Jody Rosen at the formerly-locally-owned Slate has a lovely rant about the unbearable whiteness of “indie” music. Then Rosen segues into a side rant about the peculiar slant of NPR (and upscale white America) toward black music; preferably their preferences for Af-Am artists who are “Dead, Old, Retro, Foreign,” or “DORF.”

Feliks Banel offers fond recollections of the late great KJET, the AM modern-rock station that ruled a small but eventually-influential portion of Seattle’s listening audience from 1982 to 1988.

Mount Holyoke College prof Douglas J. Amy insists that “Government is Good,” and has a whole detailed site all about why.

Cenk Uygur, meanwhile, explores the other side of this ideological divide, and decides today’s big business power-grabbers aren’t interested in democracy or even capitalism; but that’s only to be expected from “corporatists.”

Political PR maven Jonah Sachs insists progressives have gotta stop being so damned rational. He argues that public opinion in this country isn’t swayed by analytical arguments but by emotional appeals.

Guess who uses social-media sites the most? That long-neglected demographic caste, the stay-home moms.

Paul Krugman wrote it weeks ago, but I’m still trying to get to the end of his long essay asking the musical question, How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? The answer to his query’s easy, really. Economics is either the most or second-most fraudulant “science” out there (competing with sociology). Economic theory has less to do with the world most of us live in and more in common with the virtual worlds created by or for role-playing gamers

Henry Gibson, who passed away Monday, had a long and solid acting career ranging from Nashville to Magnolia and Boston Legal. But he’ll always be known as “the Poet” on the original Laugh-In. Gibson was a prime example of that show’s basic premise. Laugh-In was suit-and-tie guys (what we’d now call the Mad Men generation) looking gently askew at Those Darned Hippies. Saturday Night Live, by contrast, WAS Those Darned Hippies.

At least Gibson died without the tragic career footnote faced by Peter, Paul and Mary co-singer Mary Travers. She faced her cancer-ridden final months with the indignity of having one of her group’s hit songs reworked into the unauthorized political hatched-job “Barack the Magic Negro.”

Some clever publishers, with permission of the bands being referenced, are putting out an Indie Rock Coloring Book. (I know, some of you snarkers would color all the pages pale, white, or the colors of dingy discount sneakers.)

One of his former lawyers says it just might have been the same thing that did in his first wife’s dad.

The ultimate tabloid celebrity was also the ultimate mess of contradictions, as you’ve long known. He was a devout student of classic R&B who had a series of nose and chin reconstructions, straightened his hair, and wore whiteface makeup on and off stage. He was a self-made sex symbol whose mark of “toughness” was to shriek in an attempt to reach the high notes of his early fame. He was a creator of effortless-sounding music whose life was rife with chaos, drug/alcohol abuse, and music-industry sycophants. He was a beloved entertainer who was accused of some of the most heinous crimes. He’d attained unlimited wealth (or the closest thing to that any African-American man has ever had), then spent the last third of his life scrambling to avoid total financial collapse.

In all the TV, radio, and online chatter in the first hours since his demise, I’ve been reading and hearing the wildest tales. Given what we know about his life, even the wildest of these rumors seem believable, whether or not they’re true.

My favorite quotation about Jackson came in a Facebook message from ex-Seattle semiotician Steven Shaviro: “MJ, in his musical genius and in his sad racial and sexual confusions, epitomized American civilization more than anybody else ever did.”

…and best wishes to top local music producer Conrad Uno (Young Fresh Fellows, PUSA, and more). He and his lovely bride Emily Bishton renewed their wedding vows at Safeco Field on Sunday. The here-linked Seattle Times article mentions almost nothing about Uno’s musical career.

…today to Bob Bogle, Ventures founding guitarist and NW rock legend. His band got into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame just last year. His distinctively crisp, cool instrumental sound is eternal.

Thanks to iTunes’ automatic search for album-cover art, I woke up this morning to find this image now attached to the brassy 1959 instrumental hit “Manhattan Spiritual.” I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Sad relic of a Mad Men past we’re glad to be over.” Since this is the No-Comment Dept., I’ll let your thoughts carry the day.

Back in the days of vinyl and even beyond, the University District was the record-store capitol of the region. That’s where such once-mighty industry players as Budget Tapes & Records, Discount Records, Tower, Peaches, and The Wherehouse all purveyed the big (later little) plastic discs bearing assorted types of beautiful noise.

That era ends this month. That’s when the District’s last specialty new music store, Cellophane Square, gives up the good fight it’s fought since 1972.

At its original location on NE 42nd, and later in more spacious digs on upper University Way, Cellophane Square was a lot more than a retailer. It was a community center, a hangout, an information exchange.

This was particularly true during the 1979-91 era of the punk underground, when Seattle’s civic cultural establishment sneered at any musical act younger or flashier than the Eagles. Cellophane Square was where we learned which bands were touring, which bands were breaking up, and which bands needed a new drummer. It was where we got the domestic zines and the UK music mags. It was where we got those oh-so-rare (even then!) import-only releases by American bands.

There will still be a few new CDs at the University Book Store, and a lot of used discs at 2nd Time Around. But the scene just won’t be the same.