I'm more or less on vacation at the moment, so I'll keep this short, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point you in the direction of my just-posted review of the entire Patti Smith discography for eMusic. It's been too long since I've really listened to Horses, let alone dipped back into it for several weeks on end, and boy, does it hold up like a friggin' tank. (Sadly, I was 2 when it was released in 1975, so despite that fact that I lived in Manhattan then, I was sadly not hip to the downtown goings-on.) No surprise there. What did surprise me was how strong some of Smith's latter-day albums are, especially the consecutive trio of Gone Again, Peace & Noise and Gung Ho. The topical lyrics of Gung Ho's "Glitter in Their Eyes" may be loaded with clunkers, but it boasts the catchiest riff in Smith's oeuvre since "Because," and the unlikely pairing with producer Gil Norton produces surprisingly potent results. Lots, lots more at the link.
There's been a lot of complaining about the imminent price hikes at Netflix (including my own drops in the bucket of tears), but a few commentators have pushed past the consumer outrage to look at the deeper motivations of the company's decision to sever its streaming video and DVD-by-mail businesses. Over at the A.V. Club, I run with the ball a bit, wondering what a world defined by endless choice and inevitably limited selection might look like. In essence, I worry that the easier some things become to access, the more those that aren't become devalued or pushed aside, and that that syndrome has knock-on effects in the realm of digestability and comprehension; if you're not willing to work to get a hold of something, how hard will you work to understand it? More, including a few pile-ons in the comments section, right thisaway.
(h/t commenter GeoGreg)
UPDATE: There may be more, but I've caught wind of two interesting reaction to the piece. The post at Subtraction, and especially the comments, get into an area I thought about but neglected to explore in print: the fact that Netflix's reputation originally rested on its "long tail" selection of hard-to-find movies (they were supposed to be the place you could get anything), and that they're dramatically moved away from that model as their DVD library slowly falls victim to attrition.
In a post called "Convenience Has Nothing to Do With It," Jonathan Poritsky not surprisingly takes issue with the piece, specifically becuase "there's nothing that says our selection is limited to Netflix alone." I'd agree, mainly because I didn't say that, either. Netflix is a business people are free to patronize or not as it meets their needs, or fails to. What concerns me is that people might be — and, my own ancedotal experience suggests, are — adapting their needs to meet the service, and not vice-versa. I'm not sure why Poritsky finds it "offensive" to compare Uncle Boonmee and Friday Night Lights, but the idea wasn't to denigrate one at the expense of the other, which is why I picked a critically acclaimed series that's uniformly beloved by my peers and not, say, White Chicks. What I'm doing is not "blam[ing] streaming technology for our own deficiences," but speculating about how an unfounded faith in that technlogy might enable or expand them.
As a general rule, I don't blame technology for people's failures, since that would be like getting mad at a hammer. But from the inclined plane on up, the tools we use have profoundly altered the course of human civilization, sometimes in unexpected ways (just ask Alfred Nobel). I agree that the responsibility, as it should, rests with individuals, which is why I'm addressing them and not Netflix itself. I don't trust any corporate entity, no matter how benevolent-seeming, to be the conduit through which all our information flows. Netflix has already proven they're capable of dramatically altering their business model without warning, and I think those inclined to treat them as a one-size-fits-all solution should keep that in mind.
I've been trying for years to write an article encompassing Adam Schlesinger's double life as a rock musician and protean songwriter-for-hire, and the A.V. Club's Set List provided the ideal opportunity. In addition to playing bass and writing songs for two great bands — Fountains of Wayne, whose album Sky Full of Holes is out today, and Ivy, whose After Hours comes along in September — he's become Hollywood's guy for fake band songs, whether it's creating an '80s synth-pop ditty for Hugh Grant's washed-up teen idol in Music & Lyrics or fleshing out the back catalogue of Josie & the Pussycats. (Lousy movie, great soundtrack.) Even in a lengthy conversation, we couldn't get to everything — no "Stacy's Mom," sorry — but I think I succeeded in touching every base. Here's one you might not have seen, the Neil Patrick Harris-sung opening number for this year's Tony Awards:
And while we're on the subject, here's a 2009 interview centering on Schlesinger's involvement in the odd-sock supergroup Tinted Windows (also including Smashing Pumpkins' James Iha, Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos and the singer from Hanson), and a review of Fountains' great acoustic tour earlier that year. Bonus track: Talking with Schlesinger's former roommate — and Oneders lead vocalist — Mike Viola about his contribution to the decade-spanning oeuvre of fake star Dewey Cox for Walk Hard.
Bad enough it took Gillian Welch and her partner, David Rawlings, eight years to record their new album, The Harrow & the Harvest, but now they've got to suffer through a string of near-identical interviews rehashing the long dry spell. I bit the bullet right off when I interviewed Welch for the A.V. Club, but I put a slightly different spin on the question: Instead of asking why it took so long to produce Harrow, I wondered if she ever feared there might not be another record in her. As it turns out, she did. She and Rawlings were constantly writing new songs, but, well, you can see what she thought of them above.
More with Welch, including thoughts on collaborating with The Decemberists on The King Is Dead and her advice on how to stain Harrow's letterpress cover for that perfect old-timey feel, here.
Some show reviews I pitch because you can't beat getting paid to go to a concert you'd see anyway, and some I suggest out of simple curiosity. What follower of the culture at large could resist the opportunity to check in on Britney Spears, and especially to find out who, after all these years, is still showing up to see her? After Saturday's concert in Philadelphia, I can verify that Spears still has a robust following of women in tight clothes and gay men in even tighter clothes, but Nicki Minaj's opening set, and especially the deafening roar that went up from the crowd as she closed with "Moment 4 Life," should have been enough to put Spears on notice. Minaj reappeared during Britney's final song, but only as a virtual presence, adding a pre-filmed rap verse to "Till the World Ends"; apparently Minaj has taken the stage sometimes and not others during the Femme Fatale tour's six weeks, but you have to wonder if it's Spears' way of holding off the competition.
Further thoughts on the show, via the Philadelphia Inquirer, are here, but a tad more on Minaj that I didn't have room for in the short piece. This was an entirely different, and substantially more girl-friendly staging, than her opening set on Lil' Wayne's "I Am Still Music" tour, which is to say more feminist sci-fi, fewer dildoes. The overarching narrative, in which Minaj battled a Predatory villain named Nemesis, was semi-coherent — the muffled sound mix didn't help in that respect — and bit more than a little of off Janelle Monáe, but it indicated that she's thinking big, and that thrilling things are still ahead.
