This search result won't qualify as a Googlewhack, but when I did a quoted search on "black indie rock bands", I got a single result to a Billboard magazine site, which requires registration.

I'm doing a Black History Month theme for February's Musicwhore.org reviews, and I want to spend a week featuring black artists performing music not usually considered "black". I've so far got Audra McDonald (a theater singer) and Living Colour (a metal band).

Why should I be shocked and surprised there are no (widely known) black contemporaries of, say, Death Cab for Cutie or Spoon? Of Caitlin Cary or Wilco?

Name me a black artist who doesn't perform jazz or blues or hip-hop or urban pop. Name me a black artist who does perform indie rock, country, punk or metal.

(I already know about Charley Pride, Fishbone and Bad Brains, so they don't count.)

Now there's a twist.

EMI has decided not to pursue the purchase of Warner Music Group. Instead, the label is being bought by Edgar Bronfman, former chief of Universal. In essence, Warner is turning into an independent label.

On the surface, this news is strange -- it bucks against consolidation. But given Bronfman's former bosses, what's to say Warner won't get swallowed up by the largest label in the world somewhere down the line?

I guess this answers my previous question. Tack on a bunch of remixes of other people's songs to the Queer Eye theme song, and you get an over-glorified CD maxi single.

Kind of like that Alanis Morrissette song, "Uninvited", that was sold as a soundtrack to some Nicolas Cage move. (Sarcasm alert.)

Quote: "'As we have been able to introduce better taste and sensibilities in living to prime time television, we will be able to introduce great music to a new audience,' Scout executive director of creative services Rob Eric says in a statement."

Note to self: Write about how you should not trust gay men¹ with your music collection.

¹Or straight men working on a gay-themed television show.

That was the exclamation a friend of mine had when I sent her this little tidbit about Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen.

Apparently, dude's recorded five albums before, and on his latest one -- Dec. 5 drop! -- he works with Buckethead. It's being described as "experimental". Yeah -- what you said.

I wonder if Phil Spector is relieved Michael Jackson is upstaging him in the court of public opinion. I'm sure there are some great Law and Order episodes ready to rip these headlines. Oh. Wait.

Oh my.

I finally get to watch my baby Garrett on DVD. If the Voyager DVDs follow the release schedule of the previous series, the motherload will drop circa May and June, when seasons four and five are released. Season five, in particular, has "Timeless", episode 100 in which Garrett flexes the Sexy. Hoo-baby!!

First, Boomtown. Now, L.A. Dragnet. (Would've linked Boomtown, but it doesn't get more than a paragraph in a story about Skin.)

Canceled. Both. Harumph.

I watch too much Law and Order anyway, so I think I can handle life without Dragnet. But Boomtown? That was probably the most theatrical (cop) show to come around since Homicide: Life on the Streets. I really hoped it would find its audience. Alas and alack.

Miscellany: I don't usually watch The West Wing, but did something happen to the lighting? The White House looks pretty dark compared to the episodes in syndication on Bravo. And am I mad to think John Spencer is pretty hot for a middle aged guy?

Remember how MP3.com was supposed to stick it to the music industry establishment? Not any more.

CNet has acquired "certain assets" of MP3.com, and it's nuking all the content. I uploaded some Eponymous 4 files back when hosting your own MP3s was unfeasible. MP3.com hasn't mattered to me in, oh, three years?

About the only thing I really like about MP3.com was founder Michael Robertson. Call me a freak, but I think he's pretty damn hot.

The Chinese government doesn't think all-girl punk band Hang on the Box is an appropriate representation of Chinese culture. So the government denied the band members visas to travel. As a result, Hang on the Box had to cancel its dates on the New World Disorder Tour in the UK.

Although Hang on the Box writes songs with such titles as "For Some Stupid Cunt at BBS" and "Ass Hole, I'm Not Your Baby", the set they played at SXSW 2003, well, bored me. They're actually pretty tame in that Shonen Knife-Mummy the Peepshow way.

Straight Eye for the Queer Guy. Right.

Of course, when I heard about QE in the first place, I rolled my eyes. That was some nice dinner of crow I had when the show actually premiered. So who knows?

(I thought the more obvious episode would be the Fab Five doing a make-over on a gay guy who has no fashion sense.)

But where's the twist? Gay guys have to pass for straight all the time ...