Changes in the format and delivery of music—in both technology and packaging—would seem to have spelled the death of context for contemporary popular music, liner notes being only one element of that context. Our music has become much more a part of our multitasking lifestyle, only rarely indulged in as the sole focus of our [...]
[I threatened, about a week ago, to run a story I'd written about the demise of liner notes; here it is. It was written almost two years ago, so a couple of temporal references are no longer quite accurate; I haven't attempted to correct them. I was also shocked to see that I'd rehearsed my [...]
Ah, the joys of serial writing! In yesterday’s post, I referred to the title of Michiko Kakutani’s recent NYTimes essay incorrectly—not once, but four times. (Don’t bother to look back: I’ve “silently amended” the error.) I’d credited her with writing “Texts without Contexts”; the actual title of the essay uses the singular “context.” Now to [...]
I’ve realized recently that I can be something of a reactionary against “reactionaries.” I suppose I’m a left-reactionary, though reactionary against both right- and left-reactionaries. Quite a “meta-” situation, to be sure: precisely the kind of thing Michiko Kakutani loathes. As many of my readers will be aware, Kakutani has been at it again; her [...]