New Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens!!

For those of you not already drooling over the "Dark Was the Night" compilation here are two excellent reasons to start doing so: "Lenin" by the Arcade Fire and "You are the Blood" by Buck 65 (remixed by Sufjan Stevens).

The Arcade Fire track is classic Arcade Fire and while very good in its own right, it is easily overshadowed by the epic "holy-fucked-ness" of "You are the Blood." Listen to that sucker, Sufjan really let loose his inner editor on this one and the results are beyond epic.

Ticketmaster fucks everyone over (again)

How's this for the latest chapter in Ticketmaster's horrible, shameful legacy (via the ever-lovely AV club):

A bunch of Bruce Springsteen fans tried to buy tickets for an upcoming show at the Meadowlands through the Ticketmaster website. They were taken to a screen that claimed that tickets weren’t available from Ticketmaster, but could be purchased for many times their face value from TicketsNow, a ticket resell outfit currently owned by Ticketmaster. In response to fan outrage, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey is lobbying for the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department to look into a possible conflict of interest. For its part, the company said through a spokesman that only a few fans reported problems.

Whether this is a mistake or not (my money's on not) it's just gross of Ticketmaster to contemplate ripping off their customers to such a horrific degree. Having worked for a Ticketmaster outlet in the past I can say with absolute certainty that the company is about as blatantly unethical as you can get (old news, I know) and I'm surprised that both the US people and US government have failed to rise up and depose it at some point in the past.

Maybe this will finally push things in that direction...