Rusty Shackleford

I like the songs they included, although I'm a bit puzzled about "Kingpin." Never one of my favorites, although I recognize that mine is a minority view. Looking forward to the horns on "Monday." Hoping that the "Heavy Metal Drummer" is the one from DC where a chick threw a bra at Tweedy. The "set list" is short, but I like the interviews and backstage stuff, so if they run the whole thing out to 90 minutes or so I'll be more than satisfied.

As for a Mac OS X-friendly FLAC converter, I use xAct, which is available for free download. I use xAct to convert the FLACs (or SHNs) to AIFF format, although you can also convert to WAV, then I use iTunes to compress them to AAC for iPod use. It's not exactly seamless, but it's free and it works.

In chronological order: Radio Free Europe (Hib-tone) Wolves, Lower Gardening At Night (different vocal from Eponymous) Perfect Circle Shaking Through So. Central Rain Maps and Legends Driver 8 These Days Fall On Me Finest Worksong (drum/horn mix from Eponymous) Welcome to the Occupation Pop Song 89 Orange Crush Half a World Away Country Feedback Find the River Sweetness Follows Circus Envy Let Me In Be Mine Bittersweet Me At My Most Beautiful Lotus Disappear Living Well's the Best Revenge Good luck!

That's one of my favorites as well. Great sound, great performance overall, including a sublime "Less Than You Think" (sans drone). I'm listening to 2/26/08 at the 9:30 club right now. I actually went to the show the following night there, but this is a great recording as well.

This is an odd pet peeve of mine, the underpricing of concert tickets. It's great that some folks will get to see Bruce for a relatively low sticker price, but many others will end up paying through the nose for scalpers. I'm offended not just that the unlucky ones have to pay a high price, but that most of the money they pay ends up going not to Bruce, but to some low-life scalper. If it were up to me, I'd make some tickets available at relatively low prices, with the caveat that they'd be will-call only. Only people who really planned to attend the shows (and are willing to pick up tick

Um, after reading the full linked piece, I'm pretty sure that's a joke. The author's bio is a tip-off, as is the review of Wilco's German tour by David Hasselhoff.

Well, given the last few BCS games we were in, I was frankly pleased to see OU show up ready to play. The defense acquitted itself pretty well, the special teams played very well (that kid wasn't going to make a 49-yd FG anyway), the offense shot itself in the foot. It happens. I hadn't watched too many UF games this year, so I'd been spared most of the Tebowners from announcers, but it was still hard to listen to the constant man-love from last night's crew. And I love it how Tebow can dance around on the field and make a spectacle of himself and it's okay because he's just being inspir

Oops. Yeah, that is weird. Somehow I doubt the band cares a lot about those Reprise-era videos.

Lots of good ones (and some bad ones) in this thread, but I'll add a few I didn't see mentioned: R.E.M., Fall On Me Son Volt, Windfall Television, See No Evil Big Star, The Ballad of El Goodo The Beatles, Let It Be

The band has always been pretty clear that they didn't consent to video taping at their shows. But that's weird that they would start enforcing it all of a sudden. Maybe this is a label thing, or maybe it has something to do with the upcoming DVD? If I were them, I wouldn't want to ban the Youtube clips--they're not good enough to stand as a substitute to the DVD (no offense to any tapers, of course), but just good enough to make someone who hasn't seen them live want to buy a ticket.

I guess I'm not sure where RIAA gets its information on who's uploading copyrighted music. I share plenty of stuff on BitTorrent, but it's all live stuff I've pulled from DIME, etc., which should be off-limits to RIAA. I would think that they're going after LimeWire users and people who put copyrighted stuff up on Pirate Bay, etc. One hopes that this particular effort will not affect legitimate trading of live shows on BitTorrent at all.

I heard that too, but I don't understand it. Wouldn't leaving for another job be breaching the existing contract in any event? Why does it matter who he leaves for? I agree with others that Brian Kelly would be a great hire. I've been really impressed with the way he held that team together despite a train wreck of injuries at the QB position (not to mention the whole Ben Mauk controversy at the beginning of the year).

