I HAVE TURNED...

...A NEW LEAF. Proverbially speaking, seeing as how I am speaking about BLOGGING. I'm setting some goddamn priorities, man. Like, updates on THE REG. And guest writers, and uh...who the hell am I kidding. Lets listen to Jeff Healey. Goosebumps, motherf*cker. Goosebumps.

RA RA RA Ray Charles is here to school you, again!

People, you know how today's music sucks? etc etc. Well, thank god there are reissues so we can spend our hard earned dollars on stuff that looks new, but isn't really. Enter Concord Records and their ambitious exploitation reissue program of the Ray Charles catalog. An old favorite hit stores at the beginning of the month and is raising eyebrows (again). I wish the world would be a simpler place, instead of revolting Iranians (as in, the verb) and Craigslist Killers, they only had soda fountains and comic books to keep themselves occupied back then. And this album, of course. And boy did it start something. I heard it contributed to the civil rights struggle and made black people listen to garth brooks. Ha, just kidding about that last one. So, I offer for your discerning eyes the OLD cover art (cus it's awesome) and a place where you can spend what you would have otherwise supidly totally straight up sunk into the soda fountain with no benefit at all. So, there:

Old School!

buy the reissue here

Oh, and a shout out to my ol' buddies parents for taking me to a soda fountain this weekend for the first time and hence giving me something to write about. Bless!

Oh Sh*t, First Twitter Post

META TWITTER is the word of the week, kids! Who would have thunk, Fuse TV, MTV...everyone is doing it. Next step, I will follow suit by twittering about my cat's and goldfish's latest tweets. I shall call it the tweet menagerie. Oh good, I deserve a pat on the back for that one. On a side note, look what I found:

I fucking love the Boss. Now, if I could only follow his tweets. Along with those of The Decemberists, Bon Iver, Passion Pit, Grizzly Bear, MGMT and Portugal (OMG I think I just went to the bathroom in my pants a little (man, I'm bored with my own snark there, feel free to re-phrase and email better line to wabten@gmail.com, thanks)). It must be my lucky day BECAUSE I CAN - YES, I (WE) CAN - actually do exactly that.

Go here: http://fusefest.fuse.tv and enjoy!

It's kind of like sitting in front of the Fuse building! I suppose I'm the only one in the twitterspehere to have ever done that, but it's awesome. Except for the angry bums who think you're stealing their front row seats. Sheesh, get a lyphe.

Sometimes I have so much going on in my head I don't even know where to look. All I need is more tweets

Playing for Change Staying True To Their Word -

A COLLECTIVE GASP OF ANTICIPATION ESCAPES THE ENTIRE WORLD

So, I've mentioned this before but these cats WILL NOT stay down. True to their name, they're playing. Maybe not for pocket change anymore, but everywhere from the Glastonbury Festival (hook it up, yo) to some Pier somewhere. Awesome.

From the press release:

Playing For Change – Songs Around the World, the project has taken another leap forward. After a Top 10 debut on Billboard’s Pop Chart in the US and a strong start throughout Europe, including a top 20 chart position in Spain, the Playing For Change band has been confirmed to headline the Jazz/World stage at Glastonbury Festival in the UK on Saturday, June 27, one of the three major open air stages with a crowd capacity of approximately 25,000 people. Word of mouth spread among other Glastonbury acts that Playing For Change was confirmed on the bill and several musicians expressed interest in joining the band on stage. This resulted in Gabrialla Cilmi, Tinariwen, The Magic Numbers and Baba Maal confirmed to make guest appearances with the band at Glastonbury.

The band will then travel to Los Angeles for a performance at the opening night of this year’s Twilight Dance Series at the Santa Monica Pier. The concert is free and will run from 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM. The band is also set to perform on NBC's The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien on Thursday, July 9, 2009. Hailing from New Orleans to Johannesburg via Europe and the Congo, the band consists of some of the incredible musicians who are featured in the smash hit YouTube video “Stand By Me” which has become the #1 rated YouTube video of all time with over 20 million views.

Pay up, sukas!