Rock And Roll March Madness First Round - Classic/Traditional Rock Division

Genesis vs. Journey. The Beatles vs. Weird Al. Yes, really.

Tags: lj, music, polls

Tags: music, opera, video

The master switch : the rise and fall of information empires / Tim Wu.

"In this age of an open Internet, it is easy to forget that every American information industry, beginning with the telephone, has eventually been taken captive by some ruthless monopoly or cartel. With all our media now traveling a single network, an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear. Could history repeat itself with the next industrial consolidation? Could the Internet—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by one corporate leviathan in possession of “the master switch”? That is the big question of Tim Wu’s pathbreaking book.(source)"

CONTENTS: The rise. The disruptive founder ; Radio dreams ; Mr. Vail is a big man ; The time is not ripe for feature films ; Centralize all radio activities ; The Paramount ideal -- Beneath the All-seeing Eye. The foreign attachment ; The legion of decency ; FM radio ; We now add sight to sound -- The rebels, the challengers, and the fall. The right kind of breakup ; The radicalism of the Internet revolution ; Nixon's cable ; Broken Bell ; Esperanto for machines -- Reborn without a soul. Turner does television ; Mass production of the spirit ; The return of AT&T -- The Internet against everyone. A surprising wreck ; Father and son ; The separations principle.

Tags: books, internet

*Nine choices : Johnny Cash and American culture / Jonathan Silverman.

Info from the publisher

*Jim Crow's counterculture : the blues and Black southerners, 1890-1945 / R.A. Lawson.

CONTENTS: Call and response : the blues of accommodation, the blues of resistance -- To be Black is to be blue : the blues profession and negotiating the "Black place" during Jim Crow -- Leavin' the Jim Crow town : the great migration and the blues's broadening horizon -- Jim Crow's war for democracy : the blues people and World War I -- Workin' on the project : the blues of the great flood and Great Depression -- Uncle Sam called me : World War II and the blues counterculture of inclusion.

info from amazon

Tags: books, johnny cash, music

*Valuing the unique : the economics of singularities / Lucien Karpik ; translated by Nora Scott.

Publisher's info on the book

("Singularities" in this book include goods and services such as art and music, that cannot, according to the author, be analyzed economically in quite the same way as mass-produced items. This looks quite relevant to those of us currently struggling with the challenge of making our artistic pursuits economically viable, versus the financial black holes they often threaten to become!)

*The erotic engine (How Pornography has Powered Mass Communication, from Gutenberg to Google) / Patchen Barss.

amazon.com link for the book

*Gratuity : a contextual understanding of tipping norms from the perspective of tipped employees / Richard Seltzer, Holona LeAnne Ochs.

link

Tags: art, books, economics, internet, media, porn, sociology

Crash : cinema and the politics of speed and stasis / Karen Beckman.

CONTENTS: "Jerky nearness" : spectatorship, mobility, and collision in early cinema -- Car wreckers and home lovers : the automobile in silent slapstick -- Doing death over : industrial-safety films, accidental-motion studies, and the involuntary crash test dummy -- Disaster time, the Kennedy assassination, and Andy Warhol's Since (1966/2002) -- Film falls apart : Crash, Semen, and Pop -- Crash aesthetics : Amores perros and the dream of cinematic mobility -- The afterlife of Weekend, or, the university found on a scrapheap.

Tags: books, film

Poll #1641391 Ouch
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

Would/could you cut off your forearm with a blunt knife, to save your own life

Would/could you cut off your forearm with a blunt knife, to save a stranger's life

Would/could you cut off your forearm with a blunt knife, to save a loved one's life?

Tags: ethics, film, polls, psychology

FDA Approves Depressant Drug for the Annoyingly Cheerful

Tags: video

Thriller : the musical life of Michael Jackson / Nelson George.

CONTENTS: Startin' somethin' : an introduction -- 2009 -- Going back to Gary -- The voice -- Audio/Visual I -- New York, New York -- Audio/Visual II -- Black Hollywood -- "Thriller" -- "Wanna be stratin' somethin' " -- "Baby Be Mine" -- "The Girl is MIne" -- "Thriller" -- "Beat It" -- "Billie Jean" -- "Human Nature" -- "PYT (Pretty Young Thing)" -- "Lady in My Life" -- Covering "Thriller" -- The fire, the tour -- The "Bad" years -- The third and final father -- Searching for transcendence -- "This is It" .

the book on amazon, with some reviews

Tags: books, music

The twisted tale of glam rock / Stuart Lenig.

