|
Saturday, September 27, 2003
PBS series of films by 5 directors on The Blues airs this week
9:27 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Friday, September 26, 2003
R.I.P. George Plimpton
9:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
One Last Look R.I.P. Robert Palmer I worked in a record store back in the late 70s, and I remember Palmer's work with the members of Little Feat on his early Island albums was pretty neat ("Sneakin' Sally" being the most well-known, I guess). Never got into the "Addicted" incarnation. But I think the last album of that first lot was titled One Last Look and the title track was a poignant little number that stuck with me. Can't find it on the networks though. I'm sure most know him from his 80s work, solo and with Power Station.
8:21 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Also from Arts Journal: The anti-copyright movement among artists. 16 year-old Kiwi classical phenomenon Hayley Westenra has the fastest selling debut in classical music history.
12:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Latest RIAA stupidhead move file RIAA sheepishly withdraws lawsuit against 66 year-old Massachusetts sculptor who claims to have no P2P software on her Mac [Arts Journal]Sarah Seabury Ward, of Newbury, Massachusetts, and her husband use their computer to e-mail with children and grandchildren, said Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Cindy Cohn, who has worked with the family. They use a Macintosh, which cannot even run the Kazaa file-sharing service they are accused of using illegally. Nonetheless, Ward was one of 261 defendants sued by the recording industry this month for illegal Internet file sharing. Ward was accused of illegally sharing more than 2,000 songs, including rapper Trick Daddy's "I'm a Thug." An attorney for the Recording Industry Association of America withdrew the case Friday, calling the move a "gesture of good faith" but writing in a letter to Ward's attorney that the organization would continue to look into the matter and reserved the right to re-file.
11:50 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Edwin Black's War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race: capsule reviewHitler was so impressed with American "eugenics" (a contrived term made up of the Greek words for well and born) that he sought to duplicate it in Germany. What began here as an organized campaign at the start of the 20th century was financed by Andrew Carnegie, and later by the Rockefellers and Harrimans, and based on Long Island, New York, at the Station for Experimental Evolution of the Carnegie Institution. The movement leader: a terrifying (my word) and sad (Black's word) zoologist named Charles Davenport, who intended to build a Nordic master race ... the SAT test was created by a "radical raceologist" committed to white superiority.
3:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
The ALTA report - Daily is a reduced version of the comprehensive ALTA report prepared for our subscriber base. This report is prepared using linguistic analysis tools for the expressed purpose of predicting Universal Events over the short term. See ctc post on AL TA IR from halfpasthuman.com
8:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Monday, September 22, 2003
salon interview with Sofia Coppola [salon clickthrough blah blah] Still haven't re-rented Virgin Suicides. I remember it not working for me at all...
11:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
"The Titanic music is making me sick. It seems to go on for hours. It is a living hell." UK family hit with noise-abatement order for endlessly performing Celine Dion hits in home [Undernews]
1:13 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Blankets, a new graphic novel by Craig Thompson: reviewCraig Thompson's graphic novel Blankets is not a book to waste on conversion attempts. It's a treasure trove of image and word, to be savored by those in the know and neglected by those who won't appreciate its brilliance and beauty. Its length -- nearly 600 pages -- may seem daunting, but the pages whip effortlessly past: I read it in one night, virtually in one sitting, from about midnight to 3 a.m. It's a fast read, but Blankets is worth revisiting, if only to luxuriate in its astonishing imagery and pick up all the details you missed the first time when you were too eager to find out what happens next. Thompson's layouts are intricate and organic; instead of the rigid six- or eight-panel pages of standard comics, he varies the shape, size, even the borders of his panels, frequently achieving a collage-like effect that would simply be impossible in any other medium. Like the best comix stories, Blankets emphasizes the medium's exclusive strengths. Thompson's illustrations pack more beauty and power than much prose or poetry, and the frozen images allow the reader's gaze to linger, to examine, to climb inside the picture in ways that film cannot.
4:22 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Kyle Gann's PostClassic blog (also at AJ) engages the debate on the "end of classical music" From his critique of Reich Remixed:...maybe they're right. Maybe the austerity of postclassical music is neurotic in some way. Maybe it's due to some mental or personal deficiency that we can listen to Lucier's voice slowly become indistinguishable over 45 minutes, or Ashley's calming voice mutter nonsequiturs for three hours, or for god's sake La Monte Young doodling on a bizarrely out-of-tune piano for six hours. But some of us feel a deep need to go out into a vast musical desert where we can commune with a sound or a process or a tuning and really get into it, and we don't want the route cluttered up with convenience stores and shopping malls. For many of us, the large-scale course of the piece is precisely the point, even (or especially) if it goes nowhere. We don't need distraction: we need focus. We don't need backbeats and chord progressions and the familiar accoutrements of everyday music to keep us from feeling like we've left home. With varying intentions and success, those Reich Remixed DJs did to Reich's music what the planners of Staples business supply stores do, make every store have exactly the same process and layout so that you never have to face the anxiety of being somewhere unfamiliar. I read Gann's criticism in the Village Voice back when he replaced Tom Johnson (I think) in the 80s. Nice to see him active in cyberspace. Myself, I like the trash as well as the treasures. And perhaps especially artists who blur the line. And from another entry, a subjective yet informed take from a reader on CD-R brands. I definitely agree from my own experience that CD-Rs never quite sound as good as CDs (even with cheap headphones I can figure that out), but the faster you record CD-Rs the worse they are. Mind you, the quality of CDs also varies widely, and some CD-Rs actually sound better than older CDs that haven't been remastered or whatever. Perhaps this is all pointless to listeners of comps of the latest hits, but with someone like Eliane Radigue, it makes a difference. I'm still trying to get clear on what exactly is the best archival CD-R, and how you know whether the Mitsui discs you find cheaper are the good ones, etc. Haven't found anything more recent than this to guide me, but I belong to no usenet groups or whatever to keep up with the latest either. Any informed comments would be appreciated.
7:54 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
People who decide what "Art" is file And from Arts Journal: early MOMA curator Dorothy Miller's estate -- from her Greenwich Village flat -- will bring around $10 million at Christie's in November [use NYT password etc in left column] Kline, Johns, Calder among the offerings, rarely seen outside her living space.
7:41 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Adding Arts Journal to my column left -- good arts blog, in a mainstream old school way
7:34 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
|