February 2011
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-2-27) →
Julian Cope (14)
Hauschka (11)
Rainbow Arabia (11)
Paul McCartney & Wings (11)
Janet Jackson (9)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Death Of The First Person.
jakec:
One thing I noticed this week while reading those old issues of Rolling Stone is that first-person writing is everywhere, and from other things I’ve read from that era in other publications it seems like that was pretty thoroughly the style. So at what point was first-person writing forfeited for writing in the third-person? And why? (I can think of several reasons but I’d like to know...
BG Speaks to the People . . . Quickly: A post that... →
bg5000:
Something else Rob said during our little talk was that not being on Facebook in 2011 was kind of like being one of those people who said they didn’t own a television. I don’t particularly agree with this, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that it’s true. Now, to get someone like that to watch TV, you wouldn’t just say “You should watch cause everybody else does.” No, you’d point...
“For many of these acts, the moment they perfect their blend is also the moment...”
– Appropriately enough, my Guardian column this week is about genre splicing and experimentation. It’s spotlighting a couple of my favourite records this year - the Dirtbombs’ Party Store and Hauschka’s Salon Des Amateurs, both of which find acts stretching themselves by using techno...
“I was thinking recently though about how I’ve never been a big fan of how...”
– Matthew P replying to me. (via jonathanbogart)
FWIW I think this is fair enough, though I don’t know who’s doing the expecting here exactly! As a Brit I was raised on the mulch of micro-genres and would never part with it, though I’m very out of touch now - I dropped out around...
bluelightsaa-deactivated2012072 asked: "A record that is 8 tracks and 38 minutes long and really wonderful"
What is the name of the record?
What is the name of the record?
popcornnoises asked: After reading the Poptimist column about James Blake and Brian Eno I got thinking about the most basic questions we ask of music, like the "why is this sound here instead of not?" and the "now that it's here, what's it doing?" kind of stuff that it seems really easy to think about (or think about thinking about) with those two artists since they're both so...
beckyontheinternet asked: I've been reading you on Pitchfork for a long time and just recently realized that my work (market research) twitter follows you! How do you feel about the combination of music and market research?
thevidsarealright asked: From that link you reblogged: "Their prose is entertainment too." Which critics do you find entertaining to read even when you don't particularly care about the music they are writing about? Links encouraged!
sayyes asked: Are there any concerts/bands you've specifically flown to the U.S. to see, and if so, did it end up being worth it?
And speaking of the Ask Box...
A bunch of other people are asking for questions tonight, and so will I. My next 24 hours are going to be extremely tedious and administrative, so any distractions will be thoroughly welcomed. Enquiries, requests, music talk, nonsense etc all accepted.
Def Bingo: Who are Radiohead Critics? →
defbingo:
I think that the thing that people forget as they lament snap judgements and hurried reviews of Radiohead’s latest album is the real-world relationship of the music critic to the music listener. As a music listener who has procured the majority of my music from the internet, I listen to critics…
Click through to the whole thing - I’m reblogging this because a) it...
Great News For All Our Readers (Maybe)
Thinking of merging It Took Seconds into this Tumblr, differentiating the posts via hashtag. Not for any particular content reason but I have a strange hunch it would motivate me to run it more often.
(I sometimes think I should go back to having one gigantic blog/site for EVERYTHING but there are def. people who only want Popular, only want the research stuff, etc etc.)
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"There's always been a dance element to our music"
Looking for examples of recent (4-5 years old tops) non-club music which has drawn heavily on club/dance music?
Attribution? In this day and age?
alexwhines replied to your photo: I would love the dataset for this to be…
What’s the data behind this?
No idea! It was presented free of context on a marketing blog about “cool brands” I idly clicked on via Twitter. I suspect it comes from the book on “cool” being referenced in the post.
I certainly don’t think you should take it any more seriously than a...
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Libraries Under The Big Society →
You’ll be amazed to learn, I’m sure, that the “Big Society” in action in a Tory borough involves slashing public services in the most deprived ward and providing more free ones in the most prosperous.
This also reminds me that I need to do a post on Blackbeard on the “consultation survey” I found on the BS in my own local library.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-2-20) →
PJ Harvey (27)
Angel Haze (24)
The House of Love (14)
Hauschka (10)
Creedence Clearwater Revival (10)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Tom Morris: Infographics are porn without the... →
tommorrisdotorg:
Now, to show the complete superfluousness of infographics, I have expressed the same information in another format, namely plain text (Internet MIME type: text/plain) encoded in ASCII.
