More 'eezy'? Pleezy

In the last 24 hours, a kind of cultural tipping point has been reached in hip-hop: Nicknames rhyming with “eezy” have jumped the shark.

Tuesday night, during a broadcast of the star-studded Fashion Rocks charity fundraising concert, as multiplatinum-selling R&B phenom Chris Brown performed onstage wearing a pair of high-waisted chinos and neckkerchief, the word “BREEZY” was projected above him in an ornate font. It was an assertive corruption of his last name, a kind of street cred signifier for those versed in the argot of ghetto fabulism.

Then, this morning, the braggadocious Southern trap-rapper Young Jeezy captured the No. 1 spot on the national albums chart, moving more than 260,000 copies of his new CD, “The Recession,” during its first week of sales.

A quick stroll through the contributors' list for Da Capo's forthcoming "Best Music Writing 2008" anthology yields many of the usual suspects (including, unfortunately but inevitably, Gene Weingarten's High Culture barricade-enforcing piece on Joshua Bell playing for change in the D.C. Metro). But a surprising small-run magazine popped up a few times with very worthy entries, the Middle Eastern and South Asian cultural journal Bidoun.

The magazine, like its contemporary peers n+1 and Russia!, is a roundabout survey of long-form political reporting, interviews and essays on cultural ephemera, but its thoughtful dissections of Orientalism in the avant-garde and pop music worlds are often revelatory.

   

Before MySpace and its low-level stalking possibilities or Facebook and its gazillion time-sucking applications, there was Makeoutclub, a meeting site for hard-core, punk, goth and emo kids. Launched in 2000 by Gibby Miller, the website was bare bones -- click on "girls" or "boys" and read hundreds of profiles, which consisted of little more than a picture and a blank space ready made for a poem, a list of your favorite bands or maybe just a cribbed lyric representative of your sad little scotch-taped heart.

On Monday night, I trespassed in Griffith Park, ran from men with flashlights and retrieved a valuable envelope hidden inside a drainpipe.

No, I'm not a secret agent. Just a Nine Inch Nails fan.

Less willing to drive across the state -- or across town, for that matter -- to see your favorite performers because of skyrocketing costs at the gas pump?

We want to hear how the cost of fueling up may be cutting into your summer concert- and club-going. And if you’re a musician, tell us whether you’ve re-routed a tour so your band’s 1985 Ford Econoline van won’t have to make that 500-mile detour through Boise, Idaho, one more time.

Please e-mail your tales of fossil fuel-based woe to me at Randy.Lewis@latimes.com or leave them as comments.

--Randy Lewis

Photo of LoveLikeFire, one of the many young bands affected by steep gas prices, by Eric Risberg/Associated Press

The second annual Reggae Rising Music Festival is giving away $100 gas cards, in hopes of luring reggae fans to the festival grounds in remote Piercy, Calif., a town about 200 miles north of San Francisco. Performers include Sizzla, Cham, Junior Reid, Julian Marley and UB40. "Let reggae pick up your gasoline," its website explains. What a brilliant idea! Now, if only rock could pay for my hotel and hip-hop for my food.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

From our pals over at the Technology blog:

If you are going up against a giant, it helps if you too are a giant. And scrappy.

That appears to be Amazon.com's strategy as its MP3 store takes on Apple's iTunes in digital music.

Today, the British alternative rock group Coldplay (pictured above), is releasing its new album, "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends." Amazon is using the occasion to wave in more customers with some huge discounts.

Amazon said it would begin selling digital versions of past Coldplay albums for bargain-basement prices. As part of a weekly promotion called Daily Deal, the Coldplay album "X&Y" is today available for $1.99. On Wednesday, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" can be yours for $1.99. Both albums are currently $7.99 on iTunes. "Parachutes" is next up on Thursday for $1.99. On Friday, the "Brothers and Sisters" EP will cost you only 99 cents.

Since it launched in September, the Amazon MP3 store has trained its sights on Apple's iTunes store, which sells more music than any other U.S. retailer. Amazon has not released information about how much music it has sold.

