enamored of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. There’s a lot of reasons, from their music to their various art projects and media hacks. But the one that’s struck me as most compelling lately is The Manual. I’d guess the advice...

My reign as most verbose Justin Timberlake fanboy on the Internet is not yet complete. Thus, some links to augment the review of “SexyBack”. The Observer has a lengthy review/interview on the eve of the publicity tour for...

Four years is a long time in pop music, but that’s how long it’s been since Justin Timberlake’s “Like I Love You” heralded his launch as a solo singer and led the parade of singles from Justified. But it’s summertime, time for hit singles, and this...

It’s no great revelation that popular music has largely shifted to a producer-centric culture, and though this is true not just in hip hop or house music, as discussed earlier, those were certainly two of the biggest influences. If you want to talk...

One of those interesting side-effects of having lots of old blog posts around is that sometimes they come back to life. With Star being fired last week, there’s been a whole bunch of new visitors and commenters to my old post which states, correctly,...

It’s like they chose the onstage talent at this event just to appeal to me! ![Rock Your...

I’d be remiss if I didn’t pass along the NYTimes story on MTV Desi from last week. There’s a lot of different reactions this prompts from me, but perhaps the most important one to MTV is summed up in the story: The three target audiences for the new...

I have received the following comments on posts from my Pop Life blog. Though they’re ostensibly aimed at the celebrities I discuss on the blog, I prefer to think they’re aimed at me. Hey Baby!! I love you sooo much.I love your music, your style,...

With the news that Toyota is launching a record label, I guess we can officially say that the music industry has gone completely random. Though most people want to attribute it to Wal-Mart’s dominance of the distribution of physical recordings (as...

Michal Levy reminds us what we love about the web. With Giant Steps, Levy took Coltrane’s masterwork and set it to Flash in a beautiful interpretation. Nothing literal, just a stunning representation of what the music made her see. Go take a look at...

It seems that Jermajesty Jackson‘s parents are splitting up. An unfortunate and surprising turn of...

When "The W" came out, I got to see all 9 members of the Wu-Tang Clan on stage at one time. Even that night, I knew we’d never see them all together again. And unfortunately, that turned out to be the case. Rest in peace, Russell...

Gina lists the 1,049 federal rights that depend on marital status. Civil unions are not enough, and will never be enough, despite the fact that they’re harder to enter into than marriage...

Dan Woods has a poignant lament about the end of life for his application (and labor of love) Watson. The circumstance is unfortunate, but it would be totally understandable if he said “Oh well, I got paid by Sun. So long, suckas!” Instead, he is...

About 250 years ago, Josiah Wedwood invented the concept of the celebrity endorsement. A scant two and a half centuries later, his clever marketing strategy has reached its ominous and terrifying nadir. If I understand correctly, the worst idea in...

Okay, there are services that handle eBay for me if I’m too lazy to sell my junk. Which I am. But what I need is a service which will handle Free After Rebate products for me. I’d trust them to be my purchasing proxy, perhaps with one of those...

So, Prince is playing the Fillmore in San Francisco this weekend, two shows, and I need tickets. His online music club is supposed to hook us fans up, but I missed out on the window for buying tickets and now I am sad. Since I can’t be home in New...

I finally got around to seeing Finding Nemo this weekend. It’s pretty good, not great, but I suppose I’d appreciate it a lot more if I were a parent. In summary, the story is not as good as Monsters, Inc. but the animation, as one might expect, is...

I’m absolutely certain that I’m the only person in Nice, France, who is walking around looking for locations that were used to film scenes for "Under the Cherry...

I’ve been following Russell Simmons’ political ambitions for over a year now, and it seems like his self-promotion campaign has kicked into high gear in the last few weeks. Either he’s trying to take Rush Communications public or he’s planning to...

I have an older, kind of broken-down laptop that I wanted to do some research and testing on, so I installed a fresh install of a new operating system on it. Having a slow processor, I chose an operating system with relatively low system...

The basic details: Justin took to the stage at 1:30am after the end of the VMAs, where he won 2 moonmen. Performance lasted one and a half hours, and onstage guest performers included Timbaland, Pharrell, Black Eyed Peas, and John Mayer sat in on...

I am really, truly, inordinately excited about the fact that I’m going to see Justin Timberlake perform this week, especially since it’s not the crappy arena tour with Aguilera, but one of the live club gigs he does with a real band. If this sort of...

It’s been about 10 years, where’s the Best of Method Man collection? You could fill a strong 2-disc set or one bangin’ solid CD of tunes with Meth’s tracks, even without getting into all his duets, guest appearances, and wu-tang stuff. It’s damned...

My cousin in California sent me the following email, but I haven’t kept up enough with our local hip hop stations enough to know if we’ve had the same trend on the radio in NYC. I figure some of you are more up to date on this, so leave any relevant...

