iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

There's a new way to listen to the Grateful Dead: Play Dead, a nugs subscription service that brings the band's prior archival releases – and tons of exclusive new ones – to high-resolution streaming. More about the news ft @davidlemieux.bsky.social & the team www.billboard.com/pro/grateful...

billboard.com

The Grateful Dead Launches Play Dead Streaming Platform: ‘We Want to Melt Your Faces’

The Grateful Dead launched a new subscription streaming service, Play Dead, created by nugs, Rhino Entertainment and Grateful Dead Productions.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

RIP Bob Weir, the man whose voice I've heard more on record and in concert that any other. The prophet on the burning shore, a cosmic cowboy who stopped by Earth for a few decades to share his songs with us. A titanic loss, an immeasurable impact. The music will never stop. Rest easy.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

My favorite albums and songs – led by Geese's Getting Killed and Alex G's "Afterlife" – of 2025. Alphabetically listed, my essentials separated and bolded

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Wrote about some of my favorite songs of 2025 for @billboard.com's year-end list: Water From Your Eyes' 'Playing Classics,' Alex G's 'Afterlife,' Turnstile's 'Never Enough,' and Tyler, the Creator's 'Sugar On My Tongue' www.billboard.com/lists/best-s...

billboard.com

The 100 Best Songs of 2025: Staff Picks

The Best Songs of 2025: The 100 best hits and deep cuts of the year.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Wrote about two of my favorite 2025 albums for @billboard.com's year-end list: Kaytranada and Geese. My colleagues didn't share my opinion that Getting Killed is far and away the year's best album, and CERTAINLY a 2025 top 10... but that's OK! www.billboard.com/lists/best-a...

billboard.com

The 50 Best Albums of 2025: Staff Picks

The Best Albums of 2025: The 50 best releases of the year.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

A new Cardi B era is upon us – and @billboard.com's latest cover is an unmissable, wide-ranging interview with ever-colorful hip-hop star www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip...

Billboard cover featuring Cardi B with the cover line "CARDI B MAKES HER MOVE"

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Enough with the note-for-note re-records of old material. Need a Dylan album where he does barely recognizable reinterpretations of his most classic songs

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Wednesday has a new album out next month, and it's one of their best. Talked to 'em about it for @billboard.com's fall preview www.billboard.com/music/rock/w...

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Wild how immediately social media becomes way more grating when it's A-Certain-Someone Season again

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

The way every post on The Other Site currently is about Edward Sharpe's 'Home' ... cooked

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

In 2024, Harris and the Democrats decided that refusing to move an inch to the left, or to vocally defend trans people, or to condemn a genocide was worth risking this and myriad other catastrophic policies, and that's something we should never forget

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Richard B. Simon @rbsimon.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Solid, well-informed, and finely-penned rundown by @erbrown.bsky.social 👇

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

Jerry's Travis Bean guitar really getting around this weekend

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Grahame Lesh playing Mission Control for 'Box of Rain,' Billy Strings leading a towering 'Wharf Rat,' and more highlights for @billboard.com from Dead & Company's first Golden Gate Park concert celebrating 60 years of the Grateful Dead www.billboard.com/lists/dead-c...

billboard.com

7 Best Moments From Dead & Company’s Kickoff Celebrating 60 Years of the Grateful Dead in SF

Dead & Company's performed at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on Aug. 1, celebrating 60 years of the Grateful Dead. Here are the best mooments.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

Big Grateful Dead 60th anniversary shows in San Francisco but without Steve Silberman feels wrong

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woodsist rumors @woodsistrumors.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

Answers questions about Gizz as a jamband (namely it’s impossible since they are Australian). Great insights from Jello Biafra as well.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

In a just world, it's Fallon who would've been canceled, not Colbert

Via Twitter:

@jimmyfallon: It's a Jorts Summer!! And it's also Will Ferrell's birthday. You know what has to be done. [video of Fallon dancing in jorts]

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K.G.L.W. of the day @kglwoftheday.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

A choice nugget from a solid piece. Somehow the "are they/aren't they" question still does not feel definitively settled. (For the record, I don't care if they're called a jam band, just keep being excellent to each other at the shows.)

As Mackenzie points out, jam band culture "just doesn't exist" in Australia, and King Gizz has never considered itself part of that world. "We don't see ourselves as a jam band, per se," Walker says, though he adds that "one thing that's kind of cool about that crossover is if people are calling us a jam band, or we've all of a sudden been taken under that umbrella, that we are bringing something really different to the sphere." In other words, he says, "we're not a band that ever listened to Phish," but could be "a new version of what would constitute the traditional jam band."

