It's been somewhat quiet news-wise these days, what with Michael Jackson hogging up all the Internet space. Labels are between releases right now, and bands have already started or are about to start touring, which I suppose explains the veritable silence. Here are a couple things of interest I've found:

-- PopMatters has a good Q&A with Maria Taylor, where she talks about her new album and the future or Azure Ray. Among the exchanges: "MT: We decided to take a break from Azure Ray and that's where I am now. PM: Is Azure Ray over? MT: We're just kinda seeing where life takes us right now." Another hiatus situation where there's no end in sight. The good news is both Taylor's and Fink's CDs are better than the last Azure Ray CD. Wonder what they'll do when/if they do decide to get back together... shelf their solo songs during the live sets? Taylor heads out on tour with Statistics this month. And speaking of Statistics, the band is playing a set at O'Leaver's Thursday with Latitude, Longitude.

-- Chartattack (and others) is reporting that Radiohead's OK Computer was picked by SPIN as the best album in the last 20 years (read it here). Good record, but strange choice. For whatever reason, SPIN is getting a lot of play out of this list. I saw the story scroll by while watching something on cable last night.

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