Lair of the Asp

This is a pretty funny but long article. And people wonder why politicians and bureaucrats have a bad name... In the winter of 2002, with the federal budget stretched thin, President George W. Bush asked Congress to give back money that lawmakers had earmarked for local projects so it could be used instead to fund the Pell grant program, which helps needy students pay for college. One of the local projects that had drawn particularly harsh scrutiny was a $273,000 federal grant that U.S. Rep. Sam Graves had procured to study goth culture in Blue Springs, Missouri. "It's one of those priorities that my constituents asked me to fight for," Graves told an Associated Press reporter at the time. Congress refused to return the money, and that spring the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste singled out the goth grant as one of the worst examples of pork-barrel spending its staff had encountered as it filtered through thousands for its 2002 Pig Book. Soon,

Good news for some, hideous news for others. Either way it's going to happen and we'll be up to our eyeballs and ears in "wildboys" just in time for Xmas... NEW YORK (Billboard) - It may have taken 21 years to get a new album from Duran Duran's original lineup, but it took the five members only 24 hours to decide to get back together. Duran Duran's new album, ``Astronaut,'' which Epic Records/Sony Music will release Oct. 12 in North America and Oct. 11 in other territories, is the first studio album from the original lineup since 1983's ``Seven and the Ragged Tiger.'' ``Astronaut'' reunites lead singer Simon LeBon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, guitarist Andy Taylor, bassist John Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor.Roger and Andy Taylor quit the band in the mid-1980s; John Taylor exited in 1997. Although LeBon and Rhodes continued Duran Duran with various lineups, the question always remained: Would the original members ever get

I saw this announcement earlier today and thought it might be worth dragging myself out to in January. It's still a ways off, but I've heard good things about VNV Nation live, even if they are basically a karaoke band, and it'd be very cool to see the guys from Front 242... Patrick Codenys and Richard 23 of Front 242 are going to be Djing under their DJ project's name "Coder23". They are opening for VNV Nation. Info: Coder23 and VNV Nation Friday Jan 7th 2005 Ogden Theatre Denver, CO

This is pretty cool to see. I thought DCD was something that was broken up and never going to happen again, so this should be good... While Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry are discussing a new album, plans for a reunion tour are taking shape. Lisa Gerrard in a post on her website: "The lineup of musicians is absolutely phenomenal, actually it is better then that, this will without doubt be the Dead Can Dance concert to see and hear, it is hard to contain my excitement and anticipation." The tour will take place sometime in 2005, but no locations are set yet.

This is the sort of news that drives me nuts. Who do you want to believe in the big question of who is being screwed in the music industry? It seems to me that like usual it is the artists themselves and the customer, obviously p2p sharing is not doing too much to bring down the corporate giants. Well, I guess we'll see how this all shakes out, so much for playing field being levelled for the little guy... From arstechnica.com by Ken "Caesar" Fisher Everyone knows that piracy can affect an artist's bottom line, and very few people would argue that artists, programmers, and the like, should work for free in all instances. Indeed, while there is a lot of hostility to lobbying groups like the RIAA, most folks do want to support the bands and songwriters that they like. That's why the RIAA (and sister organization, the MPAA) often use the notion of the starving artist to justify their attacks on piracy-it plays at the heart strings and gives a sense of im