Read the rest of Amazon cuts Coldplay album prices to bring in the crowds.

Has everybody in hip-hop gone vocoder crazy?

On the new single from G-Unit, "Rider (Part 2)," 50 Cent sings through the voice synthesizer for the chorus:

I told you boy, I’m a soldier boy

I got no choice but to be a rider

I approach you boy, with the toaster boy

From point blank range and then fire

Alas, Fiddy is hardly alone in his use of the instrument – which primitively yet evocatively augments the human voice, first developed in 1970 by electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog.

Blame ubiquitous R&B star T-Pain for the vocoder’s sudden vogue. The "rappa turnt sanga" (read: rapper turned singer) began using the voice synth in 2005, making waves with his singles "I’m Sprung" and "I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)."

And the instrument’s futuristic yet retro sound began to slouch toward a kind of cultural saturation point after he used it on collaborations with a laundry list of pop, rap and R&B luminaries -- Akon, Yung Joc, Mike Jones, Kanye West, Too Short, R. Kelly and Styles P among them.

Fast forward to this year’s slinky Snoop Dogg banger "Sensual Seduction." On the Shawty Redd-produced hit, Snoop’s voice is processed through the computerized talk box a la his 1970s funk hero Roger Troutman and is shown in the video singing into the vocoder’s telltale plastic tube.

And of course no discussion of the current vocoder craze would be complete without mention of Kanye’s Daft Punk collabo "Stronger," which features a sizable sample from the Parisian electronic dance duo’s vocoder-riffic 2001 single "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Robot rock indeed.

--Chris Lee

Photo by Jim Cooper / AP

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

Bidoun becomes an unlikely home for great contemporary music writing

A quick stroll through the contributors' list for Da Capo's forthcoming "Best Music Writing 2008" anthology yields many of the usual suspects (including, unfortunately but inevitably, Gene Weingarten's High Culture barricade-enforcing piece on Joshua Bell playing for change in the D.C. Metro). But a surprising small-run magazine popped up a few times with very worthy entries, the Middle Eastern and South Asian cultural journal Bidoun.

The magazine, like its contemporary peers n+1 and Russia!, is a roundabout survey of long-form political reporting, interviews and essays on cultural ephemera, but its thoughtful dissections of Orientalism in the avant-garde and pop music worlds are often revelatory.

   

Before MySpace and its low-level stalking possibilities or Facebook and its gazillion time-sucking applications, there was Makeoutclub, a meeting site for hard-core, punk, goth and emo kids. Launched in 2000 by Gibby Miller, the website was bare bones -- click on "girls" or "boys" and read hundreds of profiles, which consisted of little more than a picture and a blank space ready made for a poem, a list of your favorite bands or maybe just a cribbed lyric representative of your sad little scotch-taped heart.

On Monday night, I trespassed in Griffith Park, ran from men with flashlights and retrieved a valuable envelope hidden inside a drainpipe.

No, I'm not a secret agent. Just a Nine Inch Nails fan.

Less willing to drive across the state -- or across town, for that matter -- to see your favorite performers because of skyrocketing costs at the gas pump?

We want to hear how the cost of fueling up may be cutting into your summer concert- and club-going. And if you’re a musician, tell us whether you’ve re-routed a tour so your band’s 1985 Ford Econoline van won’t have to make that 500-mile detour through Boise, Idaho, one more time.

Please e-mail your tales of fossil fuel-based woe to me at Randy.Lewis@latimes.com or leave them as comments.

--Randy Lewis

Photo of LoveLikeFire, one of the many young bands affected by steep gas prices, by Eric Risberg/Associated Press

The second annual Reggae Rising Music Festival is giving away $100 gas cards, in hopes of luring reggae fans to the festival grounds in remote Piercy, Calif., a town about 200 miles north of San Francisco. Performers include Sizzla, Cham, Junior Reid, Julian Marley and UB40. "Let reggae pick up your gasoline," its website explains. What a brilliant idea! Now, if only rock could pay for my hotel and hip-hop for my food.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

From our pals over at the Technology blog:

If you are going up against a giant, it helps if you too are a giant. And scrappy.

