September 18, 2007

Tuesday: Doozy of a Music News Day

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God Save the Queen

  • Reunion mania continues: John Lydon tells NME that the Sex Pistols will come together for a one-off concert at Brixton Academy November 8th, their first show since… oh, just since 2002. Yawn. NME tries to drum up excitement by spearheading a campaign to send “God Save the Queen” to #1 on the charts for its 30th anniversary, a position it was supposedly denied in 1977 by, you know, chart freemasons or whatever, desperate to preserve the Queen’s dignity in her jubilee year.

  • With Kanye West on track to outsell 50 Cent by at least 100,000 records this week, Fiddy cancelled his U.K. promo appearances after selling less than Mr. West there as well; he had threatened to retire from solo albums if West won the sales race.

  • The venerable management company The Firm has dropped Britney Spears as a client, after only one month. The Firm was to spearhead Brit’s comeback, but released a statement saying “current circumstances have prevented us from properly doing our job.” Ouch.

  • Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, frustrated by high CD prices and distribution problems in Australia and China, respectively, is telling concert-goers to steal his music. A YouTube clip shows him telling a Sydney audience, “Steal it, steal away, give it to your friends.” He also told a Beijing audience that because Western music is difficult to find via legal channels in China, that “downloading from the Internet is a more acceptable options than buying pirated CDs.”

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    “Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

    We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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