Help! I’m designing news pages! Supposedly InDesign becomes really easy to use once one is familiar with it. At the moment, however, I’m struggling mightily to remember shortcut keys and all the crap necessary to import photos. Whatever. I’m probably retarded and didn’t realize it until Monday. Mild autism, rather. Today I didn’t take a lunch break so I could leave earlier. The commute takes me 40 minutes each way. 127 is under construction. Jackson is a hell hole from what I’ve seen. Then again, so is Lansing/all of Mid-Michigan. Pretty sure I’m scheduled to work Saturday.

On the bright side, my co-workers are friendly and helpful. My boss is somehow remaining patient with me. Maybe things will get better.

Missing telling people what to do at TSN. Now I done get told.

Con: seeing a sign that proclaims Alpena to be the “#1 retirement community in the midwest.”

Pro: spending my birthday drinking beer at JJs and almost eating the ACC omelet at John Boy’s. (ACC stands for American cheese, cottage cheese, and chili!)

Con: smelling John Boy’s while eating a sloppy, scrumptious repast.

Pro: having some spare time to read.

Con: realizing that I basically read when I DON’T have spare time.

Pro: the news that Brett Favre retired. Looking better for the Lions…

Con: the excessive Favre-slurping that will pass for sports news during the next few days.

Pro: not being at TSN 24/7

Con: not being at TSN 24/7

Wicked Wednesday at the Bolton Bar… pro or con?

This movie has been eating my brain. 

Actually, there are no zombies involved, although P.T. Anderson, the genius behind “There Will Be Blood,” does refer to his latest film as a horror movie of sorts. And I would second that designation. If we weren’t experiencing what’s widely regarded as one of the best film cycles in history, I would be able to truthfully make a grand statement like this: A movie hasn’t stuck in my mind this much in ages. But it was only a handful of months ago that I caught “No Country for Old Men” in a Lansing megaplex. That film’s unforgivingly stark desert backdrop practically forced me to shield my eyes inside the theater. The now infamous villain, Anton Chigurh, haunted me with his nihilistic approach to serial killing. But “No Country” could never be as effective as a horror movie, for me at least, because I cannot relate to its antagonist on any level. I’ve never seen anyone with that haircut, which I wrongly associate with Disney’s “The Sword in the Stone” for some reason. I don’t have urges to commit mass murder all across the shitty-not-great state of Texas.

I guess it boils down to this: “No Country” makes a tremendously powerful statement about powerlessness. Do-gooder types along the lines of Tommy Lee Jones will continue to ride into town a little too late to save day. Demonic Javier Bardems escape to continue their reigns of terror because of dumb luck. It’s a rough, unfeeling world out there and the blinding brightness of the desert sun on a bone-bleached steer skull about sums it up. But that isn’t so much scary as it is depressing.

In the world of “There Will Be Blood,” people do have choices. Those choices end up affecting each character in an untold number of ways, eventually leading to an unexpected and uncomfortably engrossing finale.

Almost a biopic in the mold of “Citizen Kane” or “The Aviator” (two movies also about tragic, larger-than-life tycoons), “Blood’s” events unfold slowly over a period of 30 years. We see the humble beginnings of prospector Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) and his subsequent rise as a savvy oilman/con artist. He travels around California with his son, H.W., using the child’s innocent face to coax land leases from unwitting farmers and townspeople. His men arrive one day on a train, excavate, take their fill of oil, and move on.

A teenage boy pays Plainview a visit inside his makeshift office, telling him that a recent earthquake has jarred loose an abundance of oil on his father’s sheep ranch. Plainview pays the boy for the tip and moves in to strike a deal for the land. The film follows the difficulties involved in procuring said petroleum, clashes with the local religious community, Plainview’s evolving megalomania, a drastic turn in H.W.’s development, and epic personality struggles.

I want to say a lot more about this movie, but don’t want to spoil it. I’ll simply state that the title proves apt (and not at all in a gratuitous Rambo kind of way).

Even if there isn’t a legitimate Oscars ceremony this year, I’ll be satisfied with either “No Country” or “Blood” taking top honors. Considering that Zodiac, another uncompromising thriller that defies easy Hollywood tropes, also came out this year, we’ve seen a banner year.

