Rusty Shackleford

This is not correct. The plea bargain was that Polanski would plead guilty to one offense in exchange for the prosecutors dropping 3 others, and that the prosecutors would recommend a light sentence. The judge had nothing to do with the bargaining on sentencing, and the hearing at which Polanski entered his guilty plea makes that abundantly clear. The judge never agreed to a particular sentence and reserved the right to sentence Polanski to up to 15 years on the one count. Polanski fled because he thought (perhaps with justification) that the judge would give him jail time, but the judg

Trace.

Quick review from the Washington Post: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postrock/2009/09/son_volt_live_last_night.html 'Scuse me, son, but haven't I seen you hanging around with Chrissie Hynde lately? Indeed. The pale, intense young fellow stage right at last night's robust Son Volt gig at the 9:30 club was one James Walbourne, the British guitar prodigy whose serrated-edge leads make the current, boot-cut incarnation of the Pretenders so much fun. He's even more valuable as an addition to Son Volt, whose solid but often grayscale tunes -- which aspire to be the iPhone era incarnation of

I'd never seen them before and was pleasantly surprised last night at the 9:30. Jay seemed to be having a good time and actually joked around with the crowd a few times, which I gather is unusual. I agree that the new stuff comes across very well live--it's got more energy and the lyrics don't bug me. I really liked "Cocaine and Ashes," which does nothing for me on the record. The crowd was a bit annoying--the folks around me talked all night. They quit yapping only during Windfall and Tear Stained Eye, which you'd think would be a good thing, but you'd be wrong--instead of talking they

How about a couple of Jason Isbell/DBT songs: TVA and The Day John Henry Died

It's even worse, from what I understand. I've read that the Beatles Rock Band will not be compatible with other versions of Rock Band--i.e., you can only play Beatles songs on it. I have a Guitar Hero game but was thinking about buying Beatles Rock Band if it would let me download all those extra tracks, but if it won't, it's not worth it. That, and one of the features of BRB is apparently 3-part harmony vocals. Thinking about my family playing the game, that's not a feature, that's a bug.

Pink Floyd, The Wall As for a classic double album that needed some editing: Ryan Adams, Cold Roses

Great show at the Birchmere tonight. I'd never seen Jason before, having got into DBT after he left the band. He played just about everything I really wanted to hear, except John Henry and Dress Blues, but I can't complain about the set list. Their cover of Psycho Killer with Brownan Lollar on lead vocals was terrific, and they managed to work in the riff from Spiders (Kidsmoke) into a super-long jam version of Never Gonna Change to close out the show. I could have done without the chick who kept bumping into me, or the dude who puked a few feet from me, or the guy who flailed around like

Looks like this is on Verizon FIOS TV too. Thanks for the heads-up.

You lucked out. Whenever I put on Outlaw Country I get nothing but "classic country" stuff: Hank Sr., Willie Nelson, etc. Nothing wrong with that stuff (although there are other channels for it), but when I put on "Outlaw Country" I want to hear the folks you mentioned, or Uncle Tupelo, or the Bottle Rockets, etc. Basically, I want an "alt-country" station, which is what X-Country (pre-merger XM Ch. 12) used to be. Alas, it is not to be.

I think the simple explanation is that in the summer, they play outdoor amphitheatres, and in the winter they play indoor theaters and clubs. It's been that way for some time. Also, they're touring behind a new album this summer, so there's more publicity and whatnot than in the off-season, so to speak. (Last winter was a little different because they were coming off the residency and thus did have a wave of publicity to ride, but still).

Jun 07 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD Feb 08 9:30 Club, Washington DC (2nd show only) Jul 09 Wolf Trap, Vienna VA

This is very interesting to me. By coincidence, just last night I was going through my iTunes library, and I had downloaded the mp3 version of the album from Wilco's web site (which I got from purchasing the CD through them). I had also ripped a 256-kb AAC version (i.e. pretty high quality rip) from the CD into iTunes before. I compared the 2, and the mp3 version from the web site sounded slightly better to me, which I thought was weird because (1) my CD rip was supposedly better quality than the mp3 (AAC is supposedly better/less-compressed than mp3); and (2) I'm not such an audiophile th

Just FYI: there's lots of Ryan Adams/Whiskeytown demos and live stuff up on DIME the past few days. I'd link to the torrents, but DIME is blocked at work.

He took a break because part of his brain exploded, but he came back to finish the tour. Most (all?) of the U.S. dates on the Monster tour were post-aneurysm, and they cut NAIHF after the Monster tour ended. The aneurysm probably played a part in his decision, but Berry actually had a long-standing distaste for life on the road.

Yeah, I could see myself being like this guy, totally geeking over meeting these bands. I also thought the bit about his interactions with the various guys in Wilco was interesting--some conform to their stereotypes, others not so much. One more piece of the puzzle that is Wilco, I guess.

I think R.E.M.'s decline is are pretty easily explained: they wore themselves out. Look at their touring schedule from, say, 1981 through 1989. They took 1988 off pretty much in terms of touring (although they recorded Green then), but otherwise toured and recorded non-stop. They released one classic record after another, and played well over 100 dates per year. From 1981 to 1986 they hardly ever took as much as a month off. See: http://www.remtimeline.com/ They really were the hardest-working band in the world for a few years there, and by the time their I.R.S. deal ran out, they were

Great blog post on Aquarium Drunkard about one guy's experience (almost) working for Wilco back in the day. http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2009/07/11/wilco-the-near-miss/

I was glad to see that. Malitz's tastes run a bit Pitchforkian, and he has been generally down on Wilco for the past few years, so it is good to see him give credit where it is due.

I would quibble with the original premise. At any given time, I might put Ghost as the best Wilco album overall, and I don't see a serious dropoff between the rest of the catalog and the last three records. R.E.M. is a different story. I'm a huge R.E.M. fan (yesterday became the proud owner of my third different copy of Reckoning), but their albums these days are not close to Wilco's, or (more to the point) their earlier work. You go back and listen to any of the albums up through Berry's tenure, or even Up, and there's a marked dropoff. R.E.M.'s run from Chronic Town to Green saw them

That's funny. I was also in row K, left-center, and there was an empty one next to me. Plus some empties in J. Row K had some antsy folks. Hardly a song went by without someone walking past me for a smoke break or something.

Did anyone here take the bus yesterday? I drove, but it took almost an hour (54 minutes, to be precise) to get out of the parking lot. I'm going to the NSO/John Williams show in a few weeks, and I might want to try alternative transportation.

I saw your mike stand and I was wondering about the crowd noise--thanks for taping and I hope it comes out well. I was pretty close to the front (15th row or so) and the crowd in the pit was surprisingly raucous. I was worried that they'd be season-ticket holders expecting a Huey Lewis show and sitting down all night, but they brought great enthusiasm that probably helped keep the band's energy really high all night. Other thoughts: I don't understand the complaints about the show length--this is the 3rd time I've seen Wilco in the past 2 years, and each time they've started at 9 pm and

They had a decent display at Target last weekend, better than I recall ever seeing for them before, so this might be their "mainstream" breakthrough.

Part of the privilege of being a hipster douchebag is that your stereotypes don't apply to yourself. I'm sure this guy looks at all the other hipster douchebags in Brooklyn and complains about how it was so much better in 2004, before all these hipster douchebags moved in.