Blog Posts by Daniel Kreps

Charlie Louvin, who as a member of the Louvin Brothers influenced innumerable country artists and Americana-leaning rockers with songs of despair and redemption, passed away today at his home in Nashville after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, Reuters reports. Louvin, born Charlie Loudermilk, was 83. A member of the Country Hall of Fame and a Grand Ole Opry mainstay, Louvin is perhaps best known for the Louvin Brothers' gospel-tinged "Satan Is Real," which along with its collection of songs dedicated to Christian hymns and spirituality boasts one of the most memorable album covers of all time.

Artists like Johnny Cash, who wrote in his biography about his inspiring encounter with Charlie Louvin, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard and James Taylor have all admitted being indebted to the Louvin Brothers' work, which also includes 1956's stellar "Tragic Songs of Love" and a dozen or so more LPs prior to his older brother Ira Louvin's death in 1965. Gram Parsons, as a

Even though Frank Zappa was strongly opposed to the censorship of controversial rap acts like 2 Live Crew, the bizzaro-rocker's name isn't synonymous with hip-hop. Yet Zappa's 1969 jazz-rock album "Hot Rats" oddly continues to inform rap music more than four decades after its release. In 1993, Brooklyn rappers Black Moon used perhaps one of the first ever Zappa samples when they put a slice of "Son of Mr. Green Genes" into their song "Ack Like U Want It," and just last year the Roots were wrestling with whether to include a cover of "Hot Rats" opener "Peaches en Regalia" on their album "How I Got Over."

With two of the three songs off Side A of "Hot Rats" already part of hip-hop lore, DMC of Run-DMC and Talib Kweli have teamed up to contribute new verses for a remix of the third Side A song, "Willie the Pimp." The track always had what we considered a built-in hip-hop beat and a catchy sample-ready riff, so the remix makes sense to us even if it seems strange on paper. The remix is

Talk to any friend in the legal profession and no doubt they'd entertain you with countless tales of ridiculous lawsuits that make you ultimately question the legitimacy of our judiciary process. Our favorite had always been the lawsuit where the thief successfully sued the owners of the house he was robbing after injuring himself in a fall through their skylight. Now we have a new favorite: A woman named Valerie Joyce Wilson Turks is suing Diddy, or Sean Combs as he's referred to on the suit, for $1 trillion for a number of atrocities ranging from the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center to the breaking of her baby's two legs. Radar Online got their hands on this insane lawsuit, which asks for $900 billion in child support and another $100 billion dollars for "loss of income."

In her poorly written suit, Turks makes startling allegations like "[Diddy] went through Kim Porter and Rodney King and knocked down the WTC and then they all came and knocked my children down. Set me up

Ever watch an episode of MTV's "Cribs" and think, "Man, I'd love to live like that"? Thanks to the recession, you can! For the low, low price of $3.5 million, any "Chocolate Factory"-loving fan can purchase R. Kelly's former 8,000 square-foot love palace in the Lakeview area of Chicago. Although Kelly sold the church-turned-mansion in 2002, many of his architectural wonders remain inside: the log cabin-themed room (or the "full knotty pine spa room" as Chicago Breaking Business calls it), the 1,600-gallon shark tank, the two fireplaces, four bedrooms, and 1,500-foot roof deck.

Kelly lived in the mansion, which he purchased for $1.1 million, from 1994 to 2002 before moving to an even-bigger spread on the outskirts of the Windy City. Since then, the Lakeview house has changed hands almost as many times as "Trapped in the Closet" has chapters (maybe not that many, but close). According to Curbed, Kelly sold the house for $2.25 million, but then the mansion shuffled between owners for a

Judging by the incredibly low totals for 2010 music sales, illegal downloading is a big problem. It's not that people are listening to less music -- with so much music at their fingertips, they're likely listening to more -- it's just that they're purchasing less music. While the music industry continues to put out the wrong fire by trying to punish those who illegally downloaded music on antiquated peer-to-peer services, search engine Google, a conduit that often connects downloaders with illegally shared files, is taking steps to help prevent music piracy by making searches for "bittorrent" and "rapidshare," two of the more popular harbors for illegal downloaders, slightly more difficult.

"We will prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete," Google said in a statement last month. "While it's hard to know for sure when search terms are being used to find infringing content, we'll do our best to prevent Autocomplete from displaying the terms

Overseas music festivals, they're just like us! So far, music festival announcement season has blown us away with the stacked Coachella lineup and the return of Jeff Mangum and Portishead at All Tomorrow's Parties fest. And now South America is getting an awesome fest: Leading the charge at the inaugural Lollapalooza Chile are the Killers, Jane's Addiction, and Kanye West, who will also headline this year's now-sold-out Coachella. The eclectic bill invading Santiago's Parque O'Higgins on April 2nd and 3rd also includes Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 30 Seconds to Mars, the Flaming Lips, the National, Cat Power, and more. Check out the full lineup here.

Lollapalooza has been an summer music institution for two decades, first as an all-star traveling circus, and later as a Windy City destination event. The Chile incarnation, however, marks the first time a Lollapalooza festival has been held outside of North America. And frankly, the lineup is making us jealous. "The 20-year-old American music

Let the history books show that the mammoth publicity machine surrounding the debut of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" revved its engine today, January 27th, with the slow release of the lyrics to the album's self-titled single. The fun started over on Twitter, where Gaga thanked her "little monsters" for turning #thankgod4gaga into a trending topic by encouraging them to turn #leakitgaga into another trending topic. What followed next was a site-to-site scavenger hunt for song lyrics (that did not involve any pants-free photos).

Perez Hilton was the first to get a slice of "Born This Way," revealing the line:

"Don't be a drag, just be a queen"

Hilton then went on a hyperbolic compliment rampage, teasing fans by saying, "We've heard the song and -- it MORE than lives up to the hype!!! We've been holding a big secret from you all, which is we've heard the whole album. We've been there every step of the way and....This album is going to change culture! When we can say more, we will!" Get

Thanks to the marvels of interleague baseball, fans get unique opportunities to see National League teams face off against American League teams. While city rivalries like Mets versus Yankees and the Cubs against the White Sox are yearly battles, the chance to see a team like the AL West's Seattle Mariners come to Miami to play the NL East's Florida Marlins is a twice-in-a-decade event. That is, however, if you schedule the series against a U2 tour. Then it's a once-in-a-decade event.

For the second straight year, U2's 360° Tour, with its massive "spaceship" stage that requires days to construct and disassemble, is wreaking havoc on the MLB season. This time around, it's forcing the Marlins/Mariners series, scheduled for June 24th to June 26th, to jump coasts from Miami to Seattle because of U2's scheduled June 29th concert at Sun Life Stadium. U2's concert comes three days after the series was scheduled to conclude, but because of the amount of time that's needed to build their stage,