January 23, 2009

Video: Arcade Fire Cover “Born in the USA” at Obama Staff Ball

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After hearing about all the trouble people had even getting onto the Mall for Obama’s speech on Tuesday, I was starting to feel a little better about watching the whole thing from my comfy couch, instead of, you know, going back in time two years and quitting my job and volunteering for the campaign so that I could have been a part of the festivities. But then I found out about this: playing the Obama Staff Ball on Tuesday night was Arcade Fire, the Montreal combo whose raw, ecstatic 2005 Coachella performance brought me to actual tears. Like Obama getting inaugurated wasn’t enough to start up the waterworks, ballgoers were treated to the Fire doing a mandolin-led cover of Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” which you can watch above thanks to Stereogum, but only if you have some Kleenex nearby. If you’re still wondering what the heck I’m talking about with all this Arcade Fire blah-dee-blah, watch a clip of that Coachella performance after the jump. Sniff, I just have something in my eye…

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

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.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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