That appears to be Amazon.com's strategy as its MP3 store takes on Apple's iTunes in digital music.

Today, the British alternative rock group Coldplay (pictured above), is releasing its new album, "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends." Amazon is using the occasion to wave in more customers with some huge discounts.

Amazon said it would begin selling digital versions of past Coldplay albums for bargain-basement prices. As part of a weekly promotion called Daily Deal, the Coldplay album "X&Y" is today available for $1.99. On Wednesday, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" can be yours for $1.99. Both albums are currently $7.99 on iTunes. "Parachutes" is next up on Thursday for $1.99. On Friday, the "Brothers and Sisters" EP will cost you only 99 cents.

Since it launched in September, the Amazon MP3 store has trained its sights on Apple's iTunes store, which sells more music than any other U.S. retailer. Amazon has not released information about how much music it has sold.

Read the rest of Amazon cuts Coldplay album prices to bring in the crowds.

Has everybody in hip-hop gone vocoder crazy?

On the new single from G-Unit, "Rider (Part 2)," 50 Cent sings through the voice synthesizer for the chorus:

I told you boy, I’m a soldier boy

I got no choice but to be a rider

I approach you boy, with the toaster boy

From point blank range and then fire

Alas, Fiddy is hardly alone in his use of the instrument – which primitively yet evocatively augments the human voice, first developed in 1970 by electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog.

Blame ubiquitous R&B star T-Pain for the vocoder’s sudden vogue. The "rappa turnt sanga" (read: rapper turned singer) began using the voice synth in 2005, making waves with his singles "I’m Sprung" and "I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)."

And the instrument’s futuristic yet retro sound began to slouch toward a kind of cultural saturation point after he used it on collaborations with a laundry list of pop, rap and R&B luminaries -- Akon, Yung Joc, Mike Jones, Kanye West, Too Short, R. Kelly and Styles P among them.

Fast forward to this year’s slinky Snoop Dogg banger "Sensual Seduction." On the Shawty Redd-produced hit, Snoop’s voice is processed through the computerized talk box a la his 1970s funk hero Roger Troutman and is shown in the video singing into the vocoder’s telltale plastic tube.

And of course no discussion of the current vocoder craze would be complete without mention of Kanye’s Daft Punk collabo "Stronger," which features a sizable sample from the Parisian electronic dance duo’s vocoder-riffic 2001 single "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Robot rock indeed.

--Chris Lee

Photo by Jim Cooper / AP

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

The relaunch of Makeoutclub.com

Before MySpace and its low-level stalking possibilities or Facebook and its gazillion time-sucking applications, there was Makeoutclub, a meeting site for hard-core, punk, goth and emo kids. Launched in 2000 by Gibby Miller, the website was bare bones -- click on "girls" or "boys" and read hundreds of profiles, which consisted of little more than a picture and a blank space ready made for a poem, a list of your favorite bands or maybe just a cribbed lyric representative of your sad little scotch-taped heart.

On Monday night, I trespassed in Griffith Park, ran from men with flashlights and retrieved a valuable envelope hidden inside a drainpipe.

No, I'm not a secret agent. Just a Nine Inch Nails fan.

Less willing to drive across the state -- or across town, for that matter -- to see your favorite performers because of skyrocketing costs at the gas pump?

We want to hear how the cost of fueling up may be cutting into your summer concert- and club-going. And if you’re a musician, tell us whether you’ve re-routed a tour so your band’s 1985 Ford Econoline van won’t have to make that 500-mile detour through Boise, Idaho, one more time.

Please e-mail your tales of fossil fuel-based woe to me at Randy.Lewis@latimes.com or leave them as comments.

