- One of the godfathers of punk rock is back with the band
that helped him rise to fame four decades ago. Iggy Pop, still going strong
into his 60s, has reunited with the Stooges and together they have completed a
new album, “Ready to Die.” Iggy And The Stooges are a seminal proto-punk
act and although they have recorded together occasionally over the years, they
last released a new album in 2007. The new project was mixed by Ed Cherney, who
described the follow-up to 2007's “The Weirdness” by saying, “It's old-time
Stooges. It's raw. They're great songs, but not necessarily big choruses.
They're the Antichrist of anthems.” Iggy Pop has always been socially and
politically-minded in his music, speaking out for various causes over the
years. Cherney called the lyrics very timely, saying of Pop, “"He knows
what he wants to say. He's watching the world around him."
Some of the
album’s track listing has already leaked, including the tracks “I Got A Job But
It Don’t Pay Sh*t” and “Gun.” Guitarist James Williamson produced the album at
Fantasy Studios in San Francisco, though Iggy Pop recorded his vocals in Miami.
It’s a disjointed way to record an album for sure and can take away much of the
chemistry and cohesiveness for a project, so the album will be interesting to
listen to for that reason alone. The project is Williamson’s return to the band
for the first time since 1973’s “Raw Power.” He returned to the fold following
Ron Asheton's death in 2009. Iggy Pop has kept himself busy, releasing a solo
covers album last year and recording a song for an upcoming pirate-themed compilation
album, “Son of Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys.”
For
old-school punk fans, though, there’s nothing quite like the raw aggression of
Iggy and the Stooges……..
- Kooks abound in the world around us. Sometimes those kooks
chain themselves to trees, sometimes they collect 25,000 signatures for an online petition for the government
to build its own Death Star and occasionally, they perform random acts of household
cleaning and maintenance without homeowner permission. The latter is the
current news of the weird in the greater Cleveland area, as a woman dubbed “The
Cleaning Fairy” by police has resurfaced after a few months off the grid and is
now shoveling total strangers’ sidewalks in the city of Elyria. The Cleaning
Fairy earned her nickname because police say she broke into a home in Westlake back
in May and cleaned the house without the homeowner’s permission. She left
behind a $75 cleaning bill on a napkin, which was at least courteous if not
totally bizarre. For eight months, this household servant for unwilling hire
remained under the radar, but she showed back up Thursday in Elyria. Police
were called to Andrew Smith’s nwighbor’s home on Branston Avenue when Smith
noticed a person shoveling a driveway without the homeowner’s permission. “Without being
approved ahead of time, that’s really weird. Scary,” Smith said. The mystery
shoveler was Susan Warren, an Elyria woman who was arrested and taken into custody, not for
shoveling snow, but for violating probation. Warren was sentenced to one year
of probation for breaking into the home she cleaned in May and may now face
prison time for what would seem to be a harmless act of help. “We looked out
Tuesday and saw our walkway was shoveled. I really didn’t understand why, but
it was,” Smith added. “I guess I can thank her for shoveling the
sidewalk. And not having to pay a bill,” added Smith. No bill was left
behind this time, probably because it’s tough to write a bill when you’re
handcuffed in the back of a squad car…….
- Dammit, Greece. If riot police are showing up, then there
had damn well better be an actual riot going on. Instead, the riot in question
was nothing more than Greek riot police storming a subway train depot in Athens early on
Friday to disperse striking subway staff who defied a government order to
return to work for a ninth consecutive day. Police officials confirmed the
incident, which included brawls that broke out when police forced their way
through a metal gate shortly after 4 a.m. and scuffled with striking workers,
detaining at least 10, with one woman taken to the hospital with minor
injuries. Riots have been commonplace in Greece in recent months, mostly on
account of austerity measures that have included wage reductions and other
financial changes that have provoked the warth of unions across the country.
