Yes, the blog has been a little quiet recently. It’s not for wont of cool stories, that’s for sure. Actually, I am working on several larger pieces, so that’s where my time has been spent in the past week or so. But the world doesn’t stop to wait for me, as it turns out, and there have been a few really interesting stories hitting the presses and the blogosphere in the past few days. They include:

• Lou Reed is collaborating with a German “classical ensemble” called Zeitkrater. This is interesting, not just because of Reed’s tradition of exploring the nether-regions of music and art, but because it reminds us of other incredible collaborations (Frank Zappa & the Ensemble Modern, for example), and because it taps into a current trend in classical music, which is to get the music out of the concert hall.
• Illegal downloading of music is “at an all-time high,” or so says Entertainment Media Research. The study is skewed because they only surveyed 1700 people. But on the other hand, it’s still interesting to note that this approach to acquiring music is so prevalent.
• I am so blown away by this story about the CEO of a Boston-area arts organization/promotion/presenter that I am having a hard time not using sarcasm in describing it. So instead, read it for yourself.
• And here is a shocking blog post: it turns out that Archie Andrews of Archie comics is really, really worried about his royalties, probably from his hit song “Sugar Sugar,” and has decided to tell the kids not to download music illegally anymore. But I don’t think he has much to worry about. I just checked the client of one of the major torrent aggregators and there is nothing with his name on it to be found. Phew.

Ok, so that’s it for today. I’m going back to work on that plethora of in-depth, hard-hitting journalism residing elsewhere on my hard drive. More soon.

Thanks,

Rick McLaughlin