--Randy Lewis

Photo of LoveLikeFire, one of the many young bands affected by steep gas prices, by Eric Risberg/Associated Press

The second annual Reggae Rising Music Festival is giving away $100 gas cards, in hopes of luring reggae fans to the festival grounds in remote Piercy, Calif., a town about 200 miles north of San Francisco. Performers include Sizzla, Cham, Junior Reid, Julian Marley and UB40. "Let reggae pick up your gasoline," its website explains. What a brilliant idea! Now, if only rock could pay for my hotel and hip-hop for my food.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

From our pals over at the Technology blog:

If you are going up against a giant, it helps if you too are a giant. And scrappy.

That appears to be Amazon.com's strategy as its MP3 store takes on Apple's iTunes in digital music.

Today, the British alternative rock group Coldplay (pictured above), is releasing its new album, "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends." Amazon is using the occasion to wave in more customers with some huge discounts.

Amazon said it would begin selling digital versions of past Coldplay albums for bargain-basement prices. As part of a weekly promotion called Daily Deal, the Coldplay album "X&Y" is today available for $1.99. On Wednesday, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" can be yours for $1.99. Both albums are currently $7.99 on iTunes. "Parachutes" is next up on Thursday for $1.99. On Friday, the "Brothers and Sisters" EP will cost you only 99 cents.

Since it launched in September, the Amazon MP3 store has trained its sights on Apple's iTunes store, which sells more music than any other U.S. retailer. Amazon has not released information about how much music it has sold.

Read the rest of Amazon cuts Coldplay album prices to bring in the crowds.

Has everybody in hip-hop gone vocoder crazy?

On the new single from G-Unit, "Rider (Part 2)," 50 Cent sings through the voice synthesizer for the chorus:

I told you boy, I’m a soldier boy

I got no choice but to be a rider

I approach you boy, with the toaster boy

From point blank range and then fire

Alas, Fiddy is hardly alone in his use of the instrument – which primitively yet evocatively augments the human voice, first developed in 1970 by electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog.

Blame ubiquitous R&B star T-Pain for the vocoder’s sudden vogue. The "rappa turnt sanga" (read: rapper turned singer) began using the voice synth in 2005, making waves with his singles "I’m Sprung" and "I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)."

And the instrument’s futuristic yet retro sound began to slouch toward a kind of cultural saturation point after he used it on collaborations with a laundry list of pop, rap and R&B luminaries -- Akon, Yung Joc, Mike Jones, Kanye West, Too Short, R. Kelly and Styles P among them.

Fast forward to this year’s slinky Snoop Dogg banger "Sensual Seduction." On the Shawty Redd-produced hit, Snoop’s voice is processed through the computerized talk box a la his 1970s funk hero Roger Troutman and is shown in the video singing into the vocoder’s telltale plastic tube.

And of course no discussion of the current vocoder craze would be complete without mention of Kanye’s Daft Punk collabo "Stronger," which features a sizable sample from the Parisian electronic dance duo’s vocoder-riffic 2001 single "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Robot rock indeed.

--Chris Lee

Photo by Jim Cooper / AP

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

Nine Inch Nails sends fans to downward spiraled drainpipe

On Monday night, I trespassed in Griffith Park, ran from men with flashlights and retrieved a valuable envelope hidden inside a drainpipe.

No, I'm not a secret agent. Just a Nine Inch Nails fan.

Less willing to drive across the state -- or across town, for that matter -- to see your favorite performers because of skyrocketing costs at the gas pump?

We want to hear how the cost of fueling up may be cutting into your summer concert- and club-going. And if you’re a musician, tell us whether you’ve re-routed a tour so your band’s 1985 Ford Econoline van won’t have to make that 500-mile detour through Boise, Idaho, one more time.

Please e-mail your tales of fossil fuel-based woe to me at Randy.Lewis@latimes.com or leave them as comments.

--Randy Lewis

Photo of LoveLikeFire, one of the many young bands affected by steep gas prices, by Eric Risberg/Associated Press

The second annual Reggae Rising Music Festival is giving away $100 gas cards, in hopes of luring reggae fans to the festival grounds in remote Piercy, Calif., a town about 200 miles north of San Francisco. Performers include Sizzla, Cham, Junior Reid, Julian Marley and UB40. "Let reggae pick up your gasoline," its website explains. What a brilliant idea! Now, if only rock could pay for my hotel and hip-hop for my food.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

From our pals over at the Technology blog:

If you are going up against a giant, it helps if you too are a giant. And scrappy.