Here it is:
The iPad has been out a year.
Analysts thought it would sell 3.3 million units. It sold 14.8 million.
Oppenheimer & Co. predicts tablet shipments will grow from 15.1 million...
Albums on my iphone
memo to self, v boring if you are not me (& even then…) - do not bother going below the cut :)
Played
Angel Haze - Altered Ego
Charanjit Singh - Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River
Destroyer - Kaputt
Diddy Dirty Money - Last Train To Paris
Fleetwood Mac - Penguin
Forest Swords - Dagger Paths
Girl Talk - All Day
Harald Grosskopf - Synthesist
...
“A few months later, as my diabetes control spiraled to its worst in my life, my...”
– The Cure for Bedbugs: 2004: The Year Everything Broke
!!!
(via desnoise)
If you are a music criticism nerd this piece is, of course, a must read.
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Maiden
How are Iron Maiden generally regarded by ppl who like metal?
“[New Republican Governor of Wisconsin] Scott Walker ordered the National Guard...”
– From a good post: Class Warfare in Wisconsin: 10 Things You Should Know (via bigboxcar)
This was really interesting. It also reminds me that I should download this.
Maslow & Privilege
Lady Gaga, “We are all born superstars”, and the difference between individualistic and solidaristic empowerment; this sort of ties in with what I said yesterday about the relational aspect of privilege. If what Lady Gaga does is to empower people against cisnormative privilege, she also does it by giving privilege to all of her fans (and anyone who wants to listen to her, period) in a way...
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Words Redux →
Wrote about “The Words That Maketh Murder” for Pitchfork’s tracks reviews. It’s a perfectly good write-up but cleaves pretty closely to most people’s interpretations of the song. Because that’s what I reckon’s going on in the song, obviously.
BUT then I found this at songmeanings:
“The Words That Maketh Murder” is referring to the act of...
dyfl:
“It’s easy to look at the stream of people cursing out “The Suburbs band” and think it represents some kind of real community. When of course it’s not: It’s just a bunch of data spun to make you laugh and feel better about the music you like. But this is the power of aggregation— it puts flesh on straw men, creating imaginary communities to rail against as well as pulling together real...
Slow Food →
Random link on twitter (thanks @jby789) which I found really interesting - pretty much a foodie equivalent of music-crit concern over hot-band turnover, with pork belly and razor clams replacing chillwave and witch house. The best bits are talking about the economic consequences for local scenes, I mean menus.
“And this is what makes the trend so interesting to me— because these pop songs...”
– - from Tom Ewing’s Poptimist #36 I’m So Fucking Special
I have so many problems with Lady Gaga as of late and particularly with this song. I’m going to set aside my complaints about her general fashion sense (AN EGG?! REALLY. AN EGG.) for the time being. It all boils down to one basic question for...
db
likeaphoenixignition replied to your link: Poptimist 36: I’m So Fucking Special
Excellent piece! One minor note — unless something’s changed recently, I believe danah boyd prefers her name to be uncapitalized
Aargh! I cite danah boyd a lot and I almost always remember to include the DON’T CAPITALISE memo but I forgot this time :(
Poptimist 36: I'm So Fucking Special →
I wrote this. It’s quite long. It comes from a bunch of different directions - in an ideal world it would weave them together into a devastating whole with a clear conclusion but we do not live in an ideal world, so instead of the ideas forming a phalanx to punch your brain in two they hang out together in the kitchen at a party and you get to overhear. Maybe two or three of them pair off at...
Wishful Thinking: Instant Reviews Reviews →
hndrk:
Didn’t really enjoy the new Radiohead album on first listen but I’m happy for everyone who does. What I do very much enjoy is the communal experience of sharing impressions of an almost-synchronized first listen over Twitter and other places.
The thing that really annoys me though is the…
V sensible. I distrust people with finished opinions. I also distrust people who don’t...
I Succumbed
First half - music excellent, tense, rhythm-heavy, good enough to make me hear past my Thom Yorke allergy. Second half - them being them, will delight if (unlike me) you like them in nebulous anomic beauty mode. Overall - good stuff, would play again.
Concrete etc →
There has been a lot of talk about “punk rock” in my various streams today - something to do with a garden gnome and a TV and the Internet - and it all prompted me to go and re-read Mark’s piece on punk, Concrete, So As To Self-Destruct which is always very well worth reading even if it turned out to have no direct relevance today.
