Liner Notes

Remember that scene in David Fincher’s cult classic crossover Fight Club where Ed Norton’s character beats a bleached Jared Leto within an inch of his life? There’s blood all over floors, hands, and faces when Norton’s voiceover drones, “I felt like destroying something beautiful.” Leto must have really taken the line to heart, because he set out to do the same thing to the entire Western tradition of music when he created 30 Seconds to Mars.

Leto was not satisfied with thinking of his group—whose genre could be most closely described as scream-pop cry cry—as simply a band. “We’ve always thought about 30 Seconds To Mars not just as a band but an art project,” he told MTV in a recent interview. The singer has grandiose plans for what 30 Seconds to Mars, now some kind of collective, could become. It could be “a place where we would make music, we would make books, we would make art in general, short films, documentaries.”

The band is set to release its new album Love Lust Faith + Dreams on May 20, but Leto wants to make sure everyone knows that “the music is the glue that binds it all together but its certainly not just about the music, it’s about community, it’s about a life.” When Leto says things like this, it makes me want to sign him up for the projected one-way journey to Mars planned for 2023.

Meanwhile, in actual space, something profoundly cooler has happened. Commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut who spent over half a year in the International Space Station, has just passed a celestial landmark in true glam fashion: he’s shot, sung and edited the first music video in space. Not just any song would do for such a milestone, though; Hadfield chose David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” not only for its on-the-point aptitude for the situation, but for its beauty and timelessness.

Hadfield reentered our pale blue dot in mid-May, and is being welcomed as a hero in such a fashion that astronauts have not been for years. Now this may be because he had a pretty big web presence, tweeting from space and answering a lot of questions on aggregate sites like reddit.com. But I think credit should also be given to David Bowie himself for making every scenario in life better. If only we could send Bowie himself to space, that he might watch over each and every one of us.

Down here on earth, good things are happening for the arts. Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine are giving $70 million to USC to start an interdisciplinary program for arts, design, entrepreneurship, and marketing. Dre wants to make new college graduates ready to take on the media landscape with all the necessary tools. No word yet on whether or not incoming freshman will be issued Beats by Dre headphones. Dr. Dre will probably give millions further to universities around the country over the next few decades, having buildings named after him so that no one, God forbid, forgets about Dre.

The artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince is rearranging his backing band, and he’s doing so in a fresh way. What I mean by that is that Prince, who turns 55 this year, has deliberately chosen young musicians to back him up because, he says, “I don’t have time for old people.” In an interview for the Star Tribune, he said “I want to work with young people. I have my legacy. It’s time for their legacy.”

It’s understandable that Prince would want a lot of energy in his stage shows which have, historically, been quite wild and frenetic anyway. It’s also understandable that he at least appears to want some new artists to solidify their legacy rather than established artists. But what doesn’t make sense is how anyone is going to establish a legacy by playing behind Prince who, although aging himself, is still one of the biggest pop stars of all time. Ask yourself: Who played guitar on Michael Jackson’s last tour? Drums? Playing for Prince is a good gig (unless you don’t want him to throw your guitar on the ground) and I’m sure it pays well; but it’s not going to launch anyone. The only name people remember from Michael Jackson’s last tour is the name of his official glove washer, Sir Patrick Stewart.