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DECONSTRUCTING ‘GIMME SHELTER’: LISTEN TO THE ISOLATED TRACKS OF THE ROLLING STONES IN THE STUDIO
comment posted at 11:57 AM on Nov-30-10

Rock historian Joseph Burns makes a case for why Arthur Big Boy Crudup's "That's All Right Mama" should be regarded as rock & roll's first song. Not everyone agrees - clips to some of the other contenders inside. Or explore Google's Rock & Roll Timeline.
comment posted at 3:54 PM on Nov-24-10

There were few more important bands in the 1970’s than Free, and even fewer whose significance has been so underestimated or misunderstood by posterity. Lyrically utterly conventional, sonically they were revolutionary.
comment posted at 11:17 AM on Nov-23-10
comment posted at 3:00 PM on Nov-23-10

Please Allow Me To Correct A Few Things. Mick Jagger "responds" to Keith Richards about his new autobiography. (From journalist Bill Wyman.)
comment posted at 3:29 PM on Nov-5-10

With his whimsically biting number from 1988 entitled Jazz Police, ol' Lenny Cohen has shown himself to be a prophet once again: Jazzer drop your axe it's jazz police!
comment posted at 8:21 AM on Dec-13-09

Van Morrison loses it on stage. An analysis by Geoffrey K. Pullum
comment posted at 1:29 PM on Jul-29-09
comment posted at 2:47 PM on Jul-30-09

Help Us Test Timed Editing This is a special thread for testing out a new feature. We're thinking about letting members edit their comments for three minutes after it was posted. This should be enough time to fix typos and make grammer changes. When you post a comment to this thread, you should see an [edit] link along with a timer that shows how much time you have to edit the comment. Clicking "edit" should take you to a form that also has a timer where you can make changes.
comment posted at 5:21 PM on Dec-17-08

70s Rock Stars in their parents' homes (via BuzzFeed)
comment posted at 10:24 AM on Dec-1-08

Behind the scenes on election night, a set of candid photos by David Katz, Obama's longtime photographer.
comment posted at 2:33 PM on Nov-7-08

How Obama Did It: an in-depth look behind the scenes of the campaign, assembled by a special team of reporters who were granted year-long access on the condition that none of their findings appear until after Election Day.
comment posted at 10:34 AM on Nov-6-08

Please turn off the lights. The founders of flickr are joining the executives leaving Yahoo. Caterine Fake left Friday; Stewart Butterfield will leave July 12th.
comment posted at 10:21 AM on Jun-18-08
comment posted at 10:22 AM on Jun-18-08

Ze Frank asks when the first time you saw your parents as just being human was.
comment posted at 12:40 PM on May-20-08
comment posted at 12:41 PM on May-20-08
comment posted at 12:41 PM on May-20-08
comment posted at 12:42 PM on May-20-08

A fantastic photoset capturing the life and times of country western artists Carl Butler and Pearl. There are a few people you may recognize as well.
comment posted at 1:37 AM on Mar-4-08
comment posted at 1:38 AM on Mar-4-08

Everybody on the dance floor for two of the high masterpieces of disco from 1979: Lipps Inc.'s Funkytown and Anita Ward's Ring My Bell. Hey, Funkytown even has its own comprehensive website! No doubt about it, 1979 was a very BIG year for disco. Not everyone back in '79, though, was ready to shake their booty. Oh well. Doooooooooooooooooooooooo
comment posted at 2:17 PM on Feb-4-08

Cold outside? Gray skies and icy rain? Seasonal affective disorder got you down? What you need is a nice frothy cup of Hot Chocolate.
comment posted at 6:33 PM on Feb-3-08

Who Can I Turn To? - Anthony Newley, 1965
comment posted at 12:26 PM on Jan-25-08

"Your dog will need to be a pitbull shaped dog around 65 lbs or Ill need your dog here in person to get the right fit." Armor with a personal touch. A full suit of armor for $610! And you your pitbull shaped dog can even match. Oh, and in case you share a hobby with the janitor from Scrubs, you can get this as well.
comment posted at 11:25 AM on Dec-7-07

The Urban Peastant dies at 84. I don't know if the show ever got any play in the U.S. but here in Canada I learned to cook as a student from James Barber's show, The Urban Peasant, and from his books. They remain some of my all time favorites.
comment posted at 8:40 PM on Dec-3-07

The worst sounding thing ever? Van Halen, on a show of their reunion tour in North Carolina, attempting to match up their pre-recorded background synths for "Jump" with their live instruments & vocals. The pre-recorded material is accidentally being played back at a higher pitch, approximately 1.5 semitones sharp of the key from the guitar/vocals.
comment posted at 12:16 PM on Oct-22-07

Mine was The Fixx opening for A Flock Of Seagulls in '82 when I was 12 and it was the first time I smoked dope... I know this is the worst kind of query-Metafilter post but I can't resist. It is a fun article and I bet you have a better story.
comment posted at 12:41 AM on Oct-2-07

Barry Bonds has broken the all-time record with the benefit of a controversial technological revolution in the game, derided by traditionalists: The Maple Baseball Bat. Using technology and woodworking techniques pioneered by Sam Bat, Bonds helped develop and popularize the bats that are just as responsible for the advent of the Juiced Ball Era as, well, the other thing.
comment posted at 2:09 AM on Aug-8-07