I’d like to chalk that fact up to more than just dumb luck. Good choices, Coens. Good choices, P.T.

Forget what you know about Drive-By Truckers, even if all you know is their ill-conceived name. Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Remember their name.

I bought the band’s latest album, “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark.” Title sounds a little Modest Mousey, right? “It’s a Long Drive through the Lonesome, Crowded Moon with Bad News for Creation’s Dark.” But I popped it into my comp and heard a decided lack of Johnny Marr’s clean, ringing girlyman guitar stylings.

Instead, I was treated to 75 minutes of hit-or-miss Southern rock and country, pretty much what I’ve come to expect from this once-vaunted Muscle Shoals, Alabama outfit. Drive-By Truckers hail from a city rich in rock/soul/country recording history — such artists as Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers Band, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett laid down tracks in Muscle Shoals studios.

The Stonesified mid-tempo rocker “3 Dimes Down” gets points for making direct reference to a Bob Seger song, but people who aren’t from Michigan might be a little less lenient on that score. The Shonna Tucker songs are dispensable and frankly difficult to listen to even one time. Her cliche-ridden “Home Field Advantage” fairs slightly better than the clumsy “I’m Sorry Huston,” which may or may not be about her ex-husband Jason Isbell. For his sake, I hope it is not. Overall, a middling DBT performance that leaves me hankering for the good old days.

Time was that I could count on a DBT record being at least three-fourths great. Check out the virtually flawless mid-career trio of “Southern Rock Opera,” ”Decoration Day,” and “The Dirty South” for evidence.

2003′s “Decoration Day” is the undisputed masterpiece, released smack-dab in the middle of a tireless, 12-year touring trek. The album features a slew of spinworthy songs, most of which are about the most depressing subjects imaginable. For example, the lead-off track broaches the oft-neglected subject of, well, consensual incest. WAIT, WHAT?!? Don’t worry, it’s not condoned, nor is that topic exactly representative of the album as a whole.  

This isn’t ”Second Helping” that we’re talking about here. No “Sweet Home Alabamy’s” to be found. Don’t listen to this album if you’re planning on moving down to Dixie. But if you want a nuanced character study of the American South as it is today — blemishes and all – pick up this long player. 

Some of my favorite rock lyrics of all time appear on this album. In “Marry Me,” the songwriter neatly summarizes his origins:

“Well, my daddy didn’t pull out, but he never apologized,
Rock and Roll means well, but it can’t help tellin’ young boys lies.”

That comes courtesy of “The Stroker Ace” Mike Cooley, a man whose sweet nickname is only surpassed by his voice, a dead-ringer for Randy Travis (not a bad thing!)

(Above: Do you want to know why they call him “The Stroker Ace?” No? It’s probably better that way.)

But the bulk of the DBT catalog was penned by Patterson Hood, a man whose Klan member-like real name is surpassed only by his woefully bad vocals. But don’t hold those things against him – gentleman can write a tune. Hood turns in such winners as “My Sweet Annette” — a song that came free with my Compaq Presario back in the day. Thank you, pre-installed MusicMatch Jukebox! Anyway, the song is about leaving some broad standing at the altar while making off with the cute bridesmaid. So I dub it a hit.

The band’s now-departed third songwriter [He's not dead, just left to do solo work -- ed.] , Jason Isbell, manages to outdo Cooley and Hood by offering up a sure-fire classic in the title track. “Decoration Day” offers a complex tale of love and loyalty gone wrong in the rural South. A blood feud plays out over a series of generations with neither family remembering “how the whole thing got started.” By song’s end it’s no longer clear who the protagonist resents more — the rival Hill family or his own father, the man who instilled that sense of unquestioned vendetta.

The only thing that might keep ”Decoration Day” out of the classic Southern rock hall of fame (aside from its exceedingly thoughtful subject matter) is its absence of awesome artwork. Not that anyone could ever hope to trump “Street Survivors” … that combo of fatal irony and cut-off denim short shorts just can’t be touched.

Pay no attention to the previous post, which I wrote last March. It says something about John McCain being old and senile… true, but now he’s the GOP frontrunner. (Frontwalker, frontshuffler.)

And my new posts are going to be mostly about music and politics, like before. Yeah! All right!

Hey Maverick, you ain’t that dangerous.

