To celebrate/exploit the release of Varshons, the new covers album by Evan Dando’s Lemonheads, Bootleg City is covering its own covers-filled edition from July 27, 2007. Of course, back in those days there was no Popdose.

“But Mayor Cass,” the children always ask, “where did people go when they wanted to download music for free and write comments underneath the accompanying text that was only tangentially related to said text?”

“My my!” I answer. “What big words you have in your … um … don’t tell me … starts with a V …”

That’s when their smiles usually vanish. “Fine, we’ll dumb it down for you, old man. What was it called before it was called Popdose?“

Kids. They really do say the darnedest, most f**ked-up bulls**t.

For those who don’t know, before there was Popdose there was Jefitoblog, and whenever its creator, Popdose’s Jeff Giles, was foolish enough to allow guest writers to contribute, he’d often have to upload all their MP3s for them along with all their text. Uploading MP3s is a time-consuming, hand-cramping, soul-fisting process. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun being mayor of Bootleg City, but if there was a way to charge you people a nonreading tax so I could buy some child labor that would upload the MP3s for me, I’d do it in a heartbeat. (Of course I wouldn’t underpay them. I love those little octothorp ampersand percent sign exclamation points.)

However, I’m glad Jeff no longer has to upload songs for me, because (1) he does more for Popdose than you’ll ever know and deserves our eternal gratitude, and (2) I don’t trust him one bit with my stuff. Never have, never will. The real Jeff Giles writes for Newsweek — who does this “Jeff DeWester” impostor think he is?

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