Since every other band from 1984 now has a reissue and is a major "influence" on today's hit parade (Interpol, the Rapture, etc.), I decided to get a jump start on 1990 and be ahead of the curve.
So does anyone have mp3s of K Records Lois' band Courtney Love? I got all the singles to convert except "Hey! Antoinette" on Feel Good All Over. Searching online is nearly impossible because of that celebrity circus freak with the same name.
(Damn, Rough Trade has already beaten me to the punch but my request remains the same. Yes, I am looking to you, Alistair.)
Dali aide convicted of 'touch-up': "A close friend of Salvador Dali has to pay one million euros (£696,296) in compensation after being convicted of doctoring one of his works.
John Peter Moore, 85, who was Dali's assistant for 20 years, was accused of manipulating The Double Image of Gala, which was stolen in 1974.
The painting turned up after Dali's death in 1989 but there was no explanation of where it had been. Moore must also pay additional costs for repairing and restoring the piece... Moore's wife, Catherine Perrot, was also convicted on the same charge of 'damaging the moral rights of the author'."
Apparently no consideration is given if the doctoring actually makes the painting better.
Mexico rats survive cat onslaught: "Mexican health officials say they have failed in their effort to deal with a rat plague in a remote mountain village by sending in hundreds of cats.
Authorities in the state of Chihuahua came up with the plan after the people of Atascaderos appealed for help in dealing with an estimated 250,000 rats.
[Rodent control expert Alberto Lafon] said the villagers would just have to learn to live with the rats.
'At this point, they are going to have to take charge and learn to control them,' he told the Associated Press news agency.
Residents in Atascaderos asked the authorities for help two months ago, saying at least 800 homes had become rat-infested and traditional extermination methods had failed.
Experts launched an appeal asking people to donate unwanted cats, in the hope of recruiting an attack force of up to 700 animals.
In the end, however, they only managed to rustle up a mere 50 cats."
Cakes in the kitchen and naps in the basement: "Since [Granny D] Haddock walked 3,200 miles across the country at the age of 89 for campaign finance reform, she's mustered the support of many like-minded people. She met Dennis Burke, her campaign manager, on the edge of the Mojave Desert. He offered her a camper to sleep in ('so I didn't have to sleep on the ground with all the scorpions and the snakes . . . I said 'okay'') and eventually helped pen her book, Granny D: You're Never Too Old To Raise A Little Hell. Now Burke lays out strategies for radio ads and rallies and naps on the couch in the basement...
Haddock rummaged through the refrigerator and settled on a leftover piece of veggie pizza and some flat Coca-Cola.
'A lot of people don't approve,' she said, patting a small black microwave before setting the timer to 45 seconds. 'But I think it's God's gift to women.'"
The only way Ashlee Simpson's "incident" could be better is if she had a wardrobe malfunction and tore up a picture of the Pope when doing her stupid little jig. Now that I have recovered from weltschmerz, I am participating in schadenfreude.
Congo slams 'Tintin' minister: "The Democratic Republic of Congo has recalled its ambassador to Belgium, following critical remarks made by the Belgian foreign minister. The Congolese government accused Karel de Gucht of acting like Tintin - a colonial-era Belgian cartoon character... While visiting Africa, Mr de Gucht said Congolese politicians were unable to introduce democracy or end corruption... Henri Mova Sakanyi said in a statement that the minister was treating Belgium's former colonies like children and was 'completely ignorant of the basic rules of diplomacy'.
The comments border on 'racism and nostalgia for colonialism', the minister said. 'It's Tintin in the Congo all over again.'
Tintin, first printed in 1929, has been criticised for using racist stereotypes of non-Europeans."
The best part is the photo caption to explain which person is which:
Dizzy for president!: "American politics could have turned out very differently if a little-known presidential campaign of the mid-1960s had been able to vault the millionaires-only hurdle. Duke Ellington could have been secretary of state, Max Roach could have been running the military, and the CIA might have been under the thumb of that master of subterfuge, Miles Davis himself.
The presidential candidate offering these irresistible alternatives was the trumpeter and bebop pioneer John Birks 'Dizzy' Gillespie, who declared himself a runner in 1964, up against Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. As well as a potential cabinet of jazz all-stars, Gillespie's ticket advocated US withdrawal from Vietnam, putting African-American astronauts into space, and renaming the White House the Blues House."
The Mona Lisa experience: "'I don't know why they keep coming,' Stephane, a security guard who has worked for the Louvre for the past two years, says. 'It's a nice painting, but there are many more interesting pictures elsewhere in the museum. People don't look at it anyway. They come in, take a picture and leave. It takes 15 seconds.'