It’s been a while since John McCain’s lauded Straight Talk Express has run on anything more substantial than a few scant fumes, as this NY Times blog report shows. Seven years after his first presidential bid, McCain no longer embodies his well-worn, valiant, national-hero-cum-nonconformist-politician image. If anything, McCain’s devolution into self-parody strikes me as a little sad.

I genuinely admired the guy in the lead-up to the 2000 Republican primary. He exuded an energy none of the other smug GOPers could muster. His work (alongside Sen. Russ Feingold) to bring about campaign finance reform demonstrated McCain’s propensity for results. Also, the former naval aviator went through hell as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. These things, in addition to McCain’s personable nature, garnered him trust and respect. Had I been older, I would have considered voting for him.

McCain began to lose my confidence shortly after that unsuccessful presidential bid, when some startling news surfaced. Perhaps not so startling if you’re familiar with Karl Rove’s dirty tactics, but I was ignorant of “Bush’s Brain” at that early stage. The upshot: phone pollers working for the Bush campaign called South Carolinians in the days before that state’s primary and insinuated McCain’s daughter was both illegitimate and black. She’s actually an adopted Bangladeshi, but it didn’t seem to matter to many racist and misinformed Southerners.

My confidence in McCain dwindled when he neglected to denounce the smear attack in any one of the many media outlets available to him. He uttered hardly a peep and, as you can see in the below picture, all bad blood with Dubya dissipated in time. I sat by in horror, suddenly realizing McCain’s strategy: defend Bush’s foreign policy with steadfast zeal, wait him out, and run for president again when he’s safely out of the way.

The 2007 edition of John McCain looks a lot like editions past and has the same soft-spoken tone of voice. But now, rather than hinting at a cool sense of confidence, that voice betrays a whimper. McCain panders to the Christian right like there’s no tomorrow (which I suppose makes sense, if you believe in the Rapture) and stubbornly defends the Iraqi War. I’m not shocked to see McCain’s metamorphosis into a pure politician, since it eventually happens to even the most staunch lone wolves. The senator’s remarkable tendency to flip-flop (hey, remember that phrase?) has been well documented.

[Left: The day the music died.]

The really tragic thing is his free fall into cluelessness. Let’s revisit that NY Times piece…

“Senator McCain, do you think condoms can help prevent the spread of HIV?”

“Gee… I don’t know. Let me get somebody to find out my position on that.”

This man cannot become the leader of the free world. The results could be embarrassing. Seriously, I’d sooner support Rudy Giuliani, a man whose political experience* has yet to ascend past the city level.

Here’s hoping John McCain regains the gumption and force of will that once defined him. It would serve him well in his personal life, far, far away from the Oval Office. Go ahead and park the Straight Talk Express in Arizona, there, John. You won’t be able to fit the damned thing into a metered DC parking space anyway.

*Giuliani did serve as a U.S. attorney, famously prosecuting Marc Rich. But that is NOT supposed to be a political position. Alberto Gonzales might say differently, but I digress…

[Right: The Straight Talk Express, back when it stood for something.]

East Lansing:

My motto for the past week really should have been, “No classes, no class.” I mean, what else could you say about drinking into the wee hours with your friends before walking to Bell’s Pizza for a late-nite slice? And the presence of a cute Greek goddess/cashier may have entered into that decision as well. And would someone with any semblance of class even consider singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” round style, then four-part harmonized to try to gain said cashier’s attention?

How about going for a whirlwind tour of Lansing’s thrift stores, highlighted by a spirited browse at Volunteers of America? How about eating gluten-free birthday cake (delicious) and popcorn for breakfast? What of purchasing a 30 pack of Stroh’s solely on bottle return slips? These are a few of the indulgences my friends and I enjoyed over break. And that was just the East Lansing swing!

Alpena:

I arrived in Alpena ready to recharge my batteries from a long birthday weekend. Trying the front door of my house, I found much to my chagrin that it was locked. The spare lay inside, uselessly on the kitchen counter. I did what any enterprising young man with a hankering for home cooking and his own bed would do: break a window. Yes, I broke into my own home late Saturday evening, feeling every bit a cat burglar with the flashlight and hammer I had procured from the garage. And sure enough, my cats looked on nervously through a nearby storm window.

