Each release will include two discs, and the DVD set will also available on Blu-Ray.

Brits will get to watch the show for free on BBC 4, Monday, 4 May.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTqg9WSsrCg[/youtube]

Recorded live at Harmony Festival, 2008.

Scientists have just shown that one of Bob Dylan’s most famous lines–”everybody must get stoned”– is correct. That’s because they’ve discovered that the brain manufactures proteins that act like marijuana at specific receptors in the brain itself.

The possibilities are intoxicating.

This discovery may lead to new marijuana-like drugs for managing pain, stimulating appetite, and preventing marijuana abuse.

Dylan says it all.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFbZxV4KMvo[/youtube]

That performance of “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35″ was recorded at a concert in Dallas in 2008. Lyrics are posted here.

Over 40 years after its release, whether “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35″ has anything to do with marijuana remains controversial.

An evil Spector: Record producer guilty of murder
Second jury convicts producer in actress’s death

LOS ANGELES — Phil Spector, the rock music impresario behind hits like Da Doo Ron Ron and You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling, was convicted Monday of second-degree murder in shooting a struggling actress at his mansion in 2003 after a night of drinking.

Spector, 68, faces at least 18 years in prison. The jury, in a five-month trial, reached its unanimous decision after 27 hours of deliberating whether he shot the woman in a fit of anger or, as his lawyers argued, merely witnessed her suicide.

Phil Spector was responsible for some of the most joyous moments in 1960s pop-rock music.  His work with such groups as the Ronettes, the Crystals, and the Righteous Brothers earned him world-wide recognition as an influential and respected creative artist.

Today, however, it all turns sour.  The music will live on, but its creator is brought low in shame and disgrace.  How the mighty have fallen.

On another day, I’d post a video of the Ronettes in happier times, but not today.  Here’s an AP report on the verdict.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPHx4VCknfE[/youtube]

When he opened up the CD, we were both astonished however. I hadn’t noticed when I bought it, but the tightly sealed plastic wrap packaging had been removed and had been replaced with a clear plastic resealable envelope-type wrapper. The front cover of the little booklet tucked inside serves as the front of the CD cover. This little booklet insert has photos of the artist, a list of the songs and lyrics, as well as the artistic credits.

Here’s what the front cover looks like before and after Saudi CD cops got through with it.

Click on images for enlargements.  See Susie of Arabia’s blog for the rest of the censored and uncensored cover art.

Saudi Arabian CD cops went to a lot of trouble to remove the plastic wrap and take the jewel box apart so they could carefully colour Kate Perry’s excessive exposed flesh with red and black markers.

One suspects, however, that the CPVPV agents were so distracted by Ms Perry’s bare legs that they completely forgot to read the song titles and lyrics. The second song is the notorious (and fatuous) “I Kissed A Girl”. How did that slip past the CD constabulary’s black markers?

h/t: Global Voices

They were the jaunty, forgettable streams of synthesized music you would hear between the lobby and your floor.

But like so many other cultural reference points, the elevator-music industry has faded away. And barely anybody noticed.

The breaking point came in February, when Muzak, the company that introduced us to elevator music, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

“We just don’t have music in elevators anymore,” said Joseph Lanza, author of “Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong.” Introduced in the early 1930s, elevator tunes were designed to calm the nerves of jittery passengers and mask the loud, frightening sounds of the grinding gears. But now, they are almost all silent, Lanza said. And somewhere along the way, the term elevator music became derisive, he lamented.

In 1989, Muzak rejected Ted Nugent’s offer to buy the company for $10 million with the intention of shutting it down. Ted hated elevator music:

“It’s an evil force in today’s society, causing people to lapse into uncontrollable fits of blandness. It’s been responsible for ruining some of the best minds of our generation.”

No more minds shall be so ruined.

h/t: Allmusic Blog

This hidden gem, recorded in 1962 for a film that was never released, Ten Girls Ago, features the great Dion singing “Feeling No Pain”. He co-wrote the song and produced a version by The del Satins that was released in 1963. The del Satins were the back-up group on many of Dion’s 1960s Columbia recordings, including “Runaround Sue”.

The del Satins’ version (also posted at YouTube) has a pop-rock doo-wop arrangement, whereas Dion goes for a big-band sound.

Imagine a film which played so promiscuously fast and loose with the ‘scientific facts’ that it strongly implied that the Asian businessman’s penchant for flying was responsible for fatal rainstorms in Mumbai, and that Bedford Council’s rejection of our heroic wind-turbine developer’s planning application led to Bedford’s ‘worst ever floods’ in 2007.

No one would make such a morally warped film, right? Wrong. All of the above comes from The Age of Stupid, a half-documentary, half-‘peril porn’ hybrid, which has been hailed by commentators as ‘the most powerful piece of cultural discourse on climate change ever produced’, but which left this reviewer feeling more than a little nauseous at its solar-powered, carbon-lite premiere in London yesterday. The film is so cretinous it makes Michael Moore look like a modern-day Bergman; so scientifically vacuous it makes Lysenko look like Einstein; so achingly middle-class it makes The Good Life look like a kitchen-sink drama about miners’ wives.

