Well, I suppose they are brothers after all…

So I took a look at the new Crowded House mini-site (link), and was stunned to see that Neil Finn now looks like…well…Tim, circa 3 or 4 years ago! (Well duh, I hear the crowd saying.) Moreso than usual, I mean. He looks almost exactly like him. (Of course, I seem to remember a while back being completely stunned when I opened the CD booklet for Imaginary Kingdom to see that Tim had gone from that one little shock of grey hair that he’s always had to this enormous mane of completely grey hair.) It’s somewhat curious that most of my pantheon of musical heroes are, across the board, steadily marching toward their mid-50s.
The upcoming Crowded House album has a title, Time On Earth. In other news, Intrada is taking orders for their limited edition (~3000 copies) release of the original 1968 session recordings for Alex North’s unused 2001: a space odyssey score – be sure to leave me a copy though.
With the above, plus the already-ordered final ELO remasters, and the upcoming Alan Parsons Project remasters, I keep telling myself that great music is a perfectly acceptable reason to be broke before the baby gets here. 😛 Dave mentioned over on Not News his feelings on 2007 being an embarrassment of music riches – I certainly hope he’s right on that count. It’s definitely shaping up that way. (It’s not for nothing that music reviews have been bumped back up to a weekly feature on theLogBook for this year.)
Veering completely off topic here, and not prompted by anything in particular, I’m wondering if anything is really being accomplished by the trend of the past few years of all but forcing-at-gunpoint bigoted celebrities to apologize for their actions and promise to change their ways. I understand that there’s an instructional element to this, that we want to make sure that hatred and bigotry aren’t cool just because they’re practiced by the likes of Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, that fellow from Grey’s Anatomy whose name escapes me… I understand we need to say that it’s not cool, and it’s not okay. But somewhere inside me is a little bite-sized bit of Libertarian wondering if it’s any better to “force” tolerance than it is to embrace ignorance. Does it change my world to hear that Michael Richards is sorry and is “seeking help”? Not really. I’m content for such people to stand as less-than-shining examples of ignorance, and proof that the fight is so very far from over, and there’s something just a little thought-police-ish about the enforcement of tolerance that makes it a bit creepy. Tolerance is good (though acceptance is better), but jamming it down people’s throats sets up a potential backlash that could do more damage to the fight for civil rights, gay rights, religious tolerance, etc. than somebody’s tirade to a comedy club audience or a police officer or a closed production set for a TV series – not exactly mass media venues.
By broadcasting these events and making them water cooler news, are we not giving the celebrity bigots more of a voice for their garbage than they would’ve had otherwise in any of these settings?