“The Beatles: Rock Band” behind the scenes

Impressively thorough look at the making of the Beatles video game, from NYTimes.

I’ll write more soon.

NYT profiles a forgotten band

A Detroit band called Death is enjoying a renaissance. As the New York Times noted, the band “was punk before punk was punk.

Several of there songs are posted here. The track “Politicians in my Eyes” is pretty goddamn brutal. It has the bouncy bass and blunt guitar sound of punk, but with a little more groove than the Ramones or the Pistols. Very cool.

My favorite part of the NYT story: They were offered a record deal if they changed their name to something other than “Death.” They declined.

Their entire seven-song output is available on a new disc.

Thanks to Quentin for the link.

Snow delay

A snowstorm socked the Northeast and delayed the mastering engineer I’m working with at West West Side Music from adding her magic to the tracks on the Nuts + Berries EP. Too much snow to get to the studio in North Jersey.

I’m hoping to get them tonight.

Noise in Cleveland, part 2

I got a copy of the lawsuit music critic Don Rosenberg filed against the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Cleveland Orchestra. Most of the best stuff was in the NYT story I mentioned yesterday but it’s worth a look.

Many, many music critics are supporting Rosenberg. A letter of support from the Music Critics Association of North America and a list of names is near the end of the document.

I read some of Rosenberg’s criticism online, including two reviews of Messiaen performances (here and here). Rosenberg seems honest and he knows the music well. A competent, veteran music critic deserves better than this.

Epilogue: I tried to post a comment about Rosenberg on the Plain Dealer website and it magically disappeared. Surprise, surprise.

Noise in Cleveland

From the New York Times, my favorite story of the week:

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer recently reassigned its classical music critic, Donald Rosenberg, who has a history of writing concert reviews critical of the Cleveland Orchestra and its conductor. Rosenberg fired back at the orchestra with a lawsuit, saying they had campaigned for his removal. The sheer juiciness is impressive.