rereader2

I was curious, so I looked--it's currently #18 in iTunes Singer/Songwriter. (10 of the 17 ahead of it in that category are Ed Sheeran. Goodness!) It sounds good.

(I think you mistook my videos for arguments. They just amuse me.)

The construction queried was not "Me and my band performed," but "Me and my band." It can be correct at the start of a sentence. For example, in standard SPOKEN English, it is acceptable to say, "Me and my band, we performed at the prom last night."

If you drop the "and ???", you will almost always know. Or if you replace "me" with "him" and "I" with "he", that will also tell you. Ex: "The prom committee hired me and my band to perform at the dance." You would never say "The prom committee hired I to perform at the dance," or "The prom committee hired he to perform at the dance"; therefore it is incorrect to say "The prom committee hired I and my band" (or even "The prom committee hired my band and I"). Your English teachers were incorrect.

Sometimes "Me and my dad" or "me and my band" is correct. "I" is often used incorrectly in such constructions.

It's a good interview--and a great pity we couldn't get to know the contestants like that while they're still competing. I was impressed. I took particular note of how he made the point--in the most diplomatic way possible--that it's better to work with people (and get them around to your way of thinking) than to confront them...especially if you might end up working for them. ETA: Michael Slezak always gets the best out of his interviewees.

Hear Benedict Cumberbatch Read Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (Free For a Limited Time Only) ETA: I believe the same reading is available for free on iTunes--search for "Metamophosis Benedict Cumberbatch", and four episodes of SciFi Friday podcast appear, which so far as I can tell is the same four-part broadcast as is being rebroadcast on BBC Radio.

Texas is notionally--although not geographically--southwest. In real life, it's only one time zone away from the East coast.

It's always interesting to me to see which stars are generous to the Idol kids and which are not--there are such wildly different levels of sharing mike time on display. For my money, Steven Tyler won the "Is there someone else on the stage?" prize, poor Jax. And I thought Andy Grammer and Nick sounded excellent together in what was very much a well-blended performance.

This is completely, absolutely true. I know that AI, certainly, has started (or boosted) a substantial number of genre artists by the exposure they got on the show, and I would assume the "other show" has done the same. The key for these artists is that they have a good sense of themselves as artists going in, so they can build a base with their target audience.

YouTube, yes, but not YouTube alone--the new stars (and making-a-living-doing-what-they-love level successful singers) also do a ton of self-promotion via social media and Noise Trade. It's not enough any more to be a great singer or performer, now they need to be great direct marketers as well. It does mean there's more room today for those in less mainstream genres of music, but the streaming services--with their terrifyingly low payments to artists--are unsustainable. Unless they raise their payments--which means raising their fees--they're going to force an awful lot of singers out of the field.

The "other" show may be popular, but it's just as irrelevant. Today's music scene is far more fragmented than it used to be, and there are very, VERY few stars in the old sense of the word. Success is now mostly by genre, and these shows aren't good at picking out genre stars, since they go for mass voting.

Boo on Benedict not winning--but cheers for the series win!

Jason Castro (Season 7) is launching a new group with his siblings, and they've released a video with an acoustic version of a song from their upcoming album:

I watched it on ff--just the reveals. So half of every fifth show til the last week. It was enough!

Mark Gatiss just never stops, does he: Mark Gatiss: ‘Doctor Who is my first love, my last, my everything’.

THIS.

Thank you for the lovely, detailed report!

<s>M. Darcy, do you have a link?</s> Never mind, I found it. :) Thank you for the heads-up!

People weren't buying tickets last year or the year before, and the tour was playing to largely empty arenas (so the news reports said). They aren't going to pay for venues that they can't fill--they venues get paid whether tickets are bought or not.

From RadioTimes: It's a good thing for us that everyone involved in Sherlock WANTS to keep doing it.

Mark Gatiss to lend Sherlock twist to the BBC Proms. (I think "Proms" stands for promenades or promenade concerts? It's a whole series of classical music concerts and related events, and I am totally jealous that we have nothing like it here.) I think it's extremely cool that they're doing a concert based on Sherlock Holmes!

That whole thing with Harry drawing sports circles--that had to have been planned ahead of time, because lines don't just magically appear on screenshots, neither do freeze frames spontaneously occur. Whichever member of the production staff that had this brainstorm (or approved it) needs to go sit in the corner.