First person to make a joke about the "don't tase me, bro" remix being automatically included on this 1-gig player's hard drive^* is totally, utterly fired.

Taser unveils holster with music player [MSNBC; HT Jon Solomon]

^* only $72.99 list! Buy it now!

This story is sooo not over. Now Raz B's brother is saying that the LA Crips gang forced his brother to say those things at gunpoint and Raz B has been missing for 2 days. The whole thing is wild, just wild.

I thought that the commenter was joking, but both stories actually came straight from Raz B's brother, a.k.a. Ricky Romance, via the gossip site Bossip, which is apparently doing further legwork on that side of the story. Meanwhile, people claiming to be Raz B and his management have taken to their MySpace bulletins, as a reader of Oh No They Didn't found out:

A dead cell phone! Raz B is clearly not having the best week with communication-related technology. Meanwhile, the blog namechecked in the bulletin also has reprinted a "no, I'm OK" statement from Raz B, although anyone who's ever gotten a phishing comment probably knows all too well how easy it is to fake those sorts of things on MySpace. And posting a picture dated Oct. 10, 2006, with a "no, really, I'm OK" message doesn't exactly inspire confidence, now, does it?

Raz B's Brother 'Ricky Romance' Confirms Raz-B is Missing [Bossip]
Raz-B's reps speak!! [ONTD]

In "Gutta Time," P opens with a profanity-laced disclaimer that this new clip isn't for kids, before kicking off a heavy-handed and symbollic court battle between the "Coloreds" and the "Wizards," a commentary on...the state of race and class relations in America? Within hip-hop? Both? We're not even going to attempt to unpack P's metaphors here, except to say that the last 30 seconds or so take "Gutta Time" just that little bit more over-the-top. We were so not ready for this at 7:48 a.m. Maybe that was the point?

Master P - "Gutta Time" [On Smash; HT: Walker Chambliss]

From the product description for the dog's-body-shaped speakers that go by the name of (what else?) Woofers: "This is functional kitsch; the wrong becomes the new right. By adding a function to an otherwise grotesque object, it acquires new aesthetic values, becoming an object of desire.... Ofcourse this speakersytem, with it's unusual set-up, is not to hold up against a high-end/high costs speaker system, but it's engineered by a professional audio studio, and sounds remarkably well, compared to your everyday speakersystem!" In other words, the €599 sticker price won't necessarily buy you a good set of speakers, but man, will it freak out any kids that you'll be forced to invite over for the holidays!

Woofer [POAA.nl; HT Kevin Colligan]

The latest addition to Madame Tussaud's New York: Leann Rimes, outfitted in such a way that she's looking the Times Square denizens of years gone by. We know she's not the fresh-faced 16-year-old singing Patsy Cline castoffs anymore, but really, sometimes there's such a thing as too much growing up.

THE WORST WAX FIGURES - EVER - SERIOUSLY! [Popbytes]
Earlier: Idolator Presents: The Worst Classic-Rock Wax Sculptures Of All Time!

Produced by Matt Dike—behind the scenes svengali on the Beastie Boys' Pauls Boutique—"Smart Girls" really is deranged, as much for Wilson's slackjawed rapping and surfin' harmonies laid over a late '80s electro groove as for the hallucinatory way the (really loud!) samples from old Beach Boys songs explode in the mix. Over/under on this (frankly really awful) MP3 becoming a "key influence" for some band that will top bloggers "Best Of 2008" lists: two months.

Brian Wilson's Lost Rap Recording [WFMU]

Between the My Chemical Romance-inspired outfits, the karaoke-on-cough-syrup cover (so as to better make the dance "dramatic," I guess, although this cover is seriously veering into "you ruined my favorite song" territory), and the fact that Garth and Hough seem to be either in "jazzhands-face mode" or trying to prevent themselves from cracking up, I was in a full-body cringe for pretty much the entire minute and 46 seconds. Is it camp? Perhaps. Or maybe it's the new brand of camp that's designed to get an instantaneous rise out of, uh, blogger types so as to increase "visibility" for the show. Which, of course, leads to the inevitable denouement where all of American popular culture nicks its concepts of "linearity" and "cohesion" from the 2007 Video Music Awards. Suddenly, the idea of the blipvert seems so... benign.

