Category: kristen hall

kristen hall sues sugarland

~ jamie ~ 5 Comments

from an associated press article a few days ago:

A founder of the country band Sugarland is suing the two current members of the popular group for $1.5 million.

According to a lawsuit filed late last month in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Kristen Hall was to get a cut of the group’s profits even after she left in 2005 for a solo career. The lawsuit says Hall, who founded the band in 2002, has an agreement with Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush to equally share profits and losses.

Hall says in the lawsuit that she has been excluded from the group’s profits since she left.

this somehow seems un-kristen-like to me, but i suppose she’s entitled to the money if they promised it to her. does this mean that she should continue to share in profits only from work when she was with the band, or that she should get a share of the profit for work that sugarland did after she left? i can’t say that it makes sense to get money for work you haven’t performed, so to speak, but if that’s what they agreed on then give her the money.

i hope she has that in writing.

michelle shocked, my other favorite artist

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

amy, a commenter on one of my kristen hall posts, asked me about some of my other musical favorites.

i blab on so much about kristen hall, and kiki and herb, that you might think that’s all i like. but you’d be wrong.

although i don’t listen to music nearly as much as i did when i was younger, and although most of the music i do listen to when i listen to it was made before 1990, and although i very infrequently attend live music concerts, and although when i do attend them the artists giving the concert most likely got their start long before said year 1990, i do have some current musical opinions.

even though the subjects of my current musical opinions aren’t themselves very current.

back in the day, when being emo meant you were merely just another black-clad youth, i listened to my cure, and my smiths, and my siouxsie, and my pil, and my depeche mode, and my sisters of mercy.

and i listened to my skinny puppy, and my ministry, and my severed heads, and my moev, and my nine inch nails, and my legendary pink dots.

and i listened to my r.e.m., and my fetchin bones, and my love tractor, and my dbs, and my connells, and my royal crescent mob, and my mojo nixon.

and i listened to my alphaville, and my the the, and my new order, and my cabaret voltaire.

and i listened to my nirvana, and my mudhoney, and my sonic youth, and my dinosaur jr., and my jane’s addiction.

and i listened to my kristen hall, and my michelle malone, and my ani difranco, and my utah phillips, and my michelle shocked.

and of all those, the one i still listen to, and listen to the most, and go see whenever she plays in new york city, is michelle shocked.

she, and her music, is a little bit of everything and constantly surprising and enjoyable. she’s a bit of a troubadour and a story-telling raconteur (like utah phillips), and a bit of a brilliant acoustic musician (like ani difranco), and a bit of an incredible lyricist (like kristen hall), and a bit of a political animal (like michael stipe).

except that it’s all in one package. and she’s creative (each of her albums is completely different), uncompromising (she gave her label the stiff middle finger better than nearly anyone else ever has), and entertaining (self-effacing, spontaneous, and explosive).

not familiar with michelle shocked? if you like acoustic, start with texas campfire tapes; if you like folk, start with arkansas traveler; if you like protest rock, start with short sharp shocked.

but you’ll end up listening to all of them anyway, so start wherever you damn well please, or with whatever is accessible or handy.

kristen hall, not kristin hall

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

good lord. ever have one of those moments when you wonder just how much more embarrassed you could possibly be?

I’m having one of those now.

i’ve been blogging (blathering, really) for years about how much i love kristin hall. about how kristin hall is my favorite artist. about how i want “peaches” by kristin hall to be played at my funeral. about how my favorite two cds by any artist of all time are “fact and fiction” and “be careful what you wish for”. and about how high my gooogle ranking was for kristin hall related searches.

blah, blah, blah.

and now i realize that i have been spelling her name wrong. for at least two years on my site.

it’s kristen hall, idiot.

i really don’t undertand how i did this. i’m a fanatically accurate speller, especially of names. i used to be rain man with names when i was a yearbook adviser. I could blow students away with my memory of who was carrie versus cari versus kerry versus cary. i could spell 12-letter polish names with ease.

it’s no wonder “kristin hall” got me so many google hits. everyone else was spelling her name correctly, and i was getting the spelling-challenged crowd to visit. and the worst part is how many times i linked to the kristen hall website and never noticed the “e” versus the “i”.

not to mention how many times i’ve looked at cd covers.

i’m sorry to have propagated this misspelling.

i’m an idiot.

hopefully this posting will somewhat mitigate my past misdeeds. and i’ve edited all the pages (and the site category) to correct the spelling.

it may seem i’m making a mountain out of a molehill. but writing this is a process–it’s a reminder to myself to be more humble about my abilities.

and to not take anything for granted.

back to number one

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

i’m back to the number one position on google for jamie howard, ahead of jamie howard the professional wrestler, and jamie howard the swimming machine, and jamie howard the alderman in davenport iowa, and jamie howard the former ceo of excite, and all the rest.

it’s about damn time. enough of this number two and number three nonsense.

in an effort to figure out google and how it works, i signed up for google sitemaps. you can then get a plethora of info about how google sees your site, and all that.

for instance, i learned that the number one topic i have blogged about is kristin hall. if i just turned this site into a series of blogs about kristen hall, i might get some action around here. and certainly she is an interesting topic.

but i wouldn’t subject her to the vagaries of my attention. she deserves better.

the second hottest topic? peeps pie. come on people. that wasn’t even a blog. it was just a picture, with no words involved.

of course, as i’ve mentioned elsewhere, the number of people subscribing to my rss feed rises with each day that passes that i haven’t blogged. howard’s law, i suppose.

which tells me that you all just want me to shut up, or just talk about peeps pie or kristen hall incessantly.

i get the message.

and on a completely unrelated topic, i found my post containing my american idol prediction. back in early march, i predicted elliot would go all the way.

i think i’m sticking to that. before last night, i thought he was gone. but after last night, he’s around for one more week anyhow. he may be a dark horse, behind chris and taylor, but i think he’s the only performer left who has actually improving somewhat, if only marginally. and i think people are going to notice that, and reward it.

update: all those google hits for kristin hall? i was spelling her name wrong. it’s kristen hall. here’s my mea culpa on the matter.

cool things coming

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

lots of good happenings upcoming for kirk and me. last week was just hectic–every night with something different going on.

and i am a bit of a homebody, and i like to go out and do things, but not every single night. i need time to decompress. i like sitting around the house and wasting time however i choose to waste it.

that said, the next few weeks are bringing some fun things. spaced out a bit, so i can’t complain.
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rasputina. not bad!

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

i’d been cranky about going to see this band. frankly, yesterday’s post was more an attempt to kick myself in the ass to try to enjoy an evening about which i was, at best, dubious.

well, who knew.

not only was rasputina not bad, they were very very good. in fact, i’d go so far as to say they were pretty close to brilliant.

i used to care a lot, as faith no more once cynically said, about music. i was a nightclub dj and went out every single night for years on end. but music lately?

feh.
Continue reading “rasputina. not bad!” →

when i die

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

i made a little joke about this subject this weekend, in conversation. i’ll throw it in somewhere. but, especially on a cold rainy-ish monday, i have to tackle this biggest of subjects sometime. plus, my opinions should be down in black and white, in case someone needs to see it. my will has all the legal stuff, but this is the cool stuff. so here goes.
Continue reading “when i die” →