November 2008 Archives
A pre-emptive radio strike on this hollow opinion. If I were his editor, I'd sit Sorkin down to take notes on this stuff: smart sports anchors, now there's a twist worthy of a progressive economics President from New Hampshire. (Silly wag [Richard Sandomir], West Wing WAS a comedy, Studio 360 was the drama!) And now that the Times has adopted yet more RNC talking point jargon by incorporating "center-right" governance into the official lexicon, will that paper (in the person of Keller) ever stop breaking my bloodied heart?
Print wimps gather to celebrate 40th anniversary of the Beatles' White Album symposium, at Skidmore College, hosted by Gordon Thompson, author of Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out (Oxford). Panel: Allan Kozinn, New York Times critic and author of The Beatles; Walter Everett, University of Michigan, and author of The Beatles as Musicians; Tim Riley, National Public Radio commentator and author of Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary; and Jonathan Gould, author of Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America. Local coverage: Times-Union, Saratogian.
The oral rendition of the selected bibliography, in conversation with Scott Woods (mp3).
blip: (verb) a mashup of pandora and twitter, blindingly addictive, killerapp, non-sequiturs woven through instant classic playlists, ricoched through various anonymous ears of abundance, the flash fantastic, in blissful stereo where available.
This would be quote of the week but it's too juicy, too venal, too outrageously narcissistic, even after watching the Boogie Man (Frontline's Lee Atwater) profile on Friday night. From Karl Rove in the Sunday Times Magazine:
"Our new president-elect won one and a half points more than George W. Bush won in 2004, and he did so, in great respect, by adopting the methods of the Bush campaign and conducting a vast army of persuasion to identify and get out the vote..."That's quack-talk, vastly entertaining, deliberately misleading and gaseous as anything he's ever uttered. Surfing on oceans of denial, rectitude and self-immolation, the key redemptive spirit of the the quote is its loser durability. John Powers long since declared these pie-holes Sore Winners, and the freefall food fight would make a cackling sideshow if the GOP weren't busy looting the Fed.
Obama: The First Motown President (podcast riley), a discussion of the Vanity Fair oral history by Lisa Robinson, with Suzanne de Passe and Raphael Saadiq On Point (Thursday, November 13, 2008). (Download mp3, or iTunes)
Tune in to On Point tomorrow morning at 11 am (Thursday, Nov. 13) for a discussion of Lisa Robinson's oral history of Motown (Vanity Fair).
And when Levi Stubbs died last month, nobody mentioned that 1986 Billy Bragg song, "Levi Stubbs' Tears," a eulogy in search of a death.
AD LINE OF THE MONTH:
Urinal wallboard, Rennaissance Hotel Convention Center:
King of Country Picks the King of Chrome: George Jones for Hunters Custom Automotive, Nashville (Society for Music Theorists conference, Plenary session on "Popular Music and the Canon")

SENTENCE OF THE WEEK:
"Any lawyerly razzmatazz can only compound Republican chagrin..."--New York Times editorial.
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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
rock culture approximately
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
Richard Kessler on arts education
Douglas McLennan's blog
Art from the American Outback
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
No genre is the new genre
David Jays on theatre and dance
Paul Levy measures the Angles
John Rockwell on the arts
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude
dance
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...
jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
media
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Martha Bayles on Film...
classical music
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
publishing
Jerome Weeks on Books
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
theatre
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
visual
Public Art, Public Space
John Perreault's art diary
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