Twenty contestants started Nov. 8, placing a hand on the 400-pound statue in the parking lot of radio station WFLZ-FM, the contest's sponsor. They were allowed 12-minute breaks every three hours and got catered meals, but weren't allowed books, cell phones or iPods.

Powell was declared the winner Wednesday afternoon when the other remaining contestant, Lara Padgett, became distracted and let go.

"That sun really got to me today," said Padgett, who later was checked out at a hospital because she wasn't feeling well. "I took my hand off the fur-lined boot."

Oh, cry me a river, Lara. You got 12-minute breaks every three hours! If I were your daughters, I'd be questioning your commitment to Miley Cyrus up and down and all over the place.

Man Hangs On, Wins `Hannah Montana' Tix [AP]
[Photo via 93.3 FLZ]

Allow me to illustrate. From Brock's house, drive—or bike, if you want to avoid hipster scorn—up Southeast Belmont Street for a bit and hang a left and you'll run into the residence of James Mercer, lead man of the Shins. Go about six blocks north of there and you'll see the palatial home of Stephen Malkmus, whose former band, Pavement, created today's incarnation of indie rock with 1992's Slanted and Enchanted. A few blocks west stands Beulahland, a bar where for years a team made up of Malkmus and the members of the all-girl punk group Sleater-Kinney thoroughly (and irritatingly) dominated the weekly trivia challenge. Follow East Burnside Street for a mile or so and you'll land at the Doug Fir, the club where newly minted Portlander Britt Daniel of Spoon recently unveiled his critically lauded new album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, at a secret show. Or, alternatively, you could follow Northeast 28th Avenue up toward the Alberta Arts District, where Death Cab for Cutie guitarist and producer Chris Walla lives. His place is just a few short blocks from the lovely home of singer-songwriter Laura Veirs, where I attended a party a few months back and met her boyfriend, Tucker Martine, who—aside from being responsible for the sound clip you hear every time you start up Windows Vista—produces records for Portland favorite sons the Decemberists.

Clark goes on to mention the type of car former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss drives, and where she gets her coffee, and how Mercer is really into the city's public transportation, and how Malkmus' house looks like a "castle." Seriously. I look forward to future installments of Slate's Guide To Stalking Your Favorite Indie Rock Luminaries—if only because maybe it'll help further drive nails into the coffin of this little boomlet that the genre has joined, since everyone will either move or want to go into hiding.

The Indie City [Slate; HT Matthew Perpetua]

"I had met Jackson years ago and he's always been really kind to me over the years. And I had met Jewel but I had never sung with her. She was great to work with. And it was the first time to meet Ghostface Killah. It was very cool, he's very cool. There's a breakdown in our version, in the middle of it, where Jewel yodels and he raps over that."

Well, that's it. There is nothing Kanye can ever to do top that for awesomely awful collaborations with wack-ass white people. Ever. Sorry, 'Ye. Swedish whistling shrivels and dies in the face of Alaskan gap-toothed yodelling. Holy crap. I mean, what??

Lyle Lovett Meets Ghostface [Rolling Stone]

Staffordshire police said the drone's images did not lead directly to any arrests, but one reason for using it had been to deter would-be thieves. It was not flown over the main arena because of fears that a crash might cause injuries.

The battery-operated drone's four carbon-fibre rotors are so quiet they cannot be heard from the ground once it is higher than 50 metres, and at 100 metres up it cannot be seen with the naked eye. It can fly 500 metres high, but the Civil Aviation Authority has set an operating limit of 120 metres. The vehicle, which takes off vertically, can be flown even when out of sight, because it beams images back to video goggles worn by the operator.