Yeah, I got rid of the little toolbar that used to be next to the sidebar. Nobody uses it anyway, and most of the links there are on my page of other stuff...

Another in my occasional series of great emails sent to our customer service address at work: From: [Name Redacted] Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 2:18 PM To:customerservice@example.com Subject: why won’t you respond to my help request? i signed...

I wasn’t going to write about it, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about it, so maybe writing it out will get it out of my head… I’m surprised just how affected I am by Jam Master Jay’s passing. You probably already know, if you didn’t before, that...

If web services are considered the API to an Internet operating system, what would be the device drivers? What’s analogous to the layer that abstracts the physical...

Understand this: I am an unapologetic Michael Jackson apologist. I was that guy, the one still holding on to hope. Michael Jackson has had a third child, apparently, of unknown maternity. The child’s name is apparently Prince Michael Jackson II. Let...

Understand this: I am an unapologetic Michael Jackson apologist. I was that guy, the one still holding on to hope. Michael Jackson has had a third child, apparently, of unknown maternity. The child’s name is apparently Prince Michael Jackson II. Let...

Andre kindly pointed out this weblog of Quake news from Blue’s News circa July 1996. I’ve always wondered why Stephen Heaslip deliberately gets written out of some people’s history of weblogs, and I can’t help but surmise that it must be a concerted...

And all good things, they say, never...

I thought everyone had read this, but then I mentioned it to a few people, and they hadn’t seen it. Do yourself a favor and read Clay Shirky’s thoughts on the received wisdom that "half the world has never made a phone call." I’ve always...

It’s funny because it’s true! This list of One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately only includes 3 or 4 that I have. Overall, they are so, so right on. But you’ll pry "Fear of Black Planet" out of my cold, dead...

I just got back from a two and a half hour show where Prince led a band consisting of, at various times, George Clinton, Maceo Parker, Larry Graham, ?uestlove of the Roots, Musiq, Alicia Keys, Candy Dulfer, Doug E. Fresh, and Renato Neto, a terrific...

Four words: James Brown, Saturday...

I saw Maceo Parker last night, and he was funky as all get out. Granted, he wasn’t as ass-kicking as the first time I saw him, but that may have been due at least partially to the exasperatingly unfunky crowd. Still, I’d recommend checking him out if...

Anil Dash:whooo! andretorrez: yeah? Anil Dash:whooo! Anil Dash:It takes two to make a thing go right… andretorrez: yeah Anil Dash:It takes two to make it outta sight Anil Dash:Whoo! andretorrez: yeah Anil Dash:hmm. it loses something this way,...

Remember a few months ago everyone was gaga over Golden Shower’s "Video Computer System"? Well, now you can see how it was made. And in case you missed it the first time I’ll mirror the video locally right...

I saw Wu-Tang Clan last night, and it was predictably entertaining, even though I’m not a huge fan. But the reason I think it will turn out to be quite memorable is because O.D.B. was there. Expectedly, he was largely incoherent, confusing, and quite...

Liquid Audio: See also Sand, Head in...

Another downside to the Tulip Bubble mentality saturating the industry is the "Why are they making all the money, I should have thought of that!" reaction I keep having to every innovative, creative new idea that comes along. Case in point:...

Dammit, I just can’t stop starting trends. I half-jokingly put up my "FadMaker" section on the sidebar when Ani signs Arto Lindsay to her label. As part of my ongoing "Circular Reference ’99" tour, flip through my CD collection to...

Went to the grocery store the other day. (Did I mention I love grocery stores?) The fellow in front of me in the express aisle had three items: A 6-pack of 12-ounce Bud Light Longnecks. Bag of pork rinds frozen White Castle burgers. And a 4-pack of...

Everything that rises must converge. If pressed to recite a short list of some of my favorite pop musicians, that list would undoubtedly include Prince, Ani DiFranco, and Chuck D of Public Enemy. Interesting to me, then, that all three are now free...

The harsh realities of the capitalist free market. Or, "Art vs. Commerce, Chapter LXXXII". Despite my fondness for independent record stores, (or should I say CD stores?) their penchant for buying and selling used discs results in some...

Just one of those great "Only on the Web" sites is the Visual Thesaurus from a company called ThinkMap. I’m not much of a fan of Java applets, but this one’s worth the download time, it’s a great brainstorming tool. And one of my classic...

Separated at birth? The opening bars of Stevie Wonder’s "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" features vocals being handed off from a male vocal to a female and finally to Stevie himself. Prince’s "1999" features the same technique,...

Today and yesterday I have used the Metropolitan Transit Authority‘s trains to go to work. I have been a big believer in public transportation, as long as I personally didn’t have to use it. However, the experience has been fun and suprisingly...

Actually, it’s technically very early on 21st July, 3:45a to be exact. That bastard Prince made us wait 5 hours until he showed up. In my opinion, of course, it was worth it. Others who were present tended to disagree… Also present onstage at Life...