Very interesting article about the opening chord of the Beatles' song "A Hard Day's Night".  Apparently for years no one has known how George Harrison played the opening chord of the song.  It took a mathematician running a Fourier transform on the recording to figure out how George did it.

Scientific Blogging

...but what really blew our mind was frontman Wayne Coyne's tricked-out double-neck guitar, which, as a jab at rhythm-game obsessed kids, featured a twist on the Guitar Hero plastic axe.

I guess that's one way for a group to help kids identify with these new fangled guitars that have strings on them. >grin<

Hollywood Insider Article

The selection is pretty good, even including some stuff from their programs, like Pop Up Videos and concerts.  There's 15 videos for the Talking Heads, which isn't all of them, but is a pretty big list.  Sound quality varies from vid to vid.  Better quality than most YouTube videos, but not DVD quality (or even VHS quality).  It's Mtv though, so I expect they'll screw it up or make it lame somehow.  They always manage to do that (look at how far VH1 Classic has fallen since it's launch).

MtvMusic.com

Check out this side by side comparison of what the Physical Graffiti album cover by Led Zeppelin looked like today compared with the album cover.  Robert Plant didn't age this well.

Side by Side Comparison Photos

Basque separatist councillors insist on hanging the Basque flag on their desks during debates, upset rivals opposed to the idea of the Navarre region being treated as part of the Basque country have adopted the Iron Maiden flag as their own emblem.

Well, I guess they could have picked worse or more offensive imagery for a flag protest.  Feel free to pick an album cover you think would be worse to look at and post in the thread!

Full Story at Telegraph.co.uk

The American Heart Association recommends 100 chest compressions per minute, far more than most people realize, study author Dr. David Matlock of the school's Peoria, Illinois, campus said Thursday. 

The Bee Gee's song is 103 BPM, which is close enough.  According to the article, Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" has a similar beat count.

Full Story at CNN

Former Beatle Ringo Starr will no longer sign memorabilia for fans and will throw away all fan mail he receives in the future, he has said.

"Please do not send fan mail to any address you have," he said in a video message on his website.

"Nothing will be signed after the 20th of October. If that is the date on the envelope, it's gonna be tossed.

Full story at BBC

In this essay published by the Wall Street Journal, Lawrence Lessig outlines his idea for a truce in the copyright wars.  The essay is Lessig's remix of his own book, Remix, comes out on October 16, 2008.  This post, if you will, is a remix of a WSJ article.

A YouTube video of a 13-month-old baby dancing to a barely-audible background noise of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" is not in any meaningful sense a copyright infringement.  To the extent that it is, the law has failed everyone from the music industry to the listening audience.  It's time to admit that as the means of music distribution have changed, the meaning of copyright must change with it.

Unable to conceive of music as anything other than a live performance, John Phillip Sousa, in 1906, warned Congress about "infernal machines" (presumably Edison's phonograph or Berliner's gramophone) displacing the need for live performances by musicians.  It turned out that recorded music drove demand for music, and spawned an entire industry, and gave birth to thousands of new musicians, as well as new musical forms, and live music in all forms from the marching band to the rock concert still thrives.

Today, unable to conceive of music as anything other than a pre-packaged product, RIAA has similar issues about another "infernal machine" (the computer) which displaces the need for prepackaged music.  Lessig argues that the current copyright regime is inadequate to address remix culture, and that remix culture -- with its emphasis on taking prepackaged music, deconstructing it, and then reproducing it in a new and novel way -- is a way to spawn an entire new industry, all without jeopardizing the right of the original artist for compensation for his original work.

Lessig's suggestions for ending the war:  Worry less about if a copy has been made in favor of why the copy was made.  Simplify intellectual property law and restore efficiency to the cultural marketplace.  And decriminalize Generation X.

Apparently unfamiliar with the "equal time" laws, he was asked to remove the shirt.  Craig Ferguson's explanation as he explains the clip of their performance is priceless. Watch as the band storms off stage at the end of their set.  It's on YouTube at the moment, so watch it while you can.

Full Story at StereoGum

What happens when you combine a Ukulele with a toy piano and a kazoo?  This...

Video at MonkeyReview

Wired has an excellent five page article on Weird Al, and his current plan to start releasing parody videos straight onto iTunes and YouTube.

Full Story at Wired