I have to give the music industry credit. They continuously find new ways to make themselves look like jerks. That has to be tough to do on a weekly deadline, yet they manage.

Good job, ASCAP!

ASCAP is demanding a licensing fee from a venue that has the video game Guitar Hero for people to play.

I love music concerts. Don’t go to them, don’t particularly like going to them but there’s nothing better than a well-produced concert DVD or television special.

Now, iTunes has joined up with Live Nation to offer a bunch of them, either audio or video.  The thought of going through the Apple TV to download and watch a random concert is kinda cool.  I just hope they have an artist or two in there that I’m interested in.

Speaking of live music, O.A.R.’s next release is “Rain or Shine,” due out in January, with a two disc concert album.  You can buy a special limited edition version of it, too, with a ton of extra goodies for about three times the price, too.

A series of concerts from 2007 working towards their “Accelerate” album is now coming to CD.

Quoting Rolling Stone:

“. . . the highlights from the five shows will be featured on the upcoming double-disc set Live at the Olympia, due out October 27th.

“In addition to the 39 tracks from the show, a deluxe version of Olympia will feature concert and backstage footage from French director Vincent Moon.”

Sounds good to me!

Weezer announced on MySpace a couple weeks back that their seventh studio album is due out October 27th.

There you go — proof that someone out there is still using MySpace.

Also, proof that comments on major blogs and social sites are just doomed:  “Hope this one’s actually good…”  Wow, THERE’S a fan for you, Weezer.

No, not the band — the store in Wayne, NJ that the band took its name from.  It might be closing.

Or it might not.  They closed for the day. Nobody knows what’s going on.  Sad.  That place is a local legend.

What’s going on north of the border in music land?

First, INXS dumps J.D. Fortune, the winner of “Rock Star: INXS.”  JD has returned to his homeland, broke and homeless.  Turns out, he developed a wee cocaine habit while on the road.  You don’t want to do that with a band like INXS, after the troubles their last front man had with the white powdery stuff.

More sadly, Barenaked Ladies’ co-lead singer, Steven Page, has left the group. They say it’s a mutual decision and that he wants to pursue solo projects and acting.  C’mon, that’s like a politicians retiring to “spend more time with family” just before the indictments are handed down or the hidden documents suddenly appear on the front page of the Washington Post.

BNL is set to record and release an album without Page this year, with a tour planned for the end of the year.  It’ll be weird hearing certain songs sung by Ed Roberts, but I imagine they’ll give it a try.

Someone please go check on Bryan Adams.  I’m worried for him.

If you view only one YouTube video today, let it be “All Music Is The Same Four Chords.”

I’m guessing many of those songs are from British music, and not that I’m completely out of touch.  But it is riveting to hear how many memorable songs use the same chord progression.

Who doesn’t love the movie orchestration of John Williams?  Isn’t it time someone composed an ode to him?  Say that person did four part a capella harmony by himself using Williams’ tunes with “Star Wars”-related lyrics.  God bless YouTube.  (I can’t get “Kiss a wookie” out of my head now.)

If that’s not good enough for you, perhaps 64 part a capella for “Thriller?”

Or four part Super Mario 2 a capella?

Maybe the MacGyver theme song a capella? It’s pretty awful, though the kazoo almost saves it.

How about three part Tetris music?  It builds kinda slowly, really kicking in with the third guy.

• MTVMusic is an on-line repository for thousands (?) of music videos.  This is all the proof you need that all forgotten art forms will eventually find new life on the web. I’m thoroughly hooked on reliving the 80s right now.

• Whoa: The Christian Science Monitor is dropping its print edition. Ironically, this story is brought to you by “The New York Times,” a dead tree newspaper in deep financial trouble.

• Video from London. Turn of the century London. Most impressive.

• How about a Mac utility to play FLAC files in iTunes?  I like that idea.

• Wii Fit has outsold Grand Theft Auto IV!

• Now it can be told: How a Jeopardy! game board is written. (Current up to about a decade ago. ;-)

Tim McGraw Apologizes to Fans for Third Greatest Hits Album

Country singer Tim McGraw apologized to his fans for his latest greatest hits CD, criticizing his label for not releasing a record with new material, People magazine reported Tuesday.“I am saddened and disappointed that my label chose to put out another hits album instead of new music,� People quoted McGraw as saying.

Even the artists don’t like the recording industry.

Sorry for the last minute warning, but O.A.R. returns to Conan O’Brien’s show tonight (Wednesday, 14 Oct), where I first saw them back in 2003.

The latest issue of Wired Magazine has a nice interview with Weird Al Yankovic in it.  It covers a lot of old ground for Al Fans, but there is a near attempt to touch on the problems Weird Al has in the current music market. It’s twofold: First, music is much more fractured than it used to be.  In the 80s, you had MTV and a Top 40 chart.  Today, you have 40 Top 40 charts.  No single lasts the entire summer in the #1 spot.  How can you parody a song that everyone likes, when no single song reaches everyone anymore?

Second, the YouTube Generation can make their own parodies by slapping some random words that rhyme together and uploading them to YouTube, MySpace, etc. overnight.  Not that it’s entirely legal, but it happens.  And anyone who ever looked at Napster in its hey day and any BitTorrent stream since then knows that Weird Al is credited with all of them by people with clearly tin ears.

The solution to both problems is simple: use the internet.  Target niches.  Release as you write.

Sure enough, that’s what Weird Al is doing.  He’s announced that he’ll being selling songs off his website as he writes them, rather than waiting to put together and entire album.  Smart move, though the purist in me misses the sensory overload and excitement of 12 fresh songs on a CD.  Times have changed.  I’ll deal.

The first song comes out this Tuesday, and will be an iTunes exclusive for two weeks.  Sold! More hints from Al in the link above.

• Whatever happened to Jennifer Capriati? The story is a year old now, but it’s the best I could find.
• The problem with radical compression on CDs in the music industry has hit a new low now:  the new Metallica album sounds better in Guitar Hero than on CD, due to compression issues.
• Typography can be funny, too.
• What’s the difference between film and digital photography?  Here’s one test that shows you. Interesting.
• If modern video games were made for the Atari 2600, here’s what the box art would look like.

Groucho Marx was a genius of comedy.  This weekend, I found a recording of his legendary concert at Carnegie Hall from 1972.  Called “An Evening with Groucho,” it’s not in print on CD.  It is, however, available as a free download through Archive.org. The internet is a beautiful place, isn’t it?

And here’s something else I just learned via Wikipedia.  Groucho and Elton John were friends:

He met and befriended Elton John when the British singer was staying in California in 1972, insisting on calling him “John Elton” because “Elton John” was the wrong way around. According to writer Philip Norman, Groucho jokingly pointed his index fingers at Elton John as if holding a pair of six-shooters. Elton John put up his hands and said, “Don’t shoot me, I’m only the piano player,” so naming the album he had just completed. Elton John accompanied Groucho and the family hosting him in California to a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar, where Groucho offered two witticisms. As the lights went down in the theater, Groucho called out, “Does it have a happy ending?” During the Crucifixion scene, he declared, “This is sure to offend the Jews.”

Aren’t we do for a new “Fountains of Wayne” album in the next year?  It feels like it’s time.  At least now we have a hint of what they’ve been up to lately.  They’ve been writing the music for a holiday special that seems like a “Muppets Christmas” starring Stephen Colbert. Just without the puppetry.

Crazy world, innit?  Elvis Costello and Willie Nelson will appear, which makes for at least two artists who’ve been around as long as the Muppets.