I closed yesterday by saying I’d draw on some personal experience to try to flesh out the complexities of the Figes “fake reviews” scandal: his “praising his own work and rubbishing that of his rivals,” in the memorable words of The Guardian. I am, by training, a scholar of British & Irish literary modernism, and [...]
The following headline appeared last Friday in the U.K. newspaper, The Guardian: “Historian Orlando Figes Agrees to Pay Damages for Fake Reviews.” I don’t exactly have a Google alert set for the word “fake”—my inbox would be deluged every night, I fear—but this item did, for obvious reasons, catch my eye, and my interest. Turns [...]
[Big ups to reader Ken for suggesting the topic of today’s post.—KD] The first time it ever happened: Ah, I remember it well. I was in high school; it was the fall of ‘74. I was a nerd, and my favorite band, my one real passion, was the British progressive-rock group Yes. And some kid [...]
Amazon.com’s recommendations to its shoppers—the “Best Value” pairings and also the “Kevin’s Store” tab that greets me at the top of the page, the “Hello, Kevin J. H. Dettmar. We have recommendations for you,” at the start of every new session, the “Customers with similar searches also purchased” pitch, and so on—are generated by what [...]
So Mary Ann Caws was thrilled to know my book on rock & roll was being marketed with her book on Surrealism. Good to know who your friends are. But I was puzzled, initially, at the gnomic “my son, as in NADASURF. . . .” To begin, one has to unpack her unconventional typing of an [...]
A reader of fake chinese rubber plant recently suggested that I might like to write something about “bands (or movies or books or whatever) that you know you should like, but don’t.” What a great idea! And I will write that blog post. The question about what one likes vs. what one actually likes, however, [...]
What’s the minimal semantic unit of the pop song? What’s the smallest particle that contains the information we require to “name that tune”? Based on my experience using Shazam on my iPhone, the answer must be, “very tiny.” For those not familiar, Shazam is an application that can sample and process the audio stream of [...]
My thesis, in yesterday’s post, was that Twitter and Facebook together have made attending a conference a lot richer, and a lot more complicated. Which are perhaps two ways of saying the same thing. Richer (cont.): I’m sure all of this—the invasion of conferences by Twitter and Facebook—isn’t news to many of you; I’m sure [...]
I want to use the blog today to call your attention to a new documentary that’s streaming in its entirety (77 mins.) this week on Pitchfork’s web site: I Need That Record! The Death (Or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store, posted on Record Store Day (Saturday, April 17). The film is directed, written, [...]