After visiting this curious blog...

Robbing a bank is as simple as putting pen to paper. Here are actual demand notes used in successful and unsuccessful unarmed bank robberies - - accompanied by a photo of each robber and appended with details about the robbery itself.

My favorite note so far:

I have a gun in my bag.
Give me $5,000 please.
Thanks a bunch.

The intro hangs for a bit, but it's well worth the wait.

h/t: Greg Vandy!

I always suspected that McCartney sang the "ahhhhhhhhhhh" in "A Day in the Life." Now, thanks to internet bootleggers, I'm 96.3% certain that I'm right.

Today in rock and roll history marks the birthday of Frankie Lymon (1942-1968): rhythm and blues singer, songwriter, precursor to Jackson Five-era Michael, heroin addict from the age of 15.

Lymon and his group The Teenagers are best remembered for the 1956 hit "Why Do Fools Fall in Love"— a song repeatedly appropriated by white artists that remained more successful in its original incarnation, a rare feat at the time that numbers among their many coups as an integrated group in a very racist America.

Check out this golden, vintage (and completely unscripted) clip from their first national television broadcast. Watch how his nervousness during the stilted dialogue flips to complete panache when he breaks into his trademark falsetto croon. Man, rock and roll has gone downhill since.

* Actual lyric; was in fact the original title of the song.

Because it will always be the singer, not the song.

As YouTuber FishHead33 explains:

In 1977 during the brief run of the Richard Pryor TV Show, the Pips came on to perform two numbers WITHOUT Gladys Knight. They just sang the backup parts and the camera would zoom in on an empty microphone whenever Gladys Knight was supposed to sing. One of the funniest and most original things I've ever seen.

FishHead33 is right: It is funny. (And the close-ups of Gladys' abandoned mic are hilarious.)

Thanks for the heads-up, MetaFilter.

Take The Stone Roses debut.

Add twenty years.

Hear what sounds like what just might be, even now, the greatest record in the history of the world.

If you're Silvertone, the band's original label, you also want to dip into the well all over again. Manchester's The Stone Roses have a bad history with Silvertone, full of profit-stealing, splatter-paint terrorism, and career-destroying legal battles, and the label's used any excuse, from remix albums to shuffle-the-tracks compilations, in order to milk the music for all its worth.

The album's been re-packaged more than God.

At least this time, however, it feels a little more genuine. The original band members seem to somewhat approve of this 20-year look back, promoting it for the last couple of months, against tradition. The actual re-issues are excessive and interesting as well, if only affordable if you model your life after the old man in Monopoly.

First, on top of all the press coverage, there's a new web-site and a couple of anniversary podcasts. An official one, which includes interviews with lead singer Ian Brown, Peter Hook, Noel Gallagher, Brian Cannon, Clint Boon, and Bobby Gillespie. And otherwise, which includes interviews with bassist Mani, original producer John Leckie, and the Manic Street Preachers.

Then there are the five original singles, put out once again, but only on vinyl and with unreleased, untitled tracks, all ultimately collected in a new set with guitarist John Squire's artwork.

Elephant Stone
[July 6th]
"The Hardest Thing In The World' & "Untitled 1"

Made Of Stone
[July 13th]
"Going Down" & "Untitled 2"

She Bangs The Drums
[July 20th]
"Standing Here" & "Untitled 3"

Fools Gold
[July 27th]
"What The World Is Waiting For" & "Untitled 4"

One Love
[August 3rd]
"Something's Burning" & "Untitled 5"

Of course, there's also the album, re-mastered by John Leckie and Ian Brown, and re-packaged next month by a madman.

Special Edition
[1 Disc]
Original album.

Legacy Edition
[2 Discs, 1 DVD]
Original album, demos, unearthed track, and a DVD of the band's historic Blackpool show.

Collector's Edition
[3 Discs, 3 LPs, 1 DVD, 1 USB, 12" Slipcase]
Original album, demos, unearthed track, Blackpool DVD, three heavyweight vinyls, videos, b-sides, behind-the-scenes, new 48-page book, 12"x12" art-prints, and a lemon-shaped USB of ringtones, backward tracks, and more.
Complete Tracklisting

Now, on the one hand, all of this is monstrously out-of-control, the sort of music fetishism that leads to bad ideas, sacred cows, and vicious-label victory. On the other, if any debut could be justified to have a capitalizing avalanche of anniversaries — with all of its massive attitude and legendary melodies, its effortless wash of belief, abstraction, acid house, and beautiful, extraordinarily classic British pop — it'd be The Stone Roses.

There are also rumors of a reunion.

John Squire has already issued a painting as a response, which states, in simple hand-writing, "I have no desire whatsoever to desecrate the grave of seminal Manchester pop group The Stone Roses".

Yeah?

Perfect.

The dance-contest scene from The American Astronaut (in which "space is a lonely town" and there are no women).

This Autumn, Warp Records celebrate their 20th anniversary. To commemorate the event, Warp have set up a website to allow fans a voice in what appears on the forthcoming Warp 20 compilation. 10 tracks will be chosen by Warp and 10 will be chosen by fan voting. Head over to the Warp20.net microsite to make your picks.

I also highly recommend this excellent article tracing the lineage of Sheffield's music scene from Cabaret Voltaire to Warp. There's a fantastic mix of the tracks discussed at the end of the article.

The Guardian have done a great job explaining the history of the label here.

Of course, no discussion of Warp Records is complete without acknowledging The Designers Replublic. Although TDR™ no longer exist, their designs are second only to Factory/Peter Saville in completely defining the sound and attitude of the label. Be sure to take a look at this article discussing the history of The Designers Republic. Again, there's a great mix at the end so take advantage of the resources on that page.

My favorite Warp era was the 'bleep n bass' stuff like LFO, Sweet Excorcist and the first Nightmares on Wax album although Smokers Delight has probably had more plays on my hi-fi than any other Warp release.

I'd like to hear from the LineOut audience about what your favorite Warp tracks are and any good stories about the first time you heard something on the label. If you're a fan, that moment was probably etched in your brain like it was for me.

The greatness of this line in Rod Stewart's "Maggie May," "The morning sun when its in your face really shows your age," is that it breaks the standard link between light and life and monstrously relinks light (and particularly morning light— the very rays of renewal, rejuvenation, regeneration) with aging and decay. Here the light exposes its opposite, death.

It's not that I ever disliked Judas Priest, but for some reason it took me until now to finally, completely jump on the bandwagon. I heard the singles growing up, I chanted "Breaking the Law" along with Beavis and Butthead in grade school, but the full force of the Priest always seemed to elude me. I even had good friends in college who idolized them, guys I was in bands with, but for some reason I never figured it out. But now, Judas Priest has my full and undivided attention. Unfortunately, the cause of my revelation is more than a little embarrassing for a guy who already listens to a lot of metal: it's because of Rock Band 2. I feel dirty admitting it, but I need to be honest here. I have heard many Judas Priest songs I liked over the course of my life, but I had never heard one that I loved until I got to the final, most difficult track on Rock Band 2, "Painkiller."

Dude. What a song. So I got the album Painkiller, from 1990, the last record with Halford singing until he rejoined in 2005. Dude. What a record. Pure fire. I had no choice but to get my hands on a discography, and now I've got more material to sort through than I know what to do with - they've been putting out records since 1974. I'm slowly chipping away at it, discovering which records are classic (Stained Class), which are technically "classic" but aren't blowing my mind (British Steel, Screaming for Vengeance), and which I will probably never listen to again (Turbo). I'm going to wait until I've heard every Halford record before I dig into the ones with Mark Wahlberg singing. There's still so much to listen to, where should I go next?

The critic here writes: "'Starlight'... seriously - every home should own a copy of this track - and we totally mean that..." How right he is. Model 500's "Starlight," which was released in 1995, introduced a new humanity and sense of soul to the science fiction of space travel. The track is not hyper funky like Keymatic's "Breakers in Space," but instead imagines the shimmering phenomena of deep space as calmly and as honestly as possible. The track's movement through the stars, the systems of planets, the rings of moons, the asteroid belt is an emotional rather than cold experience.