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From Stephen Elliott
Once, many years ago, I was at an artist’s colony in New Hampshire, The MacDowell Colony. I could never spend much time at MacDowell without suffering with paralyzing loneliness, and this visit was no exception.
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“Talent” is from the Greek for a certain weight of gold, because, I suppose, people who had a lot of it seemed to be metaphorically wealthy.
Here’s one example I encountered recently:
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Johnny Cash’s late covers are superior to their original recordings, but are they traditional?
Recently, I was given an assignment by Rumpus film critic and friend Ryan Boudinot to write about one of those pieces of music that is so execrable, so thoroughly gangrenous, that it’s nearly impossible to figure out why anyone would like it.
Lovers of contemporary experimental music will likely remember the moment in the early eighties when John Cage, the godfather of minimalism and of most New York City experimental music, referred to Glenn Branca (he of the pieces for ensembles of multiple electric guitars) as having “fascist” qualities.
In popular music circles, these days, very good instrumental technique is often considered bad form.
The following is a record review in dialogue form conducted between this columnist and Michael Snediker (with whom I corresponded about Antony and the Johnsons a couple months back), the poet and literary critic. We were shooting for ten thousand words about the Size Queens, until Michael fell deeply in love and, simultaneously, started preparing for his fall classes back in Ontario.
These lines depend on your having a working knowledge of the New York City suburbs. So for those who are not from the Northeast, or who are not up on their regional suburbs, let me remind you that Westchester County is the first county beyond the edge of the Bronx
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As I mentioned a few posts back (see: “On Repetition”), I am friendly with a writer from Santa Fe called Tim Ramick. I have never met him, but we correspond now and again on various subjects. I admire his uncompromising devotion to his aesthetic.
The original idea for this blog was to find my way to things that were unreleased, self-released, and unsigned, and in this installment I’m going to take my mission seriously for a change. Since I’ve been writing these notes, I’ve been polling friends near and far—as well as complete strangers—for interesting music, and a great many people have written in with suggestions.
Makers and consumers of music, there is no other conclusion but that the future of the medium lies in your hands.
The intractable problem of the moment in the arts—in music, in books, in movies, in almost every area of contemporary culture—is the problem of inattention.
Note: to the readers of this intermittent bulletin, I recognize in what follows that I am violating the compact I made a couple of months ago, to cover only unsigned, unreleased, or self-released music, and I want to assure you that I take that compact seriously, and will return to it very soon.
I love the city of Tucson, Arizona, because I like places that have run out of luck, and I think running out of luck makes for good music. Running out of luck makes for a lot of good things, in fact.
I was going to start this post by talking about Bruce Springsteen. I was going to start by saying that there was a certain moment in the output of Bruce Springsteen when I realized I was no longer interested—because he had become too professional.
by Rick Moody
Arthur Danto, the Columbia University philosophy professor and frequent writer on contemporary art, has often referred to this “historical present” as a time after the history of art. What he seems to mean about this, I think, is that once Warhol made the Brillo box pieces, art had come to the end of a certain historical imperative.
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Introduction
Everybody knows the book business is in dire straits these days. The news comes in awful fusillades from the daily press. But in part the book business looks so dire right now because it has mainly been indemnified against the kinds of downturns that have afflicted other media in the digital age.
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