DNC 2K8 Speeches - Teddy Kennedy

This was really something great for the party faithful. I only caught a little of Teddy Kennedy's speech on tv, and he looked in fine form. For many this will be a bittersweet moment, a closing of an era for Democratic politics. But Kennedy promises to be there on the floor of the US Senate, welcoming President Obama on January 20. We'll all be rooting for him.

Denver 2k8 - Bill Maher Chats With Olberman

I'm scouring through YouTube for footage from the Democratic Convention in Denver. Not much to show so far, but I'll expect to see the speeches before too long. I'll do my best to post the big speeches at the very least. I remember four years ago when I posted the transcripts of the major speeches from the last Democratic Convention. Thank God For YouTube!

I'm still miffed that they shut down my account, though. Jerks.

Anyway, here's Bill Maher speaking on MSNBC, chatting it up with Olberman. The new season of Real Time begins this Friday, and I'll be checking in as always. Here's hoping Bill gets more facetime on the teevee this week.

Pro-Ject Debut III - My Complete System

Long overdue for some new photos of my stereo system, which I've been posting at the Steve Hoffman forums. Back in March I bought a Pro-Ject Debut III turntable for $300. It was a major upgrade over the portable $99 Numark table I had before, a serious upgrade into the world of hi-fi music. I became dissatisfied with the stock Debut unit, but thanks to the advice of the crew at Needle Doctor (located at the University of Minnesota campus), I made some necessary upgrades. Each upgrade made the table sound better and better. Now the fully upgraded system sounds quite excellent.

True, this is an entry-level turntable, but you would have to be a real curmudgeon to not be impressed with the music coming out of your speakers. Which means that analog nirvana is available to the average person, without having to spend a thousand dollars for the table.

At this point, I would recommend the Pro-Ject Debut III for anyone who wants to discover or rediscover the world of vinyl records. You will need these upgrades to get the most out of your system, but the payoffs are definite and immediate. Best yet, each addition to your system can be bought in installments. It took me two months to buy all these extra parts.

So enjoy the photos of the Debut III system, with all the upgrades: Speed Box II, Tube Box II, acrylic platter, and Denon DL-160 cartridge.

We Need a New Houses of the Holy

It's funny that Metallica would be criticized for not wallowing in such tired heavy metal cliches like "Satan" or "Kill." By this logic, they should also be criticized for not writing enough songs about groupies, hot cars, and supermodels. Oh, more tunes about "rocking out!!!!"

Hah - funny. I'm 35 now, and many of my friends were Metallica freaks in the '80s when they and the other thrash bands were all underground. The whole '80s underground music world - thrash and speed metal, hardcore punk, hip hop - was built upon directly rebelling against the pop music of its day. I think the punk aesthetic ruled the roost; we were all Ramones in spirit, even if the music was vastly different. But there's a clear line connecting Dead Kennedys Husker Du to Metallica to Megadeth to Run DMC Public Enemy. It was the music of the streets (the movie Style Wars comes to mind as I write).

The punk and thrash bands threw themselves into topical, political material because it was the very opposite of airy pop and hair metal. We were the anti-Poison. The anti-Michael Bolton. The anti-Stryper. The anti-New Kids on the Block. Yet more rock anthems on the hot groupie chicks? How does a kid relate to that in 1980's America? So that's how you distinguished yourself in the scene. You dealt with war, poverty, hypocricy, urban decay, corporatism, yadda yadda.

This is a crucial reason why you really can't go back again. Asking 45-year-olds to revisit their youth a generation ago, now that everything and everyone has scattered to the four winds, is a fool's game. You'll never recapture the spirit of those days. No artist can. You can only capture the present moment. Bitter medicine for aging adults who look to their rockstars to turn back the clock, and turn us all into teenagers again.

I vastly prefer the "CNN Metal" to the tired, nerd claptrack that metal has descended into. Now it's just a teenage macho joke, just waiting the elf ears and the 12-sided dice. In my humble opinion, of course. But I've always preferred protest music, anyway. If you have nothing to say that's useful in daily life, what's the point? There are enough bland love songs and car commercials.

