Pop culture references

They can be indexed to which age cohort has the dominant voice in the entertainment media. Hence it seems like 1984 was a hugely significant year for film, rich in lasting reference points. But that's only because the people who were watching those movies as teenagers are now injecting the references into the current culture. But a look at this well-intentioned but naive series of video essays shows how much young film lovers have lost sight of in the 1980s, and how distorted the notion of its lasting relevance will become. Experiment: try watching Ghostbusters now and see if you laugh.

Atavistic garage bands

Elijah Wald in this FT article makes an interesting point about pre LP listening habits:

My father, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1906, had a terrific memory for the hits of his youth and I grew up hearing “The Sheik of Araby”, “When Frances Dances with Me”, “Yes! We Have No Bananas”, over and over. I would sometimes ask, “Who sang that song?” – a normal question for any pop listener born after 1950. But it made no sense to him. Everybody sang those songs; that was what a hit was. Record dealers assumed the average customer would be happy with any decent performance of a hit – just as casual buyers of classical music still shop primarily on the basis of the composition and composer.

The charm of garage bands, who often play the same songs (e.g., "Hey Joe"), lies in precisely their permitting listeners to reconnect to that era when the personalities of musicians didn't matter, and generic assumptions about them could suffice. There is the song and the attitude, but no faces and gossip.

Listening strategy

Taste is not important; it is the approach to listening that is definitive. We must have a "listening strategy" -- see end of this Pitchfork article about impact of MP3s -- it no longer suffices to pretend that organic responsiveness counts. There is no unmediated reaction to music; only what sort of reaction we are prepared to have. What are the ethical criteria for these listening strategies, I wonder.

McCartney at Citi Field

I'll be going to see McCartney live at Citi Field in Queens tomorrow night. I'm hoping beyond hope that he'll play "Press."

Guest posting at Generation Bubble

FYI: I'll be guest posting at Generation Bubble starting soon, so keep a look out there.

Why I hate Scrabble

A list of all the two- and three-letter words that can legally be played.

"Knowing which words are acceptable - even if you have no idea of their definitions - is a perfectly legitimate strategy, and all expert players have memorized all the two-letter words and often the three-letter words as well."

It is perfectly legitimate but totally lame.

Cliche morgue

Please inter "...wait for it..."

As in "Geoffrey Dean has reviewed two hundred different studies into whether graphology can tell us anything about personality (Dean, 1992). Adding up the effect of each of these studies showed that graphology has a combined power of about...wait for it...zero." (from PsyBlog)