Why use a drone instead of regular policemen? Why, cost, of course:

There is no legal barrier preventing a private security firm or a paparazzo photographer from using the technology, but MW Power said that it was only licensing the vehicle to customers from the military or emergency services. It costs less than £1,000 a month to lease - an amount that would buy less than an hour's use of a conventional helicopter.

Ah, the future: It gives us an endless number of reasons to never leave the house again.

Eye in the sky: police use drone to spy on V festival [Guardian, via Arts Blog]

Mischa Barton is going to star in Finding t.A.T.u., which is apparently based on a book—yes, an actual book, and not just some printed-out fan fiction. Variety has the plot's details:

Set against a background of music, Internet chatrooms and hedonistic Russian nightlife, it's the story of a lonely American teenager in Moscow who becomes friends with a local girl over their shared obsession with pop band t.A.T.u.

We don't understand why the studio had to hire Barton for this flick—surely the young ladies who make up the Russian duo could tart themselves up in dual roles? The clip for "All The Things She Said" surely makes them out to at least be better actresses.

Mischa Barton to star in Joffe's 't.A.T.u.' [Variety]
t.A.T.u - All The Things She Said (Ya Shosla S Uma) [YouTube]

"Modest Mouse generate a divide between the venerating and violent like few other bands. The latter of which currently questions my ascertations. Wipe the slate clean. You officially have not heard Modest Mouse until you have heard their major label debut. The growth, bravery, and confidence are staggering for a trio that most recently hammered through a song about 'doin' the cockroach.'" - Modest Mouse, The Moon and Antarctica (a 9.8 by Brent DiCrescenzo sometime in the depths of 1999 or 2000 or whenever the hell that record came out, and 13.6% of the vote)

"I can think of few pop songwriters who've delivered their diaries with enough conviction to transcend the medieval, lifeless nature of oral tradition, and I can think of only one other rock critic as touched by The Final Cut as I've been over the years. Kurt Loder awarded The Final Cut Rolling Stone's sacrosanct five star rating in issue 393, comparing Waters' gripping linear narrative to its only conceivable peer, master storyteller Bob Dylan. An unflinching, out of control spiral toward the center of paternal identity, Britain's stiff upper lip, and the idiocy of war, The Final Cut fulfills the promise of The Wall's most poignant moments, gutting sons, soldiers, and the unknowing inheritors of their sacrifices eight ways from Sunday."- Pink Floyd, The Final Cut (a completely inexplicable 9.0 by Chris Ott on November 3, 2003 and 18.4% of the vote)

"There's something irresistible about that Chan Marshall. Recording under the Cat Power moniker, she's got a magic coolness that only certain guitar-totin' girls come equipped with. You know what I'm talkin' about— Beth Orton's got the Magic Cool, too. You can't really pinpoint any particularly cool things these girls; they're just cool. And somehow, the new Cat Power record is proof positive that Marshall is the coolest on the planet." - Cat Power, Moon Pix (a 7.4 by Ryan Schreiber on November 1, 1998 and 38.8% of the vote)

"'She's the One' stretches the strums of the Champion Versions EP across a full 70mm print, pumping the mix full of Technicolor detail. It's not saying much except "I'm in love," but it does so with such swirling, ringing conviction that even professional cynics like me have used it as a soundtrack to going head over heels. "Dr. Baker" starts out hungover in bed watching drips of piano against the window, but, by the second verse, a lost calliope has burst into the bedroom." - The Beta Band, The Best of the Beta Band (a 7.2 by Jess Harvell on October 4, 2005 and 29.1% of the vote)

Pitchfork [pitchforkmedia.com]

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

The problem is that [the music industry's] main product, recorded music, has a zero marginal cost to produce. It's so cheap to make that consumers can actually make it themselves. And they do. A billion songs a month are downloaded, mostly illegally, from P2P networks.

Wait, what?

We must be missing something. Yes, a billion songs a month are downloaded from P2P networks. But unless the Infofilter top 50 is missing a good-sized chunk of file-sharing traffic, we fail to see how the simplicity of making music at home has resulted in piracy being so high; as Yancey at 17 dots points out, not everyone has the ability—or the desire—to simply create the music they want to listen to on command. And even when people do go the DIY route to much fanfare, it's not always lapped up by a lot of people, as Tila Tequila can probably tell you.

