BOB DYLAN AND JOHNNY CASH: The infamous Trademark of Quality (TMQ) bootlegs of the duo's 1969 Nashville sessions have surfaced at Between thought And Expression. IIRC, they're quite good.
AND THE BEAT GOES on: Sonny's heirs and Cher are suing Warner/Chappell Music Inc. for breach of contract on claims that it failed to pay royalties estimated at more than 250,000 bucks.
DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS: Patterson Hood answers the eternal question, Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Allman Brothers Band? It's like a Southern echo of Diner.
ARE YOU A YANKEE OR A REBEL? Take a language test to find out. There are more than a few midwesternisms in there, too.
THE FIFTH LARGEST U.S. TV NETWORK is Wal-Mart.
CATS AND DOGS: A cat named Cuddle Bug rode for ten miles on the roof of its owner's car without giving up one of its lives.
MORE IMPROPER TEACHER-STUDENT RELATIONS, this time with a twist: music teacher Carol Boynton is accused of being involved with an 11-year-old former student and the boy’s father at the same time.
BILL CLINTON has been making bizzare remarks about Iran lately. At a meeting near the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a few weeks ago, he said: “Iran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.” A transcript and MP3 audio are available online. He also told Charlie Rose that Iran is the only country “where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections.” Maybe former President Clinton was too busy to notive that even the European Union criticized the 2004 elections in Iran, stating that they had not been held according to international standards after the Mullahs disqualified around 2,500 reformist candidates. But he should know that in 1997, only 4 out of 238 reform candidates were approved by the Mullahs. Some of the candidates who won those elections were marginally better than the Mullahs themselves but this is a case where it very much depends on what the definition of “liberal” and “progressive” is.
IRAN VOWS TO MAKE NUCLEAR FUEL if the issue is sent to the U.N. Security Council.
“FROZEN DEAD GUY” FESTIVAL in Boulder, Colorado, March 11-13. I guess it's the Rockies' answer to Burning Man.
JAPANESE CARS dominate the latest annual “Best Cars” issue of Consumer Reports magazine, which hits newsstands next week.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON: The circumstances of his suicide is attracting conspiracy theories.
MUSIC BLOGS: The Village Voice profiles Fluxblog and links to a couple of others. Claude Pate fans cannot help but enjoy a blog named One Louder. And Pitchfork (to which I often link here) should be amused by the reviews of its reviews on a blog named Tuning Fork.
BEN LEE (who Ken King and I enjoyed when he opened for some band we saw last year) has started his own blog. Plenty of his photos there.
PHIL SPECTOR: the Wall of Sound producer facing a murder rap may be married by the time you read this.
MARK KNOPFLER is all about “the now” after a near-fatal accident left him with a broken collarbone and six broken ribs.
CULT OF THE iPod: I have been assimilated. I am now a pod person. You probably knew that already. But now I have an iPod also.
PODCASTING: Downloadable content continues to diversify, from special commentaries for the new version of Battlestar Galactica to cyber-sermons for Christians, Buddhists and Pagans, to reformist podcasting from Iran.
DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL! A couple is nearly killed by a chimpanzee attack at an animal sanctuary.
US. TROOPS FIRE ON FREED JOURNO: An Italian journalist shot by U.S. forces in Iraq shortly after being freed from her captors disputes a U.S. account of the incident in which she was wounded and a security agent protecting her was killed. The shooting warrants investigation. However, the CNN story is a bit vague on some details reported elsewhere. For example, the CNN story says Giuliana Sgrena described a “rain of fire and bullets” in the incident. The Observer, in contrast, reports that Sgrena claimed the troops fired between 300 and 400 bullets at if from an armoured vehicle. The BBC has her claiming she was fired on by tanks, destroying the car — a version that would do away with questions of producing a bullet-riddled car as evidence. Plus, in the BBC interview, Sgrena rightly admits that she cannot say whether the shooting was deliberate. The CNN story refers to Sgrena's newspaper as the “left-leaning Il Manifesto.” In contrast, the Associated Press refers to the paper as communist. Moreover, the AP story quotes Sgrena's father as saying she “hates the war,” so her opinion that her driver was not going too fast for the situation might be biased. Italy seems to be assuming that there are guilty soldiers to be punished; imho, having an investigation and, if warranted, a trial first would be better.
PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: The troubled singer is now painting with his own blood for the cover of a free literary magazine.
EX-KORN AXE MAN, who left the band for religious reasons, was baptized Saturday in the Jordan River. Seems serious to me.
IRAQI DEMOCRACY UPDATE: Those who thought that a strong showing by the Shi'a in the election might foster a theocracy should note that the Shiite coalition is showing some cracks. ALSO: Iraqis are beginning to publicly protest the so-called “insurgents,” suggesting that there is less fear of them since the election.
IRAQI EXPLOSIVE DEVICE fails due to a cellphone glich. A cool picture at the link also.
…AND I FEEL SO BOHEMIAN LIKE YOU, Olsen twins.
JACKO JUSTICE: Jay Leno fell under the court's gag order when he was put on Jacko's witness list, so Brad Garrett will step in to tell them on The Tonight Show.
WASHINGTON STATE GOVERNOR'S RACE UPDATE: The recount challenge drags on, with Democrats poking holes in the GOP's list of allegedly illegal voters. But that list still seems kinda long, so it's not over yet.
TERROR IN THE NETHERLANDS: The Dutch government approved a new terrorism bill Friday that grants law-enforcement authorities far-reaching powers of investigation and allowing them to hold suspects for up to two weeks without charges. The proposal was spurred by the Nov. 2 killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose throat was slit allegedly by a young Muslim radical who associated with a suspected terrorist cell (as has been noted here before).
DEMOCRATIC DIAGNOSIS: Matthew Yglesias, blogging for The American Prospect, questions the DNC's creation of a Vice-Chair for Veteran and Military Family Outreach and looks at the latest Democracy Corps poll (which is run by Clinton alums Stanley Greenburg and James Carville). The New York Times holds a roundtable on liberalism with Peter Beinart, the editor of The New Republic; Michael Tomasky, the executive editor of The American Prospect; and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation.