Craig and Britney

Craig has become my favorite of the late night hosts. He is less obviously partisan that Jay and Dave and has a freshness that they lack. Plus he really seems to like the US, and to like it for the right reasons.

A scene I had forgotten

I did not remember this scene from Spinal Tap until reminded of it by Jeff Wooldridge (!) on Facebook today.

Embedding is disabled so you have to click through to see it. Short, funny and worth it.

Uncle Bonsai tomorrow at the Ark

Uncle Bonsai is my favorite folk group, so much so that I am skipping the Society of Labor Economists meetings (one of my very favorite conferences) in Vancouver (one of my very favorite cities) to be in Ann Arbor for their show tomorrow, Saturday, April 30 at the Ark.

Tickets still available.

First single I ever got

As best I can recall, this is the first single I ever owned. I think I do still own it now but it is buried somewhere in the basement.

I am not sure what this proves other than that I already had a bit of an off-kilter sense of humor at age seven.

Oh, and for the student readers, that thing in the picture is a 45 rpm (revolutions per minute) record, which contained one song on each side and was called a "single" (though perhaps it should have been called a "double" as there were two songs). It was played on something called a phonograph or record player.

Las Ketchup: the Ketchup Song

I stumbled upon this cheerful bit of musical fun a couple of days ago, though apparently it was a worldwide hit nine years ago.

How did this not become a hit in the US?

Uncle Bonsai at the Ark - April 30

Uncle Bonsai, the folk group I followed in college is coming to the Ark on April 30.



Now, the sad part is that Ashley, the member of the trio on whom I had a very large crush, has bowed out, replaced by someone else. But still, I'll be going.

Oh, they have a new "album" - showing my age there - too, the first in a decade. You can buy it on their web page.

Humor? At Mother Jones?

The usually humorless, lefty scolds at Mother Jones offer up this entertaining quiz: can you tell the difference between rappers and libertarians?

I got 8 out of 10.

Hat tip: Nat Wilcox

Economist on the music industry

An interesting status report on the music industry from the Economist.

Here is a teaser:

In a sense, the recorded-music market is not so much dying as greying. In 2002 people aged 12 to 19 accounted for 16.4% of all spending on albums in Britain, according to TNS Worldpanel. That was almost double the share of people aged 60 or over (8.8%). The two groups have now switched positions. By 2008 teenagers accounted for just 12% of spending on albums, whether digital or physical. By contrast, the older fans’ share had gone up to 13.8%. The over-60s do not just spend more on music albums than teenagers. They spend more on pop-music albums.

The consequences can be seen in the pop charts. America’s bestselling album since 2000 is “1”, a collection of Beatles hits from the 1960s. At one point last year four of the top ten albums in Britain were Beatles recordings and the number-one album was a collection of songs by Vera Lynn, who was then 92 years old. The bestselling album worldwide last year was “I Dreamed a Dream” by Susan Boyle, a middle-aged Scot. Universal Music’s bestselling album in Japan in the first half of this year was “Vocalist 4” by Hideaki Tokunaga, Japan’s answer to Harry Connick Jr. If most of your fans are middle-aged, CD sales are holding up well.

Via Marginal Revolution

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

A recounting of the fascinating history of the song, along with some legal lessons about international differences in copyright law, courtesy of Mark Steyn.

My main memory around this song concerns the talent show we had in sixth grade (or was it fifth?) wherein Becky Frier and Pam Johnson (and maybe someone else), who were among the girls to mature the earliest in our cohort, did an interpretive dance to this song as their contribution to the show. I remember thinking that they were somehow too old for the rest of us.

Hat tip: Nat Wilcox

Flash opera

Hat tip: Jackie Smith

On the return of Uncle Bonsai

The Seattle Times has the story.

But they will never be quite the same without Ashley.

I followed Uncle Bonsai around in college (and after) enjoying shows all around the Pacific Northwest as well as at the Ark in Ann Arbor when I was at Western Ontario.

Overactive customs agents in Switzerland

The sad story of a Stradivarius, on loan from the Austrian central bank to a noted young violinist, seized at the Swiss border by over-zealous customs agents.

The rest of the story, for which I could not find an English language link, is that the violinist was not ever able to bring the violin into Switzerland for use in a planned concert. Instead, an official from the Austrian central bank ultimately went to the border and retrieved the violin.

Hat tip: Herr Prof. Dr. Michael Lechner

The ebullient moment

Of all the many public relations offerings that UM produces, I like the bits about the history of the place the best. This one describes a famous Life magazine photo related to UM's marching band.

More on Michael Jackson

1. How they plan to honor MJ in Iowa.

2. Courtesy of the Smoking Gun, you can read MJ's will.

Uncle Bonsai: profit maximizers?

My favorite folk group is called Uncle Bonsai. I saw them 20 or 30 times in college and a few more times after that - including once at the Ark in Ann Arbor when I was teaching at Western Ontario. The group was made up of three graduates of Bennington College in Vermont - Arni, Ashley and Andrew. Uncle Bonsai (UB) had a fair amount of success in my college days and shortly thereafter, getting radio play on college radio stations and the like. Their most famous song was sung by Arni and Ashley and began "If I had a penis ...". You get the idea. But UB never quite hit the big time and, as a result, all three eventually went on with their lives, getting married, having kids and, in Ashley's case, moving to Iowa.

There were reunion concerts every year or two - I went to a couple - and chit-chat on the web page, but not much in the way of musical output. As such, a fair chunk of change (and many little triangles of utility) was being left on the table as UB has a very loyal (and not small) fan base. So, I suppose I am not surprised to learn that at some point last year, Ashley dropped out and was replaced by a new third person, presumably someone who is in Seattle and interested in doing more recording and more concerts.

But I am still a bit sad, for it was Ashley who was the object of my collegiate crush and whose voice I remember singing "Charlie and me" (not a reference, I think, to my colleague Charlie Brown, but you never know).

Oh, UB is, of course, on Facebook, where you can listen to a song and become a fan.

Hat tip: Ginger Petersen

The music of the stocks

From Germany comes the financial crisis put to music:



Things get a bit political towards the end. I think the authors real hidden message is that you should by stock in (1) the porn industry and (2) German arms makers, but I could be wrong.

Also, the time period covered by the porn industry time series is different from all the others in a way that serves the political point. Darrell Huff would not approve.

Hat tip: Elizabeth Bruch