When you post a link to Tumblr, you get the green box, and an excerpt which Tumblr reads from the data on the original post I guess.
And if you delete the excerpt and write your own description and press post, does it just delete what you wrote? Or is that just a thing for me and I need to update something on my PC?
It’s happened a couple of times, depriving you of my golden insights on, er, an airport in Amsterdam and something else I can’t remember. But it’s the principle dammit.
Obviously there is NO SHORTAGE of artefacts in our culture for and possibly by ageing dudes, so Random Access Memories doesn’t get a special critical pass based simply on that! (Except from Q, and Mojo, and Rolling Stone, and and and)
But for better or for worse I am such a dude and I liked the record a lot.
“In the end, they wound up making the “Daft Punk sucks!” record themselves. At a moment when mainstream pop has never sounded more like Daft Punk, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo went the other way, crafting a gold-plated homage to the pop music of their youth, the kind of sweet and sad and sexy sounds that ruled radio waves years before most of their fan base was even born. It’s extremely impressive musically, weirdly pedantic in places—unless you think there’s merit in listening to Giorgio Moroder haltingly talk about his early days as a German club warrior over a click track—and probably a little overgenerous to guys like Panda Bear, who basically gets to sneak a solo track onto one of the most anticipated albums of the past decade. I would say the disco-connoisseur-y songs outnumber the potential pop smashes by a ratio of about 4 to 1, but there are definitely a couple of potential pop smashes. I have no idea who they imagine Random Access Memories being for, besides themselves, but there is something seductive about that, the band’s ability to do something so totally, breathtakingly self-indulgent—it makes you want to try to see it their way.” —
Really enjoyed this Zach Baron profile of Daft Punk. The above summary of the album seems, after two listens, right on. The sort of inherent contrariness of the album makes me want to love it more than anything else. Random Access Memories is a dusty gold record hanging on a closed studio’s wall. An old disco medallion in a pawn shop display case. A gaggle of retired session musicians drinking Campari on a quiet Italian beach. I do sort of love it. (via bmichael)
I agree with your description - “A gaggle of retired session musicians drinking Campari on a quiet Italian beach” is perfect - but I don’t see what’s self-indulgent here exactly. There are an awful lot of people who used to go out dancing and now don’t - not because pop music sucks now but because their bodies and souls are older. Making a record that connects with those people seems commercially fairly smart. I found the Moroder talking bit probably the most straightforwardly moving thing on the whole record, to be honest.
I think there was a watershed moment for rock a couple of decades ago where its longer-running, smarter practitioners took a look at the terrible music they were making in order to appeal to “their fanbase” and thought, I’m too old for this, OK, how can I make music that is honest about that? So you get things like Dylan’s late-career renaissance, which started with him going back to very old, long-gone music and rebuilding himself up using that. I think Random Access Memories is a bit like that (on one listen, granted!). I don’t think it’s a bad thing if people who make dance music go through that kind of thought process too.
The first thing my wife said when she heard “Get Lucky” was, they sound really OLD, not meaning it as a compliment. But it’s sort of true. At some point staying up all night becomes a big deal again, something worth remarking on or building a chorus around. I can relate, certainly.
Short version: “contrarian” as a response feels like a feature of perspective, not of the record.
Viral James Mattis Email About Reading -
[snip]
But what does he have to say about Bracknell?
Time To Give Ourselves Into Strange Gods’ Hands -
I am - very very belatedly! - getting into Hellboy. So I wrote a bit about him, which turned before my very eyes into something about Lovecraft and Cthulhu instead.
BuzzFeed Starts Program to Train Agencies in the BuzzFeed Way -
Buzzfeed to offer training in storytelling to ad agencies.
Marketers who complain about how easy it is to make ‘branded content’ that spreads are in an equivalent position to their topic as music fans who roll their eyes at the simplicity of pop songs. But it’s hard not to be amused imagining the look of granite disdain on the face of an adland grandee exposed to this golden paragraph.
“We know dog content resonates strongly online, so we have created a number of stories around the loving and joyful connection between dogs and owners,” Melinda Winter, senior brand manager at Milk-Bone, said in a statement. One of these stories, for instance, is a collection of 10 GIFS of dogs warmly greeting humans.
‘Pacific 202’ by The Williams Fairey Brass Band
British Summer Time
It’s weird the things you assume other people will know about. I just made an offhand reference to Jeremy Deller’s “Acid Brass” in the office, in full - and utterly naive - belief everyone would get it.
The upside is the office is now listening to Acid Brass.
Cantos Stop Won't Stop: Inferno XII: Join Our Insect* Nation -
(the incident with the witch that Dante apparently made up for this book)
Wait whut isn’t this a ref to the start of Aeneid VI? A witch — or a Sybil or some such — is how Aenaes gets down into hell to visit his pore old dad, and also fend off emo Dido…
This is the witch! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erichtho - appears in a different Roman epic, but Dante has invented this particular piece of Virgil’s backstory. Very likely also a reference to the Aeneid - tho Virgil is IN Hell already and Erichtho is how he gets down to the really bad bits.
“I may be the only one to see this, the chorus of Husbands reminds me the chorus of Patti Smith’s Horses”
O youthful hope!
(via timocraticyouth)