Settle or be sued. These are the two options given by the settlement letters that many college students have received. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently sent out its thirteenth batch of settlement letters and of the 401 notices, 50 target USC students.

Most will probably settle, whether through the RIAA’s p2plawsuits.com or otherwise, but what happens if someone actually decides to go to trial?

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Vampire Weekend came to the Echo last night and they killed. These witty preps from NY played a great live set, effectively translating their unique sound onto a live stage with a ton of energy. Long live danceable bass lines, airy island guitars, and diverse rhythms. Oh! and that keyboard! The boys got some chops. Did I mention the wonderful lyrics? Hold on, I think I’m drooling.

Indeed, there’s a lot of buzz surrounding this band of four Columbia grads - so much that even MTV got an interview with Ezra, Rostam, Christopher, and Chris. The best part about all of this? Vampire Weekend doesn’t even release their debut self-titled until January 29th. Granted, their notorious “Blue-CDR” of recorded full length promos was leaked and has been floating around the internet for awhile. But, that’s a lot of hype for a band with no official LP. So, why all the buzz?

Answer: Gloriously catchy tunes, excellent live shows, and a fresh sound.

Say all you want about Paul Simon’s Graceland, early Talking Heads, and African tribal music/drums. These kids can play fantastically well, and desearve the attention. Here’s a video of “Mansard Roof”:

Pick of the set: “Oxford Comma.” Vampire Weekend is out 1/29/08 on XL.

Yea so this electronica artist from Montreal keeps coming out with consistently good tracks on his myspace page. From Kanye remixes to straight-up orginals, CFCF brings a sound that is instantly familiar. Maybe not as technically impressive as Daft Punk, but certainly as original. The sounds this guy makes with his computer are superb. Enough said. Check it out. And if you don’t trust me, trust PITCHFORK WHO HAS NAME-DROPPED HIM MULTIPLE TIMES !!!!!

Here is a fantastic blog about the fall of OiNK and its prophecy of music industry revolution

It’s a bit long, but a worthwhile read. There’s a section in particular that I want to post below, for it yields understanding to the incentive and opinions behind many of us here at KSCR.

“Unlike newspapers, record companies own the distribution and the product being distributed, so you can’t just start your own website where you give out music that they own - and that’s what this is all about: distribution. Lots of pro-piracy types argue that music can be free because people will always love music, and they’ll pay for concert tickets, and merchandise, and the marketplace will shift and artists will survive. Well, yes, that might be an option for some artists, but that does nothing to help the record labels, because they don’t make any money off of merchandise, or concert tickets. Distribution and ownership are what they control, and those are the two things piracy threatens. The few major labels left are parts of giant media conglomerations - owned by huge parent companies for whom artists and albums are just numbers on a piece of paper. It’s why record companies shove disposable pop crap down your throat instead of nurturing career artists: because they have CEOs and shareholders to answer to, and those people don’t give a shit if a really great band has the potential to get really successful, if given the right support over the next decade. They see that Gwen Stefani’s latest musical turd sold millions, because parents of twelve year old girls still buy music for their kids, and the parent company demands more easy-money pop garbage that will be forgotten about next month. The only thing that matters to these corporations is profit - period. Music isn’t thought of as an art form, as it was in the earlier days of the industry where labels were started by music-lovers - it’s a product, pure and simple.”

Hopefully, the digital revolution will eventually banish money grubbing executives from recycling music as a disposable flavor-of-the-week. In addition, I suggest anyone who believes “indie snobs” are informed not by personal taste but by a self-righteous, just-for-the-sake-of-it rebellion to the “sheep” of pop culture, to read the above essay and then consider the common defense of mainstream music: “Popular music is popular for a reason. It wouldn’t be popular if it wasn’t good.”

If you were a freedom-loving U.S. American in the mid-1990s, you surely remember the tense (and, in retrospect, patently ridiculous) battle for college rock supremacy between Hootie and the Blowfish and the Dave Matthews Band. It was a conflict that threatened to tear a nation of khaki-shorted collegians apart solely on the relative merits of “Let Her Cry” and “Don’t Drink the Water.”

