We Got Your Music News

* David Brooks, your friendly local conservative "New York Times" columnist, tells us how music is: too specialized, too fragmented, with too many artists who don't know their musical roots. While I would do my normal "Baby Boomers Just Don't Get It" rant here and emphasize that all that nostalgia for Hendrix and Zeppelin is a bit revisionist (#1 hits from 1977 include Shaun Cassidy, Mannfred Mann, and Meco's disco cover of the "Star Wars" theme), I'd rather just blame Sasha Frere-Jones. Stupid "New Yorker" article.
* Update on an old story: Greg, the Quail's very own Cassandra, actually scooped this story back in early October. France, per President Sarkozy, is now policing its internet users. If you get caught illegally downloading music three times, the French government reserves the right to cut off your internet access, in addition to the up to three year prison sentence for downloading. How does the government figure out who's been downloading what? By monitoring your web habits through your ISP. And in other news, the French are now at war with Eurasia and have always been at war with Eurasia.
* U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper has "tentatively ruled" that new defendants, including Marion "Suge" Knight, former police officer Rafael Perez, and members of the LAPD, can be added to the Wallace family's wrongful death suit against the city of Los Angeles for events related to the death of Christopher "Biggie" Wallace. Did you know that Biggie was only 24 when he died? (He died when I was in high school, but now that I'm in my mid-twenties, 24 doesn't seem so old.)
* And as long as we're talking about tumbling into irrelevance, John Edwards is hitting the campaign trail with Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt. If you don't know who Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt are, consult your local baby boomer.