
From the 7 inch (bada bing, the puns roll on!) of Morrissey's new single.
Obama’s election has the additional virtue of being a good deed in itself—that is, last Tuesday, we spectacularly narrowed the distance between American ideals and American reality. We acted true to the original Puritan vision of America “as a City upon a hill,” as opposed to the self-satisfied, we’re-Number-One-no-matter-what revisionism of the last few decades.
Even before he takes office, there is one large, low-hanging fruit that Obama is harvesting already: The rebranding of America in the rest of the world is under way. Intolerant, ignorant, bellicose cowboy-America is suddenly … not. And thanks to overwhelmingly white America, as Tunku Varadarajan wrote on Forbes.com, “a black man will be the most powerful person on earth” and “the most powerful black man in the history of mankind.” Also? His father was actually African. Foreigners are even more astonished than we are.But the election happily overturned another set of conventional wisdoms that were not specifically racial: Reason and intelligence made a comeback against the heretofore ascendant forces of the idiocracy. For the moment, America is reality-based once again.
- Obamaism, New York Magazine, Kurt Andersen, November 9, 2008
There is a prevailing mood in DC this weekend of shock and awe, to hijack a Bush term. No one can quite believe this is happening. I keep thinking of all the civil rights leaders who did not live to see this, but were driven by the belief that would happen. Surely they can see it now! I will try and comment on my next "mixtape" about the concert performances, but one surprise for me was Josh Groban and Heather Headley back by the... Gay Men's Chorus of DC!
photo from DCist. That's about where I stood.
Recorded in Santa Barbara and New York, Depeche Mode returned to using a lot of vintage gear, from analogue synthesizers to drum machines, in order to conjure up the retro-futuristic arrangements featured on the album. Lyrically the release contains many of the group's enduring obsessions plus more overt black humor than any of their previous collections.I follow depechemode.com for DM newsLike with their 2005 studio album, Playing The Angel, Sounds Of The Universe features writing credits for both Martin Gore, the group's primary songwriter, and Dave Gahan who after honing his talents on two solo albums, has earned his place as Depeche Mode's second writer. The release also marks a reunion between the band and producer Ben Hillier (Blur, Doves, Elbow), who worked with the band to help give their new album its timeless sound. The first single from the release, Wrong, grabs the listener's attention from its first stack-heeled, staccato shriek. Over stomping beats, screeching synthesizers, and Dave's overlord chant, Wrong already feels like a Depeche Mode classic. Other standout tracks include Martin's velvet-lined Scott Walker croon on the sensual lounge-music ballad Jezebel, to the sci-fi gospel-blues hymn In Chains and Hole To Feed, which marries modern electronics to a floor-shaking, bone-rattling Bo Diddley beat.
She's not the hard-faced chav everyone paints her to be. I'm sure that her and Keisha together could be vicious when they were younger, but she's a mother and she's seen a lot and achieved a lot. She's very sweet and caring. I like her. She holds herself well in the house and is far more mature than 45 year old father-of-four Coolio. What a knob.Watch a Big Brother profile on Mutya (yes, it is Moo-tee-uh).
The album has a running time of approximately 48 minutes. Tracks 1, 6 and 10 are Pet Shop Boys/Xenomania co-writes. All other songs are written by Pet Shop Boys (track 2 with a little help from Tchaikovsky). As we have previously reported, the album was produced by Brian Higgins/Xenomania and has a provisional release date of March 23rd.In other PSB news, they've hired Angela Becker to represent them. Their site says this, "Angela is based in London and co-managed Madonna from 2004 to the beginning of 2008 when she left work to have a baby." That last bit has been the source of much rumor over the past year - namely that it was Stuart Price's baby, which seemed a bit unexpected. Not sure what the truth is, but the story went that she left Madonna on bad terms. Hard Mandy did make reference in 2008 to finding out that people she thought she trusted were not her friends. Whatever, I hope Becker is happy to have an actual life now. I am sure it is fascinating inside the Madonna hurricane, but I imagine getting away from that is as joyous as entering into it.