That appears to be Amazon.com's strategy as its MP3 store takes on Apple's iTunes in digital music.

Today, the British alternative rock group Coldplay (pictured above), is releasing its new album, "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends." Amazon is using the occasion to wave in more customers with some huge discounts.

Amazon said it would begin selling digital versions of past Coldplay albums for bargain-basement prices. As part of a weekly promotion called Daily Deal, the Coldplay album "X&Y" is today available for $1.99. On Wednesday, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" can be yours for $1.99. Both albums are currently $7.99 on iTunes. "Parachutes" is next up on Thursday for $1.99. On Friday, the "Brothers and Sisters" EP will cost you only 99 cents.

Since it launched in September, the Amazon MP3 store has trained its sights on Apple's iTunes store, which sells more music than any other U.S. retailer. Amazon has not released information about how much music it has sold.

Read the rest of Amazon cuts Coldplay album prices to bring in the crowds.

Has everybody in hip-hop gone vocoder crazy?

On the new single from G-Unit, "Rider (Part 2)," 50 Cent sings through the voice synthesizer for the chorus:

I told you boy, I’m a soldier boy

I got no choice but to be a rider

I approach you boy, with the toaster boy

From point blank range and then fire

Alas, Fiddy is hardly alone in his use of the instrument – which primitively yet evocatively augments the human voice, first developed in 1970 by electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog.

Blame ubiquitous R&B star T-Pain for the vocoder’s sudden vogue. The "rappa turnt sanga" (read: rapper turned singer) began using the voice synth in 2005, making waves with his singles "I’m Sprung" and "I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)."

And the instrument’s futuristic yet retro sound began to slouch toward a kind of cultural saturation point after he used it on collaborations with a laundry list of pop, rap and R&B luminaries -- Akon, Yung Joc, Mike Jones, Kanye West, Too Short, R. Kelly and Styles P among them.

Fast forward to this year’s slinky Snoop Dogg banger "Sensual Seduction." On the Shawty Redd-produced hit, Snoop’s voice is processed through the computerized talk box a la his 1970s funk hero Roger Troutman and is shown in the video singing into the vocoder’s telltale plastic tube.

And of course no discussion of the current vocoder craze would be complete without mention of Kanye’s Daft Punk collabo "Stronger," which features a sizable sample from the Parisian electronic dance duo’s vocoder-riffic 2001 single "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Robot rock indeed.

--Chris Lee

Photo by Jim Cooper / AP

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

Gas prices keeping you home?

Less willing to drive across the state -- or across town, for that matter -- to see your favorite performers because of skyrocketing costs at the gas pump?

We want to hear how the cost of fueling up may be cutting into your summer concert- and club-going. And if you’re a musician, tell us whether you’ve re-routed a tour so your band’s 1985 Ford Econoline van won’t have to make that 500-mile detour through Boise, Idaho, one more time.

Please e-mail your tales of fossil fuel-based woe to me at Randy.Lewis@latimes.com or leave them as comments.

--Randy Lewis

Photo of LoveLikeFire, one of the many young bands affected by steep gas prices, by Eric Risberg/Associated Press

The second annual Reggae Rising Music Festival is giving away $100 gas cards, in hopes of luring reggae fans to the festival grounds in remote Piercy, Calif., a town about 200 miles north of San Francisco. Performers include Sizzla, Cham, Junior Reid, Julian Marley and UB40. "Let reggae pick up your gasoline," its website explains. What a brilliant idea! Now, if only rock could pay for my hotel and hip-hop for my food.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

From our pals over at the Technology blog:

If you are going up against a giant, it helps if you too are a giant. And scrappy.

That appears to be Amazon.com's strategy as its MP3 store takes on Apple's iTunes in digital music.

Today, the British alternative rock group Coldplay (pictured above), is releasing its new album, "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends." Amazon is using the occasion to wave in more customers with some huge discounts.