Now, if all these bands stayed in the same realm forever, I would agree. It's best to move on, to evolve and explore new ideas. I know that's poison to the headbangers, but that's just the way life works. Thank goodness The Beatles evolved. Thank goodness Dylan evolved. If I had to listen to a half dozen Metallica albums that aped Ride the Lightning, I'd go crazy and shoot someone. And I love that album!

I've been a great admirer of Master of Puppets for many years. It represents the pinnacle of thrash metal to my ears (although speed metal junkies will obviously go for Slayer's Reign in Blood). I think I prefer the diversity on the third Metallica album. Fast songs, slow songs. Heavy songs, light songs. The personal and the political. The blistering and the beautiful. I've never understood the backlash, the way Metallica split its fans right down the middle when Black Album exploded. This band was always bigger than one sound. They were far closer to Led Zeppelin than their peers. And I wish heavy rock music would discover that imagination again. I wish it could recapture that original sense of wonder, of opening up to new ideas. It's far too cliquish and Puritanical. We need a new Houses of the Holy. We need a new Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

Anyway, hope I didn't ramble too far, but it got my brain whirling.....

So What About That New Metallica Song?

Alright, I'll get to the damned point. "The Day That Never Comes" is a good song. It grows on you. It feels like two songs that were stitched together, one from '90s Metallica and one from '80s Metallica. How this reflects on the complete album is hard to say. But it's a good ride, and once I can be able to hear a decent version, one that won't sound like it came from a broken transistor radio, I may just like it some more.

It makes me wish I had Ride the Lightning and Load/Reload on vinyl, if that means anything.

Metallica - The Day That Never Comes

We'll it's finally here, kiddies. Time to start that latest round of whining, screaming temper tantrums from the hyper-caffeinated, under-sexed pack of American Idiots known as Metallica Fans. How did it ever get to this? Of all the arenas in American life to wage the cultural wars, why here? Why this? Damned if I ever know. If I ever become lucky enough to pose the question to God Almighty and live to tell the tale, my money's says the great answer will be an intergalactic shrug.

Somewhere in the early '90s, somewhere after the band's legendary two-year world tour, Metallica's self-titled "Black Album" split the fan community straight down the middle. It's been open sectarian warfare ever since; although, it has to be said, the screaming tantrums have been coming almost exclusively from the other side. See, that's the fun part of any civil war. It's always the other side's fault. I keep this little bit or Orwellian doublethink in mind as the hours to the next election grinds away. Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.

It's funny that the endless trashy turbulation that is evoked at name of Metallica. I can't believe the old men are still around, still finding ways to piss everyone off. The kids scream and pout about greedy Lars and those music downloads, the Great Global Music Shoplift that has destroyed the music industry as we know it. How dare he expect us to pay for his albums! How dare he expect to earn more money! He has enough! By the way, I just downloaded the album from that new up-and-coming band. Whatever happened to those guys? Why didn't they make another album?

When I was 18 years old, I walked into my dorm room at the humble College of St. Scholastica. I hadn't owned more than five albums my entire life. I was raised during the culture wars of the Reagan Era, the days when fire-breathing televangelists pumped your minds full of fear and prejudice. We were too young to realize that we were being served warmed-over leftovers, fecal piles from the zombie brigades for the Jim Crow army. I hope I'm not being too harsh, I think to myself. Then I pick up the newspaper and read of yet another megachurch preacher busted for stealing money from his followers. Mansions. Fancy cars. Private jets. It's the year 2008, and the Leper Messiahs still roam freely. The Pharisees and Saduccees ripped open wounds in this land that never heal.

This was the world I was struggling to escape when I entered that dorm room. My roommate was a Minnesota kid named Carl. He liked weightlifting and videogames. And he loved Metallica. With a ratty, worn-out cassette tape copy of Ride the Lightning, the Black Album, and a radio show called "M-M-M-M-Metal Shop," the melodic thrash of Metallica opened my eyes to the beauty and cruelty of the world. I felt like Alice in the land of Oz, enveloped by Technicolor for the very first time. I've been on that long, strange trip ever since.