Unfortunately, there's more:

As the marginal price of recorded music continues to fall towards zero, its natural price, bands will need to make money elsewhere. Live concerts will become more and more popular, and will be the largest source of revenue for many artists. Recorded music will be used to promote those live events. Popular artists will still make a very, very good living. Others will have to decide if love of their art is enough to keep going.

We're well aware that the music industry is bloated and in need of a serious correction, and that touring and merchandise are a large source of revenue for artists. (Exhibit A.) But expecting live events to become the primary source of income for artists doesn't only replace one bloated framework with another, it completely ignores how people experience music. Let's list a few reasons why wholly replacing the recorded-music industry with the live-music one is unlikely: the relative price, and long-term cost, of going to a concert as opposed to buying a recording; the low number of live-music opportunities in suburban, exurban, and rural areas; the fact that you can't just head to a concert when you're struck with the urge to listen to "My Love" at work; and the relative time-sink of going to a show, as opposed to listening to a song or an album. And that's just for starters. But the most obvious one is this: The likelihood of breaking new artists solely through live shows is pretty low, as far as reaching audiences who aren't necessarily musical obsessives.

Then again, it seems to us like Arrington doesn't really care about new music: his closing line, "Others will have to decide if love of their art is enough to keep going," is the ultimate "let them eat cake" statement, one that could only come from someone who doesn't give a damn about musicians, or the possibility that a Darwinian approach to music as an art form could result in what we hear day-to-day becoming even more calcified than it already is.

Good News! CD Music Sales Down 20% From 2006 [Techcrunch, via 17 Dots]

^* We won't even get into the commenters, one of whom blames the music industry's woes on "motherhood (ie. Lauryn Hill, Shania Twain, Celine Dion)." Women! You just can't trust them to keep up their pop-star personae, can you?

THE POLICE 30th Year Anniversary!!
EXCLUSIVE 1 TIME USE PRESALE PASSWORD
FOR DODGER STADIUM
Los Angeles, California
June 23, 2007
The presale starts 10AM tomorrow at ticketmaster.com

The presale code can only be used once and does not guarantee the ability to purchase tickets for the show - only the opportunity to purchase tickets. THESE ARE NOT TICKETS!

Paypal only, will email code immediately following payment recieved.

NO REFUNDS - ALL SALES FINAL - PAYPAL ONLY

We don't know what's more depressing: The fact that this ad exists, or the fact that someone will probably snap up this hot commodity within the hour. Here's hoping that the "lucky" purchaser at least prints out the e-mail with the precious presale code inside; at least this way, he'll definitely have something to remember that $150 by.

The Police Presale Code from Best Buy - $150 [Craigslist]

Today's LA Times has a piece on Mutaytor, the 35-member "techno-funk-rock circus" whose founding member, Matty Nash, achieved some unwelcome fame recently—he was caught on tape by Dateline NBC's pedophile-sting segment, "To Catch A Predator." He's left the band and has felony charges pending:

Remarkably, most of the group didn't hear about Matty's woes until after the broadcast, which led to a furious debate among members that was still going on as the curtain went up on its gig Wednesday night at the Knitting Factory. Backstage, several Mutaytor cast members discussed the incident before the show.

Of Nash, dreadlocked Buck Down (co-writer with Atom Smith of most of the group's music and one of the act's longest-tenured members) was blunt: "At this point, he has no connection with us. He has nothing more than a historical link to this project. Whatever it does from now on will be without Matty." Nash's wife of 13 years, who goes by the single name Crunchy, is staying on as stage manager/den mom.

"Everybody's seen the clip at this point," Down conceded. "Even if he goes to court and more than wins, the damage is already done. He did quite a job of containing this from us. Nobody saw it coming. This worst of surprises is costing us enormously." Specifically, he said the group has lost its manager and booking agency.