Amazon said it would begin selling digital versions of past Coldplay albums for bargain-basement prices. As part of a weekly promotion called Daily Deal, the Coldplay album "X&Y" is today available for $1.99. On Wednesday, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" can be yours for $1.99. Both albums are currently $7.99 on iTunes. "Parachutes" is next up on Thursday for $1.99. On Friday, the "Brothers and Sisters" EP will cost you only 99 cents.

Since it launched in September, the Amazon MP3 store has trained its sights on Apple's iTunes store, which sells more music than any other U.S. retailer. Amazon has not released information about how much music it has sold.

Read the rest of Amazon cuts Coldplay album prices to bring in the crowds.

Has everybody in hip-hop gone vocoder crazy?

On the new single from G-Unit, "Rider (Part 2)," 50 Cent sings through the voice synthesizer for the chorus:

I told you boy, I’m a soldier boy

I got no choice but to be a rider

I approach you boy, with the toaster boy

From point blank range and then fire

Alas, Fiddy is hardly alone in his use of the instrument – which primitively yet evocatively augments the human voice, first developed in 1970 by electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog.

Blame ubiquitous R&B star T-Pain for the vocoder’s sudden vogue. The "rappa turnt sanga" (read: rapper turned singer) began using the voice synth in 2005, making waves with his singles "I’m Sprung" and "I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)."

And the instrument’s futuristic yet retro sound began to slouch toward a kind of cultural saturation point after he used it on collaborations with a laundry list of pop, rap and R&B luminaries -- Akon, Yung Joc, Mike Jones, Kanye West, Too Short, R. Kelly and Styles P among them.

Fast forward to this year’s slinky Snoop Dogg banger "Sensual Seduction." On the Shawty Redd-produced hit, Snoop’s voice is processed through the computerized talk box a la his 1970s funk hero Roger Troutman and is shown in the video singing into the vocoder’s telltale plastic tube.

And of course no discussion of the current vocoder craze would be complete without mention of Kanye’s Daft Punk collabo "Stronger," which features a sizable sample from the Parisian electronic dance duo’s vocoder-riffic 2001 single "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Robot rock indeed.

--Chris Lee

Photo by Jim Cooper / AP

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

Gas prices, Jamaican me crazy!

The second annual Reggae Rising Music Festival is giving away $100 gas cards, in hopes of luring reggae fans to the festival grounds in remote Piercy, Calif., a town about 200 miles north of San Francisco. Performers include Sizzla, Cham, Junior Reid, Julian Marley and UB40. "Let reggae pick up your gasoline," its website explains. What a brilliant idea! Now, if only rock could pay for my hotel and hip-hop for my food.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

From our pals over at the Technology blog:

If you are going up against a giant, it helps if you too are a giant. And scrappy.

That appears to be Amazon.com's strategy as its MP3 store takes on Apple's iTunes in digital music.

Today, the British alternative rock group Coldplay (pictured above), is releasing its new album, "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends." Amazon is using the occasion to wave in more customers with some huge discounts.

Amazon said it would begin selling digital versions of past Coldplay albums for bargain-basement prices. As part of a weekly promotion called Daily Deal, the Coldplay album "X&Y" is today available for $1.99. On Wednesday, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" can be yours for $1.99. Both albums are currently $7.99 on iTunes. "Parachutes" is next up on Thursday for $1.99. On Friday, the "Brothers and Sisters" EP will cost you only 99 cents.

Since it launched in September, the Amazon MP3 store has trained its sights on Apple's iTunes store, which sells more music than any other U.S. retailer. Amazon has not released information about how much music it has sold.

Read the rest of Amazon cuts Coldplay album prices to bring in the crowds.

Has everybody in hip-hop gone vocoder crazy?

On the new single from G-Unit, "Rider (Part 2)," 50 Cent sings through the voice synthesizer for the chorus:

I told you boy, I’m a soldier boy

I got no choice but to be a rider

I approach you boy, with the toaster boy

From point blank range and then fire

Alas, Fiddy is hardly alone in his use of the instrument – which primitively yet evocatively augments the human voice, first developed in 1970 by electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog.

