Daily archives: September 15, 2004


Around The Sun

REM’s new album, out October 4th.

Other interesting looking forthcoming music related items-

This week-

Out of Nothing, Embrace

Raw, The Ramones

Singles Box 2: 1986-1995, Duran Duran

Next Week-

Teenage Mojo Workout, The 5, 6, 7, 8s

Welcome to the North, The Music

London Calling – 25th Anniversary Edition, The Clash

Solarized, Ian Brown

October 4th-

Palookaville, Fatboy Slim

Once More With Feeling – The Singles Collection, Placebo

Gold Diggas Head Nodders & Pholk Songs, Beautiful South

I know I’ve ranted against buying from the major labels before, but there’s a special dispensation if you do it from this list and I get commission. (Yes, I know that sounds hypocritical. I prefer to consider it nuanced.)


9/11 in Baghdad

I doubt you’re going to read any more powerful review of Fahrenheit 9/11 than this one from Baghdad Burning.

I constantly wonder, three years after 9/11, do Americans feel safer? When it first happened, there was a sort of collective shock in Iraq. In 2002, there was a sort of pity and understanding- we�ve been through the same. Americans could hardly believe what had happened, but the American government brings this sort of grief upon nations annually� suddenly the war wasn�t thousands of kilometers away, it was home.

How do we feel about it this year? A little bit tired.

We have 9/11�s on a monthly basis. Each and every Iraqi person who dies with a bullet, a missile, a grenade, under torture, accidentally- they all have families and friends and people who care. The number of Iraqis dead since March 2003 is by now at least eight times the number of people who died in the World Trade Center. They had their last words, and their last thoughts as their worlds came down around them, too. I�ve attended more wakes and funerals this last year, than I�ve attended my whole life. The process of mourning and the hollow words of comfort have become much too familiar and automatic.

(Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader)


If your names on the list you're not coming in

This looks cool- Birth of a Nation by Aaron McGruder (of Boondocks) Reginald Hudlin and Kyle Baker. When Florida style disenfranchisement means most of the population of East St. Louis can’t vote in a Presidential election a dumb Texan fronting for extreme right wingers gets into the White House. East St. Louis’ idealistic mayor, spurred on by black nationalists and a dubious billionaire, decides the city should secede from the Union. The Republic of Blackland becomes rich from “offshore banking”, but can it last?

Reviewed in today’s Permanent Damage.

Buy the book from Amazon