It's hard to listen to a track like the newly unearthed “North Street” from Death without hearing the alternate history that could have been. What would punk have sounded like had Columbia records followed through and released the Hackney brothers music in the mid-70's? How would the movement have flourished with Death as one of its leading lights?
It's an all-too-common punk rock narrative for a band to exist, record a bunch of influential songs in a short burst before imploding completely. (I'm looking at you, Rites of Spring and to a lesser degree and also begrudgingly the Sex Pistols) But for the trio of brothers, the dissolution of their contract with Columbia didn't break up the family. Although the band Death officially broke up in 1977, the Hackneys continued on through the 80's as The 4th Movement. “North Street,” the first look at their post-Columbia career, comes from 1980 after the band relocated to Vermont.

By Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor

Featuring a tighter sound and post-punk influence, “North Street” serves as further evidence why the world continues to be captivated by Death's story. The could have been, should have been, and now nearly are rock stars never quit evolving and pushing their music forward even when mainstream success continued to elude them. They are the ultimate story of second chances in punk rock. And as anyone who caught their electrifying set at Afropunk Fest 2013 can attest, no-one deserves it more.

The song will appear on a new compilation of Death's music from Drag City due out this April. Given the band formed after seeing the Beatles appear on Ed Sullivan, it's especially poignant to have their new single drop this week on the 50th anniversary of that appearance.

Lizzie Schiffman at DNAChicago says that a huge Chicago sci-fi convention has been postponed for a year:

A major science fiction and fantasy convention scheduled to hit the city in March has been canceled and moved from the River North Westin Hotel after hotel staff referred to attendees as "freaks," according to an announcement posted on the event's website.

Sci-fi conventions are big money for hotels. I find it hard to believe, in America in the 21st century, that a hotel manager would refer to sci-fi convention-goers as 'costumed freaks [who] are not in keeping with the reputation' of the River North Westin Hotel. In any case, I'm pretty sure, given the online maelstrom that's forming over this story, that the hotel manager in question probably won't be working at that hotel for much longer. You can read the letter from Chi-Fi Chairman James Dobbs here.

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The A.V. Club's Sean O'Neal writes:

Alien designer H.R. Giger is in talks to bring the “biomechanical” décor of his famous Giger Bars in Chur and Gruyeres, Switzerland, to the U.S., opening a new American hotspot that evokes the welcoming coldness of an extraterrestrial womb. The plan hails from Andy Davies, who’s currently developing his own Sci-Fi Hotel, “an architectural and stylistic celebration of science-fiction” that will feature sci-fi-inspired design and amenities—among them the Giger Bar, which he’s developing in cooperation with Giger himself.

While Davies doesn’t yet know where the Sci-Fi Hotel will end up—early contenders are Seattle, New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Chicago, with New Mexico’s Spaceport USA close behind...

On Twitter, Emerald City Comicon is trying to convince Paul Allen to flex his nerdy muscle to pull the sci-fi hotel to Seattle. Other nerdy local institutions, like the EMP, are pushing for the Giger Bar, too. Here's a video of what an existing Giger Bar looks like on the inside:

I ask you: Who wouldn't want to have a drink inside a cave lined with alien genitalia and monster babies?

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Are you ready for more developments from the LaBeouf plagiarism scandal? Earlier today, Jordan Zakarin at BuzzFeed published a piece accusing Shia LaBeouf of plagiarizing some of his comic book work from Charles Bukowski and the (very good) Benoît Duteurtre novel The Little Girl and the Cigarette.

Then Zakarin published an update to this story that sends this whole thing into a whole new level of navel-gaziness:

LaBeouf took to Twitter to attempt another apology on Wednesday morning, and the apologies he sent out also seem lifted from very famous statements, as first pointed out by blog The Film Stage.

He wrote, “I have let my family down, and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart,” which was taken word-for-word from Tiger Woods’ 2009 apology for infidelity.

Then, LaBeouf tweeted, “I was wrong, terribly wrong. I owe it to future generations to explain why,” which former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote in his memoir about the execution of the Vietnam War.

LaBeouf also plagiarized another apology tweet from Kanye West. It seems as though LaBeouf is fully aware of what he's doing now, and he's just trolling the world. Either this is a performance art piece or LaBeouf is dropping the clues for an elaborate Da Vinci Code-like hunt that will end with the discovery of a hidden cache of art that was presumed destroyed by the Nazis.

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bad timing, i know, but you gotta leave those stitches alone, nick!!!

“it was going to be awesome” – ryan c., real gamer