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With the Oscars only two weeks away, Hollywood’s pulse is quickening. The NY Times has a very nice special section of the Oscars present and past here. Profiles of Daniel Day Lewis, Julianne Moore, Peter O’Toole, and features on digital animation, the tradition of Oscar campaigning are all fascinating; but …

I have railed against musicians and celebrities being given undue access to the media to vent their opinions on politics and whatever just because they are celebrities. The most effective channel for artists to convey their perspectives is through their art. Jon Pareles tracks the anti-war movement in song: There …

My dad loves Tom Lehrer and played his records often when I was a kid. That old-fashioned patrician Northeastern accent is indelibly imprinted in my brain singing such pointed satiric fare as “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “Polution” and “We’ll All Go Together When We Go.” I was mildly surprised …

Profound essay on the nature of the Internet from Blogcritics Doc Searls and David Weinberger, with ramifications for those who seek to control it, especially the media industries we follow here on Blogcritics. Every government figure from the judiciary to Congress to regulatory bureaucrats, as well as every media executive, …

We are very excited to introduce Blogcritics Radio. We have a super cool new streaming audio player provided by Andromeda, and we are going to feature one outstanding indie artist at a time for an entire week. Just click here to bring up the player, then click on the green …

Neo-payola has been getting a lot of attention of late: it’s a factor in FCC media ownership considerations, new anti-payola legislation, and it’s particularly rife in the Latin music biz. Cliff Doerksen has written an interesting history of payola for the Washington City Paper: the truth is that payola isn’t …

Another look at Minus 5's Down With Wilco.

About the last thing musicians want to worry about in the first flush of creative ecstasy when a new group is formed is a bunch of legalistic and contractual crap. Unfortunately, these should be among the very first issues considered and resolved. As we have all heard many times before: …

Chicago jazz trumpeter Ameen Muhammad died suddenly of a heart attack at 48. He is featured on the forthcoming Ernest Dawkin’s New Horizons Ensemble CD Cape Town Shuffle on Delmark Records, which ranges expertly far and wide across the musical roots of the African America: from South Side Chicago to …

This is an interesting idea and certainly something I would watch: Former President Bill Clinton and his opponent in the 1996 presidential election, Bob Dole, will debate national issues in a series of segments for the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes.” Clinton and Dole have agreed to tape 10 segments, which …