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by Tim Quirk

As a founding member of both The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite and a producer responsible for records by The Libertines and Babyshambles, Mick Jones has had an illustrious and consistently relevant career that has spanned the course of three decades. Jones talks about these phases and stages in this Rhap Session.

By Tim Quirk

The hits keep on coming. Another round of "Drunk Dialing" from SXSW. In this episode: Eli from Throw Me the Statue on his most memorable drunk dialing disaster.

By Tim Quirk

Another installment of "Drunk Dialing" from SXSW, wherein your favorite musicians talk about their most memorable moments of regrettable telecommunication. In this episode, Tim Quirk talks to the legendary Gang of Four bassist, Dave Allen.

By Tim Quirk

Another installment of our "Drunk Dialing" series. Here's British Sea Power, talking to Tim Quirk at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas, about their most memorable (or barely remembered) drunk dialing experience.

By Tim Quirk

Every night at South By Southwest is a night to remember that you will likely forget. When the bands, industry insiders and journalists descend on Austin, Texas, the beer flows like wine. And who among us has not found ourselves in the precarious position of possessing liquid courage in one hand and a telephone in the other? We are all guilty of drunk dialing, my friends. Let ye without a call history cast the first stone.

With that in mind, our intrepid reporter Tim Quirk, embedded with the bands at this year's SXSW, will be asking some of your favorite musicians about their most (un)forgettable drunk dialing trespasses. In our first installment: David Gedge of the Wedding Present and Cinerama.

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By Tim Quirk

There’s little I enjoy more than talking about music. Well, maybe drinking and talking about music. What could be better than that? How about drinking and talking about music in Rio De Janeiro? And what if the people you’re talking and sharing caipirinhas with, as you gaze down at Copacabana Beach while the giant statue of Cristo Redentor gazes down at you, are a group of gifted musicians from six continents?

By Tim Quirk

When I was a teenager, Rolling Stone ran a semi-notorious cover featuring a bare-chested Jim Morrison (did that guy ever wear a shirt?) with a caption that read, “He’s Hot, He’s Sexy and He’s Dead.” The Doors still seem to do pretty good business in T-shirts and dorm room posters. As do other admirable, sexy and dead rockers such as John Lennon, Bob Marley and Kurt Cobain. So how come vendors on random street corners don’t carry an equally impressive selection of Joe Strummer T-shirts?

By Tim Quirk

But I’m also deeply suspicious of any effort to make people feel bad about the music they like, and doubly so when such efforts cloak themselves in faux-populist clothing (hipsters declaring that the really cool kids don’t like hipster music is a lot like the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy family who currently runs our country dismissing his opponent in the 2004 election as elite and out of touch with middle America). And since I’m in New York right now for the CMJ Music Marathon, which is pretty much a non-stop celebration of semi-popular indie rock, this stuff can’t help but percolate in my beer-soaked noggin (relevant aside: at the last indie-rock-tastic festival I attended in Austin, some guy behind me in the bar line at a Ponys show ridiculed me for buying a $4 Tecate instead of a $3 Pabst Blue Ribbon; I try my best to love my fellow human beings, but sometimes they make it very, very difficult).

Song: (For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People
Album: The Ultimate Chi-Lites
Artist: The Chi-Lites
Selected by: Tim Quirk
Date: October 4, 2007

Though most of their hits feature sweetly crooned reminiscences of lovers past, the Chi-Lites (from Chi-cago) also did well with this funk-inflected protest tune. The vocal interplay is as inspiring as the chugging groove: the group passes lines back and forth, jumping from authoritative bass through pleading soprano (and sometimes employing all of ‘em at once). The music makes you want to dance in the street, while the lyrics suggest a riot might be more in order.

