Karl 
ARCTIC MONKEYS bassist Andy Nicholson notes that their success would probably seem stranger to them had it not been so immediate: “This is our first album and we don't know any better than what's already happened. This is normal for us. This is just how it works.” Author and critic Simon Reynolds explains why he became a fan: “I just assumed from what I’d read that they’d be just another nowt-going-on-in-t'-rhythm-section indie-rock combo, fronted by an excessively cocky Northern lad singer, drawing an ever-more insular set of quintessentially English sources. on this occasion, though, the inbreeding has paid off: the family tree is narrow (Jam, Smiths, Oasis, Libertines, etc ), but for once the result isn’t an enfeebled poodle, it’s a mighty attack dog spliced out of the most potent and poignant genes of their ancestors.”
KIDS RULE: Arctic Monkeys may have broken UK records and entered the US charts at No. 24, but they are no match for the High School Musical soundtrack, Kidz Bop Kids and other music aimed at kids dominating the US charts. It won't be long until Apple Martin is making music and Issac Gabriel is reviewing it.
THE QUEEN IS DEAD: Twenty years later, the Belfast Telegraph has an article by guitarist Johnny Marr on the recording of the Smiths' most celebrated album.
NELLIE McKAY: Her album remains in limbo after leaving Sony/Columbia, but the video for “Real Life” has surfaced on the Internet.
KILLING MUSIC: The feds have secured the first guilty pleas for copyright infringement in Operation Fastlink, which is targeting the so-called “release” groups that are the original sources for a majority of the pirated works distributed and downloaded over the Internet.
HATING THE HUMMER: Multi-platinum bands like Talking Heads and Smashing Pumpkins have declined to license songs for Hummer commercials, but more modest indie bands like Caribou and Four Tet have also refused to help promote the gas guzzler.
SEEN YOUR VIDEO: One-hit wonder Mazzy Star plays “Fade Into You” on Jools Holland's Later.
BISHOP ALLEN is releasing an EP monthly. *Sixeyes has details and links to free MP3's, including “Eve of Destruction,” which is a mutation of the P.F. Sloan/Barry McGuire classic with DNA from REM's “It's The End Of The World As We Know It” and Reunion's “Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me).”
MY SPACE is killing music, though not in the way I normally us that phrase, accoring to an article in The New Republic (try registering as dumpstadiva51, password = bagladie): “Thanks to MySpace, young bands no longer need to start out by gigging, playing one-nighters, making mistakes in near anonymity, learning what works, finding their voice through a dialogue with their audience–I mean a musical dialogue, not a chat…” I am shocked, shocked, that a lot of stuff on MySpace is crap — as though most things in other forms of media are not. Author David Hajdu will thus be thrilled to learn that MySpace is branching into video a la YouTube.
ALLEN TOUSSAINT: The legendary New Orleans musician and producer stopped by the World Cafe, with streaming goodness from NPR, including an exclusive rendition of “Tipitina.”
GARY GLITTER goes on trial today for child abuse charges in closed session at the courthouse in the Ba Ria-Vung Tau province of Vietnam. His lawyer is convinced Glitter will be convicted. Ouch.
JACK WHITE rants about Internet music critics on his website, but appreciates the irony of it. I think he's mistaken in believing that there were a lot of great music critics in olden times.
PAUL WELLER: The ex-Jam frontman says “there are more important things in my life now to write about than politics.” But he still wants to blast London officials for retiring the iconic Routemaster model buses late last year.
JESSICA ALBA is threatening to sue Hugh Hefner & Co. for trying to make it seem that she appears in a “nude or semi-nude pictorial” for Playboy.
BRADGELINA: Pitt, who is becoming a UN ambassador (pretty sure you get that with your SAG card now), is demanding his mom choose between Bradgelina or Jen. Page Six claims that Julia Roberts pumped her camera operator for gossip from the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
MADONNA continues her downsizing by signing on to Coachella — her first-ever festival date.