While we feel for the band—which has also seen most of its upcoming gigs get canceled—it's hard not to especially empathize with "Crunchy," who, presumably, didn't set her DVR for the Dateline episode in question. For now, it appears that she's standing by her man, the band, and her title of "den mom." One suggestion: Perhaps she should come up with a new name for her role in the band, just so she can head off any off-color jokes from silly music blogs.

Mutaytor won't die [LA Times]
Mutaytor [MySpace]
Earlier: The Clay Aiken Fan-Fiction Writers Are Going To Have A Field Day With This

"Thank you for broadcasting Songs from. Let your load dropping on my hot clit. Juliana Hatfield [address redacted] Send me $20,- + SASE and you'll receive a hand-me-down panty from me."

Indie-rock porn spam from Juliana Hatfield? Is this what the world's come to? Please, someone, send us back to 1994. Now.

Juliana Hatfield - Nirvana [MP3, link expired]

Katrina buys every magazine Jay-Z is in, has called him over 300 times and e-mails him 200 times a day, but he has never responded. She even had a T-shirt made up with Jay-Z's and her picture, that she says she sleeps in every night. "Jay-Z's real name is Shawn Corey Carter. When I'm writing songs, I would just call him Shawn. I make up my own songs and leave them on his voice mail," she shares. "I went to a Web site that has gossip, and they believe anything you say. I e-mailed them a letter, saying I was Jay-Z's ex. I also went as far as saying Jay-Z liked me better^* than [his girlfriend] Beyoncé. He's in love with me," she reveals. "Everything was made up."

Katrina's friends have pointed out that she'll never be able to take Jay-Z from Beyoncé. "I don't care. To me, I am Beyoncé. I am every man's dream. I'm accomplishing it by just looking in the mirror and saying, 'Jay-Z's going to be my man,'" she says. Katrina explains that when she heard a rumor that Jay-Z proposed to Beyoncé, she snapped and tore all his pictures up. "I want to see Beyoncé and Jay-Z one day in public and just go there and snatch her weave out."

That's just the opening, and it gets a lot more depressing from there—let's just say that it's never a good sign when you have to dissuade someone from their obsession by threatening them with a future spent inhaling the fumes from a sweat-and-urine soaked cell, a tactic that Dr. Phil has to resort to on the interview's last page. Yeesh.

Fatal Attraction? [drphil.com, via Nah Right]

RAP music inspired a musician to arm himself with an imitation gub[sic]and try to rob a petrol station, a court was told.

Richard Boyne's crimes saw him jailed for five years for terrifying a petrol station cashier. And in court last week it was claimed the 22-year-old from South Norwood was spurred on by his passion for rap - although the judge said he thought greed was the more likely motivation...

Laura Brickman, defending, said: "He is a talented rap artist and he was doing this for his rap music. He was motivated by his music."

Judge Timothy Stow QC told Boyne: "Whether it had anything to do with music, I don't know, but I am satisfied the object was to get money. It was greed. It is a pity that a man of your talent should resort to crimes of a serious nature."

Yes, and it's a pity that the newspaper decided to use an already flimsy story as an excuse to mount this insultingly simplistic reader poll. We're sure the email responses so far have made for a measured, intelligent debate.

Gun raid was inspired by love of rap music [icCroydon.com]

Behold, the line-up for "OrangeDrop 2007," a California radio station's New Year's Eve concert. Yes, it's ringing in 2007—we were confused for a second, too, until we saw that the show had its own MySpace profile.

Welcome To The OCNYE ~ OrangeDrop 2007 [ocnye.com]

We were all set to blather on about the Grammys, and how their nominations are a confused jumble of the worst tendencies of big-company music in 2006 and how we're sort of dreading the ceremony, which will be full of same-ol-same performances and built-to-promote appearances, but then two things happened: first, Bob Lefsetz beat us to it, and second, our trains of thought were stopped dead cold by the "Grammy Awards artwork," which is by an artist named Todd White. We've been staring at the piano-playing hands for a good 10, 15 minutes now, and we still can't figure out where they came from, and whether or not the positions of their fingers are possible by anyone who isn't quintuple-jointed.

