Tagged: The Record

By now, everyone's heard of Kickstarter, the website that lets people with an idea or project ask other people to contribute toward realizing it. It's called crowd funding, and this summer's big success story was musician Amanda Palmer. She raised more than $1 million to produce her new album. But crowd funding doesn't work for every musician every time.

Last year, after the Atlanta rock band Black Lips released the album Arabia Mountain, its members planned a trip to tour the Middle East, but the wave of Arab Spring protests forced them to change plans. Yet even with simmering anti-Americanism persisting throughout the region, singer-guitarist Ian St. Pe was determined to see this through. Cairo, where I spoke with them on Friday, was the band's second stop.

Need something to distract you from politics news? Yeah, us too. So here you go: behind the scenes with intense, high-achieving, middle-aged men; a list of ways the common man is being screwed over by big industry; Springsteen and fact-checking our present understanding of the past. Oh, sorry. Maybe lean back with this video of a British radio legend extolling the virtues of Biggie's "One More Chance" instead.