Indeed, the film’s only virtue – and admittedly this is a big plus in its favour – is that it has exposed finally, beyond all reasonable doubt, the ugly elitism and end-of-days mania of the environmentalist movement.

It is hard to do justice to the eye-swivelling witlessness of The Age of Stupid in everyday English.

I’ll take your word for it, Brendan; there’s no way I’m going to watch that warmist drivel.

h/t: Greenie Watch

The last laugh may be on Charlie Chaplin, cinema’s funny man who mocked prejudice and fascism. The Left-leaning, suspected communist sympathizer was called many names during his eventful life, but `Christian’ wasn’t one of them. But the new tag comes courtesy BJP activists in Baindur, near Udupi. They have blocked installation of Chaplin’s statue saying it would hurt Hindu sentiment.

The statue was being put up by Karnataka film director Hemant Hegde for the shoot of his movie `Housefull’ and was meant for a song sequence. On Friday, local BJP leader Suresh Batwadi stopped the film unit from going ahead with the project, claiming that the land on which the statue was to be erected belonged to the Someshwara temple and the crew lacked the requisite permissions.

Hegde said he had obtained all the clearances and had discussed the shoot with the officials. “I had apprised the gram panchayat and the Udupi deputy commissioner. The BJP activists questioned me as to why I was not installing Vivekananda’s statue,” he said. He said he planned to shift the shoot elsewhere.

Swami Vivekananda was an influential 19th-century Hindu mystic, but I doubt he was as funny as Charlie Chaplin.

The girl walked away from God for a time, but God didn’t walk away from her. Her rebellious boyfriend started reading the Bible and says that she saved him from the devil. The sad part of the story is that her parents apparently fail to see God at work in her life.

h/t: Assist News Service

I apologise for the poor quality of the video.  YouTube is not allowing the official music video to be embedded.  Click here to watch a high-quality version.

Perhaps the best-known, and certainly the loudest among them, is U2′s Bono. His efforts have won him an honorary British knighthood, no fewer than three Nobel Prize nominations and the adulation of Tony Blair. Yet one of Bono’s most significant outbursts – rude, heckling and laden with expletives – took place away from the world’s TV cameras at a small conference it [sic] Tanzania recently.

Bono had been enraged by a Ugandan writer called Andrew Mwenda, who was presenting a powerful case that international aid, far from helping lift Africa out of poverty, might in fact be the very cause of its troubles.

Even the suggestion that this might be the case sent ‘Saint’ Bono into a foul-mouthed rant, accusing Mwenda of being a comedian rather than a serious contributor to political debate.

For his own sake, then, one can only hope that the pop star never comes face to face with the author of an incendiary new book. Called Dead Aid, its very title is a bitter mockery of that great institution and celebrity bandwagon, Live Aid.

Read the whole thing.

To find out more about Dead Aid by African economist Dambisa Moyo, click here or here.

“He’s an amazing actor. I can’t take that away from him,” she said of Penn, who worked with her on the 1988 cop film Colors. “It’s just that he has no clue at all what’s going on in Venezuela. He’s been praising Hugo Chavez, who is a dictator and a killer. He should shut up about what he doesn’t know.” Alonso, who was raised in Venezuela, was apparently upset by a glowing article that Penn had written for The Nation magazine about her homeland’s charismatic but increasingly dictatorial left-wing President.

In normal circumstances, Alonso’s interview might have been brushed under the carpet. But for the first time a Hollywood insider was saying what much of America thinks: left-wing luvvies in the movie business should wake up to the real nature of their hero.

What Ms Alonso said about Sean Penn could also be said of Benicio del Toro, Danny Glover, Kevin Spacey, and Oliver Stone—all wealthy entertainers and Chavez enthusiasts.

The defining moment of his life occurred in 1994, after his heroin-addicted wife Carre Otis was brutally raped. Putting a gun in his pocket, Rourke headed out to kill the rapist and then himself.

Yet inexplicably, he made a detour on his way to murder. Rourke felt compelled to go to church one last time. He entered one of New York City’s most famous churches—the Church of the Holy Cross near Times Square. There, racked with sorrow and doubt, he started to cry—and the parish pastor, Father Peter Colapietro, took notice.

“I reached a place in my life where living was living hard,” Rourke says. “I was at a crossroads. Because I was raised Catholic, I had issues with the dark side of life I was drifting in. I didn’t know this man, Father Peter. I just walked in his church one day, walked in the right door and met the right priest.

“I was ready to take care of business in a rather severe way and Father Peter talked me out of it,” Rourke continues. “It was gonna be more than a punch in the mouth, and the guy deserved more, but Father Peter gave me the rap about, ‘Where in the Bible does it say “Vengeance is mine, says Mickey Rourke”?’