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By Tim Quirk

OK, so Chris Brown jumping from table to table was the musical high point of this year’s VMAs. I wasn’t in the Pearl Theater itself, but friends who were insist that watching Chris and co. fly through the air was actually more impressive in the room than it looked on TV – even cooler, apparently the production lady who talked to everyone during commercials was saying stuff like, “All drinks off the tables!” and “Don’t stand up, or you will be decapitated!” just before Chris Brown blew everybody’s mind and washed the sad aftertaste of Britney thrusting her hips while surrounded by good dancers out of the nation’s collective, gaped mouth.

But my own personal high point came courtesy of Kid Rock. I have no idea if what he said was merely bleeped, or edited out of the broadcast entirely, but it was one of those priceless moments of honesty bursting through posturing that pop music specializes in.

By Tim Quirk

If you look closely at this picture, you will see that even the poor guy who has to dress up as the Moon Man in 100+ degree heat walks around drinking cocktails by the pool at the Palms. That’s a margarita glass in his left hand, though how he gets the liquid through the reflective surface of his space visor is beyond me. 

Moon Man manqué joined plenty of other people at the Palms’ pool in not-quite-rocking out to Peter, Bjorn and John this afternoon. The band did their damndest to engage the crowd: singer/guitarist Peter Moren even tried climbing up the lighting rig as though he were a deranged punker who might be willing to leap to his death at one point. Unfortunately, he did this during their whistle-tastic hit, “Young Folks,” which is eminently hummable, but not exactly the type of thing that makes you want to cut your chest open with a broken bottle.

By Tim Quirk

There’s no lack of things to do in Vegas during the VMAs. Hell, there’s a multiplex in the Palms (don’t believe the glowing reviews of 3:10 to Yuma; it’s like that Jon Lovitz “Acting!” character from SNL starring in a Pierce Brosnan-era James Bond flick, only with cowboy hats – but if you have to see it, see it in the multiplex at the Palms, where the ludicrousness of the film is at least mitigated by the total over-the-topness of everything going on outside the safe, dark, silly theater).

Things going on outside that theater include happening parties you need special wristbands or revealing dresses to get in to. Since I always travel with both, I was one of the lucky hundreds who got to enjoy the open bar at Rain while we waited for Eve to come out and show us her paw print tattoos and sing us her “new single featuring Sean Paul” even though Sean Paul wasn’t there. 

By Tim Quirk

That’s what a bunch of friends and random strangers have been asking me lately. So I figured I should explain.

As you maybe already knew, or have probably figured out by now, Rhapsody recently partnered with MTV Networks, and this year’s Video Music Awards are something like the coming out party for our new venture – we’ll be advertising Rhapsody on a scale we’ve never attempted before, starting this weekend (I’m actually typing this in Vegas, at the Palms, where the event will be taking place on Sunday, and where you can’t walk two feet without bumping into some VMA ad – both the key to my room and the Do Not Disturb sign have this year’s VMA logo emblazoned on them, as do the blackjack tables in the casino. But hey – Vegas is not about being subtle).

By Tim Quirk

Champagne corks are popping here at Rhapsody, as we’ve just announced our nuptials with the equally-obsessive music geeks at MTV Networks. Like Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, it’s a love match that also makes good business sense.

For our immediate purposes on this blog, it means three things: V, M and A. Our buddies at MTV will be bringing you all kinds of inside dirt on the run-up to the ceremony, while Rhapsody editors will be providing commentary on and music from this year’s nominees, past performers, and anyone else they make us think about. As always with Rhapsody, all you have to do is click on a track name to start hearing the songs we’re talking about, in full, for free.

Song: Needles in the Camel's Eye
Album: Here Come the Warm Jets 
Artist:  Brian Eno 
Selected by: Tim Quirk
Date: August 21, 2007

A perfect, if slightly odd, pop song that charges at you with an indelible melody and a mess of instruments that all sound like something other than what they are. Except the drums, which pretty much sound like drums. If you listen to it 10 times in a row, the “Why ask why?!” bit will get stuck in your head and you’ll find yourself invoking its advice at opportune moments in your life.

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