technology -v- culture ... and whatever else is on our minds today

Your new friend gives you something. He gives you a record. It isn’t his — it’s his older brother’s. But that’s okay, because the older brother’s away.

The record doesn’t make you sing like the records you’ve loved so far. It actually kind of makes you uncomfortable. But it also makes you want to flap your arms like wings. And it makes you want to hear more music that’s so oblique.

Once you start to delve into music like that, you can’t stop.

Pere Shae gave me that record. And I owe so much to him for that gesture. Nearly everything, in fact.

* He was “Pere Shae” long before he was the Deadheads’ “Poohshae”. And I’ll remember him as father, rather than bear.

Grinderman – Super Heathen Child (with Robert Fripp) by Mute UK

I have a problem with bands that become critics’ darlings before I’ve fallen in love with them: I tend to disdain and ignore them. I did that with Vampire Weekend, and Campus has convinced me I was a fool, as I usually am when I do this.

Black Kids, “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You”, from Partie Traumatic.

Count Matt & Kim among the bands cited above. “Daylight”, from Grand, is great.

Why do all of these bands sound like stuff I was listening to when I was 14?

Need to dig deeper: Band of Horses.

And why does Pandora think that the Strokes go with everything from the Mae Shi to Pavement?

“Eve of Destruction”, Bishop Allen (from Charm School)
“Down We Go”, Kepi Ghoulie (from American Gothic) (seemingly no linky)
“What Dreams”, Signals (okay, I owe that one to MNS. Do not miss the video.)
“Ice Age”, Good Shoes (from Think Before You Speak)
“The End and Everything After”, Johnny Foreigner (from Waited Up Till It Was Light)

I also decided I need to further investigate the work of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and British Sea Power.

What’s the point of deploying such a great riff in service of such a lame song?

Very good. Very funny. See it.

Is this the inspiration for these guys?

I hope so.

In other words, what’s the value of the cloud when the cost of storage is declining precipitously? Or, conversely, what’s the point in buying lots of storage — however cheap it is — when we all have access to the cloud pretty much whenever and wherever we want?) Last year, my pal Sandy Pearlman and I discussed this during a session at the Future of Music Coalition‘s annual Policy Summit in Washington DC.

Below the fold, I’ve posted an essay Sandy wrote to set up the topic, followed by a couple of responses:

(more…)

James Luther Dickinson died a few months ago. How did I miss this? The man was a genius, and now I’ll never get to interview him.

Seriously — the man who turned two Alex Chilton records * into masterpieces died, and I didn’t even know.

“Everybody goes as far as they can, they don’t just care/
You’re a wasted face, you’re a sad-eyed laugh, you’re a holocaust”

Goddamn, Jim — rest in peace.

[UPDATE (and the asterisk ***): Plus he produced yet another masterpiece, the one that led me to the Big Star and Chilton stuff.]

… of Bowie, but I read on nonetheless. It’s factually flawed (Spitz calls this the “Event Harmonizer”???), occasionally infuriatingly written (dozens of unclear pronoun antecedents), and highly self-indulgent (the interstitial chapters are about Spitz not-meeting Bowie). But the arc’s compelling, as is the subject.

Someday, Bowie will write his own or authorize a good one. Until then, there’s always this.