No, not really.

Beautiful.

I love this. I can only imagine how enraged Obama will be when he finds out.

It’s more intended to be educational than a classic rap diss track, but you know it’s probably not going over well with either Obama or Jay-Z.

The Scooby Gang could not be reached for comment.

Rolling Stone really wants him to validate their love for Obama, and he won’t.

There’s way seedier jokes to be made about Thailand. The Morons pull them out on a fairly regular basis.

At 48, and only a day after it was rumored she was to be Nicole Scherzinger’s replacement on The X-Factor. Not surprising, per se, but still tragic.

Here’s her classic 1991 performance of the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. Contrary to what you might be expecting, there are no unnecessary runs, just great control and raw power. Gorgeous.

Here’s what you missed last night on Idol. I set mine for 5 minutes over and it cut off right after Cowell’s first-ever standing ovation, so that was close.

ACORN is going to show up at the April 15 “tea party” protests and “pretend to act racist” to discredit them.

BBC Radio 2 had a bunch of modern bands play songs from Sgt. Pepper, with mostly good results (I’ve never heard of “The Magic Numbers” who massacre “She’s Leaving Home”, and I hope never to again. The rest of the bands including Travis and The Stereophonics do good though). It’s on YouTube in 4 parts: 1 (Sgt. Pepper, A Little Help From My Friends), 2 (Getting Better, Fixing a Hole), 3 (She’s Leaving Home, Lovely Rita), and 4 (Sgt. Pepper Reprise).

We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of the Buddy Holly plane crash (immortalized by Don MacLean) and the Des Moines Register has put together a very cool multimedia databook. There’s a fairly stunning amount of content, including interviews, photos, and even the complete autopsy reports for the ghoulish. I’d say it’s one of the best Web presentations I’ve ever seen out of anyone, much less a newspaper.

Following recent Internet experiments by Trent Reznor and others, Al’s looking to have a parody of a #1 song out while the original is still #1.

That’s what’s being reported now about the 10-years-late Axl Rose album. The release date is still not set though 🙂

Here’s a terrific essay by singer Suzanne Vega (Luka, Tom’s Diner) about how she wrote Tom’s Diner, how it accidentally became a big hit in the early 90s, and how she was involved in the creation of MP3.

The new track from The Fireman, aka Paul McCartney and the producer Youth. Contrary to their previous efforts which were well-done if straight-ahead electronica this is balls-out blues rock. I’ve seen it described as “Helter Skelter as played by Led Zeppelin”, and that’s not far off.

Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Dhani Harrison, and Prince do “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. The whole thing is great, but Prince’s guitar solo starting around 3:30 is both amazing and tasteful. I had no idea he played that well.

After that bit of goofiness, I think I’m going to enforce a no-political-posts weekend. Let’s start, as the great DJ Allyn likes to, with a bit of music.

Everyone knows the Japanese hoard all the best technology stuff for themselves – futuristic cellphones, super-flat TVs, awesome “kei cars”, the works. They also hoard the Yamaha Electone, a super-advanced synthesizer with 2 keyboards and a full pedalboard (like an organ). Unlike an organ, you can play many independent instruments at once on it, and so I present this video. It’s a 10 year old Japanese girl playing Kansas’s classic Carry On My Wayward Son all by herself.

Isaac Hayes is dead at 65.

Al-Q in Iraq deliberately released an unintentionally hilarious video in which some morons miss a Humvee with a grenade (yes, it’s possible to suck that much) and then run away yelling “Allahu Snackbar!”

I have nothing more to say about that.

Here’s a great story about simple honesty.

He’s of course been working on this album on and off since the early 90s.

The good news: the Led Zep reunion concert sounded pretty good. The bad news? Jimmy Page looks like someone’s grandmother.

I had no idea how ahead of things Bob Dylan was in 1983.