Christopher Becker Whitley
August 31, 1960 - November 20, 2005

Chris was easily one of my biggest musical influences in the last fifteen years... Born in Texas... grew up in Vermont and New York. Moved to Belgium, married and had a daughter, Trixie, who still lives there... Moved back to New York - released some twelve albums... awesome songwriter, unique guitarist... Amazing man. Died Sunday of complications from lung cancer. There will never be another like him, ever again.

Chris Whitley Website

Listening to: Whitley discography on iTunes

Oops...

Madonna has lost the plagiarism case filed against her by a Belgian songwriter. Salvatore Acquaviva claimed that four bars of his song Ma Vie Fout L’camp was stolen by Madonna for her 1998 hit song Frozen... and he won.

The Belgian judge ordered that that EMI, Sony and Warner immediately stop selling the song (and the album it is on) in the country, as well as ordered the record companies to ensure that radio stations stopped airing the song or face fines of 100,000 euros.

Sampling is one thing... it can be cool... but outright theft is something entirely different.

Listening to: nada

Very True...

Several months back, I posted how I thought that Sevendust was gonna go into the shitter after Clint Lowery left to form his new band, Dark New Day.

(from the comments)
I don't know if you've heard there new album Next, but they definitely don't suck without Clint. Trust me, I had your same reservations when I heard he had left! And I love Dark New Day by the way; I saw them live in Memphis the night after I heard their album, one of the best live bands ever! Back to 7D though, no, they don't sound like the Sevendust of old, but this is not a bad thing. 2005 is not 1997.

You are correct, sir... it does not suck, but it also doesn't rock my socks quite the way that previous Sevendust albums did... just me.

His comments continue:
P.S. Creed never sucked.....one idiot just thought they did and nobody had the guts to kill that nay-sayer, resulting in this mass hysteria in which people didn't realize the incredible talent of that band.

Ooooooh... damn, dude... y'had me... until this.
Creed bit the big one... Scott Stapp bites the big one... Altar Bridge bites the big one, too. If that "one idiot" said it... well, I never fall for "mass hysteria." I made this decision based on the fact that I begin to wretch whenever I hear their music... because it is filled with such utter cheapness... musically, lyrically... whatever... it's not good... and whomever the "one idiot" is, it's not me, and he's not alone. The only people that like Creed are girlie girls and this guy I know named Jason.

Listening to: The Cult - "Electric"

Well, this isn't the exact post I was thinking of, but I couldn't locate the earlier one... because I couldn't sit and read all the posts from the old days in a few minutes...

Gwen Stefani Buys Her Own Hype

Yeah, I was a bit more harsh than usual regarding some things in that post (not the stuff about Stefani, really)... well, maybe not "than usual" for the time... but I've mellowed out a tiny bit since then. I try not to be quite so nasty about stuff... even if I still think it, sometimes.

Listening to: iTunes

Scott Stapp's solo debut, The Great Divide = Creed with even worse songwriting.

Listening to: random stuff on iTunes

There was some dumb Madonna video on earlier... It was, like, some retro-disco complete shit thing...

Why is she still bothering to make music?

Why is she still bothering to... do whatever it is that she's trying to do?

Does anybody even still care about anything she has to say about... well, anything?

...and then, of course, what comes on next? A Gwen Stefani video... which, y'know, she can go around and be all sorta cute and stuff... but how does she justify selling her soul like she did to make such nasty-assed music compared to the music she used to make? If you remember, I predicted this exact thing a LONG time ago... I'll put the link in this post when I hunt it up.

Listening to: Jimmy Smith - The Roots of Acid Jazz