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Aja by Steely Dan is one of my favourite albums ever. Sure, it might not generally be considered the greatest of all time - but it is perfect in a way that no other album is. Steely Dan made records like no other band. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker would write the songs, and then to record them they'd bring in some of the world's greatest session players. Couple this with beautiful arrangements and outstanding recordings and the result is an album that allows us to hear incredible musicianship. The perfection on this album is intentional. It's not a gift...

Interesting gossip out of the classic rock world today: apparently Steely Dan producer Greg Katz once had to fire the Eagles’ Don Henley from tracking vocals on Steely Dan’s 1977 hit “Peg.” And it’s still awkward. Musicians Review 2021: Billionaires' Race To Space Speaking to Ultimate Classic Rock, Katz talked about how both Steely Dan and the Eagles were tight, as they were both managed by Irving Azoff. “In the chorus, the backgrounds are sort of the lead,” Katz said. “It wasn’t like a [usual] background part.” And while the song was originally coming together, Katz and Donald Fagen talked...

<p>After just two months on the air, Al Jazeera America is losing ground in the US.</p> <p>The US offshoot of the Mideast news outfit managed fewer than half of the viewers who tuned in to its predecessor, Al Gore’s Current TV.</p>

For those of us who believe the American public deserves and needs to know much more about what goes on in the rest of the world, the arrival of a television network determined to focus on hard news, to "make news the star," to quote my old boss Ted Turner, should be cause for celebration. But when that network is Al Jazeera, we all need to take a few steps back and prepare before we start watching.The first fact to keep in mind when watching the just launched Al Jazeera America is that the new network is, like the other...

Stories about the controversy over the Pope’s remarks on Islam have featured the views of Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, who has a regular show on the Al-Jazeera television network. Demanding a personal apology from the Pope, Qaradawi declared on Al-Jazeera that “Muslims have the right to be angry and hurt by these comments from the highest cleric in Christianity.” Yet, Qaradawi, a supporter of violent Jihad, is living proof of what the Pope was warning about. Tracy Wilkinson of the Los Angeles Times said that Qaradawi’s broadcasts on the Arabic TV network, which now wants to expand into the U.S. through...

Time Warner Cable customers could be watching Al Jazeera America before they see CBS again. TWC spokesman Eric Mangan confirmed a Huffington Post report Monday that the company was in "active discussions" with the new cable news network, which is scheduled to start broadcasting next week.

Anti-Al Jazeera posters have recently appeared in Egypt saying, “A bullet kills a man, a lying camera kills a nation.” This attitude led to the new government closing the channel, after 22 staffers quit in disgust over its pro-Muslim Brotherhood bias. Al Jazeera is the voice of the Muslim Brotherhood, the group now laying siege to Egypt and burning Christian churches there. On Sunday, CNN’s media criticism show “Reliable Sources” featured a discussion of the launch of Al Jazeera America. While Egyptian Christian churches burn because of what the channel has done there, Al Jazeera America was given a warm...

Al Jazeera America begins broadcasting Tuesday but will only be available in about 50 million homes. A link on the network’s website allows users to search whether the channel is available in their neighborhood, and provides a form letter for potential customers to request it from their TV providers.

I don’t know where you slept last night, butt the quaint little heartland motel I slept in didn’t carry al Jezowie-America TV, so I missed the big launch of the only real competitor Ms.NBC has for the Muslim propaganda demographic. If you were one of the nearly 200 viewers who tuned in, you witnessed agitprop history being made.This morning, I surfed on over to Algore’s former CurrentTV web site, to see what I missed, butt instead of CurrentTV, this is what greeted me:I signed up pronto and was swiftly transported to the official al Jezowie-America website. Leading the lineup was...

Al Jazeera may have a team of 1,000 journalists, a massive budget that expands coverage around the globe and a lofty goal of besting ratings king Fox News — but what it doesn’t have is a solid advertising base. The New York Postreports that when the network hits the airwaves Tuesday, it will do so with about half the normal cable news channel advertising load. It’ll have about six minutes of commercials per hour, compared to the 12-plus minutes broadcast by rivals Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Of those six minutes of commercials, about half will be in-house. Al Jazeera says...

In a warren of offices at a former bank building near Madison Square Garden, dozens of journalists are at work on gleaming new electronic equipment, ready to turn their test runs of Al-Jazeera America into the real thing. The Qatar-based news organization will finally establish a firm foothold on American television Tuesday after a decade of trying. At 3 p.m. EDT, Al Gore's former Current TV will turn out the lights in more than 45 million TV homes, replaced by the new U.S. affiliate of Al-Jazeera. In Houston, the network will launch on 4DTV (Channel W5261), AT&T U-verse (Channel 189),...

Remember when Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to introduce his American Jobs Act, exhorting them on national television to “pass this bill immediately”? Obama used that phrase in various forms 17 times despite the fact that he didn’t actually have a bill to present to Congress until a week later. And as far as all but two members of Congress are concerned, the bill itself may as well not exist. No co-sponsors have added their names to either the Senate or the House version even after more than a week ... We have a federal system, not...

"I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy." Noman wasn't aware of anyone suggesting such a thing, and might join the President to protest if he were. He does recall Republican Governors of several states, most notably Wisconsin, moving to eliminate collective bargaining in the public employee context because the conditions that make collective bargaining a right in the private sector context don't afflict the proliferating number of government workers. You need antagonists on both sides of the table arguing from different premises with different interests, and a presumption...

Not making this up. 25,500 pages regulating your entire life, moment to moment. Strict fines and/or imprisonment for violations.

Republicans to the White House: Hey, not all of the president's "new" proposals are dreadful, so we'd like to play ball on some of them.  Cool?  The White House to Republicans: Pound salt, you uncompromising, unpatriotic SOB's.  Welcome to compromise, Obama campaign style:   Obama's top political adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday that the administration was unwilling to break up the president’s $447 billion jobs plan if Republicans were only receptive to passing certain elements.  "We're not in a negotiation to break up the package. It's not an a la carte menu. It's a strategy to get this country moving,”...