CONTENTS: The coming of glam -- Pre-glam -- Mr. Bowie meets glam -- Roxy Music: glam's stable progression -- Glam's casualties and resurgence -- Glam in the margins -- Postmillennial glam tension.

the book on amazon

Tags: books, music

Please click on this link to see a potentially-offensive tattoo

A friend on Facebook posted this link, and a discussion ensued about whether the wearer/designer is a sincere idiot, or a dedicated satirist. Please give your opinion.
Poll #1593008
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

Is this tattoo

Tags: theory of mind

The 20 Worst Mel Gibson Rant Quotes (Presented By Kittens)

Kissing the mask : beauty, understatement, and femininity in Japanese Noh theater : with some thoughts on muses (especially Helga Testorf), transgender women, kabuki goddesses, porn queens, poets, housewives, makeup artists, geishas, valkyries, and Venus figures / William T. Vollmann.

Link to publisher's info on the book

Tags: art, books, gender, japanese culture, porn, theater

Lips unsealed : a memoir / Belinda Carlisle.

CONTENTS: Introduction : heaven is a place on earth -- I think it's me -- Cool jerk -- Beneath the blue sky -- Luxury living -- We're here now -- We got the beat -- Madness -- Good for gone -- Let's have a party -- Everything but party time -- Speeding -- This old feeling -- Get up and go -- Head over heels -- Mad about you -- I feel the magic -- Runaway horses -- Emotional highway -- Big scary animal -- Lay down your arms -- How much more -- Always breaking my heart -- Behind the music -- Miss August -- I plead insanity -- Fading fast -- (We want) the same thing -- Voila -- Epilogue : a vision of nowness.

Tags: books, music

This is your country on drugs : the secret history of getting high in America / Ryan Grim.

CONTENTS: The acid casualty -- A pharmacopoeia utopia -- Prohibition, Inc -- America's little helper -- New coke -- D.A.R.E. to be different -- Kids today -- Youtrip -- Border justice -- Blowback -- Conflicts of interest -- Puff, puff, live -- Cat and mouse -- Acid redux.

ABSTRACT: A tour of illicit drug use in the U.S. considers topics ranging from the possibility that anti-drug campaigns encourage drug abuse and the alleged disappearance of LSD to rumors about the peak of crystal meth and supposed drug use by the founding fathers.

Link to an excerpt at the Huffington Post

Tags: books, drugs, sociology

Pink noises : women on electronic music and sound / Tara Rodgers.

CONTENTS: Pauline Oliveros -- Kaffe Matthews -- Carla Scaletti -- Eliane Radigue -- Maggi Payne -- Ikue Mori -- Beth Coleman (M. Singe) -- Maria Chavez -- Christina Kubisch -- Annea Lockwood -- Chantal Passamonte (Mira Calix) -- Jessica Rylan -- Susan Morabito -- Rekha Malhotra (DJ Rekha) -- Giulia Loli (DJ Mutamassik) -- Jeannie Hopper -- Antye Greie (AGF) -- Pamela Z -- Laetitia Sonami -- Bevin Kelley (Blevin Blectum) -- Le Tigre -- Bev Stanton (Arthur Loves Plastic) -- Keiko Uenishi (o.blaat) -- Riz Maslen (Neotropic).

A review from The Stranger

Tags: books, gender, music

Texas tough : the rise of America's prison empire / Robert Perkinson.

CONTENTS: Prison heartland -- Plantation and penitentiary -- "Worse than slavery" -- The agonies of reform -- The penal colony that wasn't -- "Best in the nation" -- Appeal to justice -- Retributive revolution -- The triumph of Texas tough.

"Sweeping in scope and exhaustively researched, it tries to answer some of the most vexing questions of our time: Why has the United States built the largest prison system in the world, unlike anything in the history of democratic governance, and why have racial disparities in criminal justice worsened over the past two generations, despite the landmark victories of the civil rights movement? Drawing on a decade of archival, legal, and legislative research, combined with scores of interviews, this book argues that the history of American criminal justice is a more southern story than most have acknowledged (the prison boom began and has remained most pervasive in the South) and that the politics of race and reaction have played a more prominent role in the expansion of incarceration than elevated crime rates. (Source)"

Tags: books, criminology, sociology