Author: Tim Jarrett

I emailed Michael Goldberg today. He founded Addicted to Noise, which in the mid nineties was the coolest music site around. They had Corinne Tucker of Sleater Kinney writing a column for them for a while… Alas, they sold to SonicNet, who sold to the VH1 corporate megalith, and a lot of great content that they had has disappeared (though some of it is still in the Google cache).

That was actually why I emailed Michael. I was looking for good SY and Thurston Moore reviews for musicmoz, but the content was no longer accessible. To my chagrin, Michael confirmed that VH1 owns the rights to all those great stories. There’s a greater point to be made here about the evils of contracts that give all rights to the purchaser of content. You think copyright is bad when Disney owns it? What about a corporation that is bought and essentially ceases to exist, and a new copyright owner who lets all the content rot?

Fortunately this story has a happy ending. Michael’s now at Neumu, a killer little site about music and art that deserves to be a lot better known. Go check it out.
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Enough said, really. I picked up Blacklisted the other day and I’ve forgotten all the other music I was listening to, which almost never happens. If you’ve never heard Ms. Case’s music, do yourself a favor and check out the new album’s second track, ‘Deep Red Bells.’
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Brent, in a relatively rare break from work (the man has been busy since NetNewsWire went beta), wonders where the next Nirvana will come from. Is it maybe the Strokes, the Hives, the Vines, and the White Stripes? I don’t know. I’ve certainly heard words to that effect from various sources.

But the thing that Nirvana did that made everything change was to break down the barriers that the music industry and the audience had created with genres. By grabbing metalheads who were hungry for a change after the self indulgence of Axl Rose howling “Live and Let Die,” alternative music listeners who were disappointed with the Pixies’ Bossanova, and yes, frat boys who knew all the pretty songs and liked to sing along, Nirvana built a huge audience around a youth culture that felt as aimless and trapped and angry as Kurt sounded.

All the Strokes have succeeded in doing is opening the floodgates for a bunch of bands that sound kind of like them. That’s ok if you like that sort of thing, but…

I think the real problem is radio, contrary to John Robb’s assertion that it’s dead. (John, check out the MIT station WMBR the next time you’re close enough to pick up the signal. Or tune in KEXP on the web and pretend you’re in Seattle. :)) With all the radio stations being operated by remote control by some guy in Cleveland or LA who only can remember about five songs at one time, there’s no way that the “O Brother” phenomenon could reach the enormous teen audience that might have taken it and made it their own. I know it was a huge success as a soundtrack, but I have to think the demographics for it skewed way upwards of 25.

I wonder whether there’s enough commonality left in the music listening audience to make another Nirvana possible, or whether the musical universe will just keep expanding infinitely, genres rushing away from each other at the speed of light, until all the energy of pop music is turned into entropy and loss.
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I think the correlation between music and quality of life is absurdly high for me. This morning I hopped in my car–okay, stumbled into is more accurate given the fog I was in–and turned on the radio. KEXP was playing “Dig for Fire” by the Pixies. Right on, thought I, and started driving down the hill. Then they switched to “Alec Eiffel”, then Frank Black’s “Tossed.” Alas, at that point their pledge drive pitch came back on (I’ve pledged, have you?). So I turned on the iPod and it was Daniel Lanois’ “For the Beauty of Wynona.” Then Violent Femmes: “Girl Trouble.” When I got to the office, Liz Phair’s “Support System” was playing.

How could one feel anything but sing and dance good after a set like that?

A lengthy, cynical review of Lou Reed’s performance at Bumbershoot that finds nothing to bitch about save his performance of The Raven. I love the shtick that the author and his friend work up over this one:

This offers the evening’s only opportunity to do shtick over the course of the song, and Ian and I traded barbs over Reed’s rendition:

Reed: “For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore Nameless here forevermore.”

Us: “Because she’s a dirty junkie slut who got what’s coming to her!”

Reed: “Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer…”

Us: “So I popped another bennie and fucked the drag queen like a dog!”

Reed: “Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before…”

Us: “And it was Andy inviting us to an opening in Soho!”

Reed: “Then the bird said, `Nevermore’…”

Us: “And he stole my TV the next morning for smack!”

You’ll have to read the review for Lou’s “pre-emptive strike” over this one, which makes the jokes look like child’s play.
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