Back in the '80s, the rock 'n roll witchhunt was in full force. There needed to be a scapegoat for the crimes of the Pharisees, and as usual, youth culture was to blame. Elvis Presley's hips shook the walls of Jericho, or something like that. Heavy metal rock bands were the prime offenders. An endless stream of videos, books and lectures convinced a nation that heavy rock was pure evil, truly the root of all evil. The killing fields of Cambodia, the death squads of Central America, the torture chambers of Pinochet, the chemical weapon assaults of Saddam Hussein. All of these things paled in comparison to Led Zeppelin and Stairway to Heaven, and those damned evil subliminable messages hidden in Jimmy Page's guitar solos.

It's a miracle we're not drowning in millions of Manchurian Candidates. You may be one right now and not even know it. But don't worry your pretty little head about it. Just sit back, watch some TV. Watch American Idol, watch 24. Have another energy drink. Have another beer. Why don't you pass the time with a little game of solitaire?

There's something violent and viscious about the American Empire. Some great cancer at our core, causing us to rip one another to shreds like wild dogs. We live in a perpetual rage, drowning in a drugged haze of anger, fear, alcohol and caffeine. And the Masters of Puppets pull all the strings. And we tear our hearts out with bared teeth. And the darkness of the human soul becomes darker still. We survived the outsourced torture of Latin America, torture by remote control. Now we do it ourselves. In the daylight, with gleeful smiles on our faces. Guantanamo Bay is officially declared the Empire's 51st State. The American flag replete with the skull and crossbones, or perhaps the coiled snake of the old Colonial Culpepper's Brigade: Liberty or Death. Don't Tread on Me.

Something is very wrong here. Something is dangerously wrong. You've felt it all along. We should not be doing this. This was not the Fate of Mankind. The prophets tried to warn us. The true desciples of Jesus, so many of them who are gone now, taken from us. Murdered. Mahatma Gandhi. Medgar Evers. Malcolm X. Martin Luther King. There are moments in the game when you realize, if you perceive closely, with the right kind of eyes, that the fix is in. The tide will only be allowed to rise so far, then pulled back. When Malcolm was murdered, when Martin Luther King was murdered, when Bobby Kennedy was murdered. It's been hell ever since. Now we're shouting obscenities at one another because Metallica got haircuts and discovered the Blues. We're killing ourselves to live through one oil war after another. We're cutting down the trees because no Lorax can be heard to speak for them. Our cities drown, and cruel sadistic bastards like George W. Bush and John McCain dine and laugh. They dine on our ashes, laughing while poor Americans drown in the streets. And in August of the Year of Our Lord 2008, the Presidential race is effectively tied. Something is very wrong here. The Fix Is In.

The Empire has been galloping headlong for the past fourty years, churning out a world of disposable heroes and a blackened globe. There is a webcam in the Arctic where you can watch photos of the North Pole, retreating, melting every day. We will soon witness a spectacle not seen since Moses parted the Red Sea. The North Pole will become open water. There are no atheists in foxholes, the old saying goes. Well, we shall see, children. We shall see.

To most minds, this sounds like mindless rambling. I'm drifting, roaming, skipping rocks across the waters of my mind. Perhaps. But I think not. Metallica was the key that unlocked this world to me. They taught me the virtues of creativity, the need to explore, the freedom to see everything and know everything. They taught me one of God's most crucial lessons: the name of the game is boundary dissolution. We are not meant to be caged into walls. We are meant to shatter them into the dust.

So what does this have to do with the new song from the upcoming album Death Magnetic? Nothing. Everything. The Democratic Convention is in three days. George W. Bush is trying to recreate the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he's not sluggishly fighting off another night's hangovers. John McCain promises to become the Dr. Strangelove President. He will bomb Iran, or maybe North Korea, or maybe Russia, or maybe all three. He may just ride the bomb himself. Just don't ask him how many mansions he owns. Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo!

Rock 'n roll used to be engaged with the world. Music used to matter. Maybe you think it doesn't anymore, that the aging rock stars should only serve as your personal fluffers. Just another set of kicks while channel surfing. But I don't buy that bullshit. I'm willing to bet Metallica doesn't either. They sure as hell better not. But I don't worry. James Hetfield hasn't let me down before. He's led us this far out of the rat maze. We'll make it. Just have faith.

