Today marks the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, aka every non-jazz listener’s favorite jazz record. You’ll see a lot of excellent essays this week about the impact of Blue and what it has meant to jazz and culture at large since. What you won’t see are many attempts to place the record [...]

If you paid attention to the commercials during the Super Bowl yesterday (great game!) you may have noticed a familiar-sounding acoustic chant number in the background of a John Turturro-starring Heineken spot. Turns out to be none other than “Higher Than the End,” from 17 Dots fave Twi the Humble Feather! A shocking turn to [...]

I don’t ask for much. All I wanted last night was for Goldie to win Maestro and for British Sea Power or Burial to win the Mercury. But the Mercury judges clearly don’t care for my views and gave the prize to Elbow for The Seldom Seen Kid. Curses. But my Mercury choices never [...]

Music’s a religion for you, right? As of three weeks ago a Bournemouth club has been forced to take that statement more literally. Hard house night Frenzy (pictured above), has declared itself to be a religion to get around a by-law, imposed by Bournemouth Council, that bans flyering. Marketing material is allowed to be distributed [...]

I love the Mercury Prize. I admit that the bands I want to win never do win (I’m so sorry British Sea Power, it’s all over for you now.) But the Mercury seems to be one of the very few awards that actually gets people talking about music, as opposed to sales figures or party [...]

Earlier this week the musical talents of Agyness Deyn were unleashed upon the world and, outside of the fashion press, no one batted an eyelid. That’s what someone should have told Agyness collaborators the Five O’Clock Heroes: you can bring a model to the recording studio, but you can’t make them listen to her sing. [...]

As of today, I Was A Cub Scout are no more. The band, consisting of William Bowerman and Todd Marriott, announced the split via their MySpace saying: “We have had countless problems over the past year or so and with yet more occuring, we feel it best to end on what would seem like a [...]

Hello Europe! Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Belgrade and the 53rd Eurovision Song Contest!
Bonjour l’europe! Bonsoir Mesdames et Messieurs et bienvenue à Belgrade et la 53e Concours Eurovision de la chanson!
Okay, I’l stop this now, cheesy presenter-ese is too much for me even in a text format, but Eurovision is on us again. [...]

So after a number of false starts, we’re back. Again. Looks like Wordpress is the culprit — something about feed caches or feed storage bins or I dunno what — and so I don’t know what that will mean in the future, but for now, we are here. And your RSS feeds should have awoken [...]

Seeing is believing. This is Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, sitting down outside Bob Marley’s house and joining in with a Rastafarian drum circle whilst on a royal tour of Jamaica. In the flesh-crawling-skin-shrinking-wince-wince-help-cringe stakes it’s up there with your dad trying to dance in front of your friends.
Royal tours are often the [...]

So the Plug Awards show is over, the winners have been announced. Here’s my wrap up of the proceedings with pictures as clear as I could muster with my tiny digital camera from my spot 20 feet back from the stage.

I first attended the Plug Independent Music Awards in 2005, shortly after I had moved to New York and joined the ranks at eMusic. I couldn’t think of a better event to mark the beginning of my employment at a company that is so focused on the passionate spirit of music.

Not that there was a whole lot for eMusic folk to shout about at last night’s Grammyzzzzz, but you can see a list of all of the winners on eMusic here. Jazz and classical represented pretty well; the rest, not so much. I can’t even pretend to be surprised anymore.
PS: On a completely unrelated note, [...]

Yes, I am bitterly disappointed with Carla Bruni. Not musically, not with her music in the slightest. More with her choice in men. Last Saturday she became France’s first lady. She’s gone and married the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Oh dear.

(Editor’s Note: Below is an anonymous piece we received that we thought we’d share. Take a look, and use the comments to make your Super Bowl predictions.)
If you’re like me, this Sunday you will attend a Super Bowl party where you are faced with two distinct choices:
1) Pay attention to America’s Other Favorite Past-time, “foot”-ball [...]

London club Turnmills announced today that they will shut up shop for good on March 23rd, yet another clubland casualty of the King Cross redevelopment programme.
The closure of Turnmills, the very first UK venue to obtain a 24 hour Music and Dance Licence back in 1985, follows the demise of The Cross, The Key and [...]

Fans queue to see Radiohead
Is the secret gig coming back into fashion? In the last two days Radiohead and Babyshambles have played free shows, both announced at the very last minute.

Yesterday we made live the new album Hera Ma Nono from Extra Golden, a startlingly refreshing and authentic taste of Afro indie-pop (in a time where everyone seems to be going either Balkan or African). It is especially timely because half of the band is from Kenya and everyone in the country has been horribly [...]

Okay, Daniel, you win. Above is a 10-minute video (incredibly well edited, btw) of Tinariwen performing live at Other Music here in NYC. It is, to put it mildly, pretty damned good.
Elsewhere, I updated that best-selling albums of the year hub with the final tally, and the list expanded to 100 titles. A few things [...]

Today, eMusic hit a modest, but significant, milestone: our sorta-kinda-maybe official 10th anniversary! Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:
The company now known as eMusic was founded by Gene Hoffman and Bob Kohn on January 8, 1998 and originally named GoodNoise Corporation. In October 1998, GoodNoise acquired eMusic.com…
So maybe the October date has more relevance (or [...]