Music
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Swinging Modern Sounds #10: The Interactive Playlist
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…
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The Shorty Q&A With Parry Gripp
Parry Gripp’s YouTube hits include Shopping Penguin, Spaghetti Cat, and Hamster on a Piano. He’s been called a Weird Al Jankovic for the internet age. But it might be more accurate to say that Parry Gripp a leading light of…
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A Classical Music Summit with an Element of Speed Dating Thrown In: The YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Forget Ecclesiastes. There is something new under the sun–and it appeared, like a shower of shooting stars, on April 15 at Carnegie Hall, a place not known for wild innovation. While teabaggers across the land looked back on their day…
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Music on the Internet?
Last December in their annual music issue, Oxford American lamented the demise of music criticism. But nonetheless here’s a collection of music related internet findings: Douglas Wolk discusses The Celestial Jukebox. A Cultural Dictionary of Punk (doesn’t punk, by nature,…
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OK Computer!
First the IBM 704 sang it, then a malfunctioning HAL 9000, and now the internet. It’s Daisy Bell — or, a Bicycle Built for Two Thousand. That would be the number of voices compiled into this rendition. Which is spookier,…
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Margaret Cho on The Wrestler and Wrestling and Youth and S&M and Violence
Comedy hadn’t taken off yet for me, and so I tried to get as many jobs as possible. Wrestling seemed like it would be easy.
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Sounds of the Past
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest form of audio recording. Today, the Belfer Cylinders Digital Connection (part of the Syracuse University library) has begun digitizing their vast collection of cylinders with free access to all. The results provide a fascinating view…
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Shatner Unrepentant
If you’re feeling a bit cloyed and put out by Vanilla Ice’s apology for “Ice Ice Baby,” wash it down with William Shatner’s stubborn refusal to concede any ground on history’s unkind judgment of his interpretation of “Rocket Man.” The…
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Rock-Arrrrs!
From the Times (London) archive blog, this 1967 delight on offshore pirate rock stations:
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The Quintessential Mad Russian Scientist
“As I understand Leon Theremin’s personality, he was a kind of alien-child playing in a sandbox on a global playground. Like any eternal child, Theremin was always under supervision. And each time he went out of his sandbox – he…
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Cast Your Pod
Pandora too much work for your lazy ass? There’s a new indie-throbbing Music That Matters podcast over at KEXP (via Morr Music). Stellar rock photographer (and folky musician) Henry Diltz was a guest DJ at KCRW–the historical insight is better…