And stop this damned sectarian civil war, you crybabies. Cliff Burton was a hippie. A headbanging pot-smoking hippie. Wrap your heads around that paradox. Then stop sniping at each others' heels. The evil minds that plot destruction are on the loose. Watch yer backs.

Buffy Sainte-Marie - Illuminations (1969) - More Ramblings

Here, this time I made sure to take photos of my copy of Illuminations on vinyl, front and back sides. I'll actually have time to go into detail on this album, one of the true lost gems of the '60s folk-rock era.

A bit of a backstory. I've been curious about Buffy, since I see her albums at the Uptown Cheapo every time I visit, square in the folk music section, just past Peter, Paul & Mary. I also remember her from Sesame Street many eons ago, but for the life of me I could never remember any of her music. I'm one of those cranky Gen-Xers who came of age on a steady diet of hip hop, punk, thrash metal, and my beloved Seattle Grunge. Acoustic folk singers from the 1960's are a tough sell to kids like me; we want lots of noise and lots of attitude. The only folkies I could listen to during my 20s was Ani Difranco (and Dylan, of course, but he hasn't been classified as "folk" since Kennedy was president), and she still remains one of my generation's icons.

It's only now, in my 30's, that I opened up enough to appreciate good 'ol folk, acoustic Dylan and Joan Baez and Peter Paul and Mary and Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. Pete Seeger, Woody Gutherie, that sort of thing. But, still, my heart lies with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and Pearl Jam. My ideal folkie remains Ani; that's my idea of a folk singer, all passion and attitude. She's just at home with an old guitar as with, oh, The White Stripes.

Which brings us to Buffy. Not that lame-ass tv show about the blonde vampire hunter....yuck. Boring. I'm talking about the Buffy with the dark hair and mean, pissed-off, take-no-prisoners vibe. She is the angriest protest singer I've ever heard. Clearly, in the folk music realm, Buffy Sainte-Marie was the Black Sabbath of her field.

On Friday, I found a website that offered samples from her albums of the '60s and '70s, and this was really my first chance to check the songs out. I was pretty thouroughly blown away right from the start. After work I scoured past the usual record store haunts and ran away with four albums. Sooner or later, I'll go back to complete the heist. If you live in the Twin Cities, you better move fast.

This album we're looking at is Buffy's sixth studio lp, Illuminations, from 1969. Like many of her peers, she began with acoustic folk and evolved to embrace the electric rock sound of the '60s. So experimentation was the rule of the day. Even so, I can't imagine too many fans expecting this sudden shot out of left field. Heck, Buffy's fifth album was pure-country. How does she follow that up? With a wild, ecclectic, and surreal post-psychedelic lp.

Illuminations is the only album in BSM's catalog that sounds remotely like this. It is a swirling magic storm of sounds and hums, electronic pulses and wailing guitars and fluttering ballads. It's easy to think of it as a psychedelic rock album circa 1967, but I think it cuts much deeper than this. It's much more like an art-school project, with one foot in rock and folk, and the other in Pink Floyd.

The electronic effects are all processed from Buffy's voice or guitar. It's a remarkable feat as you travel through the album; the goal apparantly was to pull as many different sounds as possible from the keyboards. Dark Side of the Moon comes to mind. '90s trip-hop and electonica also comes to mind. This doesn't feel like an album that's 40 years old. It sounds new. Very new and very much ahead of its time.

The songs on Illuminations veer back and forth between acoustic folk and balls-out-loaded heavy rock. It sounds less like Jefferson Airplane and more like Babes in Toyland. Yeah, that's the ticket. Buffy definitely has that punk attitude. She doesn't dance around things. She doesn't address militarism, oppression, or reckless consumer capitalism with pretty metaphors and sugar-coated melodies to sucker the grown-ups. Naw, this ain't Peter, Paul & Mary by any stretch. It's more like a punch to the gut. It's totally Sabbath. Buffy Sainte-Marie is the folk singer headbangers can get into. She is the equal to Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez; she is also the spiritual mother to Rage Against the Machine.

