Jason presents his contrarian contention that Yoko Ono is of greater importance than John Lennon. I’ll just say I think he highly underestimates the value of popular culture, whether it takes a commodity form or not. Besides, the artistic field in the 1960s only made sense as an engagement with popular forms previously outside the […]
No, it’s not an MLA paper topic. But Negrophile points to an interesting economics paper on same-race voting preferences in American Idol. Short version: the number of black viewers rises with the number of black contestants, and voting behavior tends toward same-race recognition, with black viewers more likely to vote for black candidates, non-black viewers […]
Lately I’ve been reading an excellent book on film soundtracks, and it raised a point that I had given insufficient thought: that Tin Pan Alley musical forms perfectly matched the mass distribution that sheet music entailed, whereas the popular music forms that replaced it (jazz, rock, soul, etc.) perfectly match a mass reproduction that the […]
I miss the news for a couple of days and when I return, Merrittgate is heating up the Internet. I don’t really feel like wading into the grand issue of whether rockism = racism, but will point out that Jody Rosen seems to have a sensible reaction to the new “poptimism.”
[U]ltimately, the Blender list seemed […]
I never save concert ticket stubs, but Abby has - seemingly to every show she’s been to. Funnily enough, she was at the same 1986 R.E.M./Let’s Active show (Fox Theatre, Atlanta) that happened to have been the first concert I attended, at the tender age of 14. What an ideal first concert. I remember being […]
As if to start the research for my Boston Musical Heritage Trail idea, Charles puts out a call for the best Boston bands and albums. Already there are some good nominations.
The worst thing about the exchange on postpunk music going on over at Slate is that it’s just so dang short. I definitely want to read Simon Reynolds’ Rip It Up, a history of that period in rock that was largely underground in the States. Respondent Stephen Metcalf sums up the book’s argument about the […]
People often complain about the behind-the-scenes politics of the Oscars - people voting for directors overlooked before, or ignoring actresses who won too recently- but I’ll take that in a heartbeat over the The Recording Academy, which thinks it’s OK to give a Grammy not only to the same artist year after year, but to […]
Just as the liberatine underestimates how repression creates desire, the critics of rock snobbery unfairly discount how much genuine pleasure and heartfelt fandom goes into the rock snob’s obsessions and discriminations. Then again, Slate diagnoses me as a faux rock snob:
A faux Rock Snob—someone ready in the instant to introduce you to what you don’t […]
I’ve been busy with writing and work and such lately, so fewer posts and less substantive material. More pop culture musings.
Anyway, today Francine, fresh off the New Pornographers’ concert we attended, wonders about power pop:
The suggestion is that "power pop" stems first from bands like Big Star, and had more recent appearances in the work […]
Went to see the New Pornographers play last night at the Roxy. What a fabulous show. Live, their sounds is even fuller than on record, and it’s impressive to hear an indie band be able to do four-part harmonies and actually be in key. I was hoping they’d take the "Twin Cinemas" album title as […]
Slate has a review of the new Gang of Four album, which rerecords all of their great angular postpunk classics.
It’s hard to think of a precedent in rock history for Return—essentially, a band recording its own tribute album. The decision has bemused many Gang of Four fans, who wonder why the band didn’t just put […]
The thing about fandom - music fandom especially - is that it makes you enjoy activities that are pretty silly: listmaking, memorizing discographies, reading retread articles about the Minneapolis music scene of the 80s. Like the one in this month’s Magnet magazine. I’m eating it up, waxing nostalgic, digging out my Replacements and Husker Du […]
Matt Yglesias has a good post up on the Grokster case. But it’s a side point he makes that caught my attention:
A world where you can’t make a profit selling albums would radically alter the music business but not, I think, kill it off. Recording music is relatively cheap, being a rock star is […]
Funny how “meme” passed from a quasi-semiotic concept to an Internet parlor game. No matter. Both Chuck Tryon and Steve Garfield have invited readers to participate, and Francine’s listing her summer playlist, so I’ll play along….
Music on my hard drive:
Having no portable player or even a CD burner, I still haven’t entered the MP3 generation. […]