[HOT]
Taped Out
When music formats die, it’s not just the pieces of music that are rendered useless — the equipment electronics companies built and sold to listen to the music also went the way of the Victrola. If you have a stash of 8-tracks from the 1970s or MiniDiscs from the ’90s, you’re shit out of luck if your original players break down. Even though, like vinyl (only far less so), the cassette tape has found a little underground cult following amongst some music heads, that cutesy niche (really, we think it’s just hipster music fans trying to be difficult and “unusual”) isn’t enough to keep Sony from ceasing the production of its famous “Walkman.” The company announced its last Walkmans (Walkmen?) are in stores now and when they’re gone, they’ll make no more. (The Walkman, for those under 35, was the now-cumbersome-seeming forefather of the iPod, only a couple pounds heavier and about the size of a small brick.) The biggest question raised by the announcement? “Sony was still making Walkmans?!”
[WARM]
Tea Staind
We often make fun of the scant few D-list “celebrity-backers” Republicans often get stuck with every campaign cycle, while seemingly 99 percent of the music, film, art, television, dance, opera, etc. performers in the country lean to the left. But the rogue Republican party offshoot known as the Tea Party is in even worse shape, with very few famous people falling in line with its “government bad/money good” ideology (though, oddly, it was recently confirmed that Velvet Underground drummer Mo Tucker supports the movement wholeheartedly). Perhaps sensing the largely untapped source of new fans, Aaron Lewis of Hard Rock band Staind is singing the Tea Party’s kind of tune on his new solo venture. And to make it go down better, he’s also gone Country on the new EP. Lead single “Country Boy” (available in both Rock and Country formats!) goes the Toby Keith/Lee Greenwood route and Lewis sings the Tea Party-rally-ready lines, “I’m proud to be American and strong in my beliefs/And I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again/’Cause I’ve never needed government to hold my hand.” Lewis told Billboard he’s more of a Constitutionalist than a Tea-ist and that he’s always felt this way. We suspect it’s all just an elaborate ploy to hook up with Bristol Palin.
[COLD]
What Would Be On Hitler’s iTunes Celebrity Playlist?
A new report (which has many experts skeptical) has surfaced that says that after Adolf Hitler killed himself, a Russian intelligence official stole boxes of the Nazi leader’s albums. Feeling guilty, he stashed them in his attic, where his daughter found them and, following her father’s death two months ago, she’s now telling the world about the Fuhrer’s favorite music. No, it wasn’t just Wagner’s complete discography — the onetime artist actually enjoyed non-Nazi-approved music by composers like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, as well as what was surely his embarrassing Spin Doctors album he tried to hide from friends — music by two Jewish musicians — and, remarkably, Michael Jackson’s Thriller (see — everyone had that album!).