I've had this thought in my head all weekend long: BSM really should cut an album with Rage. That is the perfect fit, I swear. I understand she's making a comeback album, after a long sabbatical from the music scene (where she migrated into the visual arts). I fear it will be the same watered-down, milquetoast, aging Baby Boomer product, aimed at boring, lifeless 50-somethings. But Buffy was never really part of her era; she was too raw, too honest, too emotional, too loud. Her true peers hail from the punk rock generation....Patti Smith...Ani Difranco...the Riot Grrls....Seattle Grunge....Rage...The White Stripes...Somebody in the know seriously needs to bring Tom Morello over to her house with a pair of guitars, one acoustic, one electric.

I'm not sure if I'm making the right case for Illuminations. It's not a heavy metal album. It's definitely in the folk-and-rock vein, and there are many many quiet melodic moments to be found. It's just that her attitude, her fuck-you attitude, is the thing that stays in my head. It's what follows me all through her work. I don't know if you can really cram an album like this into any box. It floats freely from one genre to the next, blurring all distinctions until nothing remains except the music itself. God is Alive, Magic is Afoot. Those six words that open and close Illuminations are really the only guide you'll ever need. You'll travel through the misty forests on the ride of your life.

Why this album was not a hit in its day amazes me. I'm reminded of a lot of classic music from around 1969 - Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Velvet Underground - that irked the hippies and the suits back then. Now these are the giants. The posers and the fakers have been swept under the rug. I don't see anyone clamoring for those old Sonny & Cher records, do you? La la la la la let's live for today.....fuck that. Gimmie some fuckin' attitude and gimmie some fuckin' truth. It's like nobody else could forsee the rise of Nixonland and never knew how to handle it. Whatever. If that's your take on the last 40 years, then BSM is your new hero.

Buffy Sainte-Marie - Illuminations (1969)

File this under Great Albums You've Never Heard Of. Get your hands on this album now. Illuminations fucking rocks. I'll go into more detail later when I can. Until then, get your mitts on this by hook or by crook.

The Greatest Videogame Covers

More to be found here. Gimmie more! Gimmie more!

Atari 7800 Controllers, or You Bastards Have Broken My Hands

One of these days, I'll have to find someone respectable who can explain to me why Atari's game controllers were so terrible. I can't even think about one without my hands suddenly cramping up, almost like some phantom pain from a lost trauma.

Case in point: the joystick for the Atari 7800. This was just a mess. I really don't know what to think about this one. It was clearly a part of the original system design from 1984, during which the crumbling Atari still looked to its own heritage for inspiration. It had to be obvious by then that the nigh-indestructible Atari 2600 joysticks were stiff as a board and hard on the hands. Not that I mean to complain, because they mostly served me well way back then. They were just really, really stiff, like they needed a can or two of oil or hard liquor.

In any case, Atari was looking for a new style, something more eronomic in mind. Their first real gamble was the controller for the Atari 5200, their successor to the throne. It was certainly easier to hold in the palm of your hand, yes, but it was a disaster. Hmm, now that I think about it, this was the design mojo of the early 1980's. For some reason, everyone wanted game controllers that vaguely resembled television remotes or large bulky phones. Intellivision really was a telephone; it was just one of those telephones that couldn't send or receive phonecalls. It could only play videogames like a drunken baffoon. It was the George W. Bush of game controllers. The Colecovision style was slightly more sober, but stiff as a board. Slightly better, but not much, and still that odd obsession with the mini-keyboard.

The Atari 5200 version baffled the hell out of everyone, by making the joystick out of a pair of analog controllers. It was strange, bizarre. It was also designed to break within the first ten minutes. Perhaps this was the design goal all along. The suits knew they had a stinker on their hands; the jig was up, and the video game fad had peaked. Sooner or later, the kids would be old enough to start smoking and chasing skirts. So maybe all the guilty parties just grabbed the bong for one more monster hit, coughed out a long sigh, and said fuck it.

Which brings us back to the 7800. It's a much better design, if only because the stick actually works and nothing falls apart. It's still a pain to the fingers, like some sort of CIA torture device. Hmm, I tell myself I really should stop reading the heavy apocalyptic political exposes about the Bush Crime Family before I'm about to write something here. Either that or I need to borrow that bong for a spell. It would certainly help with those Atari-induced hand cramps, certain to evolve into full-blown arthritis one day.

