Everyone is still having a fit about Kanye West’s SNL performance of “Heartless” the other week. Did he lip-synch? Didn’t he? The debate misses the bigger issue: Kanye can’t sing. Truth be told, ability is not always the most important thing when it comes to singing. The proper amount of attitude, charm, and self-deprecation go a long way to replace actual vocal chops. Ask David Lee Roth and Bob Dylan, two dudes who can’t sing a note but make up for it with sheer chutzpah (and in Dylan’s case, an ungodly amount of lyrical prowess). Singers who know they can’t sing are always forgiven. See more… »

Frank’s Mothers Of Invention were for real…

As we enter the Year of Obama and the Year of the Ox, Bangkok-based Billy The Mountain’s Mem Will Dance, a track from their April release CD Drifting To Valhalla is still riding high at number 9 on one of the world’s top indie charts at SONGPLANET where the band has now been in the Top 40 for more than six months. The band is currently working on a new album - Born On Mars - scheduled for a Chinese New Year 2009 release, and their first album Drifting To Valhalla has just gone on sale at www.iTUNES.com

The cool stuff just keeps coming! Now that Exmass is gone, you can afford to look at what’s out there!

U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is speaking out in criticism of frontman Bono over his bandmate’s relationship with politicians. Mullen says he is specifically distressed by the singer’s relationship with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. See more… »

Jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, whose scorching rhythms left an indelible imprint on the instrumental music world, has died. Hubbard, who played with such greats as Miles Davis and John Coltrane, passed away Monday at 70 years of age. Hubbard played on literally hundreds of recordings in a career dating from 1958, the year he arrived in New York from his hometown of Indianapolis, where he had studied at the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music and with the Indianapolis Symphony. See more… »

by JERRY HOPKINS
Originally posted May 31, 1969 10:00 AM

Earlier this week Rolling Stone reported on the passing of Delaney Bramlett, the Mississippi native who co-wrote Eric Clapton’s “Let It Rain” and was credited with teaching George Harrison how to play slide guitar. Here’s a look back at a classic 1969 feature on the songwriter and his then-wife and musical partner, Bonnie.

Bonnie Bramlett is the female part of a new recording act, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, and the wife of the Delaney part. She, like her husband, is from rural America and when she speaks, it is in an accent that used to be called hillbilly, but now it’s called soulful (as in soul-full). See more… »

Antony Hegarty exudes the air of a rumpled Buddhist monk, says The Guardian’s Alex Needham. Hegarty’s new album embraces environmental issues. Seated in a semi-swanky London hotel bar, the man opposite is a benign and playful presence, joshing that he’d like a gin and tonic (despite it being 11.30am), spying Cameron Diaz on the front of InStyle magazine and crying, “Look, they’ve put me on the cover!” and trying to convince the Guide that he’s planning a special outdoor show hung from balloons. However, there are more serious issues on his mind. See more… »

Folk legend Davy Graham, cited as a major influence on The Kinks, Nick Drake and Paul Simon among many others has died aged 68. His manager announced that Davy died “from a massive seizure at home after a short battle with lung cancer,” reports BBC News

See more… »

By Jeré Longman

SCRANTON, Pennsylvania: When George Downey and other lacrosse players at Marywood University volunteered to take Viagra for a study, he received a snickering nickname from his high school coach. His parents jokingly told their friends. Inquiring minds sent messages to his Facebook page.

“They’re making fun of me,” Downey, 19, said good-naturedly. “Deep down, I think they’re looking for tips.”

Except that the Marywood study does not involve the bedroom, but the playing field. See more… »

Best of 2008

by MICHAEL S. MALONE

Even as economic losses and unemployment levels mount, America’s most effective engine for wealth and job creation is being dangerously — perhaps fatally — compromised. For more than 30 years the entrepreneurship-venture capital-IPO cycle centered in Silicon Valley has generated new wealth, commercialized innovation, and created new companies and industries. It’s also spun off millions of new jobs. The great companies created by this process — Intel, Apple, Google, eBay, Microsoft, Cisco, to name just a few — have propelled most of the growth in the U.S. economy in the last two decades. See more… »

CHUCK EDDY, the well gifted Billboard, Village Voice and Creem contributor among other mantles, issues an authoratative and eclectic annual top ten albums list each year and this year, our Jungle buddy Joe Cummings’ Tonic Rays album made the man’s extraordinary list.

The top ten list in full follows and here’s the link for his top 150 of 2008 : See more… »

2009 is time to start your own record label…and for peanuts! Mostly Music can get your band covered across the universe…well the Internet for starters! If you have a band name, pictures and some cool MP3 tunes we do the rest! For just 9000 BAHT or $300 we’ll give you your own website, a MYSPACE, a press release and front window positions on the top ten music retail sites on the Net - including iTUNES!

HOW? See more… »

A few words which have yet to make it to the Oxford Concise Dictionary.

Dresstitute: How a woman feels when she looks into her crowded wardrobe and realizes she has nothing, absolutely nothing, to wear.
Four-wheel-drivel: The stream of excuses that four-wheel-drive owners now feel obliged to offer by way of explanation for why they own one, despite living in the city.
Eggsbestos: The crispy thatch of white around the stiff yoke left when an egg is cooked too fast.
Droodle: A small puddle of drool which deposits itself on the front of one’s shirt during an afternoon doze.
Correctus interruptus: The irresistible urge to answer a question or correct a fact in an overheard conversation.

© Courtesy of Richard Glover and his Dag’s Dictionary published by ABC Books