Weekend reading: Usher sold eleventy billion, politicos don’t know music

While usually I hate Stephen King’s music picks, I just might check out this James McMurty character, after reading a profile of him in the Washington Post.

The singer/songwriter is the son of author Larry McMurty and, yes, King’s been pushing him, too.

Check out that Post profile, along with these other fun pieces. The Usher one from the New Yorker is particularly good. It doesn’t really get amusing until about halfway through, but then that wily bastard Frere-Jones just doesn’t stop with the funny.

Al Green tells Newsweek he can’t really explain things, and he ain’t lying.

Bob Dylan likes messing with Jack White now and then, it seems.

Usher’s recent record sales are, in a soft music market, the equivalent of “eleventy billion,” the New Yorker says.

James McMurty would rather drink at a Mexican restaurant than change the oil in his tour van, we find out in the Washington Post.

When it comes to music, politicians are dumb, the AP writes.

Sony BMG will start selling rare, high-quality shots of its artists — Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Sly Stone — because in lean times, “perhaps every million counts,” the New York Times writes. Wait, perhaps? (You may need to register with NYT to get to this article.)