Rourke gave his gun to Father Colapietro and left a note with St Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes. The priest told the actor that it wasn’t too late to change his way of living. The two have since become close friends.

The article also mentions that Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Ram Robinson’s estranged daughter, became reconciled to her own father through making the movie.

The Wrestler is not always easy to watch, focusing as it does on the brutal and seamy world of professional wrestling, but it is a very deeply moving film. Mickey Rourke deserves every accolade he has received.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u14BC9tBRAA[/youtube]

h/t: Christianity Today Movies Blog

This clip is believed to be from a 1970 documentary.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIuVzSkwYr4[/youtube]

Born partially blind, Rev Davis lost his sight completely before adulthood. He took up the guitar at age 6 and taught himself to play. As a youth, he attended Center Raven Baptist Church, Gray Court, South Carolina, and was ordained  a Baptist minister in 1933.

I first heard “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” in 1970 on Hot Tuna‘s initial album. A callow rock ’n’ roller at the time, Hot Tuna’s soulful acoustic blues opened a whole new musical world to me. Eventually, I discovered recordings by Rev Gary Davis himself.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpnNrMhO9cc[/youtube]

h/t: Francis Beckwith at What’s Wrong With The World

The World Academy of Arts, Literature & Media recently named Iranian band Kiosk Best Blues Band of 2008.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjKQigyw8C0[/youtube]

To me, except for the Farsi lyrics, Kiosk looks and sounds like an American alt-country band.

KIOSK is often noted for its biting critical social and
 political, but humorous lyrics.

I’ll just have to take your word on that.

The band’s website is here; listen to their latest CD Global Zoo for free here.

h/t: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Transmission blog

Source: Shortpacked! by David Willis

h/t: Christian Adams at Telegraph Blogs

h/t: Global Voices

[T]hey painted the signature red-and-yellow facade completely red&black and veiled it with a black curtain. Then they parked a couple of hot blonds in black skintight suits and a bodyguard out front. The top secret facility was unveiled on November 1 to be a Quarter Pounder store. The inside of the store is also black and only sells Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal sets.

McDonald’s Japan announced that sales records had been broken at a shop in Osaka, where 15,000 customers purchased a burger on opening day. Rumours immediately began to circulate that about 1000 of them had been paid to join the queue.

Ubersite GIGAZINE posted a screenshot of a recent ad from the temp agency Fullcast in an article titled “Short-term job to ‘line up to buy and eat a new product’ announced – Hourly rate is 1000 JPY” . McDonald’s says that it was market research to collect feedback, and that it wasn’t an intentional attempt to create buzz.

Ex-pat Australian blogger Neil Duckett posted several photos from one of the re-designed Quarter Pounder outlets. As he says, it looks more like a night club than a crappy fast-food joint.

Hindu fanatics want the film banned in India because it offends Hinduism.

The Goa unit of a Hindu organisation has demanded a ban on the release of `Slumdog Millionaire’, saying the award-winning film hurts the religious sentiments of the majority hindu community.
[…]
They alleged that there are a few scenes in the movie that denigrated Lord Ram.

The film has now opened in India, so the attempt to have it banned failed.  Nevertheless, attacks continue.  Some accuse the film-makers of exploiting poverty for the sake of profit.

Some representatives of the city slums are attacking [director Danny] Boyle’s work, viewing the word “Slumdog” in the title as an insult. A few dozen of them have organized small demonstrations with banners like “Poverty For Sale” and “I am not a dog.” The court in Patna has even registered a complaint by the secretary general of the slum inhabitants, accusing musical director AR Rahman and the actor Anil Kapoor of defaming slum inhabitants by calling them “dogs.”

But Ruth Manorama, an activist for Dalit women, sees the matter differently. Speaking with AsiaNews, she says that the film is an “an exposition of how slumdwellers live in our part of the world, it has brought awareness to the international audience through this movie. This film has brought to light on the international stage the problem of these urban poor.”

Ms Manorama better be careful or she may get hauled into court.  As just mentioned, the film’s music composer and a lead actor are being sued for “depicting slum-dwellers in a bad light and violating their human rights”.

Mr [Tapeshwar] Vishwakarma objected to the use of words such as “slumdogs” to describe the millions of inhabitants of India’s cramped shantytowns, and filed a defamation case against the duo in the east Indian city of Patna, according to media reports Thursday.

His lawsuit alleges that the very name of the movie is derogatory and an affront to the dignity of India’s many slum-dweller.

Vishwakarma did not sue director Danny Boyle because “he hardly expected anything positive from a British filmmaker as their ancestors described us as ’dogs’.”  That’s very insulting.  Maybe Boyle should sue him.

After watching the film’s fascinating trailer, I’d go see it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0DKHKVWwkg[/youtube]

h/t for link to The West: Overlawyered