February 2012
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WatchOne of those moments of real happiness he talked about here. A genius at work.
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Florence Green, Last World War I Veteran, Dies at... →
In 2006, I had a random thought: Were any veterans of WW I still alive? I crunched some numbers and it seemed unlikely—the vet would have to be well past 100. But then I googled it and discovered that there were, as of May 2006, still 74 remaining. A Wikipedia page had all of their names, where they served, where they lived now, how old they were. I started tracking it, and they were dying...
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“Q: Obviously a tool is a tool and you can use it any way you want. It’s your...”
– Tape Op Magazine > Articles > Steve Albini
So in the full print version of this, which I finally finished reading there are great anecdotes about the Pixies, Nirvana, all of that. But this quote above is definitely the “lede,” if you will.
(via desnoise)
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Semipop Life: Best Lana Del Rey Writing 2012 (part... →
semipoplife:
Sasha Frere-Jones:
Most of the tracks were produced by Emile Haynie, who has mostly recorded hip-hop until now—a slightly misleading credential, since “Born to Die” sounds only intermittently like hip-hop, and there is nothing like rapping (except for a few Dad-like eruptions of vernacular in…
jakec asked: HEY MARK! When you said this: "I have written about this a little bit, but it’s one of the beautiful mysteries of music, that songs about sadness and loneliness can make you feel less sad and alone," is there somewhere one could find what you've written about that?
B Michael Tumblr: A Serious Observation →
bmichael:
I made a joke about this to my partner, but the rate of Lana Del Rey thinking and writing (‘scholarship’) was actually amazing and cool. I mentioned her in a piece back in, I think, November — and that was after resisting mentioning her a few times already. At this point, all the greatest music…
January 2012
29 posts
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Judy Berman: Please submit to my fun/painful... →
judyxberman:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS It’s Complicated: Feminists Write About the Misogynist Art We Love ed. Judy Berman and Niina Pollari “Listening to the Sex Pistols, trying to figure out if ‘Bodies’ was really an antiabortion song, I discovered that it was something even worse. It was an outburst of loathing…
Reblogging this a second time because I think this is a really exciting idea,...
Judy Berman: Please submit to my fun/painful... →
judyxberman:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS It’s Complicated: Feminists Write About the Misogynist Art We Love ed. Judy Berman and Niina Pollari “Listening to the Sex Pistols, trying to figure out if ‘Bodies’ was really an antiabortion song, I discovered that it was something even worse. It was an outburst of loathing…
Sounds like an interesting project here.
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opinionsareforming asked: I'm just starting to get into electronic music on a somewhat serious level, what songs/artists/albums would you recommend as introductions/classics of the genre? My experience is pretty much limited to "Midnight City", the little LCD Soundsystem I've heard, and Aphex Twin's "Flim", but I like all of these. What would you suggest?
Anonymous asked: hi from japan. i really adore your writings on music, some kind of a guiding light for me to explore new music. i discovered so many music through your columns and reviews (like, Gas, Herbert, many jazz stuff..) and i want to say thank you for that. The question i want to ask is, how do you feel about music that are painfully sad, like Sparklehorse or Elliott Smith, or maybe Mark Kozelek,...
Lana Del Rey: The Irony Lady →
amyrebeccaklein:
I am saddened by the backlash against Lana Del Rey. I am sick of this kind of horror at a woman laid bare—and sick of the fear and disgust that arises when we discover a woman is less than perfect. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time. There’s a famous poem, “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” written in 1732, in which the satirist Jonathan Swift describes sneaking into...
Anonymous asked: In the summer of 2002 I read a review (yours) of an album that I knew was right up my alley. The way the music was put together, the simple elements, the surprises... everything was perfect. The album was Thought For Food by the Books. When the next album came along I fell off the Books a bit, but it was still good. When Lost & Safe appeared in 2005 it totally blew me away. This is the album I...
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“In-crowd innuendo was not Liberace’s game; like a black man in black-face,...”
– Dave Hickey, “A Rhinestone as Big as the Ritz,” from Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy.
opinionsareforming asked: I really enjoy reading your Resonant Frequency columns. I wanted to let you know that your link to "Reviews" on this blog doesn't work because none of the search filters are turned on. I think you can fix this just by checking the "Reviews" box and using the link that that gives you. Do you think the NMH Box Set was overpriced? Maybe I'm not familiar enough with...
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Anonymous asked: In current music, what are you tired of hearing?
Needlebase
Maybe some people don’t know this, but Glenn McDonald, in addition to being the genius writer who used to pen The War Against Silence every Wednesday night, is also a genius statistician. Every year he crunches numbers for the votes in Pazz & Jop. Each voter’s page lists voters whose taste is similar (McDonald calls it “Empathies”). I can report that every single voter...
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A Couple Quick Things re Setting Up a Stereo
When I posted last week about my poor broken turntable (np: Springsteen The Promise, via streaming mp3/AirPort Express) a couple of people asked for some thoughts on setting up a stereo.
I am in no way an expert on this sort of thing, but I did grow up in a time when knowing the basics of stereos was more common part of being a music fan. CDs pretty much changed everything as far as that...
December 2011
25 posts
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A Proposed New Year's Resolution for Music Critics
Maybe we could spend extra time in 2012 thinking about how we, as individual listeners, respond when the music of the present seems especially connected to the music of the past. To figure out when and why we forgive artists that seem only the sum of very clear influences and when and why we actually seek out such artists. And maybe we could articulate a set of criteria for when...
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“The music critic Charles Rosen, observing that difficulty in the arts has...”
– Merce Cunningham Dance Company Ends Its Legacy Tour - NYTimes.com
This Ron Paul Newsletter Thing
Should be a lesson to us all. We need to start reading the newsletters we put out. This week I plan to sit down with a big stack of the Mark Richardson Political Report, Mark Richardson’s Freedom Report, the Mark Richardson Survival Report, and the Mark Richardson Investment Letter to make there’s nothing crazy going out under my name.