This is actually better than the versions from which it borrows:

Thanks LeRoi:

This post is mostly unrelated to the type of content that I typically post here, but I wanted to take a minute to highlight some music that I have recently found to be quite exceptional. Within the last couple months — I wish it had been sooner — I have become acquainted with Spotify, which makes available nearly every recording ever produced, with a few notable exceptions like The Beatles and Pink Floyd, etc.

I “came of age” when grunge was cool, so my favorite bands are from that early- to mid-1990s era: Nirvana, STP, Pearl Jam, Bush, Dinosaur Jr., R.E.M., Counting Crows, Green Day, etc. But for 30-somethings like myself, there is still plenty of new stuff to appreciate and dive into. Here are some selections that I have been enjoying as of late:

• New from Green Day: Stay The Night and F*** Time. Check out the new albums Uno and Dos.
• Tame Impala – Be Above It
• Tame Impala – Why Won’t They Talk to Me?
• Tame Impala – Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
• Tame Impala – Elephant
• Fiona Apple – Daredevil
• Cloud Nothings – No Future/No Past
• Cloud Nothings – Stay Useless
• Cloud Nothings – Separation
• Japandroids – The Nights of Wine and Roses
• Japandroids – Fire’s Highway
• Japandroids – Evil’s Sway
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Mladic
• The Smashing Pumpkins – Quasar
• The Smashing Pumpkins – Panopticon

I hate to see this end. It would be impossible for me to articulate what R.E.M. has meant to me in the last 20 years. The influence is immeasurable.

Here is a compilation of songs, news coverage from the BBC:

This is not your grandfather’s Austin City Limits:

A classic about a classic musician:

Recently discovered the music of Santigold from when she appeared on The Colbert Report this week. Watch that performance here.

Here is the official video:

If you are looking to read about the rantings of a wildly misinformed, aging and irrelevant rock star — and really, who isn’t? — look no further than Megadeth front man, Dave Mustaine, who during a recent concert in Singapore, charged Obama with being responsible for the shootings in Aurora, Colo., and at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. He claimed that the shootings were part of a conspiracy to garner support for Obama’s gun control policies.

This born-again Christian, Rick Santorum supporter and recovering alcoholic has not exactly branded himself as the most stable individual. At times, he has been an anti-immigration, anti-Mexican zealot, a Bill Clinton supporter and now, he’s apparently a fringe right conspiracy theorist.

Here’s what he had to say in 1988 on immigration “reform:”

If I were President of the United States, I’d build a great wall along the Mexican border and not let anybody in. … The beauty is gone when you see Americans sleeping on sidewalks and it makes me sick to think we have assholes in this country letting fucking Mexicans in. Who needs this shit?

Earlier in August, Mustaine also dredged up the already debunked birther notion that Obama is not a U.S. citizen because of a photoshopped sign of Kenya that he apparently found online:

With all of the proof about his birth certificate being fake. And you see the signs in Kenya that say ‘the birthplace of Barack Obama.’ Hello?! C’mon, guys. How stupid are we right now?

Pretty stupid, it seems if we are to believe this tripe. Here is the sign to which he is referring:

Notice anything peculiar here? Anyone with a high school education should. The non-English text on the sign resembles nothing like that which is spoken or written in Kenya, that’s for sure. Why? Because that’s Arabic. While there is some influence from the Middle East in Kenya, the two official languages are Swahili and English. Official road signs would surely not contain Arabic characters.

Here is the original, located in Oman:

I won’t tire readers with all of the hot garbage this guy has vomited up through the years, but Mustaine also believes in the “one world government” conspiracy and in the notion that America is waging war on religion by taking God out of textbooks, etc.:

It’s pretty clear that they’re taking prayer out of school. It’s been happening for a very long time. The very first schoolbook that was written had God all over it. I collect books and I have some really, really old schoolbooks, and God is mentioned on every single page. They’re taking God out of the schools to dumb us down.

Yes, you read that right. So, does he believe that textbooks that include elements of the supernatural enrich us in some way?