Posts Tagged ‘Indie’
Afternoon Open Thread: Music Fogies Fight the Evolution of Language
Afternoon, y’all! I keep forgetting how self-righteous music critics can be when it comes to the term “indie,” which was coined as shorthand for “independent music,” or music that is made and released independently of the Big 4.
But as with other words–”gay” no longer means thrilled to be alive, and “damn” will no longer send one straight to hell–the meaning of indie has changed to connote, as often as not, an aesthetic.
Read More “Afternoon Open Thread: Music Fogies Fight the Evolution of Language” »
BriTunes: Why Brian Williams’s Music Experiment Won’t Work
In the last half of the 20th Century, the national television news anchor played a deific role in American life: benevolent, yet possessing of an aloof omniscience that suggested divinity (and, by implication, infallibility). Behind the heroically concerned brow and dispassionate baritone there seemed to lie a great wisdom: unrevealed, and therefore perfect–the archetype being longtime CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, whom opinion pollsters in the ’70s and ’80s perennially deemed “the most trusted man in America.”
In the 21st Century, everything has changed: Information is ubiquitous; newsmen are no longer godheads. The role of the national news anchor in American culture must be redefined. The question is: as what?
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams seems to be molding a new archetype. Newscaster 2.0, as Williams has shaped it, is not so much an avuncular sentinel as a cultural tycoon–one who regularly parries with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, gushes about pop culture on MSNBC, and appears in Saturday Night Live sketches making fun of–and effectively disavowing–the role of self-serious journalistic demigod that he inherited from the likes of Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Ted Copple, and Cronkite.
Meet the latest extension of Williams’s tycoonery: A Web-exclusive music interview series called “BriTunes.” The site, hosted by MSNBC.com, will feature band interviews alongside a blog and a constantly-updated playlist of Williams’s fave songs. “The thinking that went into this,” he explained last week, “is that Al Roeker does about nine shows on the air, I think, about barbeque and food, Matt Lauer does men’s clothing beautifully, and so why not talk about our hobby here?”
Read More “BriTunes: Why Brian Williams’s Music Experiment Won’t Work” »
Record Store Day: Do Hipsters Hate iTunes?
This Saturday, hipsters nationwide will saddle up their fixie riders and head down to their local vinyl outlet for Record Store Day. The holiday, created two years ago by a coalition of well-connected romantics (presumably while smoking a peach hookah and watching Empire Records), celebrates the culture of indie record emporia in the face of encroachment from “corporate behemoths.” In order to participate, a store must be a “physical retailer whose product line consists of at least 50 percent music retail, whose company is not publicly traded and whose ownership is at least 70 percent located in the state of operation.”
Black Cat Baroques Out: Cloud Cult and Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s
It was a night of chamber pop and droll viz-art at The Black Cat on Saturday, as Cloud Cult and Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s played a many-strings-attached set to a crowd of studious head-bobbers.
Read More “Black Cat Baroques Out: Cloud Cult and Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s” »
Tonight: My Brightest Diamond (Now with Video!)
Journalists–even music journalists–are supposed to write somewhat objectively about their interview subjects; I suck at this. I don’t pitch softballs, but I almost always come across as curious rather than skeptical, and by the end of the interview, I’m practically rooting for my subject’s success. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I’d like to think that when I interviewed Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond, it worked really well, because we managed to talk about what informs her ideas about her art, and because I didn’t feel dirty afterwards.
Worden is a fixture in the experimental scene. She’s played with Sufjan Stevens, released two albums with her former band Awry, and just released her second solo album, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, under the moniker My Brightest Diamond. I really enjoyed Shark’s Teeth, and this is coming from a guy who–unless he’s stoned–would rather eat cat litter than listen to most experimental music. Worden plays tonight at the Rock & Roll Hotel with Clare & the Reasons. Our interview is below.
Read More “Tonight: My Brightest Diamond (Now with Video!)” »