The author of the excellent (and previously mentioned) 60s/70s soul music blog Funky 16 Corners has put together an awesome compilation album available for free download, called Rubber Souled, featuring soul covers of Beatles classics; the results are intriguing, from Stevie Wonder's funked out version of We Can Work It Out to a nightmare inducing Bill Cosby cover of Sgt Peppers.
comment posted at 11:43 AM on Jul-27-07

The Machine is Us
comment posted at 2:47 PM on Feb-12-07
comment posted at 2:49 PM on Feb-12-07
comment posted at 3:19 PM on Feb-12-07

Thoughts on Music "...in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store." — Steve Jobs
comment posted at 9:32 AM on Feb-7-07

Quebecois now a nation. Arguably, this all started with Liberal Party leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff opening the Pandora's Box of Quebec nationhood earlier this fall, pondering whether the French-speaking province of Quebec should be granted some sort of special status. Canadians old enough to remember Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord feared the worst. Before you knew it, the Bloc was arguing that Quebec ought to be viewed as a "nation without conditions". Prime Minister Steven Harper then presented a motion to Parliament recognizing the Quebecois as a nation. The controversy raged, both from the Conservatives and the Liberals. Yesterday, the House of Commons overwhelmingly voted for the motion. Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Michael Chong has resigned. His statement. How will this change the country? How do nations operate within other nations? Who is a Quebecois anyways? How does this work? Could other groups in Canada be recognized as nations? And what about those separatists? Looks like they already want their own hockey team.
comment posted at 12:45 PM on Nov-28-06
comment posted at 8:57 PM on Nov-28-06
comment posted at 1:26 PM on Nov-29-06

Robert Lockwood, Jr. R.I.P.
comment posted at 10:43 AM on Nov-28-06

Withnail & I on the YouTube:

Drinking the Lighter Fluid
In the tearoom
Withnail and Danny argue about drugs
Withnail and the Telephone Box
Monty and I
Withnail's monologue in the rain

Withnail & I - A review, Sanjek on Withnail and I
Concerning film maker Bruce Robinson
Withnail & I - The Screenplay
Withnail & I  locations, Withnail and I  quotes and picturesand...
Kids, don't try this at home!--Regarding the Withnail & I drinking game
comment posted at 3:57 PM on Nov-24-06

Sam Brown's powerbook lies a-mouldering in the grave. (Via Daring Fireball.)
comment posted at 4:37 PM on Sep-20-06
comment posted at 9:59 AM on Sep-21-06

A little more than a year after leaving New Orleans, I miss the culture of sophisticated drinking. Sure, maybe not on Bourbon Street, home of the sickly sweet hurricane and Hand Grenade. But you head off Bourbon and you can get a very pleasant Pimms cup at the Napoleon House. And just down the street is a military antiques store that was once the pharmacy where Antoine Amadie Peychaud invented the sazerac, which lays claims to being the word's oldest cocktail. Any good bartender in New Orleans will be able to make you one; finding a sazerac-capable bartender outside the city is almost impossible. Of course, just outside the French Quarter, in the Fairmont Hotel, is the Sazerac bar, but, surprisingly, their specialty is not the sazerac, but the favorite drink of Huey Long, the delicious Ramos Gin Fizz. Nearby, back in the Quarter, on an upper floor of the Pharmacy Museum, was the former home of the Museum of the American Cocktail -- now seemingly in transit after Katrina. At the opening, cocktail chef Dale Degroff served up his specialty -- pre-Prohibition cocktails, including a brandy crusta that still makes me weep from the pleasure of it. Sure, up here in Minneapolis we invented the cosmopolitan, but somehow a drink that's also become popular as a perfume doesn't have that same Crescent City je ne sais quoi.
comment posted at 2:14 PM on Sep-5-06

A Technical History of Apple's Operating Systems – Amit Singh posts a free, 140-page PDF "bonus chapter" to his Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach.
comment posted at 1:34 PM on Jul-25-06
comment posted at 2:04 PM on Jul-25-06

"Famous people who died in aviation accidents" -- notables and not-so-notables who have perished in crashes in the last 100 years.
comment posted at 11:13 AM on Jul-17-06

Dual Boot, Officially. Now that the contest is over, it could be time for both sides of the Cola OS War to put aside their differences and shake hands ... though not without a little good-natured snark: "Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries." Oooooh ... burn.
comment posted at 2:59 PM on Apr-5-06

Simultaneously the best and worst building demolition ever. IMO, the best. In the opinion of the wrecking crew... probably the worst.
comment posted at 1:17 AM on Jan-2-06

Apple announces Aperture: their answer to the professional photograph editing market. I wonder what the folks at Adobe think about this? I know I'm just aching for something, _anything_ to compete with Adobe — as its customer service went down the tubes a few years back.
comment posted at 1:40 AM on Oct-20-05

Honest With Me: Musical Stories on Bob Dylan "KEXP [Seattle] presents a series of stories on the musical life of Bob Dylan. Told by Dylan’s friends, scholars and fans, 'Honest With Me' features firsthand accounts from Joan Baez, Al Kooper, Izzy Young and the Band’s Robbie Robertson." And they're all pretty great, even if you've heard some of the stories a hundred times.
comment posted at 11:11 AM on May-6-05

25 years ago a Chicago radio disc jockey had an idea for a promotional event. Steve Dahl invited his listeners to bring a disco record to a double-header White Sox game. Between games he was going to blow them up. What happened was a full scale riot that caused the White Sox to forfeit and disco to die.
comment posted at 10:29 AM on Jul-14-04
comment posted at 10:53 AM on Jul-14-04