October 2, 2007

Tuesday’s a Bruising Music News Day

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Common

  • Artists expressing solidarity with the so-called “Jena 6” include Common (above), Mos Def, MC Lyte, Talib Kweli and Pharoahe Monch. The rappers joined the call for a classroom walk-out yesterday in support of the six black students charged with second-degree murder after a fight stemming from a racial conflict at Jena High School in Louisiana. See Mother Jones‘ coverage of, well, having mixed feelings over the whole Jena thing here.

  • Radiohead‘s Web site slows to a crawl after fans start pre-orders of the band’s new album, In Rainbows. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood wrote a kind-of apology on the site, saying it was “busier than they expected,” I guess referring to the rest of the band, but not himself, is he pulling an “I-told-you-so” here? Incidentally, the Billboard story refers to the magazine’s “Buzz” chart that measures, er, blog popularity. I didn’t know they had a chart for that. More “High School Musical” posts coming right up.

  • The Police were honored with the Order of Arts and Letters at a ceremony in Paris on Monday. French Culture Minister Christine Albanel presented the high honor to the band, saying she expressed “France’s full admiration and recognition.” Sting, replying in French, said “we are very happy to be among your knights.” That’s right, he replied in French. Gotta love that guy.

  • Ugh. In the saddest development yet in a pretty sad story, Britney Spears has lost custody of her kids in a hearing Monday. Kevin Federline will take care of Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, “until further order of the court.” Is this even music-related in any way?

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    It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

    The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

    Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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