Now, imagine that same battle with way better music, far more drunken publicity interviews, and much bigger stakes (namely, the victorious band getting to define the cultural values of its nation and hobnob with the head of state; can you imagine Darius Rucker hanging out with Bill Clinton?). That, in a nutshell, was the Battle of Britpop (ca. 1993-1997) waged between Blur, a group of erudite, post-mod schoolboys, and Oasis, a band seemingly motivated only by the prospect of fame and their disdain for their fellow bandmates. To make a long story short, Oasis won the battle but Blur won the war. It was a seminal moment in the type of British rock history that only the British can truly comprehend.

However, both bands had notable Stateside success during this period (even if Blur’s biggest hit mostly consisted of Damon Albarn yelling “Woo hoo!” at the top of his lungs), ushering a brief cultural fad known as “Cool Britannia.” The invasion was brief but influential, reminding Americans that there was life after grunge and introducing Yanks to a previously unseen side of British youth culture with a distinct nationalist flair. The Britpop influence was so pervasive by ‘97 that even its demise came from within, headed by the unlikely tag team of Radiohead and the Spice Girls.

Ten years later, there’s a distinct feeling of deja vu. Radiohead is more relevant than ever. The Spice Girls are touring again. Beckhamania has gripped the Los Angeles elite. And many a band that entrances the hipster audience hails from Britain–they just typically specialize in dance-punk or art-rock nowadays. Britpop, it seems, is as dated as Noel Gallagher’s bowl cut and Union Jack-emblazoned guitar. America’s embrace of music steeped in English esoterica hasn’t endured quite as long as its fascination with music based on Lewis Carroll-esque nonsense words like “zigazig-ah.”

But in the UK, where a fierce loyalty to the product of native musicians remains, Britpop isn’t quite dead yet. Even Oasis is still charting. Some of the neo-Britpop vanguard has made fleeting advances towards American chart success but hasn’t gotten much farther than The O.C. soundtrack (a la Kaiser Chiefs). Razorlight, in its distinctly cheeky fashion, even penned a breezy single entitled “America” for its most recent album, only to see it gain far greater notoriety in the UK. Americans’ tolerance for references to “old Leodiensians” and ebullient shouting of 12-digit mobile phone numbers only extends so far, I guess.

It’s a shame, because the vestiges of Britpop have carried on in acts a lot more lighthearted than Coldplay and Keane, where such bands’ bowdlerization of Britpop is a capital crime. You can see it in The Hoosiers–an English band with a name that has to be the logical conclusion to the neo-Britpop obsession with its forefathers’ unexpected success across the pond and the subsequent generation’s failure to capitalize on it:

The Queen doesn’t need any more saving. God save Britpop instead.

We’ve all seen it - a photograph of some freaky looking metal band wearing spiked armor with one or two hands grasping a mace, sword, or some other medieval weapon (note: if only one hand is used for the weapon, the other is likely taking to be clenching an invisible apple). Today wasn’t the first time I witnessed such a thing, but it was more like the next-to-last straw.

As I was browsing Last.fm’s metal tags to find some new music, I unfortunately stumbled into the dark realms of VIKING METAL *queue mad riff, stage blood spewing out of guitarists’ mouths, and random Nordic chanting* Such music requires a very specific fanbase, and I’m wondering who these people are… To dig deeper, I sifted through some forum posts related to artists like Ensiferum and Moonsorrow (who produce songs like that unforgettable tune Kylän päässä and the jukebox classic Ukkosenjumalan poika) - there I saw devoted fans describing their relation to extremely distant Nordic ancestors. I can respect these bands’ connections to their ancestry, but when is it just going to far? Surely you don’t expect me to take you seriously when you’re dressed like you got here with Bill and Ted on their excellent adventure from 1,400 years ago (and in some cases actually riding a Viking ship):

