Yeah, Prince's guitar playing was outstanding. Still, I was expecting more funk to be brought, and he did not bring it.

I agree. Not much funk, but a not-so-subtle reminder that the man is a national treasure, anyway.

Yeah, the dude can play. I was really enjoying the riffs he was playing during the Best of You section. The Symbol guitar sounded like a string got knocked a little out of tune before it got handed to him, though. They even took it down in the main mix towards the end, though he was still blazing away.

[link]

Susie J. Horgan strolled into a Hagen-Dazs shop in Washington D.C. in 1980 and asked for a job.

A few days later she came to work with her new 35mm Konica and started shooting pictures of her smiling boss and his shy best friend.

Her boss at Hagen-Dazs? Future punk-rock legend and Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins, then 19. Also working at the shop was 18-year-old Ian MacKaye, who would play bass for Minor Threat and co-found Fugazi and, later, Dischord Records.

Awesome slide show with that article!

Oh, he would have been an adorable baby! (Okay, teenager.)

Susie J. Horgan strolled into a Hagen-Dazs shop in Washington D.C. in 1980 and asked for a job.

Ah yes, the famous punk rock ice cream store. My friend Ivor Hanson (drummer in Faith and Embrace) worked there as well.

Ivor was in SOA with Henry, and Embrace with Ian.

Huh. Also, huh:

IPod Will Be the New CD

I'm kinda' skeptical it will be as revolutionary as the article says, but who knows?

Big changes are afoot for the iPod in the wake of the Beatles settlement -- the iPod is about to become the new CD.

On Monday, Apple Inc. and the Beatles' Apple Corps announced that a 15-year legal spat over the "Apple" trademark had been settled in Steve Jobs' favor.

But the biggest news wasn't mentioned at all in the joint press release: The new contract clears the way for Jobs to sell iPods loaded with music.

Who cares?

Well, the iPod could become the new CD, especially if Apple starts offering cheap shuffle iPods pre-loaded with hot new albums or artists' catalogs. Imagine a whole range of inexpensive, special-edition iPods branded with popular bands containing a new album, or their whole catalogs.

Flash-memory drives are now so cheap, software companies are starting to use them to ship software. H&R Block, for example, is selling the latest version of its tax-preparation software on a flash drive for $40 -- the same price as the CD version. How much would it cost Apple to add a few music chips and some cheap earbuds?

Apple was prevented from doing this until now by the 15-year-old contract between Apple Corps, the Beatles' music company, and Apple Computer. This contract precluded Jobs' Apple from acting as a music company and from selling CDs or "physical media delivering prerecorded content ... (such as a compact disc of the Rolling Stones' music)."

Apple has been selling music as downloads for years, of course, but thanks to this clause, the company couldn't sell an iPod with music already loaded onto it.

That's why the U2 special-edition iPod ships with a voucher for downloading the band's catalog online. The Beatles contract prevents Apple from pre-loading the U2 iPod with U2's music.

That is undoubtedly going to change. Apple will soon offer a range of iPods pre-loaded with tunes.

First up will likely be the widely rumored Beatles special-edition Yellow Submarine iPod, tipped to be released in just over a week on Valentine's Day.

Beatles fans are hoping that the Fab Four's entire catalog, currently being remastered, will be available in uncompressed format. What better way to deliver it than preloaded onto an iPod, instead of forcing fans to download gigabytes of data from iTunes?

Apple will also start loading sample tunes onto all new iPods, just like Microsoft's Zune currently does. This will be extra cash for Apple, and possibly quite lucrative -- the labels will pay to play. Getting a band's new single loaded onto a hot-selling iPod could prove so desirable that a new type of payola is born.

Then there will be all kinds of new limited-edition iPods, branded by artist, band or genre. Boxed sets are a natural: the Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers iPod, the Motown iPod, the British Invasion iPod.

But most exciting, there may be a whole range of dirt-cheap iPod shuffles branded by artist, containing their new albums or portions of their catalogs. The biggest risk for Apple is excess inventory. What if the new Kevin Federline special edition bombs? But that's easily solved: Make the skin a peel-off and overdub leftovers when the next hot band comes along.

a new type of payola is born.

It\'s not payola if it\'s disclosed.

But...then that would be the only music you could put on it, right, or, at least, you couldn't rip it to your computer within the iTunes framework? That seems like something that people would not so much get behind.