You have to feel sorry for Salvator Rosa, whose pictures hang to the left and the right of the Mona Lisa. No one spares a glance for the enormous Heroic Battle, 1652, to the left, with its dramatic portrayal of carnage. There must have been a time when this would have been the more obvious crowd-gatherer, but a sequence of quite random events has transformed the Mona Lisa over the past century into a celebrity painting."
1. A professor kindly reminded the class that we are not in divinity school. I am surprised that that took eight weeks to come up.
2. A classmate did not want to talk to me at first because she thought I would have an attitude coming from New York City. Naturally, my first reaction was to tell her to get lost when I heard that. I suppose she was right.
3. I study best when pacing around the apartment like Edina Monsoon and repeating the name of the subject over and over.
Baby koala's survival thrills zoo: "A tiny koala who had to be taken early from his mother's pouch has made what zoo staff call a 'miraculous recovery'.
Three weeks ago tiny Koori was dehydrated, underweight and suffering from an infection... now the feisty marsupial - still small enough to fit into the palm of an adult's hand - is beginning to chomp eucalyptus leaves."
Deconstruction icon Derrida dies: "At one point, wandering through Derrida's library, one of the filmmakers asks him: 'Have you read all the books in here?'
'No,' he replies impishly, 'only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully'."
My feeble joke: Derrida is finally deconstructing himself. Get it? I thought it was amusing at least.
Since two mornings this past week were below freezing, I thought this would be an appropriate time for the autumn 2004 mix. It really is the best season.
"You Are The Generation Who Bought More Shoes And You Deserve What You Get" Johnny Boy
"Galang" MIA
"Everybody Come Down" The Delgados
"The Only Living Boy In New York" Simon And Garfunkel
"Don't Sleep In The Subway" Petula Clark
"Send Me Shivers" Mouse On Mars
"Life Thru The Same Lens" A Girl Called Eddy
"Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" Nancy Sinatra
"The Kingdom Of Spain" The Decemberists
"My Angel Rocks Back and Forth" Four Tet
"I'm Gonna Destroy That Boy" What Four
"In The Union Of Wine" The Hidden Cameras
"Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" The Arcade Fire
"Evil" Interpol
"Spanish Song Bird" Keren Ann
"Loneliness" Ed Harcourt
New Breed of Cat: Clones to Make Debut at Annual Show: "Mr. Hawthorne said the idea for Genetic Savings began with - horrors - a dog. He said he was having breakfast with a friend in 1997, after Dolly the sheep had been cloned. 'His dog Missy, a great dog, was under the table at that moment, and he said, 'You know, we ought to clone Missy.'
The Cat Fanciers' Association, which produces the annual cat show and maintains the world's largest registry of pedigreed cats, is setting up a gene bank with Genetic Savings.
Allen Scruggs, the show chairman, described the cat fanciers' group as 'a very old and very conservative organization. He said its interest in cat cloning reflected its interest 'in showing the world that we were not so stuffy and fuddy-duddy - that we were aware of what technology has presented the animal world.'"
Polling as a political narcotic: "Opinion polls are the narcotic of choice for the politically active part of the American electorate. Like all narcotics, polls have their uses: they sometimes allow us to function better as political practitioners or even as dreamers, and don't forget that fabulous rush of exhilaration when our candidate shows dramatic gains. But polls are an addiction that also distort our political feelings and actions even as they trivialize political campaigns -- and they allow our political and media suppliers to manipulate us ruthlessly. The negatives, as pollsters might say, outweigh the positives."
My three biggest pet peeves right now are inaccurate political polling, Justice Antonin Scalia, and dirty dishes.
One-day wonder on display: "'It's an unusual material,' conceded the artist yesterday. 'It's the only fruit I have worked with ... I don't do fruit art as such. If someone said to me, 'Do you want to make a pile of mangoes?' I would say no.'"
So You Thought You Knew Dylan? Hah!: "As the Sphinx holds forth with what is, to put it mildly, atypical frankness, he admits to remarkably unhip tastes and unlikely points of reference. He wonders why he was not one of the three members of Peter, Paul and Mary...
He had no use for 'Ulysses,' found Balzac hilarious and says he once derived an album from Chekhov's short stories. What he called typically quacky critical interpretation greeted these Dylan songs as autobiographical.
And while this is no time for Mr. Dylan to write his own epitaph, still, he has done it: 'Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.'"
Emperor and mystic nun beatified: "Pope John Paul II has declared five Roman Catholics blessed, including the last Austro-Hungarian emperor and a nun who inspired a Hollywood film... Beatification is the penultimate step on the path to full sainthood... However, the beatification of Emperor Karl I has been criticised by some as he authorised the use of poison gas by his army in World War I... Karl I sat on the throne of the now defunct empire between 1916 and 1918... According to the Vatican, he cured a Brazilian nun of varicose veins."
