Lucas Jensen crunches the numbers, both hypothetical and real, for indie touring, and comes up with a negative. The moral, boys and girls? Stay home. The question is, where to now?

Four new entries in the top ten this week, the first time that's happened since the first week of March last year, and, in an interesting twist, Lil' Wayne features on three of the new arrivals, T-Pain on two, and Kanye West on two. Like the old cliche about not be able to tell the players without a program, it's getting hard to figure out who has the most presence on the charts without a scorecard. So, in the interest of keeping everything straight, I've created one. The math is simple enough: a performer gets three points for being the primary artist (PA) on a track, two points for being a featured artist (FA), and one point for being sampled in a prominent manner (SA). M.I.A., for example, gets three points for being the primary artist on "Paper Planes" and one point for being sampled on "Swagga Like Us", for a total of four, while The Clash, who get one point for being sampled on "Paper Planes", get none for "Swagga", because their presence isn't really felt on that record--even though they get writing credit. Understood?. Ties in points are broken by chart placement (i.e., M.I.A. places above Kanye, even though they have the same total number of points, because "Paper Planes" is higher on the chart than either of the records he features on). Otherwise, chart placement makes no difference in the final score (if the scorecard extended beyond the top ten I might give higher records more points, but here the difference doesn't seem critical).

One other rule: featured artists whose presence is obviously responsible for the record being a hit receive a full three points, while the primary artist on such records receives only two. This is a moot point this week, and who knows if I'll ever do this again, but believe me, if "Dangerous" was still in the top ten, Akon would get the full three points, and Kardinal Offishall would be lucky to even get the two.

I was waiting for someone to make this joke.

...when you have tons of promotion money, no sense of shame, and an overwhelming belief in your own importance. My only question is why U2 didn't think of this first.

Just before Atlantic put Estelle's Shine back up on iTunes, I was considering a post estimating how much money they were losing in this particular gambit. Now that they've given up, Billboard has done the math. Their estimate: a loss of $146,000 over the last three weeks. Somehow I don't think anyone will be trying that again anytime soon.

Atlantic records has apparently caved on their great experiment in audience gouging: Estelle's Shine, including "American Boy", is back up on iTunes.

Apparently there are limits to how much of their music collection people are willing to carry at one time: Apple has announced that they're discontinuing the 160GB iPod. And here I was hoping for a 320 for Christmas.

Bumbershoot was something of a bust for Jaq and I this year--we were busy finishing up our move to a new place, which meant a lot of hauling of stuff up and down stairs and cleaning, leaving us almost incapable of movement, much less shoving our way through crowds of people younger and more energetic than ourselves. But Bumbershoot seemed to be a bust in general this year: not a great lineup, worse art than last year, and worse food, too (at least from some--Ziegler's Brathaus? Never again). At the same time it felt more crowded than ever before, with longer lines, and ever more draconian security for the stadium shows.

We didn't even go on Sunday, only showed to see the Old 97s on Monday, and caught only five acts altogether: the 97s, Neko Case, Lucinda Williams, Estelle (the first four songs--she really needs to learn to stop talking so much between numbers), and Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby.

Williams was probably the best that we saw, with the Old 97s a close second. Her new stuff sounds rawer than anything she's done in years, and her cover of AC/DC (which is reportedly on the new album), suggests that she's more interested in rocking out than anything else right now. I still have problems with Neko Case. It goes without saying that her voice is gorgeous, but I wish she didn't feel the need to make every song such a statement, or to be so tasteful and stately about everything (if Emmylou Harris is the Joan Baez of alt-country, Case is Judy Collins). I only liked a couple of songs off of Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, and the new stuff she did on Saturday sounds like more of the same. It would do her a world of good to loosen up and raunch it up a bit, the way Lucinda has.

Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric have the opposite problem. Eric's willful incompetence schtick isn't quite as forgivable in his mid-fifties as it was 30 years ago, and Rigby is one of those rare singer-songwriters who pens real pop music, which is one of the reasons I love her so much, but it's also why she really needs a band to get her songs across. Other than Eric's old standby rabble rousers, they sounded best when they varied the instrumentation, adding keyboards and even some laptop percussion. I also have to admit I worry about what this partnership, personal and professional, is going to do to Rigby's songwriting. The new songs they played were funny and even witty on occasion, but they were good jokes, nothing more (not that that's a small thing). As great as Little Fugitive was, there were signs that Rigby had tapped out her inspiration. Perhaps teaming with Eric is just the blast of loose punk air she needs to revive herself, and who knows what her grace and wit might add to his music. Right now I'm more than willing to give them a chance, but I'm also wary.

I've been growing slightly irritated lately with Stereogum's constant stream of stories about bands covering other bands, but this one is really ridiculous. Gosh, Wilco and Fleet Foxes covering Bob Dylan? Who could have imagined such a thing? Very next post: Neko Case covers Nilsson at Bumbershoot. But no mention of Lucinda Williams covering AC/DC at the same show. C'mon guys, catch up!