Texas has 2 problems if OU loses. First is the problem you mention, which is that the pollsters have a fetish for conference champions. Never mind that the conference championship can be pretty arbitrary, as this year is showing. (How does Oregon State, a team that beat USC, losing by a huge margin at home, make USC a *better* team?)... But the other problem is the head-to-head with Texas Tech. If OU loses, and thus takes itself out of consideration for the BCS title game, you'd have two 11-1 teams in the Big 12 South, the strongest division in football this year. One of them beat the o

I agree that the Big 12's tiebreaker is loony, but I don't think the SEC's is any better, because it still uses the largely-subjective BCS rankings to throw out the third team. I think they ought to go to some kind of point-differential among the tied teams, with a reasonable cap to discourage RUTS. The further they get from on-the-field results among the tied teams, the loonier the tiebreaker gets. They need to find some objective way to break ties without letting coaches and whoever picks up the phone when the Harris poll calls make these decisions.

First, the OU-Texas game was close, as OU led through three quarters and didn't surrender the lead until their best defensive player went out with an injury. Texas won fair and square, but it was a close game. Everybody points to Texas losing on the last play of the game to Tech, but they seem to forget that Tech led almost the whole game--Texas was down three touchdowns at one point and took its first lead with under 2 minutes to play. That speaks volumes about Texas's resiliency, and if Colt McCoy wins the Heisman it will be because he led that dramatic comeback, but it also means that T

Oh, I know. If I really wanted to whine about that game, I'd point out that we played the 2nd half without a middle linebacker, a problem we've since remedied. Every year something happens that makes people say the BCS is broken. I personally think giving a 2-loss LSU team a home game for the national title was the final straw, but this season's craziness and probable unfairness might finally do it in. That said, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. I'm guessing that at least one final crazy thing will happen, since it always does: OSU over OU, or Baylor over Tech, or FSU ove

You're certainly not the only person making this argument, but frankly it makes no sense. I mean, if OU had played Tech close for a half and then put them away in the 4th quarter, we'd have a "real" three-way tie, but because OU beat the hell out of them, the victory (and Texas's loss to Tech) don't count? This is a fascinating year for the voters, because it's showing how silly the beauty contest really is. Sure, Texas beat OU fair and square (with the exceptions of 2 ridiculous personal foul calls and a miss on Lamont Robinson's interception), but if that means Texas *has* to be ahead of

I think you're allowed to have radio on in a business establishment without paying royalties, because the radio station is paying the royalty. Most businesses don't want to do that, though, because regular radio sucks. It's full of ads, including ads for competitive businesses. These days a lot of smaller companies go through XM or Sirius (now I guess just "XM Sirius"), which each offer business plans for around $30 a month. They pay the royalties, and the business gets ad-free music that's more or less tailored to their clientele (though not as specialized as Muzak).

Has anybody seen Matthew Sweet on this current tour? He's coming to my neck of the woods next week and I'm on the fence about whether to go. I'm not a huge fan, but I like the "hits" quite a bit and if he's got a good band with him, I'd probably check it out. I've not heard any buzz so far...

I'm enough of a fanboy that I don't really dislike any of Wilco's songs, but there are some that I tend to skip over: Kingpin Hotel Arizona In a Future Age When You Wake Up Feeling Old Less Than You Think They're not really bad songs, but they feel like filler on those albums. Less Than You Think is actually a lovely song, it's just about 11 minutes too long.

R.E.M. Automatic for the People

Selfish bastard that I am, I'm hoping that the open dates around the Philly and NYC shows mean that Wilco will do a show in DC, even though they come here relatively often. Of course, that would probably not happen if they play Worcester.

I think it's cool, but I wouldn't pay a lot of money for it. That would be creepy.

#1 Record 25 or 6 to 4 1,000,000 Three Days 867-5309 Sixteen Blue

Do it. I've seen these guys on every tour since Monster, and this one was by far the best show I've seen. Not only are they playing the old stuff, they are having a good time and it shows. It helps that they've stripped down to a 5-piece (the 3 "real" members plus Rieflin and McCaughey), so they sound more like Green-era R.E.M. than the keyboard-heavy band that toured the last few times around. The National is a nice bonus as well.