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But... But... But We Hate The French, Don't We? "The tyranny of name brands. The cult of celebrity. A consumer culture inflamed by advertisers who rely on sex to seduce." It's all just so terribly American, circa 21st century, isn't it? Well, no, it's all so 18th century French, actually, and a new book points out that, despite the current unpopularity of all things French among a certain sector of the American population, much of our current popular culture and its materialist trappings can be traced back to the influence of Louis XIV. The New York Times 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 6:14 am
Do-It-Yourselfers Reinvent Gadgets "In the digital era, every consumer-electronics product comes with microchips and software programming, and for a new generation of tech-savvy users, these are the raw materials needed to make a digital toy or appliance do tricks that its creators didn't envision. Sometimes, tinkerers become a consumer electronics maker's unofficial research-and-development team, with innovations winding up as built-in features down the line." Washington Post 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 5:15 pm
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Stonehenge Quarry Discovered It's only taken 4,500 years, but the quarry from which the stones for Stonehenge were taken in 2,500 BC has been found. "Archaeologists have long suspected that the bluestones, which form Stonehenge's inner circle, came from the Preseli Hills, but no evidence of a quarry had been found in the area. Darvill and Wainwright report that geochemical analysis show that the rock formations at the prehistoric quarry are identical to those at Stonehenge." Discovery 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 5:51 pm
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Mpls Music School Getting A New Home Two things have been as sure as death and taxes in the city of Minneapolis recently: riverfront development, and massive new buildings for local arts groups. Now, the city's largest community music school is leaping into the fray, announcing plans for a gleaming new headquarters in the heart of the developing river district on the northern edge of downtown. MacPhail School of Music would add 10,000 square feet of usable space under the plan, which will cost $12.5 million, and would, for the first time, have a modern building with air conditioning and a proper performance space. Minneapolis Star Tribune 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 6:05 am
Good News, Bad News In Seattle The Seattle Symphony and the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet will both finish their fiscal years in the black, or at least close to it, but Seattle Opera has dipped into the red for the first time in over a decade. The opera's deficit could be as much as $280,000 and comes just as the company is preparing to embark on a complete Wagner Ring cycle later in the summer, which will push its annual budget up by some $8 million. Meanwhile, no one's really breathing easily at the symphony, where the accumulated deficit has been reduced but is still impressive, and the musicians' contract is up for renegotiation. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 4:55 am
Wage Freeze, Unpaid Furlough For Houston Symphony After weeks of negotiations, the musicians and management of the Houston Symphony have tentatively agreed on a revision to their current contract. The revised deal includes a wage freeze, an unpaid three-week furlough, and an eventual 1% raise for the 2005-06 season. Negotiations went considerably better than the last time the orchestra was at the bargaining table, in 2003, when a bitter three-week strike left all sides unhappy and at serious odds. The revised contract is meant to lessen the organization's dependence on capital campaigns for ongoing operating funds. Houston Chronicle 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 4:45 am
Classically Trained? Classically Stupid! Why do pop musicians hide behind the phrase "Classically trained"? "Tossed into a bio or regurgitated in a feature article, that phrase—along with its cousins "classical background" and "classical studies"—can add depth to the frilliest of pop-culture images, leading some to think that a million-dollar contract is the only thing keeping their favorite artist from the recital hall. Alicia Keys, Dave Matthews' violinist Boyd Tinsley, Beyoncé, and even the avant-hop producer the Automator, all have some form of 'classical training.' Here's the problem: Few people outside of music students know what that really means." Slate 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 5:22 pm
Music Sales Down, Downloads Triple "Internet users in the U.S. downloaded 158 million individual songs from services like Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes during the first half of the year, compared with 55 million in the year-ago period, SoundScan said. U.S. album sales, including downloads, fell 2.5 percent to 301.2 million units in the first half from 309 million a year earlier. Those figures included downloaded tracks equivalent to about 17.6 million albums this year and 6 million last year. Sales of albums, excluding these new digital formats, fell 7 percent to 282.6 million units." Yahoo! (Reuters) 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 5:06 pm
- UK Downloads Top 10 Million The number of songs legally downloaded from the internet in the UK during 2005 has topped the 10 million mark. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said the figure was almost twice the level for the whole of 2004." And another odd stat: sales of vinyl signles are up 87 percent over last year. BBC 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 5:01 pm
Classical Labels Assail BBC Over Beethoven Downloads A few weeks ago the BBC made recordings of all the Beethoven symphonies available free for downloading. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded them. "But the initiative has infuriated the bosses of leading classical record companies who argue the offer undermines the value of music and that any further offers would be unfair competition." The Independent (UK) 07/10/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 4:33 pm
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C'mon, There's Enough For Everyo... Oh. I Guess There Isn't. A California legislator recently introduced a bill which would have created a special license plate touting the state's rich arts community. Motorists choosing the plate would pay an additional fee, and the money would be directly funneled to the state arts board. It's a plan that has worked in other states, but it ran into serious opposition in Sacramento from an unlikely source: environmentalists. Under California law, state environmental agencies get a cut of all vanity plate revenue, and proponents of that system saw the arts plate, which would have been an exception to the rule, as a threat. The bill was killed off last week in committee, leaving California's state arts board last in the nation in per capita arts spending. Los Angeles Times 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 5:54 am