So I don't like the 7800 controller. It's no shocker, and no loss, since the console was buried alive, dug out, reburied again, and then dug out again by the same group of owners who bought the remains of the old Atari in the mid-eighties. They were an interesting bunch, that Tramiel family. They were the bane of the videogame-loving geek squad, no question of that. But they had class. They had drama. Say what you will about their management, which never existed. They had the survival instinct of sewer rats, which means in the post-psychedelic hippie era of video games, they were the most fun. This stiff business couldn't make you laugh today if they tried. It's all too corporate. A corporate mindset for videogames. How bizarre is that, I ask myself? This whole thing has always been a teen stoner's world, anyway. The game console sits right next to the bong, the tape deck, and the stack of lp's. Be honest. Take away the wood paneling, and the classic Atari 2600 whithers into dust. I'd kill for some wood paneling on a game console today.

Hmm, I think again, perhaps the pain is part of the trip after all. Perhaps you were never supposed to become too comfortable. What else do you expect after a simple computer whups your sorry ass in another panic-strewn session of Robotron or Xevious? The whole point of joining together four friends over Warlords was never to relax. This wasn't pull-out-the-New-Yorker-time. Fuck that. It's time for Led Zeppelin and loud carpets and the stench of burning weed. At least that's what it should be.

Alright then. I'll take it all back. But only because the Atari 7800 occupies a soft spot near my heart. I really have no idea why. I never owned one back in the day. Never even bothered to try. What was the point? There were barely a handful of games ever worth trying, and they were just more retro pop hits from yesterday. Galaga. Ms. Pac-Man. Robotron. Xevious. Asteroids. This really is a retro thing. Future Retro. The Atari 7800 was the first videogame machine to transcend time. Future, Past, Yesterday, Tomorrow, The Yawning Here and Now, Sailing to Byzantium, sitting in silent darkness in wait for the self-transforming elf machines from hyperspace. This whole realm is a smoky fantasy. It's the Pink Floyd Laser Show, with you and your buddies donning the lightsabers.

I think I'll get myself one of these things one of these days. Maybe I'll even scour the intertubes - is that a crazy coincidence for words or what? - for one of those uber-rare European Atari joypads, which incorporated the newer, post-modern joypad. Once Nintendo took over, the sticks were gone, and pads were in, and Mario was tripping Magic Mushrooms and the Light Fantastic. What the bloody hell is it with computer games and psychedelics, anyway? What brings them together? What brought that marriage together and then apart? And why should any thirty-something in the Year of Preznit Caligula 2008 give a rat's ass? Who knows. Skip it. I want to play the game where George W. Bush is impeached and thrown into the slammer. Was that ever made for the Atari? I think some enterprising old hippie needs to get to work on that.

Hah!!

Metallica's Death Magnetic - Artwork and Titles

Very interesting. I've often thought of Metallica's St. Anger album as the band's midlife crisis. I may be mistaken; perhaps Death Magnetic fits that bill.

This is an interesting moment for the venerable rockers. They're long past the point of needing to prove anything to anyone, and they could just as easily cash in on their past fame, churning out by-the-numbers albums to keep the fans happy and the coffers full. This is typical for any band of musicians in their mid-fourties. And yet Metallica seems determined to have something new to say. True, they'll say it within the context of their classic '80s sound, but like U2's quote-unquote "revival" of this decade, Metallica should revisit their classic thrash metal sound through the '70s blues rock experiments of their '90s work. You know, the albums that have now been denounced for daring to swerve off the beaten path; something that speaks loudly to the creative bankruptcy and infantile mindset of American Culture. Thank goodness Led Zeppelin was never around during these days. They'd be tarred and feathered for Houses of the Holy. Hell, they were belted with rocks for Led Zeppelin III, for the unforgivable crime of playing acoustic folk and blues.

The whiny kids who are too afraid to accept anything new or different will miss out, of course, and the remnants of the Old Republic will continue to be swept away. The dead-end culture of the American Empire is all that matters now; social cliques and target demographics, red states, blue states, my religion, and everyone else's. It's the closed in, paranoid mentality of a nation in decline.