The strike is another major challenge for Greece's fragile coalition in its
battle with the unions over the austerity measures, which have been mandated by
foreign lenders as the price for bailout funds. In bold fashion, the striking
subway workers have flipped a giant middle finger in the direction of the
government order to return to work. The order was issued under emergency
legislation by the conservative-led government on Thursday in an attempt to end
a week-long walkout that has paralyzed the city’s subway system. While the
workers won't actually do their jobs, 90 of them were willing to stage a sit-in
overnight at the train depot in protest. They oppose being included in a unified
wage scheme for public sector workers that would slash their salaries and on
Friday, bus and railway workers joined the walkout. The emergency law
stipulates that the workers can face arrest and up to five years in jail, but no
arrests have been made so far, according to police officials…….
- Paranoia is a more valuable asset than ever, if Google's biannual Transparency Report is to be believed. Technological
privacy and security are growing issues for anyone with Internet access and
according to Google, The Man is growing increasingly nosy about users’ data.
According to the report, since 2009 Google has seen a more than 70
percent increase in requests from governments worldwide for information about
its users and their possible criminal activities. The report shows that for the
six-month period ending Dec. 31, 2012, Google received 21,389 government
requests for information about 33,634 users, including 8,438 requests involving
14,791 users by the United States government. Richard Salgado, legal director
of Google's Law Enforcement and Information Security unit, explained the data
in a Jan. 23 post on the Google Public Policy blog. "Today
we're releasing new data for the Transparency Report, showing that the steady
increase in government requests for our users' data continued in the second
half of 2012, as usage of our services continued to grow," Salgado wrote.
The tech giant has released the reports every six months to ensure the process
remains transparent for users of its services so they can have insights into
what is done with the data stored by Google. "We've shared figures like
this since 2010 because it's important for people to understand how government
actions affect them," Salgado added. There is no question that the U.S.
government is among the worst offenders when it comes to prying into the
personal information of Google users. The number of requests from the
government in the most recent report is up significantly from the 7,969 total
requests involving 16,281 users in the preceding edition of the report. Another
interesting portion of the report is a new section detailing what legal
procedures U.S. government agencies took to seek the information. An impressive
68 percent of the requests Google received from U.S. government entities for
the period from July through December 2012 were through subpoenas, Salgado explained.
"These are requests for user-identifying information, issued under the
Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), and are the easiest to get
because they typically don't involve judges." Twenty-two percent were
through ECPA search warrants, typically ordered by judges, and the remaining 10
percent mostly involved other court orders………
- Detroit Lions wide receiver Titus Young is the best. No
other player in NFL history has waited for a teammate to take off his helmet
during a practice before punching that teammate in the head, been benched and
ultimately put on injured reserve for being a me-first malcontent who
purposefully ran the wrong routes and lined up in the wrong place because he
wanted to get the ball thrown his way, laid out his team on Twitter by saying
if he wasn’t going to get the football “i don’t want to play anymore” and then
come back for another social media assault on his franchise. Young’s first
Twitter rant had him saying, "Like I said I never been selfish but if I'm
not going to get the football i don't want to play anymore." Some athletes
might tweet that out, realize how bad it looks and delete the tweet before
replacing it with an apology for their poor choice of words. Not Titus Young.
Young went right back at the Lions with his Twitter account, once again voicing
his displeasure with the organization. "Oh I'm not done, if y'all going to
cut me let me go. I'm tired of the threats," Young tweeted. It’s unclear
who was threatening him or what they were saying, but he made it clear he wasn’t
afraid of their threats and wasn’t after more money; only more passes thrown to
him. "Never needed the money Give me a dollar and a ball bet I come back
#HallofFame," Young added. Those are pretty bold claims for a receiver who
had just 33 catches for 383 yards this past season and until now was best known
for punching teammate Louis Delmas during an offseason workout program and n suspended
twice for repeated insubordinate behavior. Head coach Jim Schwartz addressed
Young's tweets earlier this week at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala. "Every
offensive player wants the football, and there are good ways to go about
getting that and not so good ways about trying to get that done. This is a
pretty good example of a not-so-good way," Schwartz said. "We
obviously still have some ground to cover there." Right now, that ground
looks more like scorched earth………
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