unhillbilly

And I’m so happy it isn’t. Industrial streaming of art is choke-point capitalism.

I was only vaguely aware of Joan Didion because of my dearest friend’s infatuation with D. A. Ortberg’s scatalogical YouTube impressions of imagined conversations between Didion and Anna Wintour. That changed upon hearing Susan Stamberg’s 7 minute eulogy on NPR when Didion passed last month. I was moved to dive into Didion, consuming first her nephew’s summary of her cultural/political acuity. I’ve come… Continue reading Slouching to Didion

585 days since writing here. Sorry about that. There’s a few of music-related documentaries being released as films or streaming series out now reviewing stuff that happened 50 or more years ago both by interviewing the principals and unearthing new media. The time is right because first hand accounts won’t be around for much longer.… Continue reading Some filming before they fade away ..

For better or worse, I still relate to art echoing emotions felt in my youth. Today I learned the Girlpool‘s Cut Your Bangs is a cover (hat-tip genius.com community) of a Radiator Hospital twee pop track. For months, I still cannot get that track out of my head, notably the chorus refrain.Girlpool slows it all… Continue reading Twee Forever

Once upon a time one could anonymously express your love for Bootsy Collins, Bavarian polkas, Scandinavian metal, and Katy Perry and then discover other souls with a similar disposition on the same platform as the one delivering your music, from which one would discover other artists, which to me seemed to me a worthy product. Alas,… Continue reading RIP music-centric music platforms.

March 12th was the 50th anniversary of The Velvet Underground & Nico, arguably one of the most influential popular music recordings of the twentith century, though it wasn’t evident at the time of it’s publication. The cast of characters included: the lyricist, a survivor of electroshock therapy, inspired by writers and poets of disreputable subjects,… Continue reading The first of 2017 Silver Anniversary album tributes.

Season-appropriate greetings everyone! As such, the ritual of compiling a best-of-year playlist continues. Predictably, it generally eschews well established artists (exception: Bowie) and is bent to my aging tastes, mostly soft-ish pop/rock with a few instrumental pieces thrown in. I’ve published it on Deezer and Spotify. Surprisingly I survived all of tretcherous 2016 on Deezer.… Continue reading 2016 Music Digest

Season-appropriate greetings everyone!  So I’ve survived a year on Deezer. The platform didn’t improve at all over the year but I’ve come to rely upon a set of features not available on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music or Amazon Music Unlimited (yeah, they’re into that now too): collaborative playlists with comments  LastFM scrobbling The… Continue reading Why I’m using Deezer

For those among us who still mourn the loss of Rdio, Devin Halladay has produced a reasonable facimile to be used when consuming the Spotify product:

Like so many Friday’s before, tonight is when the music industry releases it’s latest creations. There was a time when there had been an obsession, a cult, that had the thrill of discovering interesting productions, where robots weren’t involved. Sorry all you folks that deliver delightful data-mining results. I do admire the science of it.… Continue reading Paradise Lost