Luckily, I needed only to shatter a single pane of glass in my family’s utility room. It’s cold as hell in there regardless of the season and probably haunted. A problem presented itself after I’d busted the window and cleared the shards of glass away from the edges. A homemade shelving unit, fashioned several years ago by my stepfather, barred my path to the floor. I would have to lower myself softly over the shelf. It would collapse under my weight otherwise.  

The answer came in the form of a folding metal chair, also scavenged from the garage. I fed it through the window and opened it, assuring myself of an easy landing. Once inside, I stuffed the window with assorted blankets and pillows normally reserved for camping. A little duct tape provided the piece de la resistance. I was then free to ransack the place!

Before long, I remembered it was my own house I had broken into and not some stranger’s. Any ransacking I might have done would only create a mess I’d need to clean up later. 

I didn’t do much in Alpena, aside from hanging out with friends in the evenings and making a quick trip to Fast Cash & Guns in the hopes of finding some diamonds in the musical rough. If there’s one thing I love to do, it’s to search for bargain-priced CDs in a shabby joint like Fast Cash. It’s basically a pawn shop, although the proprietors are quick to tell you otherwise. Every time I’m there I hear them tell a customer with a note of disdain that, “This is not a pawn shop.” Then they get on with pawning their shit.

This time, as I sifted through racks of discs expectantly, a woman created a belligerant uproar in the shop. She came in and noticing a pile of items on the service desk, complained loudly that they were her possessions. The owner explained that a man had dropped the items off earlier in the day and had promised to return with even more merchandise to sell. The woman began to throw a hissy fit, shouting that the man was her husband and they were getting divorced. She tried to hijack the items and sell them herself, but the clerk was having none of it. He began to lay down one of the fundamental laws of pawn shops the world over: do not accept anything from a couple in the middle of a domestic dispute. The clerk advised Loud Bitchy Lady to leave the pile of clothing, jewelry, and random odds and ends alone for the moment. They would sort it out if her husband came back. But no: our obnoxious heroine was not through with her vain attempts to pawn anything and everything she could.

“Well okay, then. How much for this ring? It’s mine and I can sell it.” She had slipped a comely zirconia from her ring finger, and waved it in front of the clerk hopefully. Unfortunately for her, the clerk was steadfast in his oath not to get in the middle of the divorce. The distraught wife left with a parting shot: “Well goddang it, I’ll be back.”

Amidst all of that turmoil, I found what I had been looking for. The Gin Blossoms’ sophomore album New Miserable Experience. Jackpot. Something about finding the album at just that moment seemed to fit. You can have a lot of miserable experiences in a gun store in Alpena, Michigan. These can be magnified exponentially if you’re a college student on spring break.

I don’t know if this has anything to do with the fact that I have the least comfortable bed in the history of bed-dom or not (I salivate when I see those Posturepedic commercials), but my dreams just aren’t as vivid as they used to be. It might be more accurate to say that I can’t remember my dreams with much clarity when I wake up.

That surely was not the case this morning at 4am, though, when I woke up in a one inch pool of sweat with my blanket twisted around one leg and my head lodged inside the pillowcase. Looking back on the weekend, I guess it’s not that hard to figure out what brought on my horrific nightmares.

Friday:

The Girl Talk show rocked about as hard as anticipated, but I found some of the people there mildly disturbing. Not the least of which were the opening act, Wolf Eyes, a noise band from somewhere in Michigan (it’s honestly not worth looking up which town can proudly call these drooling, no-talent noodlers home). My eardrums should have been awarded a purple heart each for the injuries they sustained during Wolf Eyes’ onslaught of dissonance. There were no melodies. There were no discernable ‘notes’ or ‘chords’. The guitars and clarinet (??!!) were too loud to make out any vocals, but between ‘songs’ the lead freak said most of the songs were about a ‘cold, lonely fucking Michigan’ and about ‘neighbors fucking ripping you off.’ Check out how much they suck!

And um how can I put this so it doesn’t inspire much laughter, I mean I really don’t want to say it’s so late nineties Limp Bizkit but er well… THERE WAS A MOSH PIT.

Okay, so I would have been justified getting nightmares on Friday night, right? I think I managed to stave them off because I was dead tired after dancing to Girl Talk. Seriously, Gregg Gillis managed to expunge everything Wolf Eyes had befouled. And that’s right, I know these people.

