Three things are informing my thought patterns this morning after yesterday’s post. Firstly, the comment from my long-time friend Shamus from yesterday where he makes fine points, but I think misses what I was striving for. Nonetheless:
“I just love new music. I love finding it, listening to it, devoutly following it and proselytizing it. I can't imagine not. I know some of this is just for the sake of novelty but it's a habit I never broke.As to why bother listening to music. Well, while we're definitely in a post-rock and post-art in general world there is still great innovation, new sounds, new combinations, bands singing about contemporary feelings and topical subjects, new personalities; looks and styles, new cool bands like MGMT, White Stripes, Sufjan Stevens, Spoon, Rattatat, Phoenix, of Montreal, Muse, The Firemen (Paul's fantastic band with Killing Joke's Youth), Fleet Foxes, The Decemberists, and Bright Eyes. And these are all just easily accessible rock bands. I'd rather have them take your $17 or 9.99 itunes purchase than the truly awful sounding Who or Pink Floyd or The Dead sucking $175 dollar concert tickets out of the lazy and confused wouldn't you? To make a statement that no art since time X is as good anymore strikes me as a huge insult to the great bands that have put out music since 1972. It seems you pigeon-holing a genre by the strictures of the styles that developed up to that point neglecting the expansion of the genre by Krautrock, prog, post-punk, rave, mad-chester, dream-pop, brit-pop, electronica, avant-garde, trip-hop. etc, etc, etc. My god where would we be without Kraftwerk, Soft-Machine, Joy Division, Orbital, My Bloody Valentine, Nick Cave, Portishead, Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers, Boards of Canada. All these bands have put out art as valid, as important as will be listened to in 100 years as The Beatles, Led Zep, and Rolling Stones. The smart kidz will grow out of My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park just like I grew out of Men at _Work and U2. I think it's perfectly valid to be a like a specific genre and style of music, I don't have to tell you that. It's personal preference. It's opinion. But to say the expansion of the genre, the great contribution to the art is invalid, inferior and less significant betrays fear and ignorance doesn't it? When I watch Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity I see similar fear. Fear of the new, change and wistful reverence for a past that posits that everything should have stayed the same. If it did everything would be alright forever. BUT things don't stay the same do they? Be ambitious boys, be ambitious girls The beautiful thing about the internet. It's no longer a cadre it's thousand of people worldwide. I belong to many online communities who can agree that something is good and talk of it's merits and demerits. And, I can meet people on line and play in bands and get people to come to my shows who already agree that a genre is valid and move on to enjoying the music. It's okay to make mistakes when listening to new music and enjoying it. Some things don't age well, and sometimes I just plain old had bad taste or got fooled by a fad- that's okay, 'cause some of the stuff remains great. Thankfully I was open to trying it!” —Shamus
The second from Jeffrey Wells' excellent blog, Hollywood Elsewhere:
Aahh, Youth
"When you first start out you're always striving for greatness and perfection and then after some years reality sets in and you realize that you're not going to get it." -- Woody Allen between shots of his latest London-based film (allegedly titled You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger), talking to the Telegraph's John Hiscock in a piece than ran ages ago (i.e., 9.29).
Maybe you're "not going to get it" just so, but urgent creative strivings of talented young (or younger) directors looking to mark their mark tend to produce their best films. Allen seems to be saying he'll never make a film like Manhattan or Annie Hall or even Stardust Memories ever again, and that he's more or less content with that. That's a rather grim attitude. I'll take the young Scorsese (Mean Streets to Raging Bull) over the latter-day version any day of the week. Ditto young Coppola vs. old Coppola. Or young Bertolucci (Before The Revolution, The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris). Or young DePalma (The Phantom of the Paradise, Sisters, Greetings). Or young Jim Cameron (Piranha, Terminator, T2, Aliens) over the silver-haired Avatar techno-maestro he's since become.
Third, Bob Lefsetz’s review of Mika at The Palladium:
"We’re fucked.
I was standing in the back of the Palladium, all jazzed up, when I realized something. Almost this ENTIRE SHOW was on hard drive!"
Please read the rest right here.
Yes, I’m thinking out loud today.
T-Rex - Spaceball Ricochet (Mp3)
T-Rex - Jeepster (Mp3)
T-Rex - Cosmic Dancer (Mp3)
T-Rex - Ballrooms Of Mars (Mp3)
T-Rex - Girl (Mp3)
(...all live radio broadcast performances.)
