Following the headline news that Fidel Castro has announced his resignation as president of Cuba and commander in chief of Cuba’s military, it’s time for a roundup: The Miami Herald comments on “Cuba’s first real change in power since 1959“; the Guardian reminds readers that, “[w]ith the exception of monarchs, his resignation will bring to an end the world’s longest reign in power“; the Washington Post takes a look at Castro’s five decades in power through a slideshow of photographs; National Review warns that “The Regime Remains“; and Granma, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, reprints in full the “Message from the Commander in Chief.”

Will technophobes have the last laugh? In December, the New York Times posted this piece: “In the DVD War Over High Definition, Most Buyers Are Sitting It Out.” Consumers have plenty of reasons to be skeptical. Locked in a battle to avoid becoming the next New Coke, “Sony’s Blu-ray technology is emerging as the likely winner in the format battle for the next generation of DVD players after Toshiba appeared ready to ditch its HD DVD business.” (AP) And it’s never a good sign when the industry bellwether drops your product: “HD DVD … died Friday after a brief illness. The cause of death was determined to be the decision by Wal-Mart to stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format.” (NYT) Hold those Laserdiscs tight.

On Thursday, the Pentagon said “it will try to shoot down a dying, bus-sized U.S. spy satellite loaded with toxic fuel on a collision course with the Earth. … The military hopes to smash the satellite as soon as next week — just before it enters Earth’s atmosphere — with a single missile fired from a Navy cruiser in the northern Pacific Ocean.” A follow-up piece from Reuters today stated that the US has “pledged on Friday to compensate countries if debris lands on their territory.” Meanwhile, the findings in a recent New York Times piece present a viable option for embarrassed Pentagon officials to relocate: “Smaller Version of the Solar System Is Discovered.”

Explaining what go-go is in a short blog post is difficult. The easy route will help with the basics. You could try to dime why a regional music with so much appeal on paper holds such little weight outside DC. Historical texts are fairly easy to come across: The evolution has been mapped out (quite brilliantly here by Jeff Chang). But the fact that it’s still thriving in our nation’s capital without ever having huge breakout successes with a few exceptions (Slim Charles, I see you) is the head-scratcher to most folks. For a brief second or two, it looked like things were happening. Cats had Chris Blackwell money behind them.

Our selection today has a production credit from the Slaytanic Messiah himself, Rick Rubin. But perhaps its viability outside our beloved District is a non-issue. It’s thrived this long without serious play from concepts like “retail buy-ins” and “national radio partners,” so maybe brain-teasing on the widespread appeal isn’t the issue. Maybe it’s just incredible that a regional music has stayed distinct and virtually intact in its original form. Anyway, this is the first of a series of posts about go-go. This is a more well-known joint, but incredibly dope nonetheless. The Junkyard Band’s 1986 single The Word usually gets overshadowed by the epically funky Sardines, but the low-end thump on this track keeps hindparts in constant rotation every time I hear it played out.

Audio – The Junkyard Band – The Word

Post by Ben Fasman

Boston to Mike Huckabee: Step off.

In case you missed it: This past weekend, the NY Times Sunday edition featured articles about two of America’s most-cherished literary rivals: Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Charles McGrath, in the Arts & Leisure section, wrote about a recently discovered (and since unpublished) letter written by Hemingway about his time at the Hotel Florida in Madrid covering the Spanish Civil War, an experience that inspired his second play, The Fifth Column. The off-Broadway Mint Theatre Company in Manhattan is set to present an adaptation of the play (which was written in 1937) beginning on February 26th. Meanwhile, author Paul Greenberg, a member of the Writer’s Guild of America, East, in the back-page essay of the Book Review section, summed up the settlement made between the Writer’s Guild and the big studios, using F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last serial story-cycle character, Pat Hobby (“a scenarist from the old silent days, [who] tries to survive the new rules of the talkie era”) to illustrate the fear factor of future Hollywood story development.

Dutch director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Total Recall, Black Book), who spoke about everything from his love of Dallas to his quest to complete a book about the real life of Jesus Christ in an extensive interview with STOP SMILING (an excerpt of the talk is available here) is now the focus of a series of YouTube interviews.

View Part 1 (of 5) Interviews with Verhoeven Here:

A few stories this week have opened up new points of debate about some historical conundrums. According to Reuters, “Italian scientists say they have proved Napoleon was not poisoned, scotching the legend the French emperor was murdered by his British jailors.” The Independent reports on “Hitler’s lost fleet” of U-boats, which have been found in the Black Sea. And the Prime Minister of Australia “apologized on Wednesday for the historic mistreatment of Aborigines, moving many Aborigines to tears and prompting cheers from huge crowds gathered in cities across the nation.”

This is my first submission for what I hope are many more metal-related contributions to this blog. I’m sure many of you can relate to music obsession. Metal has always been mine. About eight years ago, I decided to go all the way back to the mid-Sixties and really trace the evolution that led me to the bands I loved when I was 12: Slayer, Megadeth, Napalm Death, even LA Guns, Kix, etc. I never had a filter for metal. I love it all, cheesy or not. Sweden has always done metal incredibly well. They took the British lineage (Lizzy, Priest, Sabbath, etc.) and added a touch of majesty, frost and a heady dose of classical influence. The new wave of British Heavy Metal became a global phenomenon, to varying degrees. Without further ado, I give you an old Europe song. To think this is the same band that would later write “The Final Countdown” … wow. But hey, many bands embraced various forms of commercial accessibility. Europe basically mirrored Def Leppard’s evolution. This track is from their first album, and it’s a gem: twin leads, ferocious drive, awesome vocals. And they were 17!

Audio – Europe – Farewell

Post by Laurent Lebec of Pelican

We were deeply saddened to hear that Tony Silver passed away in Los Angeles recently. Silver directed and co-produced Style Wars, arguably the best and most important movie about hip-hop and graffiti ever made. Originally produced for PBS in 1983, the film went on to win the Grand Prize for Documentaries at Sundance in 1984, along with numerous other awards and accolades. For that film alone, Silver’s contributions to hip-hop culture are immeasurable. He also worked extensively on titles, trailers and special effects for TV and film, as well as directing his own documentaries and shorts. Silver had been fighting a degenerative brain disease for a couple of years. He will be missed by his family, friends and countless people who are still inspired by his work.