Saturday:

I don’t have any pictures of this, but some friends and I visited Montie co-op on M.A.C. to party it down. Little did we know it was Mardi Gras theme night and the inside of the place looked like Bourbon Street… the next morning… with no sanitation services on duty. Not to say that the place was filthy, but by knocking over an ashtray chock full of cigs we definitely improved the house’s property value.

A jam band set up downstairs to play a bitching cover of the Beatles’ ”Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey”, which no one else seemed to appreciate, maybe because of the haunting aura the basement continuously exuded.

The depressed-looking rotund guy in a panda suit almost put me over the edge, but that right would be reserved for the random creeper with Clockwork Orange nosegear who slunk around the premises presumably waiting for a girl (boy?) to pass out so he could rape her (him?).

[Dude was looking for a bit of the old violence.]

I knew of only one way to combat the mounting weirdness: go home (or rather back to Pete’s house), drink some PBR and watch old episodes of Pete & Pete. And by God, I think it helped. Saturday night was similarly free of night terrors.

[Warning: may cause brain freeze.]

Proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan Sunday afternoon, however, as I was finishing up some homework. An MSNBC Investigates special called ‘Circle of Friends’ made me shake my head in disbelief at the television screen. At first, I thought the tragically unhip host interviewing troubled teens about when they started to take on ‘that goth look’ harmlessly amusing. Then I realized it was a true story about a group of teens caught in a lovers’ spat. The boy and one of the girls ended up choking the other girl to death in a Taco Bell parking lot, then having an acquaintance saw off her appendages and head before scattering the remains around an abandoned farm. 

The teenage boy who did the choking told his story in a manner all too composed, like he didn’t regret a thing but appreciated the publicity. His dumpy southern accent could barely conceal a devilishly knowing grin. When they showed the photo of the guy who cut the girl up, it was a chill-inducer, all right. They merely pinned this guy with concealing a body and sentenced him to a paltry five years. I would hope that he leaves the ward only to find the victim’s father waiting outside with a shotgun.

“It was worse than any horror movie you could see,” the murderous young bastard told the MSNBC guy smugly.

The nightmares hit me like an avalanche Sunday night… the whole nine yards. A brass band funeral procession belted out a dirge as they followed a hearse that surely contained my corpse. The tuba player’s cartoonishly protruding nose didn’t obstruct his ability to hit the low notes. But then I realized we weren’t going to a funeral. Wolf Eyes had made a tour stop in the Big Easy and they were playing all night in a looming structure that looked a lot like Montie House. We wound slowly toward the entrance.

I woke up before anyone could dismember me, but if dream hunches are to be believed, it was a close one.

Wes Thorp’s visit to my JRN 300 class really got me thinking about how much a blog can do for you. First, it can get you to write every day, a sort of discipline that’s important for me. It gets all of the personal gunk out there to make room for the township government stories I write for class.

In addition, a blog can act as a forum for citizen journalism. It goes without saying that nothing I or any other blogger writes can be 100 percent fact. And who would want it to be? A few people in my class shared the prof’s mindset, believing that the only journalistic sources worth considering are the prestigious, time-honored ones. Maybe so, but they might only give part of the story.

But hold on… sometimes even the most trusted sources can be incorrect. Other times, they are shockingly lax in their fact-checking; enough so that the resulting fabricated stories get people fired. Take the cases of Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass.

Consider also that most bloggers don’t have any financial backing or hidden agenda that would slant their views artificially. If an individual leans one way, it’s only the sum of his or her past experiences influencing a new opinion. In other words, this is the way we all operate at heart. You are not actively fighting objectivity when you write a blog, but you are almost always fighting subjectivity when writing a news story.

Hey, read this (or maybe just a short bit of it). It’s an article from the New York Times written about the school shooting in Bath, Michigan. I think it provides some insight into what reporting was like in the early part of the 20th century, when imagery and style were actually considered marks of good writing instead of subjective blather. Okay, maybe the reporter goes a little overboard.

Getting back to Wes Thorp, though. He actually wrote a blog about talking to our class before talking to our class! Then he referred back to it during his presentation. Now I’m sitting here blogging about that. My head is about to explode and I’d shudder to think how much snot will be splattered everywhere. Best to just leave off here.

One more thing: Anna Nicole Smith died today.

I’ve done some checking in on this and it appears that no one wants her late husband’s fortune anymore. Not since the curse of King Tut have so many people associated with one man died so strangely and in rapid succession. First the stepson, then the kid, now Anna Nicole. Um… could someone give the money to Anna’s Naked Gun 33 1/3 cast-mate O.J. Simpson? I don’t think anyone would mind.

[O.J. outliving Anna Nicole Smith: the real "Final Insult"]

So often, as a record-buying public, we browse the racks of a local music store to see example after example of shameless cash-ins. I know I’ve never had the following thought: It looks like Phish is getting the long overdue bluegrass treatment. Thank God because I’ve been doing without!

While it would be nice to play idealist and believe that today’s lackluster bands are abasing themselves out of a sense of respect for what came before, I think I know better. Money makes the world go ’round. But wait… what did Puffy and Ma$e say? That’s right, mo’ money, mo’ problems. In this case, the problems involve an artists’ attempt to cling to a final shred of credibility after committing the sin of appearing on a needless tribute album.

I’m all for bands playing classy, tasteful covers of their forebears’ work… even sloppy, off-the-cuff improvs are fine in the right setting. Broken Social Scene – some very talented musicians in their own right — played a cover of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” a few months ago in
Ann Arbor that could only be described as atrocious and foolish. Yet this choice proved forgivable in the live environment. Half the band didn’t know the notes, but damn it they were going to pull one out for Neil, man. There is something touching about a band winding down its last tour stop with a true Canadian rock standard.

To get back on track, however, you will not see Broken Social Scene performing on a Neil Young tribute album (of which there are probably dozens). They are too smart to suffer that embarrassment. I am however saddened to see that the Pixies are present on at least one Young tribute, presumably rocking their way through a livened-up version of “Winterlong”. Oh well, it’s the Pixies and they are above contempt by now.

The very worst sort of covers can be lumped neatly into two categories: “the Axel” and “the Corgan”. When Guns n’ Roses covered Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”, Axel and friends tried to make a seminal, understated anti-war tune into a HUGE GRANDIOSE UBER-BALLAD (WITH PHONY WOEFUL CRIES!). Tragically, Axel was perfectly serious about it all. And I’m sure Slash was more than happy to ejaculate out a mindless solo in all his hairy, half-naked, top-hatted splendor.

So the Axel is an ill-advised attempt to revamp a song that doesn’t need improvement. Usually the cover will bear little resemblance to the original version. The precious few times this actually worked might include Hendrix’s treatment of “All Along the Watchtower” and half the contents of Joe Cocker’s With a Little Help from My Friends, among others.

That leaves those newer artists who feel like stealing an established act’s signature song but aren’t sure how to go about changing it. So they don’t bother trying. Such was the case when Billy Corgan decided to do a cover of the Fleetwood Mac song “Landslide”. Corgan’s rendition retains all of the same ingredients that went into the classic Buckingham/Nicks number, barring the creativity and vocal range. Stevie Nicks’ voice is haunting where Billy’s resembles a creepy half-whisper. Also, whoever is playing acoustic guitar in the song misses many of the intricacies of the fabled Buckingham fretwork.

Yet another innocuous tribute album discovered on Amazon attracted my ire. The Band, a collection of five of the finest musicians ever assembled in the late 1960s and early 70s has been disgraced by a tribute from both their former peers and today’s wannabes alike.

I don’t want to hear the Allman Brothers Band (or the shell that is left of them) struggle through “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”. Hmm… does the Allman Brothers Band (as great as they once were) boast anything that compares to the mournful vocal stylings of Levon Helm? I thought not. And what of Blues Traveler lending their unique blend of shitty pop-jazz with readymade harmonica drivel to a pinnacle of creative achievement like “Rag Mama Rag”? You’re right, it’s better not even to deign to speak of it.

In conclusion, I would pray that no one ever purchase another slapped-together money grab like…

And tributes to even the best bands are bad enough. Can you imagine what would happen if today’s “hottest” groups were some day placed on pedestals with their hits recycled and reinterpreted for all to hear?

Get ready for Maroon 5: A String Quartet Tribute, available in 2025 everywhere records are sold.