We come to bury recordreviews.org, not to praise it.

So, recordreviews.org is dead, it "accidentally" got shot in a mixup between Godaddy and myself.

I received an automatic renewal notice from them last month and assumed everything was kosher -- unfortunately, they were only renewing my "business registration" not my domain registration -- I don't even really understand what a business registration is... but long story short, I received an email this morning that I had "canceled" my domain name. A frustrating phone call later, I find out that someone else had bid for the domain and bought it out from under me. Godaddy said they tried to call my house and left "messages" but the only two points of contact I can find are the cancellation and the pseudo-renewal.

Anyway, if you are a blogger or website owner, please kill any links to my site, as I presume they will shortly send readers to a spam site, porno site or a porno spam site. You could send people to the blogger site, http://record-reviews.blogspot.com/, but I don't think I'll be updating that site beyond today as the domain name was the name of the blog, etc, etc. Feel free to simply delete the link.

Also, if you ever used the recordreviews.org emails for me or any other contributors, switch to their regular email, as those will no longer work.

Too bad I don't understand how the internets work but whatevs.org (for the best in Russian Spyware!)

I may decide to blog under a completely different domain name and rework the concept, as I basically got to the point of reviewing one record a month... if that.

Gorilla-out

Greatest Contest of All Time

By simply surrendering your identity to ACDC.com you can have a chance to win a bass signed by Cliff Williams!!!!

Who's Cliff Williams you ask? And then I hit you in the mouth with a fist full of rock for your blasphemy.

The Power of Positive Thinking

So, ah, Wendy Case likes the Silent Years quite a bit by the looks of it.

Which is fine -- she's entitled to her opinion and all that -- I liked their last album quite a lot too. As I've said before, I used to find them kind of preening and pretentious (I probably saw them four or five times during that 3-year period where nobody in Detroit came to see them and apparently they were huge in New York, playing sold out shows). But the newer band members seem quite strong and for me at least, the last album showed a band that had grown, matured and had developed some songwriting chops that were previously unapparent to me.

I know they have a good slot at the Metrotimes Blowout and that we should expect said publication to promote its event with profiles of the featured bands. But is it just me or does this article strike precisely the wrong tone?

I can't point a finger at the author or the band -- I wouldn't know which to believe anyway -- sometimes a reporter embellishes or misinterprets and sometimes an interviewee doesn't think about how their words might be interpreted.

I hope the next album that was promised for this summer is another big step forward, primarily musically, but also in terms of recognition for the band. Cause quite frankly otherwise, articles like this have the appearance of big ole' checks your ass can't cash.

The Silent Years play the Blowout! festival pre-party on Wednesday, March 5, at the Majestic Theatre, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit

If you haven't yet got your bracelet, head on over to Metrotimes.com and do so.

I'm Devin Scillian?: A Blowout Pre-preview

What are the chances that local news anchor Devin Scillian actually goes through with his set of responsible country crooning when he pulls up to the glorious hot mess that is P.L.A.V. post 10 in his BMW SUV ASAP?

I honestly don't think that's the best venue for the Detroitcountrymusic.com Showcase as it has way more appeal for irony infused suburban hipsters than reality confused suburban cowboys.

I realize country singing news anchors also have some ironic appeal as well, but I'm going to suggest seeing something else in that time slot.

In other news, there's always this out of date little gem.

So Crockett was the Muffin Man?

22 years ago this month, the late-great Frank Zappa played a "weasel dust" dealing drug kingpin who is kidnapped AND forced to walk the plank by Miami's finest undercover cops.

Too bad he didn't talk C&T out of those atrocious attempts at singing careers.

Enjoy

Skimming's the new Reading

Loftus has an interesting little bit over on Detour about Vampire Salami Sandwiches or something... I don't really know, I gave up reading for Lent.

I can't even look at a Bible, lest I anger the lord.

Da' Grammys

The Police reunited at the 2007 Grammys... that is the most current piece of knowledge I have about the Grammys. I didn't watch them and I could care less about the awards.

First off, it's not like they were ever good. Look over the last 50 years and try to find all the Grammys won by major artists and you'll find things like Elvis's sole win for a gospel album and a laundry list of meaningless awards for the Beatles, punctuated by a best new artist (Petula Clark was ROBBED) and one album of the year award.

The Grammys have always been outdated and now their format doesn't even make sense -- all the stupid categories based on the dewy decimal category filing system of record stores which no longer exist.

The best thing they could is shorten it to a couple of categories more in the vein of the Oscars.

Song. Album. Producer. Female Artist. Male Artist. Group. Best New Artist.

Do you need anything more than that?

The Oscars don't have a category for adolescent comedies to insure that Will Farrell wins an award every year, why shouldn't we pit a country album versus a rock album versus a hip hop album? The Oscars on the other hand force you to ask REAL questions like is Tom Hanks portrayal of a retard as award worthy as Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of a retard?

The Grammys could do this too -- make the old Grammy voters choose between Kayne, Toby Keith and Tony Bennett -- expose how lame they are and improve the chance that Kayne really gets snubbed instead of letting him have a half dozen trophies.

The Oscars nominate middle of the road stuff like Titanic and sometimes they win. But years where Dances with Wolves beats Goodfellas end up looking pretty stupid in retrospect; as opposed to the Grammys where nearly every year is an embarrassment.

Topical Topilstein

The cool kids at Rolling Stone are reporting that radiohead have abandon their record label and will release their album digitally last year.

The article's got a little more to say than that, but not a lot that wasn't in every other Radiohead piece you've read over the past 6 months.

Of course you do get this gem from J. Greenwood.

"...hi-fi is just about middle-aged men trying to make music sound as good as it did when they were teenagers, and it never will. They'll never be as excited as they were when they first heard that music coming out of just one speaker. They'll never get that close to it again."

Five-Three-Best Fans the Flames

Blowout 2008 is to Detroit Music Blogs as Kwame's Texts are to the Freep.

No doubt about it, the only time I got more hits than Detour v. Blowout was when I posted this picture with Damore's Mandy Moore review.