Of course there are those more civilized Celts:

Luckily the bands (but not necessarily the fans) that I’ve seen so far actually hail from Scandinavia…that makes their outlandish acts a little more acceptable. It seems it will only be a matter of time, however, until I come across an all-American alternative. That would be the last straw! (and as 311 would say, “there is no reason to take it there at all”)

The silly band member photos aren’t restricted to just viking metal, though. Many genres categorized under the “metal” bubble follow this trend. I think one of my favorite metal bands, All That Remains, shares my pain:

Link: More photos of Ensiferum
Link: More photos of Moonsorrow

PS: If you’re Nordic…please…don’t take this personally.

	All That Remains
	The Air That I Breathe

As far as cultural warfare goes, the Cold War is so passé–mostly because, in a few years, a majority of young musicians won’t be old enough to remember it at all. But back in 1987, when the Berlin Wall still stood as a concrete reminder of entrenched ideological differences between the USSR and the United States, the supposed resistance to American cultural influence in the Eastern Bloc was put to the test through the efforts of none other than Billy Joel. Though I’m not sure how effective “Uptown Girl” is in improving diplomatic relations, Joel’s sojourn through the Soviet Union took the first steps in the process in reconciling the consumerist cool of the New World and the tradition-rich culture of the Old World.

And though it’s been over 15 years since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the seeds Mr. Joel so courageously sowed have finally borne delicious musical fruit. The rise of Beirut, led by 21-year-old wanderlust Zach Condon, in the indie scene is built upon meandering European folk music rhythms and a decidedly pragmatic Soviet-era aesthetic (as the cover art for 2006’s brilliantly-titled Gulag Orkestar will attest).

On the other side of the ruble exists Gogol Bordello, a New York-based band peddling a sort of gypsy/punk rock fusion. Fronted by Eugene Hütz–a man whose style exists somewhere between Fiddler on the Roof and late ’80s club kid–the band’s eight-year reign has sounded (to WASP ears, at least) a lot like the fun ethnic weddings at the community center that you were rarely invited to. Yet what comes through in their most recent single, “Wonderlust King,” is something even more, something that connects with the fact that a semester abroad in Prague is just as coveted now as one in London or Paris. Apparently there’s a killer party somewhere east of the Rhine, and Hütz wants you to come along:

Fans of Slavic folk music the world over salute you, Billy Joel.

I recently stumbled upon two really great ways to waste my time- the webcomic site XKCD and the blogspot site Postsecret.

XKCD (Randall Monroe says “It’s not actually an acronym. It’s just a word with no phonetic pronunciation”) is an online comic website started by Randall Monroe compiled from the margins of his old physics and math notebooks. It’s for anyone who has taken an advance math class, gotten their heart broken, or appreciates sarcasm, or has an uncanny fear of velociraptor attacks. There is a comic featuring these stick figures for almost every situation.
Some of the comics are a little above my head, talking about physicists and mathematicians such as Turing and
Others are totally hilarious and capture the little moments of college life perfectly

After going through withdrawal from Katamari Damacy- one of my favorite PS2 games of all time (Katamari Damacy is a game where you roll up objects on Earth that are bigger than you are into balls in order to make stars.), a friend of mine sent me this one:

Do you get it?
This website also has jokes that are made for the science-nerd or math-geek in all of us:

Finally, there are the three or four panel comics that simply and uniquely encapsulate human emotion:

and

I spend way too much time laughing at this website, and I encourage you to do the same.

Postsecret is a community art website run by Frank Warren that receives postcards from all over the world with peoples’ secrets written on them. He posts a new card with a secret on it every Sunday. The cards range from sweet to hilarious to heartbreaking. There are also a few books compiling the postsecrets that they have received.They’ve gained so much popularity (they even have a book tour!) because the postcards are so easy to relate to and they make you want to send in postsecrets of your own.

Here is this past Sunday’s: