Sponsor: Blink-182’s New Album Out This Friday

Blink-182 - California

Blink-182’s new album, California, is out this Friday. The album features the hit single “Bored to Death” and pre-orders for the album are up at their website, Amazon, iTunes, and at SRC Vinyl. Summer is here and nothing is better than turning up the volume on your favorite pop-punk band and singing along.

Blink-182 are also hitting the road with A Day to Remember, All Time Low, and The All-American Rejects. Tickets are on sale now and dates can be found on Facebook or their website.

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Review: Dashboard Confessional – Dusk and Summer

Dashboard Confessional - Dusk and Summer

Dusk and Summer is my favorite Dashboard Confessional album. How’s that for a contrarian statement? For most fans of Dashboard, Dusk tends to occupy the lower rungs of discography rankings—if not the very bottom slot. There are obvious reasons for this lowly reputation, and they happen to correspond with the various groups of Chris Carrabba fans that exist out in the wild. The first group of fans is the “there from the beginning” group. These people were listening when Carrabba first arrived on the scene and released The Swiss Army Romance (2000) and The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most (2001). Fans in this group are incredibly attached to the stripped-down acoustic arrangements and heart-on-the-sleeve angst of those first two records. They cite Swiss Army and Places as foundational albums in the emo and pop-punk movements, label them as classics, and point to Carrabba going full-band (on 2003’s A Mark, A Mission, a Brand, a Scar) as the moment where everything went to hell.

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Summer Sponsorship Openings

Chorus.fm Logo

I’m starting to book up July and August on the sponsorship calendar. So, if you’ve got a cool product, album release, or service to promote to our audience, get in touch and let’s fill these spots up. We’ve been seeing really great results from the banner ads and feed sponsorships, and please reach out if you have any questions at all.

A View From Nowhere

Jay Rosen:

In pro journalism, American style, the View from Nowhere is a bid for trust that advertises the viewlessness of the news producer. Frequently it places the journalist between polarized extremes, and calls that neither-nor position “impartial.” Second, it’s a means of defense against a style of criticism that is fully anticipated: charges of bias originating in partisan politics and the two-party system. Third: it’s an attempt to secure a kind of universal legitimacy that is implicitly denied to those who stake out positions or betray a point of view. American journalists have almost a lust for the View from Nowhere because they think it has more authority than any other possible stance.

I re-read this at least once a year.

Aziz Ansari: Why Trump Makes Me Scared for My Family

Aziz Ansari, writing for The New York Times:

The vitriolic and hate-filled rhetoric coming from Mr. Trump isn’t so far off from cursing at strangers from a car window. He has said that people in the American Muslim community “know who the bad ones are,” implying that millions of innocent people are somehow complicit in awful attacks. Not only is this wrongheaded; but it also does nothing to address the real problems posed by terrorist attacks. By Mr. Trump’s logic, after the huge financial crisis of 2007-08, the best way to protect the American economy would have been to ban white males.

Sponsor: Thanks to Audible

Audible

My thanks to Audible.com for sponsoring Chorus this week. They are currently offering a free 30-day trial that comes with two free audio books, and if you’ve got any kind of commute, I can’t recommend finding some time to listen to audibooks enough. One of the things I love about Audible is how easy they make the return process — if you order something to check out, start it and don’t like it, they’re really great about letting you return the book without any hassle.

I’ve been currently reading Ready Player One, so if you’re looking for something new to check out, that’s definitely worth giving a look.