BRING OUT THE GIMP: It turns out that George Michael had some interesting items — including a “gimp mask” — in his car when he got busted on a drug charge the other day.
BRITNEY SPEARS: Spenderline may be a complete jackass who treats the pop tart like dirt, but at least this rumored cruelty is kinda funny.
JESSICA SIMPSON hubby Nick Lachey does not want you (or Argentina) to cry for him.
LOHAN LOWDOWN: Some folks have noticed that the hi-res version of the picture of Li-Lo to the right is probably NSFW.
TERI HATCHER: The face was not real and will be less spectacular in the future. But are she and George Clooney on the downlow?
CANOODLING CORRECTION: Page Six retracts its claim that Wynona Ryder and Liev Schreiber were caught canoodling in NYC the other night, now claiming that Liev is “blissfully committed to gorgeous Naomi Watts.”
BECOMING JANE: Anne Hathaway is signed to a movie that could have the alternate title “Austen In Love.”
PARADISE WHERE? A campaign against Paradise Now — which portrays a suicide bomber as heroic and is nominated for this year's Best Foreign Feature at the Oscars — is gathering pace. It doesn't help that the film is credited to “Palestine,” a country that does not technically exist. No foreign film entry has, in academy history, been attributed to such a place.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: Rumors are rampant that the highly-acclaimed but ratings-challenged comedy has been picked up by Showtime for a 26-episode order.
CULT OF THE iPod: Silver Jews frontman David Berman, Modest Mouse's Issac Brock and actor-comedian David Cross are among those in the A.V. Club's first edition of Random Rules, setting their MP3 players to “shuffle” and commenting on the first few tracks that come up. PLUS: iLounge already has a review for the Apple Hi-Fi system announced on Tuesday.
EDU-BLOGGING: The 56th Carnival Of Education is online.
GLOBAL WARMING: Scientists from NASA and Columbia University have used computer modeling to successfully reproduce an abrupt climate change that took place 8,200 years ago. This work is the first to consistently recreate the event by computer modeling, and the first time that the model results have been confirmed by comparison to the climate record, which includes such things as ice core and tree ring data. All of which may suggest that the Earth warmed and cooled prior to the Industrial Revolution and that the computer models used to chart global climate haven't been very good before now.
IRAQ: Bill Roggio writes on the pros and cons of al Qaeda funneling jihadis into Iraq. At Iraq the Model, Omar posts on controversy caused by Prime Minister Jafari's visit to Turkey. Al-jazeera reports on the impact of the Iraqi blogosphere. Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal has more on the Zogby poll of US troops in country. Based on what Zogby told Blumenthal, it seems likely that the poll used cluster sampling (which has unique problems) — as opposed to the purely random sampling Zogby suggested in his PR. And we don't know whether Zogby knows this and accounted for it in the results. Ralph Peters opines from Baghdad that “the reporting out of Baghdad continues to be hysterical and dishonest.” Max Boot, returning from Iraq, wonders whether overall progress will be shattered by a spectacular act of violence such as the mosque bombing.
CARTOON JIHAD: The European Union issued a statement on the Danish cartoons of Mohammed and the riots opposed to them that “free media are indispensable to a free and open society” but added: “Freedoms, however, come with responsibilities.” The Islamic extremists admit by their own placards that they are not interested in a free society and are often uninterested in peaceful protest, so the only message being sent here is to the media — that their governments will not support them against the mob. Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji, Bernard-Henri Lévy and other people of arts and letters seem to have a better grip on this than the EU.
COUNTRY BEARS are visitng the suburbs across California.
CAT CURFEWS: Four European countries today imposed restrictions on the movements of cats after a dead cat in Germany was discovered to have been infected with bird flu.
SNAKE CHARMERS clear the way for President Bush in India. Insert punchline here.
APES GOT CULTURE: Fifty years of research on gorillas, chimps and orangutans has shown they use tools, communicate, and sometimes shake their hands just because it’s cool. They are just waiting for humans to blow it… up.