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Listening to Phish on the way to the Alex G gig

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Days like today are why so many progressives and leftists were so upset in 2024 about Harris' half-baked, morally bankrupt campaign (and Biden's egotistical choice to remain in the race for so long). If Democrats lost the White House, it was going to have grave consequences and, well, here we are

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Please, someone make a sampler guide to this new Springsteen release, I can't be the only person who likes Springsteen but simply can't do several hours of archival material from him (or maybe I am, considering how many Springsteen fans are true obsessives)

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

All venues should always provide all attendees free water always, and especially in the summer. Really screwed up that this isn't standard procedure universally

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Wrote about Bad Bunny and Whatever The Weather for @billboard.com's best albums of 2025 so far list (though I should note that, love these as I do, they're not in my personal www.billboard.com/lists/best-a...

billboard.com

The 50 Best Albums of 2025 So Far (Staff Picks)

Our staff's 50 favorite albums from 2025 so far, including Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga and Playboi Carti.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

When The Wizard of Oz lands at Sphere in August, audiences will hear it like never before – here's how the team behind the production updated the iconic film's audio for the state-of-the-art venue www.billboard.com/pro/sphere-w...

billboard.com

How Sphere Reimagined Audio For ‘The Wizard Of Oz’ To Help The Movie ‘Break New Ground’ Again

For Sphere's new production of The Wizard of Oz, the Las Vegas venue's team reimagined the film's audio to match its technical capabilities.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Erics and Eriks can find common ground in thinking the spelling Erick is idiotic

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Loved talking with @thebanderson.bsky.social about his meticulously researched, deeply engaging new book – it drops tomorrow and is essential reading for any Deadhead! www.billboard.com/pro/grateful...

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

German leader demands "immediate answers" following Night of the Long Knives

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Was curious what the Goose subreddit thought of my Goose article

Reddit comment from u/nobedforbeatlegeorge:

I did not hate this article and I kind of expected to haha

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

One option, if a widely beloved musician whose music you personally don't care for dies, is to simply not post about how you never cared for their music

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

A day late: @rebeccamilzoff.bsky.social profiled Weird Al! A wonderfully zany look at his iconic career, ft cameos from Lin-Manuel Miranda, Andy Samberg, Don McLean, John Mayer, Daniel Radcliffe and Clairo – one of my favorite stories I've edited at @billboard.com www.billboard.com/music/featur...

billboard.com

‘Weird Al’ Yankovic on His Unexpected Longevity, Biggest Tour Ever & Creative Freedom: ‘Nobody Owns Any Piece of Me’

Weird Al Yankovic on embarking on his bigger tour ever, maintaining his creative freedom throughout his career and his longstanding influence on pop.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Since Hamilton is trending again... eight years later, still the most trenchant critique of the troublingly hagiographic musical thebaffler.com/salvos/hamil...

thebaffler.com

The Hamilton Hustle | Matt Stoller

Matt Stoller reflects on our love for Hamilton and why liberals came to embrace one of our most dangerously reactionary founders.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

It has been – and continues to be – telling when since leaving office Obama has chosen to use his immense platform and influence, and when he hasn't

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AltheaToldMe @altheatoldme.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Yes! Yeeeessss let's goooo “The connection between the four of us is amazing,” he says. “It feels like the most connected the band has ever been. The way we’re able to communicate, and things like that — it does, to me, feel unprecedented. It feels like we’re catching a new wave.”

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Even after her uncalled for dig at Zohran during the debate, I was still planning to rank Ramos. But now, she's endorsed Cuomo, even after railing against him for months. Such a disappointment

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 05/06/2025

NEW YORK TIMES: mr. Cuomo, what's your favorite sandwich from a deli CUOMO, furrowing brow: I like to get a cheese chopped up,

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

I've never cared much for Reputation, but even so, @joncaramanica.bsky.social's piece about the Reputation Taylor's Version that wasn't meant to be is so great – and has some of the best succinct observations about the broader TV project that I've read www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/a...

New York Times excerpt:

Taylor’s Versions have been far more successful as a marketing project than as a creative endeavor (apart from the release of vault tracks, previously unheard songs from each period). Initially, it was an intriguing exercise to forensically analyze the new versions for differences from the originals, some crisp and deliberate, others the inevitable result of imprecise photocopying. But Swift’s gifts are in her unvarnished capturing of the now; creating replicas has felt like a cruel joke, and an insult to the originals. The prior albums couldn’t be improved upon either — not because they’re perfect, but because they are the art that was true to the moment in which they were released.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Running a lengthy interview with AOC weeks before a consequential NYC mayoral election – where she has conspicuously not yet endorsed a candidate – and not so much as mentioning that election is a choice! www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

rollingstone.com

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 'The People Will Show Me the Way'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the Fighting Oligarchy rallies with Bernie Sanders, crypto billionaires, cuts to Medicaid, and taking on Trump

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Just discovered a "custom-made social-sandwiching experience" is moving in a block away from my office and, you know, I'm really good with just a deli

Sandwiches Your Way!
Welcome to Barney Brown, a custom-made social-sandwiching experience. Get started by building your own sandwich in just 5 easy steps.

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Eric Renner Brown @erbrown.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

Would not wish an hour trapped in a subway under the East River on my worst enemy

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