Karl 
ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO headlined the first night of the Eighth Annual Chicago Folk & Roots Festival last Saturday night. Given his struggle to overcome Hepatitis C, I was not sure what to expect, but he looked good and sounded great — an apt soundtrack for a gorgeous sunset. He did stately versions of “Way It Goes” and “Rosalie;” “I Was Drunk” rocked and “”Everybody Loves Me” positively snarled. That last was due to the lead guitar of John Dee Graham, his former bandmate from the True Believers — a band which is reuniting to do a benefit (along with Los Lobos) for John's son September 1st at Antoine's in Austin, TX. Chicagoan Susan Voelz also smoked on the fiddle. Alejandro also played new songs from the album he plans to record in the fall; one of those songs, “Dear Head on the Wall,” was covered by Charlie Sexton on Por Vida, an Escovedo tribute album I recommend (and it's another double-disc for the price of one).
SUFJAN STEVENS talks to Gapers Block about UFOs, literary songwriting and cause and effect of industrial capitalists. And whether he will do cartwheels at the Metro. Plus, Chromewaves has Stevens' live cover of REM's “The one I Love” up for download. Which I mention only to torture you, because I know you wouldn't kill music by downloading it.
TEGAN AND SARA: Having linked to an interview with Sara, it's only fair to link to an interview with Tegan, who emphasizes that they rock now.
BILLY BRAGG'S BOX SET is explained better by Billboard than it was on the Pitchfork. It looks like the extras will include a bonanza of covers, including the Rolling Stones' “The Last Time,” the Smiths' “Back to the Old House,” Gram Parsons' “Sin City,” Smokey Robinson's “Tracks of My Tears,” John Cale's “Fear is a Man's Best Friend,” Guthrie's “This Land is Your Land” and Sam Cooke's “A Change is Gonna Come.”
THE DECEMBERISTS: A PopMatters review calls the band's current album, Picaresque, “proves downright faggy,” but means it as a compliment. The official Star Wars site notes that Chewbacca tours with the band.
THE WORST THING to happen to pop criticism is good writers, according to the Washington City Paper.
LESLIE FEIST gives an interview to The Tofu Hut, including a recommended listening list.
THREE ROCKUMENTARIES are rounded up by London's Telegraph: Dig!, which follows the Dandy Warhols and the lesser-known Brian Jonestown Massacre; The Devil and Daniel Johnston; and You're Gonna Miss Me, which is about the legendary Roky Erickson. The article calls Dig! “Terrifying, hilarious and thought-provoking all at once… destined to be quoted and referenced in the same measure as This Is Spinal Tap.”
THE CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH — GUNS 'N' ROSES CONNECTION IS uncovered at Brooklyn Vegan.
REMEMBER: The Music Business is killing home taping.
PATTI SMITH was presented with the insignia of Commander of the Order of the Arts and Letters — one of France’s top cultural honors — on Sunday.
RHINOCEROSE: Fluxblog says the upcoming single's “hooks are huge and relentless, as though the music was created in a lab for maximum pop power.” You could download it, thereby killing music, but it can be safely heard at the band's web site. That means I can tell you it sounds like Prince writing a song for AC/DC that he ended up keeping for himself.
LOUIS JORDAN and BILLY ECKSTEIN — two of the first black artists to cross over in a big way to white audiences in the forties and fifties — would have celebrated birthdays last Friday. PowerLine pays tribute, with links to audio. There's a follow-up post here.
PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: The troubled singer and fiancee Kate Moss break up and make up twice in a week, as Oasis kicks Babyshambles off their tour.
BEST OF 2005 (SO FAR): Another preemptive list, this one courtesy of the Hall Monitor.
DAVID LEE ROTH may replace Howard Stern?
HAIR METAL TOUR: “I'm sure there are some Quiet Riot fans who found the whole cheesy nightmare entertaining, but, to be perfectly blunt, most of the crowd didn't.”
LOLLAPALOOZA, which says put in Chicago this year is essayed at MSNBC, along with a bit on Perry Farrell's latest musical effort.
LIVE 8 unleashed a wave of comment among political bloggers, but many music sites stayed silent.
THE G8 SUMMIT: Bob Geldof and Bono declared victory Friday in their campaign to push leaders at the G8 summit to double aid to Africa. George Clooney also had nice things to say, though he seemed uncomfortable saying them. Privately, non-governmental organisations had urged Geldof to say: “The people have spoken, but the politicians have not listened.” Instead, Geldof said 10 million lives would be saved: “Was it a success? on aid, 10 out of 10. on debt eight out of 10.” Bono said, “The world spoke and the politicians listened.” However, Bono added, “A mountain has been climbed here only to reveal higher peaks behind it,” and acknowledged “it's not everything we've been looking for.” I'll bet Bono could write a song about that.
LONDON TERROR BOMBING: Police look to the city's ubiquitous closed-circuit TV cameras to help determine who was behind Thursday's attacks. The system is detailed at a free link of the Wall Street Journal. Critics note that CCTV is not much of a deterrent. Noah Shachtman notes that if there's a hope for surveillance-as-deterrent, it may lie in places like Chicago, which is installing video understanding algorithms into its spycam network.
PART II: Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police chief, says that the bombings were almost certainly masterminded by British-born terrorists. However, a senior government official told the Telegraph: “We are convinced it is not a British-based cell.” Early reports indicated that Europe's police were asked to step up the hunt for Morocco-born scholar Mohamed Guerbouzi, who lived in the UK since 1974, but disappeared days after the Madrid train bombings in 2004. However, that angle was being denied as Spanish detectives arrived in London to help the Metropolitan police with the investigation of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, the Syrian terrorist believed to have organised last year’s Madrid train attacks.
PART III: Even if these bombings were not the work of home-grown terrorists, they are causing an examination of the Muslim community in London. A leaked Whitehall dossier suggests Al Qaeda is secretly recruiting affluent, middle-class Muslims in British universities and colleges to carry out terrorist attacks in the U.K. The Sunday Times has a lengthy look at Britain's angry young Muslims that suggests that up to 16,000 may be involved in or supporting terrorism — a number in the same ballpark as the estimate of active insurgents and terrorists in Iraq. To be sure, many adult Muslims have condemned the attacks.
Author Irshad Manji calls for Muslims to unconditionally condemn the bombings. Tariq Al-Humayd, the editor-in-chief of the world's leading Arab newspaper, calls for Muslims to stop giving to charities that back jihad. But Milverton Wallace, a London journalist and educator, passes along that: “I talked to many of the young Muslim lads I've known since they were babies, and I talked to their parents. And guess what? The parents are shocked, the youngsters gleeful.”
SMELLS LIKE BLITZ SPIRIT: From the Londonist's signoff on Thursday, to messages from Andrew and Justin, both of whom got trapped in the Tube, to Virgin Radio playing requests from Chumbawumba to The Clash, to the blunt slogan of the Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War, to the secret internet chatroom used to keep financial markets running smoothly after last Thursday's terror attacks, the Brits are displaying their Blitz Spirit. Londoners were back on the Tube. Britons are rallying around the flag, with Tony Blair's approval numbers soaring from 32 percent in January to 49 percent now. The country's biggest anti-fascist group called for a mass demonstration against hatred. Christopher Hitchens explains why appeasement is not an option. The photoblog We're Not Afraid drew entries from all over — Iowa to Italy, from Cats and Dogs, even the cat that trains disabled service dogs, to other animals, there is the air of defiance. Our site admin Lance, who tipped me to the site — and whose cat also appears at the site — particularly liked Daniel Rohrig. From America, It Comes In Pints borrows from Team America: World Police for a profanity-laden tribute to the UK that namechecks many British bands and musicians.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Holmes stretces her 15 minutes by posing in a wedding dress for a W magazine photo shoot.
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Jennifer Aniston collapsed on the set of The Break Up after complaining of nausea and headaches. She was officially diagnosed as having heatstroke, but sources on set say she appears to have been badly affected by the increasing evidence that during her marriage to Pitt he was having an affair with Jolie. Pitt is teaming up with Ocean's Eleven co-star George Clooney and nightclub nabob Rande Gerber (Mr. Cindy Crawford) to build a new Las Vegas hotel and casino. Pitt reportedly Brad will design the hotel.
LI-LO UPDATE: The Lohan is in the Twin Cities for the shooting of A Prairie Home Companion. A manager of Sophie Joe's Emporium, observing her shopping for clothes, remarked, “Well, I think, the description I can give you honestly is that she acted like she was on too much coffee. And I'll leave it at that.”
STEVEN SPIELBERG'S upcoming movie about the 1972 Munich Olympics where Black September Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes, concentrating on the bloody aftermath as the murders were avenged, is stirring controversy in Jerusalem.
HOLLYWOOD IS TACKLING 9/11 and one of the first movies about the attack will be directed by Oliver Stone, from a screenplay by Andrea Berloff, whose background seems to be in comedy. Oh boy.
WEEKEND MOVIE ROUND-UP: The Fantastic Four won the weekend, with an estimated 56 million in box office receipts that would snap a 19 week Hollywood slump. It was better than I expected it to be, though given the generally negative advance reviews, my expectations were fairly low. It's certainly not as good as the Spider-Man movies were, or Batman Begins, maybe a notch below the X-Men series. There was a lot of exposition I would have tried to condense to get in a little more character development, though there had to be more exposition here than in the X-Men, where the device of mutation tells half of each character's story. I also think they missed a chance to do a more clever film about today's cult of celebrity. I agree with those who found Jessica Alba miscast and add that having cast her, they could have kept her in the costume with the plunging neckline for the duration of the picture. Michael Chiklis was quite good as the Thing, however. If you have a choice, I would recommend March of the Penguins to anyone who likes penguins or grew up with those Disney True-Life Adventures; the intro at the link gives you a taste of it.
IRAQ: U.S. and Iraqi forces have ''mostly eliminated” the ability of insurgents to conduct sustained, high-intensity attacks in Baghdad, according to the top U.S. commander in the Iraqi capital. Recent operations had reduced car bombings from 14-21 per week to seven or eight. But he cautioned against concluding that the insurgency has been broken. A memo outlining plans for a drawdown of U.K. and U.S. troops, first reported (and overhyped) in The Daily Mail is picked up by the BBC, with more U.S.-centric details in the Washington Post.
IRAQ II: Michael Yon has a new report on how the bureaucracy of the U.S. Military and generosity of Americans is helping bring the Iraqi healthcare system up to date. A British reservist corrects Prof. Juan Cole on the state of British operations in Southern Iraq. And ordinary Kuwaitis are rejecting anti-U.S. sermonizing from their own clerics.
AFGHANISTAN: Eighteen rebel commanders turned themselves over to government officials, signing a loyalty agreement not to possess heavy weapons or take up arms against the Afghan government or Coalition forces. The downed U.S. SEALs may have come too close to one of the US-led coalition’s highest-priority targets — perhaps Mullah Omar, Osama Bin Laden, or a regional Taliban commander suspected of links with Al-Qaeda.
TORTURE IN CUBA: Detainees at Gitmo may be forced to listen to Christina Aguilera, but ordinary Cubans were subjected to Air Supply.
REVERSE ENGINEERING FEMALE ORGASMS: Big Pharma has made billions pumping up the male population; now they want gender equality.
DO PRETTY PEOPLE EARN MORE? Yes.
TENSION IN THE HOUSE OF LABOR: Organized labor should help politicians who will advance labor's cause rather than simply supporting Democrats, says Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union — the largest member of the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO, which represents almost 60 unions with 13 million members, has substantial differences with the five dissident unions in the Change to Win Coalition — the SEIU, the Teamsters, the Laborers' International Union of North America, UNITE HERE, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America — which represent more than 5 million of that total. The coalition members have threatebd to leave the AFL-CIO over the allocation of funds to politics over organizing.
FRANKENBOOZE: Research into the genetics of barley could lead to improved varieties of the crop most commonly used in the production of whisky and beer.
YOU GOTTA FIGHT… FOR YOUR RIGHT… TO PAAAAARRRTTTTYYYY!
STRIPPERS BUSTED FOR BIRTHDAY SPANKING and handcuffing a patron.
SKATEBOARDER jumps the Great Wall of China.
RETRO RUSSIAN RADIOS: I like all three parts of that, so here's a gallery of classic designs. Record players included also.
THE MUSICAL FURRY LOBSTER, almost lost to science when French researchers ate the first specimen, has surfaced in Australia.
SHEEP PLAY LEMMINGS IN TURKEY: one headline, three animals!
THE RUNNING OF THE BULLS injures four in Pamplona.
FROGS may be useful for surgery.
PANDA CUB BORN at the National Zoo. Congrats to Tian Tian and Mei Xiang!
