The countdown is truly winding down now - less than 4 hours to go (Eastern time) until the midnight premiere of Film No. 5, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And less than 2 hours to go until my wife and son get in line! (Not me, alas. If...
"It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself." -Johann Sebastian Bach The bust at left resides in the onsite S&V soundroom (we've got an offsite facility...
Make that Dave Matthews and fellow guitarist Tim Reynolds. Way back in 1999, they released Live at Luther College. Now, 8 years later, they're Live at Radio City. Make that, of course, Radio City Music Hall. RCA announced on Wednesday that...
Yearn to unleash your inner Liberace? Jimmy Crystal can help. (I'm not sure if that's just the name of the company or the name of an actual guy. Billy's brother, perhaps?) He can encrust pretty much anything in crystals, it seems, and some of...
Recently, I did something that I hadn’t done in a long time: flipped the side. The record was King Crimson’s Red, a 1974 gem that rejoined my collection last May when an old college roommate unloaded a bunch of vinyl on me (not surprisingly, several...
I'm not kidding. Not to be outdone by Warner's recent launch of MVI, Disney announced yesterday that, on August 7, the self-titled Hollywood Records album by those pop-punk kids at left, the Jonas Brothers, will be the first release to appear on...
Okay, I'm not trying to make fun of the deadly incident itself . . . But c'mon, folks, hasn't anyone noticed the eerie similarity between the steam-pipe blast in New York yesterday - alias "Midtown Volcano!" (NY Post) or, more...
Saw a killer Crowded House show last night in an intimate setting of about 300 people. It was one of those "secret show" deals that are never really all that secret - Paul McCartney did some of these recently himself in L.A. and NYC - but they're...
If you follow S&V with any regularity, you know that I'm a HUGE fan of satellite radio. So I was quite pleased to see yesterday's reports of the possibility of a la carte pricing plans for Sirius and XM in hopes of pushing the proposed merger...
After the 1973 original LP and the 2003 surround SACD, now comes the, um, hard-rock version of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. Just kidding! The hard rock here is actually a 3x10-foot section of a brick wall from a 175-year-old...
That would be Mike Bloomberg (at left in photo), a.k.a. Michael R. Bloomberg, a.k.a. The Mayor of New York City. And the TV is indeed the world's largest 1080p plasma set, a.k.a. the professional model TH-103PF9UK - which can be yours, too, for...
Twin bands of different eras? I just couldn't resist putting them together in the same barrelful . . . From the Monkees, we have double-disc reissues of two 1967 albums, Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (both Rhino)....
That's right, you read it here first: The next installment in Rhino's boxed-set series of the complete Genesis studio recordings has been scheduled for October 23, according to a label spokesperson. That date "could move," however. As...
Yes, at long last, The Simpsons Movie opens tomorrow. And as one of its writer/producers, Al Jean, says in the July 27 issue of Entertainment Weekly: "As an event, I think it'll be somewhere between Sgt. Pepper's the album and Sgt. Pepper's...
Good news, bad news . . . It's a safe bet that you've heard about this in general already, since the story broke on Friday. (That's what I get for taking the day off! See complete press release below.) But the big news is that Led Zeppelin's...