Blame ubiquitous R&B star T-Pain for the vocoder’s sudden vogue. The "rappa turnt sanga" (read: rapper turned singer) began using the voice synth in 2005, making waves with his singles "I’m Sprung" and "I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)."

And the instrument’s futuristic yet retro sound began to slouch toward a kind of cultural saturation point after he used it on collaborations with a laundry list of pop, rap and R&B luminaries -- Akon, Yung Joc, Mike Jones, Kanye West, Too Short, R. Kelly and Styles P among them.

Fast forward to this year’s slinky Snoop Dogg banger "Sensual Seduction." On the Shawty Redd-produced hit, Snoop’s voice is processed through the computerized talk box a la his 1970s funk hero Roger Troutman and is shown in the video singing into the vocoder’s telltale plastic tube.

And of course no discussion of the current vocoder craze would be complete without mention of Kanye’s Daft Punk collabo "Stronger," which features a sizable sample from the Parisian electronic dance duo’s vocoder-riffic 2001 single "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Robot rock indeed.

--Chris Lee

Photo by Jim Cooper / AP

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

Emmys give knuckle bump to will.i.am; more videos on the way

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

From our pals over at the Technology blog:

If you are going up against a giant, it helps if you too are a giant. And scrappy.

That appears to be Amazon.com's strategy as its MP3 store takes on Apple's iTunes in digital music.

Today, the British alternative rock group Coldplay (pictured above), is releasing its new album, "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends." Amazon is using the occasion to wave in more customers with some huge discounts.

Amazon said it would begin selling digital versions of past Coldplay albums for bargain-basement prices. As part of a weekly promotion called Daily Deal, the Coldplay album "X&Y" is today available for $1.99. On Wednesday, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" can be yours for $1.99. Both albums are currently $7.99 on iTunes. "Parachutes" is next up on Thursday for $1.99. On Friday, the "Brothers and Sisters" EP will cost you only 99 cents.

Since it launched in September, the Amazon MP3 store has trained its sights on Apple's iTunes store, which sells more music than any other U.S. retailer. Amazon has not released information about how much music it has sold.

Read the rest of Amazon cuts Coldplay album prices to bring in the crowds.

Has everybody in hip-hop gone vocoder crazy?

On the new single from G-Unit, "Rider (Part 2)," 50 Cent sings through the voice synthesizer for the chorus:

I told you boy, I’m a soldier boy

I got no choice but to be a rider

I approach you boy, with the toaster boy

From point blank range and then fire

Alas, Fiddy is hardly alone in his use of the instrument – which primitively yet evocatively augments the human voice, first developed in 1970 by electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog.

Blame ubiquitous R&B star T-Pain for the vocoder’s sudden vogue. The "rappa turnt sanga" (read: rapper turned singer) began using the voice synth in 2005, making waves with his singles "I’m Sprung" and "I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)."

And the instrument’s futuristic yet retro sound began to slouch toward a kind of cultural saturation point after he used it on collaborations with a laundry list of pop, rap and R&B luminaries -- Akon, Yung Joc, Mike Jones, Kanye West, Too Short, R. Kelly and Styles P among them.

Fast forward to this year’s slinky Snoop Dogg banger "Sensual Seduction." On the Shawty Redd-produced hit, Snoop’s voice is processed through the computerized talk box a la his 1970s funk hero Roger Troutman and is shown in the video singing into the vocoder’s telltale plastic tube.

And of course no discussion of the current vocoder craze would be complete without mention of Kanye’s Daft Punk collabo "Stronger," which features a sizable sample from the Parisian electronic dance duo’s vocoder-riffic 2001 single "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Robot rock indeed.

--Chris Lee

Photo by Jim Cooper / AP

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

Amazon cuts Coldplay album prices to bring in the crowds

From our pals over at the Technology blog:

If you are going up against a giant, it helps if you too are a giant. And scrappy.

That appears to be Amazon.com's strategy as its MP3 store takes on Apple's iTunes in digital music.

