Et justice pour... bowling?

Okay, yeah, I grew up in Jersey -- which means that going to visit my folks involves catching a bus out of the ever-so-lovely Port Authority. Those of you familiar with this great wonder of architectural ugliness and terrible lighting which serves as NYC's main bus station (and also, apparently, a temporary residence for about 10% of the city's weirdoes at any given moment) are also probably familiar with the bowling alley on the second floor. Those of you who aren't have probably been to a dirty bus station or a dirty bowling alley at least once in your life, and can still understand why it's unfortunate that the bus I usually take leaves from a gate right next to it. I'm used to running past it, eyes averted in snobbish horror, because I'm an asshole. Which is what I was doing yesterday, when I stopped dead in my tracks. Because the song emanating from the entrance, along with a faint stench of feet and beer, was Justice's D.A.N.C.E.


I don't think I can think of a better barometer of what is not cool than a bowling alley. In a bus station. Ed Banger's poster child, the ultimate in disaffected French hipster elite, is now in the same genre of music as EEEVERYBODY DAAANCE NOW; what was, eighteen months ago, the hottest dance track at the coolest of the cool kid parties has devolved into a soundtrack for the garishly carpeted space where drunks from Jersey kill an hour before taking public trans back to the 'burbs. Was the Port Authority taken over by slightly out-of-touch hipsters, or does the zeitgeist cycle move so quickly these days that bands go from most-blogged-about-electro-outfit-ever to bowling alley background noise in less than a year? (Note that D.A.N.C.E. was only officially released in May 2007.) What the hell is going on?

Google VP of Engineering joins EMI as President of digital

I dismissed yesterday's "big news" that a CIO at Google had been hired as a president at (my former employer) EMI as about as likely to be true as Techcrunch suing Facebook and Gmail warping the space-time continuum -- but apparently, both the LA Times and a press release from EMI confirm that it's true. It's definitely a gutsy move, and a big symbolic step in the right direction for a company that recently fired half its staff worldwide due to, well, more or less, the implications of the internet, but how much change can one high-ranking guy actually enact? What? Marrying music and technology? Getting people who understand technology and the internet to work in music? It's a great idea, EMI -- only thing is, you're about a decade too late.