All of which points to Metallica, the most important rock band of our generation, loved and hated by the tides of the junior-high-school mindset. What they have to say will have a great bearing on us as a people. How we react, and how the anti-musical, snobbish elements of pseudofans, will say far more about our times than anything James Hetfield has to say. His insights and struggles have been drowned out for the past 15 years now, and I don't expect that to change. The old-school fans who have been crying sellout will still cry sellout; they'll only find new excuses to pat themselves on the back for their triumphant ignorance. In the American Empire, ignorance is the only virtue. Apart from status, of course. And in this scene, being an aloof snob carries a lot of status. It's enough to make any middle-aged rocker cranky.

Here are the song titles for Death Magnetic.....very interesting....more of the personal struggles from Hetfield? Why am I reminded of the way John Lennon's "She's So Heavy" is followed by George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun?" Filtered through Metallica angst, naturally, wink wink.

1 - That Was Just Your Life
2 - The End of the Line
3 - Broken, Beat & Scarred
4 - The Day That Never Comes
5 - All Nightmare Long
6 - Cyanide
7 - The Unforgiven III
8 - The Judas Kiss
9 - Suicide & Redemption
10 - My Apocalypse

Soul Calibur DC on XBox Live

This has been hitting the rounds, and it's a great addition to everyone's Xbox 360 library - the Dreamcast version of Soul Calibur on Xbox Live Arcade.

The XBLA version will boast "hi-rez" graphics, which is a common attempt to make the games look more contemporary. I don't know if that will work with the Dreamcast faithful. After all, Soul Calibur looks pretty great as is. I've also noticed that upping the resolution doesn't work for older games. True, the polygon models are sharper and cleaner, but texture maps - details like floors and clothing, for example - tend to look more blurred.

My mind races to the Saturn emulators that were surfing around the internet a while back, and playing NiGHTS in hi-rez. To be perfectly honest, I preferred the original Sega Saturn look. I like that heavy brushstroke style, that boxy cubist look to Saturn graphics. It's what gives its games their character. On my PC, NiGHTS didn't really look all that hot.

My experience with the Project 64 emulator, which plays Nintendo 64, has been very similar. Then again, the graphics were nearly always terrible on N64, as if they were spray painted or slapped together by watercolors.

So, in any event, you can play Soul Calibur on your XBox. Good for you. I'll still prefer the Dreamcast version. In fact, I've been itching to get another DC for some time, if only so I can play the emulators, and Chu Chu Rocket, and NFL2K1....and Soul Calibur, for sure. You can probably score a console and some games from local used stores or Ebay for $40.

Oh, and one last obvious point for me to make. Dreamcast Soul Calibur really was the best in the series. The Superunknown of its day.

Photos of the Day - My Pro-Ject Debut III Turntable

Today, for no reason whatsoever, I'm posting photos of my current turntable. This is a Pro-Ject Debut III, a popular entry-level table. I bought it for $300, which is a steal when you're talking about hi-fi audio. Most turntables don't start to become interesting until you pass $1,000. That's just the table itself; a good phono cartridge is essential, as is a good phono pre-amp, and various tweaks and upgrades. Yep, analog music is a pricey hobby. It's truly a labor of love.

I've made a few upgrades to the Debut III. The standard-issue steel platter has been replaced with a clear acrylic platter, which deadens much of the outside sound and significantly improves sound quality. It also happens to look terrific - I really need to attach some blue lights to the back, so it can glow in the dark. You'll also notice all the gold - that's one of my personal tweaks, just to make the table look cooler. I used a can of gold spray paint, which has been the secret weapon in my artist's arsenal for a decade. Much of my artwork from 1998-2001 revolved around cans of gold spray paint.

The phono cartridge is another major upgrade. Pro-Ject Debut III comes with an Ortofon OM-5E cart attached, but it's barely adequate. In fact, it's a pretty terrible cartridge, enough to make you question why you didn't save up for a pricier table like the Pro-Ject Xpression III or RM-5. If you buy this turntable, upgrade the cart as quickly as possible. Have your dealer attach the new one in the store if you have no experience switching carts.

