by SHANE SINNOTT

Sigh. As I write this, Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party have been elected once a again. Sure, it was to be expected, but still, you’re always hoping for something exciting to happen, right? Well I’ve got something exciting for you folks (at least in terms of the relative excitement this column warrants)—Of Montreal with the Guy from MGMT (Andrew VanWyngarden) covering

Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” recorded live in NYC on Oct. 10, at tinyurl.com/4p6fzh. I can’t completely distinguish the voices, but someone is really givin’ ’er on the chorus, vocals-wise. Yay.

Back to the sad news—the U.S. has created a new “Piracy Czar,” or “copyright law enforcement officer” if you want to get fancy, whose main job will be to advise the president on anti-piracy enforcement measures. Four years ago, buried inside a $388-billion spending bill, was a program that allows the president to create the position. Well now, with a few months left in office, GWB has decided to go ahead, signing a controversial bill last week that creates the position and calls for stiffer penalties for all downloaders. The big change is that those caught downloading illegally can now have their property seized—i.e. the computer you used to do it with. Have fun with that, Americans!

The hapless Jammie Thomas, meanwhile, who was fined over $200,000 last year in a file-sharing case brought forth by the RIAA, had her verdict overturned last month by the presiding judge, who cited incorrect instructions to the jury. The RIAA is now appealing that ruling (counter-appealing?) so we will soon find out if Ms. Thomas is completely fucked.

And finally, you PC users have what sounds like an amazing program out there called TuneUp (www.tuneupmedia.com) that will go through your entire iTunes library and fix all the song and album names. It gives a digital “listen” to each track, and finds it in the massive online Gracenote CD database (www.gracenote.com), before returning with the proper song info and artwork. Jesus! I’ll report on whether it actually works when the Mac version comes out in a couple weeks.