According to this story:

International hip-hop star Xzibit urged artists on Wednesday to try harder to communicate through their music, saying they should stop glorifying violence and get back to being the voice of rebellion and protest.

Umm, is this the same Xzibit that performs the song “Choke Me, Spank Me (Pull My Hair)” on his last album? Yes, that song is as “good” as you’d guess from the title. Though who knows, maybe there is some real reform in his future work.

Reuters reports that a briefcase with lyrics for songs intended for use on the U2 album “October”, stolen in 1981, has been returned to Bono.

I’ve been wanting a hard drive based MP3 player for a while now. I own about 20GB of music, so a 512MB flash player doesn’t cut it anymore. So I broke down and got a 40GB iPod. All I can say is that in less than a day, it has surpassed my expectations. I have used at least 3 different portable mp3 players in my life, and the iPod is better than all of them just by virtue of its user interface. I’d read all the articles saying that’s really what sells it, but I had no idea. I mean, the click-wheel is essentially a touch pad for scrolling! I’d done my research and didn’t even know that. And it works great!

So far this morning I’ve been listening to recent podcasts from Radio Brendoman and Engadget. I’m even hatching a plan to order a RadioShark so I can record some NPR shows.

And beyond that, I had a stunning realization about the benefit of having all your music with you. I was telling my girlfriend last night that it means, never being with someone and telling them “Oh, I gotta play that song for your sometime”. Unless of course the battery is dead.

So, welcome me to 2002.

Came across epitonic.com thanks to slashdot user justkarl. Lots of free and legal mp3s for download. Most suck, but with that catalog some are not bad.

First asian album released using a creative commons license. It’s a Chinese language gospel album.

I’m not a big jazz fan, but just read an interview with the founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, George Wein. This guy has definitely been around, and I really appreciated some of what he had to say about the direction of the music industry.

“I am very unhappy in what is happening, in not just jazz, but in show business in general because the only thing people are interested in is celebrity nowadays. That’s the only thing that really sells tickets,” said Wein.

“The concept of creating a great cultural event — it doesn’t have the meaning it had before. This is a world of celebrity. You put one name on there that has what you call celebrity and it sells more tickets in one hour than you can sell in 6 months to a great festival,” said Wein.

“I worry about that because there’s not that much celebrity involved in jazz at the moment. It’s just great music.”