December 2009
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2010
Screw Rock ‘n’ Roll is traveling. Also, it’s in America now. (Rough details here.)
Back in 2010.
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fight! fight!
maura johnston: i'm just sick of teenage girls being the people who are "ruining music"
maura johnston: as a former teenage girl i think old white guys are MUCH WORSE
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“The Parks Department has declared today a “snow day” and opened hills for...”
– NY1, “City Shovels Snowy Streets Clean”
Rachel: “The federal governent doesn’t think everyone has the right to health care, but New York thinks everyone has the right to sleds and hot chocolate!”
(via barthel)
America. Whatta country.
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“It’s probably going to get annoying to keep reading me talk about just how...”
– Andrew Unterberger on “Crank Dat Soulja Boy”
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“Drink in My Cup” stands as 2009’s finest drinking song, its...”
– Alex MacPherson, The Guardian
I’ve seen “Drink…” described elsewhere as a drinking song, and I can’t agree. It sounds to me as if Electrik Red, with their screwed-up vocals and, yes, “woozy synths,” have created a promethazine song. In pop music, unlike...
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a book that is popular on the internet
agrammar:
What I do want to say is this. One interesting new fact of popular culture is that there are things that are popular On The Internet in ways that are different from being popular In “Real” Life. For instance, if you spend a lot of time in certain regions of the internet, you might find yourself hearing more about certain musicians than you would in non-internet life. I’m not precisely...
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“It appears that adults are reacting to young people in early and latter...”
– rachelhills:
One of my favourite quotes from Gagnon and Simon’s classic sociological text, Sexual Conduct: the Social Sources of Human Sexuality.
Or in less academic terms, much of the panic surrounding the sexual behaviour of teenagers and young adults is a self-confirming figment of adults’...
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Slow Club - Christmas TV
I was going to do a...
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“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing...”
– Calvin Coolidge
from a comment on this post Tenacity
(via fred-wilson, via amyd)
This is all fine Cal, but that’s how you get that banal bureaucratic evil of the hard worker, the Lumbergh type, the Rawls (“The Wire” ) type. Let’s hear it for us genius* fuck-ups,...
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Contrarianism, arrogance.
Erin: but sometimes I think you disproportionately value being undervalued
you look harder for the good in things people disregard
it's not that the good isn't there
it's that you work harder to find it, and are more amenable to it when its found
Me: i don't think i do. see: radiohead, jay-z, the wire, etc.
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
i can be quite the canon-whore
Erin: I'm not saying you don't value those things
I just say
for you
the bar is higher for what you just called the canon
and lower for the Miley Cyruses of this world
(also, question - I've never noticed you robustly defending boy bands...)
Me: (that's because, apart from late period *nsync, i don't think they were very good. @poptastic will gladly defend them though, if you were in need of that)
(also, notice my silence on the jonas brothers, except when i think attacks on them are really attacks on their fans, who don't deserve it)
Erin: (hmmm.... I'll have to think on that. I listened to some Jonas Brothers this weekend and I thought it was NOTICEABLY better than Miley)
anyway
I think what bugs me
Me: (ha, really?)
Erin: is that sometimes you present yourself as more pure
in your approach to art
when yours is as flawed as anyone elses
and that's where the arrogance comes through
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“The decline has concerned classical fans, who see radio as an important...”
– Stephanie Clifford, “Never Listen to Céline? Radio Meter Begs to Differ,” The New York Times
Hey, Polisi. Rap’s all those things too, except it has a good beat and sometimes Boosie. So STFU.
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Interview: Robert Hill in Copenhagen →
Last Tuesday morning Australian time, Monday evening Copenhagen time, I spoke with the USSC’s Robert Hill, who also happens to be head of the Australian Carbon Trust, a former Australian Ambassador to the United Nations, and a representative at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen. Here’s what we talked about: [Read More]
The time difference between Sydney and Copenhagen is a bitch;...
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PSA
cureforbedbugs:
My Top 20:
4. Taylor Swift - Fearless
I know I’m a jerk for doing this, but I just have to:
November 11 2008
There was plenty of time to fall in love with this album last year, critics. If you slept, you slept. But this wasn’t a 2009 album, as all these people knew.
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“Now when I look outside, sittin’ in the drive, it blows my mind to see
An...”
– Brad Paisley, “All I Wanted Was a Car”
It’s pretty damn impressive making SUV ownership sound like something wonderful. (Rap-obsessions with Hummers are different; it isn’t for its sticker price that Paisley values his car.)
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???
cureforbedbugs:
“…in some ways, “My Girls” feels like a life preserver for people tottering on the precipice of adulthood. Panda Bear might be apologetic about his craving (“I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things,” he hedges), but “My Girls” is ultimately a celebration of the simplification— of desire, of priorities— that comes with growing up.”
From the Pfork write-up of “My...
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Least favorite people
kingdrake1:
1. Joe Lieberman
Word.
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aceterrier:
Iyaz, “Replay”
Making a song about...
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“I’ve always hated the Fleshtones for turning ‘fun’ into a...”
– Ibid, emphasis original
Also, this (you should read the whole thing):
Once the significance is understood, a reverse process takes over, and the performers imagine capital-S Significance for themselves that they don’t in fact have, and sell this imaginary significance, which the audience buys.
...
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“These are feelings and feelings are more real and basic than anything. Right?...”
– Frank Kogan, Real Punks Wear Black, quoting himself in the comments here.
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“emo. emo. fuckin’ a. remember back in the day, when critics would label any...”
– Ibid.
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“alligator is essentially an extremely accurate document of being in your 20’s:...”
– Ibid
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“more d’angelo than dylan, the most surprising thing about for emma forever ago...”
– Ibid.
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“so, the question remains: if god’s not there, but his name’s on the dollar bill...”
– Douglas Martin, in his Decade in Winning. Which you should read.
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“Examined now, years after its 92-episode run, “The O.C.” stands as a...”
– Daniel Fienberg is kidding, sort of — did the final sentence give it away? — but I like what he’s saying anyway. Check the whole thing out; it’s a great analysis/remembrance of one of television’s finest programs this decade.
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Frankly, Mr Shankly, this position I’ve...
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WatchYou wanna quit? Goddamn, I’m ready to.
Cam’ron - My Job
Cam hates his job. That’s cause HE DIDN’T JUST QUIT IT LIKE I DID.
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I like it when songs are about...
Skipping school.
E.g. Franz Ferdinand - The Dark of the Matinée; Bloc Party - I Still Remember.
Others?
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I mean, think about it...
cureforbedbugs:
Girlboymusic on “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell”:
I mean, think about it. Someone thought Pizza Hut was a good idea. Someone thought Taco Bell was a good idea. Not just someone — many someones! Enough someones to make both Pizza Hut and Taco Bell successful fast food chains, enough someones to justify an entire corporation (even more someones) being built around the owning...
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Passantino on Jukebox beef. →
I don’t like what the dude does but, I like how he does it. Or is that the other way round? A sample:
“Stop trying to make fetch happen”, the hack in question probably later commented. Probably the first time Perpetua has been described as “little” since he was a foetus though, so credit where it’s due.
Anyway, it’s just unseemly, indie journalists, as any examination into ILB posts will...