"Life could be worse in the sun..." - The Farmhands.

Good way to spend 90 minutes: Listening to Quicksand's excellent 1993 hardcore gem Slip (which arrived in today's mail at the office to replace our old cassette dub) about three times this morning at work. Bad way to spend 90 minutes: Having our dentist, who is a very nice guy we like a lot, botch three procedures (not all his fault) to close out the afternoon. The seven shots of novocaine are still wearing off, and the real pain is wearing in. Anyhoo, does anyone recommend any of the post-Quicksand projects, Handsome and Rival Schools? We haven't heard either, but as a heavy music phase is starting to manifest itself, perhaps the time has come.

AllMusic is spotlighting The Books. Which basically means there is a nice picture and a snippet of their bio on the front page right now. No matter, still nice that such a deserving band gets attention.

Coolfer points to more verbiage about the dust-up between WMG and Tom Waits' former publisher. WMG is claiming purchasing a download means you are buying a product, not a license, which they believe apparently boosts their case. We seem to remember the same "license" construction being used the opposite way a few years back, where labels were trying to limit the fair use/sharing argument for (old-style) Napster etc. by claiming that purchasing a CD is actually purchasing the right to use the music, not purchasing a product (We are sure that we could find some label dood/ette making that argument in the Webnoize archives, if such a thing were to exist). So which is it? Anyhoo, dig in to the issue at the Berkeley Intellectual Property blog.

IndieWorkshop has the first Slow Dazzle review we've seen. It's also the first one with a sentence fragment we've seen. And incorrect use of "it's." Etc. We'd write and complain, but we think we already hassled the same reviewer last year for misspelling Bracy and Deppler's names in a review of Fortune, so we'll lay off this time. Anyhoo, the Slow Dazzle record, released on Misra, streeted today. [A quick check of American Book Congress reveals the location of another review].

Despite assertions that his blogging days are numbered, Mystical Beast continues to turn out great stuff. Check the first part of a week-long exploration of Tiny Lights. [OK, the post is by Sleeve and not Dana, but whatever…].

That is all.