Blog Posts by Daniel Kreps

A talented group of hackers called Anonymous have taken over the official website for BMI, or Broadcast Music Inc., a performing rights organization that collects royalties and such on behalf of songwriters. "Operation Payback is back. Our objectives are clear, war on Copywrong," Anonymous wrote on one of the posters they plastered on the BMI site, obviously taking a libertarian approach to "copyrights." Anonymous has previously taken down the websites for controversial groups like Scientologists and the Westboro Baptist Church, and now it seems they're taking aim at the music industry. (Concurrently, Anonymous is also threatening action against the U.S. military base holding Private Bradley Manning, the soldier arrested in connection to Wikileaks.)

The music industry has infamously battled with music fans since the advent of Napster. The saga of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota mother who's been fighting in court since 2006 after she was sued for $1.5 million for illegally sharing

Radiohead's The King of Limbs is definitely the most love/hate album in the band's masterpiece-filled discography, and making light of the split fan base over TKOL, the BBC offers up this funny little skit, featuring a bunch of Radiohead fans in an AA setting who (gasp!) "prefer the band's earlier works." Statements like Kid A is "strange" and Amnesiac "lacks choruses... and verses" are arguable but ultimately wrong, but when one Radiohead fan admits he thinks OK Computer is "overrated," things get sad...

As The Amp predicted when Rock Band went up for sale, the game industry has ditched plastic instruments in favor of music titles that take advantage of new body-motion technology, like Michael Jackson: The Experience, Dance Central, and Just Dance. Exactly a month after Activision announced they're discontinuing the Guitar Hero franchise, Kotaku has revealed that the video game company is moving on -- to dance.

Activision copyrighted the name Dance Hero back in 2008, so we're not sure what's taken them so long to finally jump on this bandwagon. Billboard.biz reports that Dance Central from Harmonix -- the makers of Rock Band -- has already surpassed a million sales in the U.S., which is more than Rock Band 3 sold. Activision is coming very late to the dance party, but an impressive 10 million Kinects have been sold so far for Microsoft's Xbox 360. Factor in sales of Playstation 3's Move and Nintendo's Wii, and there's a large market still waiting to be tapped.

Not much is known about

The "unofficial" trailer for Things Fall Apart, the football movie that 50 Cent horrifying dropped all that weight for, was unveiled today over at the This Is 50 site and it looks... melodramatic? The film, produced by 50 Cent's Cheetah Vision, stars Fiddy as an up-and-coming football player whose career hits the wall after he's diagnosed with some kind of weight-reducing illness, and he's forced -- oh look, Ray Liotta's in this! -- to repair his family and personal life as well as face the end of his gridiron career. That's just our assumption judging from the unintentionally hilarious trailer, it might not be the plot at all.

This Brian's Song-esque film also has the lousiest football scenes this side of Any Given Sunday. The trailer unabashedly touts 50 Cent's performance in the film as "the most critically acclaimed role of his career," which is strange since 1) we can't find a single critic's review of the film, so we're not sure who's acclaiming it and 2) "most critically

Dave Matthews Band have revealed the details of their first of four Caravans, a three-day summer bro-down of epic proportions. The debut festival will go down June 24th-26th at Atlantic City, New Jersey's Bader Field, an unused airport turned venue. The moral here: Don't plan a bachelor party in AC that weekend. [Ed. Note: Too late.]

The Flaming Lips -- yes, the Flaming Lips -- are playing Caravan numero uno, making them The Amp's prime candidate for James Franco of rock (they're inexplicably everywhere!). They'll join a pretty granola lineup that includes David Grey, Dr. Dog, Ray LaMontagne, O.A.R. Bassnectar, Warren Haynes Band, unlikely chart-topper Amos Lee, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and Michael Franti and Spearhead. Matthews and his longtime collaborator Tim Reynolds will perform an acoustic gig in addition to DMB's headlining set each night of this bona fide Brochella.

As The Amp previously reported, Matthews has also slotted July 8th-10th for the midwest Caravan, with

Villains like Green Goblin, Venom, Carnage, and Dr. Octopus all attempted to do it, but in the end all it took was a Broadway director and two guys from U2 to stop Spider-Man. Yesterday, The Amp reported that the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark would likely postpone its March 15th opening as producers wrestled with whether to replace director Julie Taymor with a new creative team to fix the nightmare production. Now, we know the severity of the situation: Preview performances of Spider-Man will come to a halt for roughly two to three weeks next month as the cast returns to rehearsal mode to fix what's ailing the critically ravaged musical. This means, obviously, that Spider-Man won't open as scheduled on March 15th. If all goes well in the new rehearsals and preview performances, we're looking at an early summer opening night for the $65 million musical.

This is bad news for the show's creative team, cast, and crew, but the biggest victims are probably not the producers who are

R.E.M. release their 15th studio album Collapse Into Now today, ensuring that the Athens band and alternative rock forefathers will carry their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-worthy career into a fourth decade (80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, duh.) To celebrate one of The Amp's most beloved bands and their new album, we're going album by album through R.E.M.'s monster discography and picking our favorites from each LP:

1982 - Chronic Town
"Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)"

1983 - Murmur
"Talk About the Passion"

1984 - Reckoning
"Pretty Persuasion"

1985 - Fables of the Reconstruction
"Driver 8"

1986 - Lifes Rich Pageant
"These Days"

1987 - Document
"It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"

1988 - Green
"Get Up"

1991 - Out of Time
"Radio Song"

1992 - Automatic for the People
"Man on the Moon"

1994 - Monster
"Crush With Eyeliner"

1996 - New Adventures in Hi-Fi
"New Test Leper"

1998 - Up
"Walk Unafraid"

2001 - Reveal
"Imitation of Life"

2004 - Around the Sun
"Leaving New York"

2008 - Accelerate
"Living

Phil Collins and the music press engaged in a fascinating game of "Telephone" over the past 24 hours that's left everyone collectively wondering whether the onetime Genesis member has retired from music. Collins started the game by writing on his official website, "I am stopping so I can be a full time father to my two young sons on a daily basis." He also listed four reasons why "I'm not stopping because..." in response to reports that he was leaving music. The press misconstrued the word "stopping" for "quitting," and a fleet of "Phil Collins calls it quits" headlines were dispatched across the music world.

In fact, Collins listed reasons why he's not retiring without really ever saying whether he's retiring. Still, there's a pretty finite difference between "stopping" something and "quitting" something, between going on hiatus and retiring completely, so Collins' spokesperson issued a statement to clear up the confusion. "He is not, has no intention of, retiring," Collins' rep