Today, the British alternative rock group Coldplay (pictured above), is releasing its new album, "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends." Amazon is using the occasion to wave in more customers with some huge discounts.

Amazon said it would begin selling digital versions of past Coldplay albums for bargain-basement prices. As part of a weekly promotion called Daily Deal, the Coldplay album "X&Y" is today available for $1.99. On Wednesday, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" can be yours for $1.99. Both albums are currently $7.99 on iTunes. "Parachutes" is next up on Thursday for $1.99. On Friday, the "Brothers and Sisters" EP will cost you only 99 cents.

Since it launched in September, the Amazon MP3 store has trained its sights on Apple's iTunes store, which sells more music than any other U.S. retailer. Amazon has not released information about how much music it has sold.

Read the rest of Amazon cuts Coldplay album prices to bring in the crowds.

Has everybody in hip-hop gone vocoder crazy?

On the new single from G-Unit, "Rider (Part 2)," 50 Cent sings through the voice synthesizer for the chorus:

I told you boy, I’m a soldier boy

I got no choice but to be a rider

I approach you boy, with the toaster boy

From point blank range and then fire

Alas, Fiddy is hardly alone in his use of the instrument – which primitively yet evocatively augments the human voice, first developed in 1970 by electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog.

Blame ubiquitous R&B star T-Pain for the vocoder’s sudden vogue. The "rappa turnt sanga" (read: rapper turned singer) began using the voice synth in 2005, making waves with his singles "I’m Sprung" and "I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)."

And the instrument’s futuristic yet retro sound began to slouch toward a kind of cultural saturation point after he used it on collaborations with a laundry list of pop, rap and R&B luminaries -- Akon, Yung Joc, Mike Jones, Kanye West, Too Short, R. Kelly and Styles P among them.

Fast forward to this year’s slinky Snoop Dogg banger "Sensual Seduction." On the Shawty Redd-produced hit, Snoop’s voice is processed through the computerized talk box a la his 1970s funk hero Roger Troutman and is shown in the video singing into the vocoder’s telltale plastic tube.

And of course no discussion of the current vocoder craze would be complete without mention of Kanye’s Daft Punk collabo "Stronger," which features a sizable sample from the Parisian electronic dance duo’s vocoder-riffic 2001 single "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Robot rock indeed.

--Chris Lee

Photo by Jim Cooper / AP

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

Fiddy gets his vocoder on

Has everybody in hip-hop gone vocoder crazy?

On the new single from G-Unit, "Rider (Part 2)," 50 Cent sings through the voice synthesizer for the chorus:

I told you boy, I’m a soldier boy

I got no choice but to be a rider

I approach you boy, with the toaster boy

From point blank range and then fire

Alas, Fiddy is hardly alone in his use of the instrument – which primitively yet evocatively augments the human voice, first developed in 1970 by electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog.

Blame ubiquitous R&B star T-Pain for the vocoder’s sudden vogue. The "rappa turnt sanga" (read: rapper turned singer) began using the voice synth in 2005, making waves with his singles "I’m Sprung" and "I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)."

And the instrument’s futuristic yet retro sound began to slouch toward a kind of cultural saturation point after he used it on collaborations with a laundry list of pop, rap and R&B luminaries -- Akon, Yung Joc, Mike Jones, Kanye West, Too Short, R. Kelly and Styles P among them.

Fast forward to this year’s slinky Snoop Dogg banger "Sensual Seduction." On the Shawty Redd-produced hit, Snoop’s voice is processed through the computerized talk box a la his 1970s funk hero Roger Troutman and is shown in the video singing into the vocoder’s telltale plastic tube.

And of course no discussion of the current vocoder craze would be complete without mention of Kanye’s Daft Punk collabo "Stronger," which features a sizable sample from the Parisian electronic dance duo’s vocoder-riffic 2001 single "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Robot rock indeed.

--Chris Lee

Photo by Jim Cooper / AP

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

New fix for Idol junkies: Eurovision finals set for Saturday

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter