OK Go Done Gone From EMI, Going It Alone
Creators of brilliant videos and slightly lesser pop music, OK Go has split from stodgy old EMI and formed its own label, Parachute Records. The issue of contention? EMI decided to block the embed feature of the band’s YouTube videos, meaning viewers could not share the band’s videos on third-party websites like this one. For…
Glenn Beck, Music Critic
Glenn Beck spelled out the secret meaning of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” on his Fox News show yesterday: “This song is about a progressive utopia where there are no owners of anything. We all just share it. It’s made for you — it’s your land, it’s my land. We all have it…
John Lennon Education Tour Bus
The John Lennon Education Tour Bus is a nonprofit mobile audio and high-def video recording and production facility. The Bus has enlisted some great musicians and producers to inspire students old and young to partake in musical and video projects. The Bus recently rolled through Palm Springs to visit the TED Conference. Jill Sobule, John…
Students For Sensible Drug Policy Convening In SF
Students For Sensible Drug Policy‘s annual conference kicks off Friday in San Francisco with a field trip to a model medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland – and gets even more sensible from there. There’s still time to register and attend the three-day event striking a smart balance of politics and “DARE generation” culture. Keynote speakers…
Phil Lesh Turning 70, Benefiting Haiti
Look out of any window, any morning, any day, and the likelihood of seeing a 70-year-old rock star still going strong are slim to none. Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh is about to change all that. Phil will celebrate his 70th birthday with Furthur & Friends at the Bill Graham Civic Center in San Francisco…
God Street Wine Redux
As though it were decreed sheerly through the energetic advocacy of our friends at Hidden Track alone, God Street Wine has announced they will reunite on July 9 and 10 at Manhattan’s Gramercy Theater for a pair of shows benefiting the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. God Street Wine was an integral part of the Great…
Interview: Stew On The State Of The Union
I’m sure stranger things have happened on Broadway than a brilliantly scrappy Los Angeles psych-punk band – provocatively named the Negro Problem – evolving into a Tony Award-winning musical. But I really can’t think of any. Still, that’s what happened to guitar-slinging, Godard-quoting, rockin’-soul singer Stew and his bass-bumping artistic henchwoman and former squeeze, Heidi…
99Problems Swaps Hip-Hop Mixtape For Census Pledge
“We gotta lotta problems in my hood/ The Man ain’t puttin’ a lotta dollars in my hood,” raps Miss Nana on Numbers Don’t Lie, the excellent hip-hop mix 99Problems.org wants to lay on you in return for a pledge to participate in this year’s census. Like Voto Latino‘s similar deal, 99Problems’ offer attempts to raise…
One Step Off Forward, Two Back
Did a group of white girls break a color boundary by winning last month’s Sprite Step Off competition? Or was it just another controversial case of African-American culture getting ripped off once again by the dancing equivalents of Vanilla Ice? Zeta Tau Alpha’s Epsilon Chapter of the University of Arkansas were the surprise victors of…
Calling all Crows
HeadCount partner artist State Radio and their service organization Calling All Crows have teamed up for their first ever “Alternative Break Tour.” A second tour bus filled with excited volunteers is following the band on the road participating in volunteer projects with local nonprofits during the day and rocking out at the State Radio show…