My cart is a Denon DL-160, a moving-coil cartridge that sells for $180. Sounds expensive? For a quality phono cart, this is still squarely in the "budget" range. It may seem like a lot of money, especially if your idea of playing music is switching on your iPod. In the world of analog music, you get what you pay for. And the Denon DL-160 is a fantastic cart. It will bring out details and depth of sound you never knew existed, and the sound is warm and silky smooth.

As music formats go, the vinyl LP is superior the CD and digital music. If you join the vinyl revival, you'll want to be able to prove that point to your doubting friends. So if you purchase a Debut III table, the acrylic platter and DL-160 cart will win your friends over. Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy and Miles Davis' Kind of Blue have never sounded better to my ears.

And, yes, it is true that you will find an even better sound - more depth, larger soundstage, greater range - with more expensive turntables. But thanks to the fiscal management of Bush/Cheney and the Republican Party, the once Almighty Dollar is hobbled and broken. And all these wonderful turntables are becoming more and more expensive, thanks to currency exchanges. Which means your price point for the next level of tables is hovering around $1,000.

You will get what you pay for, but you also have to be a real dedicated audio junkie before you shell out that kind of money. At some point, you have to be practical about playing that Led Zeppelin IV that you paid three bucks for. So if you're curious about vinyl records ("vi-curious?"), then the Debut III is a good place to start the journey. You'll discover in time whether you get the "tinkering bug," whether the high-definition audio of analog speaks to you, whether you truly enjoy searching through used record shops like a pirate.

If you really get hooked, there's a whole crazy universe for you to discover. Tinkering, tweaking, and did I mention vaccuum tubes? Ah, yes, the glorious vaccuum tubes. My two next upgrades for my table include a Speed Box, which regulates the speed of the motor, tightens the sound, and allows me to play 33's and 45's at the press of a switch; and the Tube Box II, a phono pre-amplifier which includes two vaccuum tubes to enrich the sound. After that, time to purchase a pair of speaker stands (the kind you can fill with sand), and a new cabinet, one that's lower and can fit all the components of my ever-growing entertainment system.

It never ends, does it? But it's worth it, kids. Analog music really is worth it.

P.S. If you're curious about those brown squares supporting the table and the Marantz stereo (a 1977 classic I picked up for $65!), that's another one of my crucial tweaks. Because the phono cartridge's needle picks up everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - in your local environment, you need to isolate your components from vibrations and unneeded sounds. Everything that shakes and rumbles through your area, be it walking feet, the slamming doors, even cars driving down the road a quarter-mile away, muddies your sound. You need to decouple and isolate your system to get the most out of your sound.

There are many ideas you can try for little or no money, and this is a great way to discover if you have the tweaking bug (turntables are just like hot rods this way). What I used are vinyl floor panels (for kitchen tiles), cork board, and foam drawer liner. These can all be had very cheaply, and were also a good source for making your own platter mats (you won't need a mat with an acrylic platter).

The turntable and stereo receiver are set on a sandwich of vinyl floor panel, with alternating layers of cork and foam inside. This dramatically reduces outside noise, and greatly sharpens the sound of the music. There is greater seperation between instruments, each sound is more disctinct, there is greater depth in the background, and drumming is especially punchier, sharper, and more detailed. I wouldn't be boasting of this if it hadn't worked so well. It really improved the sound of my records enough to qualify as a major upgrade. By also moving the speakers two feet away from the wall and raising them off the ground, I've managed to add a couple thousand dollars to the sound.

So that's my final bit of advice for you. Before you decide to run off to the store and spend enormous sums of money to "upgrade" your sound system, give these tweaks a try. You'll achieve fantastic results and save your wallet in the process. You'll need that money when the Bush Depression hits.

Scott Ritter Speaks Out Against Iran War

Gee, haven't we been down this road before? Will somebody get the blobby Americans out of their hover-chairs and switch off the billboards for a moment? We need to get riled up very, very quickly before something terrible goes down. Can't think of a better time than the Fourth of July.

Here's Scott Ritter's latest interview on Bush/Cheney's upcoming air war against Iran. It's not big deal. It's only the end of the world, that's all.

Iraq Oil Pact Debases Our Nation

Robert Sheer's does a great impression of Howard Beale. Go read, kids. Enjoy.