Month of December, 2007

Last week Wired published David Byrne's piece of advice for young bands in the current age of industry meltdown and cottage industry emergence. Besides his uncuriously amusing fetish of musical production prior to recording (money only entered the picture with Edison? I think not), he does a good job of breaking down the commodity v. creativity aspects of music.

Cry cry: this passage from an earlier Laurie Anderson bio made me very upset today. It's one thing to be an armchair feminist hemming about the lack of women in the canon. It's another to be an innovator who can feel themselves being marginalized in their own practice: 

Am going back through articles I haven't read this December and found this K. Sanneh piece that seems to be arguing for more "mainstream" rock acts. Doesn't that seem odd given his anti-hegemonic, anti-rockist writing and general avoidance of the rock beat (which is Jon's domain)?

Alas, we're not mentioned but here's the brilliant Englishman's list of this year's best music books.

After a list of all the faded hair metal giants' memoirs (these books sell so well!) here is the final graf:

Vibe, Rhythm Music, and Jazz Times music journalist, radio personality, and sound lover Tom Turrell passed away late last month. Here Evelyn McDonnell's new (post-Miami Herald) publication, MOLI, runs an appreciation of his life, written by the great Vivien Goldman. Click the title for the full article as I only reposted the first page: