The James Logan Courier

By Greg Kot
Chicago Tribune (MCT)

Veteran singer-songwriter Jill Sobule got fed up with business as usual three years ago, and on a new song she pinpoints the moment.

"I'm here at a meeting," she sings in a voice perched between exasperation and resignation. "Trying to impress someone at a dying record company."

She describes the jaded talent scout, the air of condescension thick in the room, the sense of creeping frustration. Then comes the I'm-not-gonna-take-it-anymore payoff line: "I got nothing to prove!"

Sobule did more than just write a song about her dissatisfaction, however. She did something about it.

By Trenton Daniel
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

MIAMI — Chatting on late-night shows. Beaming bilingual messages via satellite. Even lingering in your inbox. If the new president is anything, he's this: digital and ubiquitous.

In a sign of the Internet age, President Barack Obama has employed a range of social networking and online devices from Facebook to the White House Web site to reach out to constituents — the latest and most direct example being an unprecedented online town hall Thursday and an address delivered via satellite through the Spanish-languague Univision network.

By Cait Baca, Courier Staff Writer

As a fan of Hip-Hop/Rap, I decided to expand my tastes in music by listening to what's considered a hard-core Rock & Roll group, AC/DC.

I listened to their "Let There Be Blood" (AC/DC) Live Album to fulfill my curiousity. And let me tell you, my attention was instantly captured the second I pushed play. For all of you Hip-Hop/Rap fans, this kind of music definitely contrasts with what we are used to listening. In Hip-Hop, we hear a lot of "boom-boom-claps" and hard-hitting snares. Although AC/DC
is different, there are various similarities that would put a Hip-Hopper's yearning for Hip-Hop beats at ease.

From wikipedia:
Alfred Edward Housman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900. Their wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, in spare language and distinctive imagery, appealed strongly to late Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian taste, and to many early twentieth century English composers (beginning with Arthur Somervell) both before and after the First World War. Through its song-setting the poetry became closely associated with that era, and with Shropshire itself.

Read A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, free from Bartleby.com.