January 2012
103 posts
1 tag
Holy Fucking Jesus Fuck
December 2011
156 posts
Mark Richardson: A Proposed New Year's Resolution... →
markrichardson:
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...
“‘I must admit I have not really followed you but your recent stance on Ron...”
– “Kelly Clarkson Sales Spike After Endorsement of Ron Paul.”
AHA
“The term resonated with me at the time, but in the intervening months I’ve come...”
– Carl Wilson, with a longue durée view of Maura’s “trollgaze” coinage.
Along with Carl, I definitely think we have to account for mediation when we talk about our reactions to certain behaviors. I’m not a Bourdieu guy like Carl—Bourdieu doesn’t talk about...
“But it also seemed like a good place to go to detox and collect one’s...”
– “Look Good in Ruins (or: Twenty-five Tangents about Bowie in ‘Berlin’).”
“For all the supposedly progressive politics of rock and pop, the structure of...”
– “Miss Independent: Why Kelly Clarkson’s Ron Paul Endorsement Makes Complete Sense.”
"If, as a child, I’d made a Top 10 list of the... →
Matthew McVickar: 2011 in Music: Music Writing →
matthewmcvickar:
My favorite writing about music from this year.
Tons of great links here (including my writing, which is clearly the best in the world). Matthew’s killing his 2011 retrospective.
Matthew McVickar: 2011 in Music: Sounds →
(This is totally awesome. Click through and listen. Love, Eric)
matthewmcvickar:
I tend to fixate on sounds and tones in songs and records. These are my favorite sounds from this year.
There are two ways to listen! Press play on the blue-and-grey SoundCloud player to hear all thirty-three sounds isolated and arranged alphabetically back-to-back, following along with the list below. Or press...
“Some criticised the reaction to Diana’s death at the time as being...”
– Thanks to Tom for the link. Bracketing the extreme cultural and ideological differences obviously, I don’t think extreme emotional reactions to the death of a powerful and charismatic public leader are rare at all.
“Two men suddenly rose into the air vertically, 15 feet perhaps, amid a spout of...”
– A medical officer of the 2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers recalls the grimly poetic result of a shell explosion during the battle of the Somme, July 1916.
From John Keegan’s tremendous The Face of Battle, which I originally read as an undergrad for my Medicine and War course, and which I’m...
“We’ve grown so accustomed to seeing American athletes treated with some...”
– Hua Hsu on this.
“It was the medical profession as well as many other trade groups that agitated...”
– Ron Paul is a complicated dude. (cf)
“Bands as incomparable as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and even Stone...”
– Mike Powell on the Smashing Pumpkins reissues.
“Before being enacted, the law triggered grave alarm among city businesses and...”
– “Five Years After Banning Outdoor Ads, Brazil’s Largest City is More Vibrant Than Ever.”
This Flickr set is amazing. Almost the stuff of sci-fi, no? There’s something weirdly appealing about removing the content but keeping the big empty signage. (via John Darnielle, who...
“This transformation of the viewing public into a nation of smug Bela Karolyis,...”
– “The Killing vs. Homeland.”
“Thinking that an office job might be a good thing to try, she did a six-month...”
– “Stumptown Girl.”
Very well might have a forthcoming academic article in me about the myriad and obvious connections between humor and the consistent self-reflexive cred-checks we place on a countercultural sensibility in the 21st century, including Portlandia and Henry Owings’...
“Later, by way of segueing into the coda of ‘Niggas in Paris,’ Kanye...”
– I write about Watch the Throne and the insane resurgence of rapping about doing copious amounts of drugs (including a Fats Waller/A$AP Rocky shoutout) to end the Voice’s year-end roundtable. It was really fun, and thanks to Maura, Tom, Nick and Katherine for playing in the sandbox with me.
“2,184: ‘CRAY’-s.
652,200: Estimated number of Watch the Throne tour...”
– ”’Niggas in Paris’: The Definitive Breakdown.”
“This is not to suggest that we have reached the end of ‘history,’...”
– From Jim Collins’ Architectures of Excess, which prefigured Simon Reynolds’ argument in Retromania by about 16 years. In ‘94 it was all about Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, cyberpunk, and Julie Dash films.
1 tag
Are People Recommending That Every Comedian Do...
Because you sort of have to already have 200,000+ devoted fans.
But hey, at least a generation of Wired readers have a new favorite comedian now.
"Give Drake a nickel bag and ceiling mirror, and... →
1 tag
West Up! West Coast Gangsta Rap, 1987-1996 →
In-progress.
I Have Been Informed That
Christwire is “satire,” and I have also learned about something called “Poe’s Law.”
4 tags
“In point of fact, these Phish shows promise to be a dangerous mix of sexual...”
– Phish is playing Times Square on NYE and CHRISTWIRE IS NOT HAPPY.
More: this “erratically rancid rockfest” is “openly encouraging youths today to turn their backs on their mothers and fathers, on the birthday of the Baby Jesus, to congregate in a crime-ridden inner city for a...
tomewing:
marathonpacks:
At the Atlantic, I briefly respond to xkcd’s Christmas-canon-as-boomer-nostalgia comic. There are other (obvious) reasons the canon stops accepting new members in the early 60s.
One interesting thing abt this is that there exists a useful control group, i.e. Britain* a country which enjoyed the same basic technological and social developments with a lag of only a few...
"Commercial radio—a free alternative to buying... →
At the Atlantic, I briefly respond to xkcd’s Christmas-canon-as-boomer-nostalgia comic. There are other (obvious) reasons the canon stops accepting new members in the early 60s.
Yours Truly at the Voice, on the Bro from Eau... →
"A very fanciful throne lodged in a basketball... →
“Das Racist’s Dapwell - Ten Ideas for My Unreleased Album’s Cover Art.”
"I always associate him and Drake with the 'deep'... →
Nitsuh on Kendrick Lamar for Slate’s year-end critics’ roundtable*. You should be following this. Ann Powers on Drake from yesterday is pretty tremendous (though comparing all music to the recession is a major theoretical stretch in sort of a 50s structural-functionalist way).
*I learned what a “Bechdel Test” is too.
1 tag
“The date was October 22, 2000. Like much of what he did as North Korea’s...”
– “How Kim Jong Il Became the Most Successful Dictator in Modern History.”