![[shrugs] “I only like their really early stuff....”](http://www.fakechineserubberplant.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Cake_Motorcade_of_Generosity-150x150.jpg)
I’m grateful to fcrp reader Steve for a suggestion that I’d like to follow out for the next few days. For various scheduling reasons, I’m going to ease into it slowly: i.e., classes start at Pomona College two weeks from today, and Kevin isn’t nearly ready. It’s perhaps fitting then that he devote a bit [...]
I opined yesterday that “Pop,” as a term of opprobrium, has come to signify an ease of access coupled with an ease of consumption. Ease of consumption: this it would be foolish to deny. But passive consumption, mindless consumption (which, in Is Rock Dead? I connected to the 50s B-movie motif of the zombie)—that’s only [...]
Faithful readers of fake chinese rubber plant will know by now that while the blog is generally about contemporary culture—its delights and discontents—I find myself coming back time and again to the fertile intersection of contemporary music and everyday life. It’s my Crossroads (though I haven’t sold my soul to the devil; nor can I [...]
Blesséd Readers, Boing Boing posted this picture the other day, which has been re-posted across the ‘net and occasioned much indie hand ringing, along the lines of, Rock Just Isn’t What It Used to Be. The poster was sent to Boing Boing by “reader Simon,” who told the web site, “I found this stuck to [...]
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, [...]
Have you ever had someone care enough about you and your writing to edit you? I mean, really edit you? Regular readers of fake chinese rubber plant already know my editor and friend Jean Tamarin, even if they don’t know they know: at least, they know her work. Jean is my editor at The [...]
[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 [...]