[Photo: Getty Images]

Of the oodles of vintage music videos on YouTube, why pick this one? Just watch it until the 1:42 mark:

Holy moly! Who convinced Weller that getting all shirtless and huggy with his bandmates was a good idea? We don't mean this as a judgement call—we're just impressed that someone as famous as Weller would have no qualms about making such a homoerotic pop video in the mid-'80s.

Style Council - Long Hot Summer [YouTube]

"I saw him walking out to his pickup truck and the bulges in his leather jacket. I said, 'Hey what have you got there,'" Clifton Lovell said.

He said Conatser, 29, replied, "Nothing."

Lovell pointed toward the unnatural shapes in Conatser's jacket and pants and said, "You've got something."

Conatser then removed a solid body electric guitar from his pants leg and from underneath his jacket.

Unfortunately, no details about the guitar appear in the AP report, so we're left to wonder if it was a Flying V, which would probably allow for greater flexibility in movement. Or perhaps our would-be robber was trying to make off with the Jenna Jameson axe?

Man tries to hide guitar in pants [AP via freep.com]

Anyway, sitting there, enjoying the music and from above comes flying on a diagnol this big black thing. I only saw it for a split second and it was dark so I didn't see what it was. It hit my knee, then the back of the chair in front of me, finally landing under that chair. I quickly stood up and looked around thinking I'd see...something. But I didn't. No snickering teens and no upset Bethy. I felt my lap, bone dry, so it wasn't a large cup with beer. But what was it. Throughout the rest of the set I looked up and around. Myself and people around me were speculating exactly what it was and where it came from. Finally, after the Raconteurs' set, the lights came on. I reached down under the chair in front of me, and pulled up (to my and everyone around me's surprise) an IBM Thinkpad. What?!? Did it come from one of the light or sound techinicians in the rafters. Maybe someone kicked it from there. That was really all I thought it could be. If someone threw it, people around them would have seen it happen.

As it turns out, the owner of the laptop wasn't the person who threw it—the laptop was stolen before it was flung, so the strikee is still hoping that whoever threw it is "tortured by hanging upside down, with their eyelids clamped open, forced to watch hundreds of hours of men's competitve ice dancing, while listening to recordings of bad country music, played backwards." What, no Self-Portrait listening session?

Tales of the flying laptop at Dylan Concert, Philly, 11/18/06 [allalongthewatchtower.dk, via Philebrity]

From Billboard. Yeah, we're thinking it's about time to call it an evening.

Linkin Park Inspired By Prog Rock On New Album [Billboard]
Earlier: The Ugliest Album Cover Of The Year: We May Have A Winner

After the jump, the cover that made the female half of the Idolator team squirm just a little bit.

It's the cover for the debut album by America's Got Talent winner Bianca Ryan. The 12-year-old has a precocious voice, but the placement of her hands in this picture is making us more than a little uneasy. Add that to the R. Kelly cover —sure, it's of "I Believe I Can Fly," but come on—and we can't help but think that Talent airer NBC is setting the stage for a very special episode of "To Catch A Predator."

Bianca Ryan [Amazon]
Earlier: The Ugliest Album Cover Of The Year: We May Have A Winner

The cover—and the band responsible for greenlighting it—are after the jump. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Behold, the Ethan Van Sciver-drawn cover for Winger IV, the 13-years-later follow-up to Winger's third album, Pull. The press release contextualizes it for us: "The album art depicts our Militaries finest protecting with guardian angels that are representative of our prayers we send." And that mini-Amerigasm isn't the release's most unnerving part—no, that comes when Winger bassist/namesake Kip Winger claims that his band's new direction "may resemble Genesis, Mott the Hoople, or King Crimson." Just what the world needed: a 14-minute, noodled-out remake of "Seventeen."

Winger Update! [I Love Music]

Circus Leaves Town: Bob Dylan-Twyla Tharp Musical The Times They Are A Changin' to Close [Playbill]