Famous urophiliac R. Kelly ain’t done with his serial slow-jamz soap opera, “Trapped in the Closet,” by a damn sight. Oh, goody. What began as a sprawling, subversive song in 12 parts has been expanded by 10 episodes, and all of the videos are available for streaming on the Independent Film Channel’s site. Meanwhile, the […]

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Queen guitarist Brian May made headlines earlier this month in the United Kingdom for turning in his astronomy PhD thesis some 36 years after he abandoned it to pursue his rock career. Quoth the Beeb: “May recently carried out observational work in Tenerife, where he studied the formation of ‘zodiacal dust clouds.’ The subject forms […]

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Music slash culture blog YuppiePunk recently surveyed the … um … equipment of rock musicians Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, Mike Patton, Ozzy Osbourne, Flea, Steven Tyler, Rick Allen (you know, the cripple in Def Leppard) and others. Is there a correspondence between the size of a man’s ego and the size of his fuck stick? […]

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Having never met a soundtrack he wouldn’t shill for, Elvis Costello has lent his inexplicable cover of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” to the House Original Television Soundtrack, which features only one decent tune: Massive Attack’s “Teardrop.” As House’s theme song,  it has always driven me absolutely crazy that Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals never kick in during […]

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It only makes sense that the land that brought us both Bach and Beethoven and Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt would be the first to even think about transcribing Lou Reed’s 1975 hocus pocus opus. Back in March of 2002, saxophonist Ulrich Krieger and accordion player Lucca Venitucci had their 34-page, through composed score performed […]

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Despite the buzz about Duran Duran’s “Nite Runner” stream at Entertainment Weekly, its label (Epic) has strangely chosen a different track for the first single, which you can stream here: here “Falling Down” is less adventurous and more laid-back than the Timbaland-produced, beat-heavy “Nite Runner.” Perhaps, the label is hoping for another “Ordinary World”-style comeback. Justin Timberlake […]

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Mission of Burma was one of those bands I never thought I’d have the chance to see live. They’d broken up well before I was even aware of them, so when news started spreading that the band was reuniting back in 2002, I was hesitant, skeptical, yet also kind of excited. Reunions are almost always a dead-lock […]

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