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Veteran Ohio Arts Council Director To Retire After 27 Years After 27 years on the job, Ohio Arts Council director Wayne Lawson is retiring. "Lawson, a Cleveland native, raised the council to national prominence during his tenure. His leadership has been widely admired for having seen the council through a rocky political and economic era while simultaneously establishing well-regarded grants programs and arts services." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 4:28 pm
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The Real Drama Is Just Offstage The Minneapolis-based Playwrights' Center has a unique mission - distributing seed money and creative support to local dramatists - and it has long been a welcome part of the Twin Cities' theatre community. But a new artistic director has begun to take the center in new directions, some of which have ruffled some powerful feathers. Now, the controversy over the center's direction has burst into the open with the wide distribution of a scathing e-mail written by a local playwright and former theatre critic. The e-mail may even have caused the center to lose $25,000 in funding from a local foundation. City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 5:31 am
Why Perform The Complete Shakespeare? "Why Shakespeare now more than ever? There's no end of blah-blah about eternal values, which remains as eternally true as it is eternally dull. There is also the less-banged-on-about simple pleasure of watching his plays. If we are on an island we would prefer to be deserted with the complete Beethoven than the collected John Barry. This is yet more dramatically the case with Shakespeare, who is not just head and shoulders above the playwriting competition, he's floating around in a hot air balloon waving benignly at everyone from Aeschylus to Caryl Churchill. But beyond the eternal blah-blahs and the sheer devilry of it, there is a sense now that Shakespeare is moving into his moment." The Guardian (UK) 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 5:31 pm
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Even Harry Potter Affected By Bombings A London bookseller came up with the perfect place to launch the new Harry Potter book this weekend - the city's central King's Cross train station, where Harry himself catches a train to Hogwarts School. But after the terrorist attacks on the city's subway last week, one of which occurred at King's Cross, the event is being moved out of central London entirely. BBC 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 5:21 am
Author: Should I Promote My Novel About A London Terrorist Attack? Chris Cleave's first novel Incendiary was supposed to launch last week in Britain. But the book is about a terrorist attack on London, and the book's cover art depicts the attack. The book was hastily withdrawn from shelved after the real attack. Now Cleave is appealing to readers to tell him whether to continue to promote the book or not. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 8:33 am
The Story Reading Machine Tired of reading to your kid? Now there's a website that will do it for you. "One More Story is a new online library where children can choose a book - complete with narration, highlighted text, and the book's original illustrations - and listen as they read along on the computer." Christian Science Monitor 07/11/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 8:33 am
Judge Orders Readers Not To Talk About Harry A Canadian judge has ordered the 14 people who were mistakenly allowed to buy copies of the new Harry Potter book this week not to divulge anything about the story. "The book was sold to 14 people who snagged a copy of J.K. Rowlings' much anticipated "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," when it landed on shelves last Thursday at a local grocery store. The book, officially set for release this coming Saturday, has been shrouded in secrecy and its debut has been highly orchestrated to enable everyone — readers, reviewers, even publishers — to crack it open all at once. It's the sixth in Rowling's seven-book fantasy series on the young wizard." Yahoo! (AP) 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 8:31 am
Google Libray? Time To Ask Questions... There are plenty of big questions to ask about Google's library digitization project, writes Christopher Allen Waldrop. There's the privacy issue for one. "The fight's just beginning and no one can say how long it will go on or how it will end. Google's partners need to get their common sense back and take this opportunity to start asking the hard questions about what the Google Library Project means for libraries, their patrons, and the future. It's the one area where the problem is not too much information but too little." MobyLives 07/11/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 8:29 am
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CPB Expands Its Look At Tomlinson "The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's inspector general is expanding his investigation of corporation Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson to include a look at how former Republican National Committee co-chair Patricia Harrison was installed as the new CPB president." The investigation is part of the continuing public and political backlash against Tomlinson, who has made a crusade out of his belief that PBS is biased toward left-wing interests. Washington Post 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 6:39 am
Quit Trying To Explain The Slump What's behind the Hollywood box office slump? No one knows, and don't let anyone tell you they do, says Mick LaSalle. Yeah, the movies stink, but they always have, haven't they? And yes, the ads and trailers are annoying, and the tickets cost too much, and c'mon, $8 for popcorn?!, but still... the fact remains, no one really knows what's causing the slump, and it's possible that, when the dust clears, it'll just turn out to have been one of those unexplainable things that happens in the world sometimes. Or maybe not. San Francisco Chronicle 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 6:23 am
Well, As Long As Everyone's Making Plenty of Money... The recording industry may still be vehemently opposed to any music distribution technology that doesn't generate loads of cash for the industry, but even as CD producers continue to rail against file swapping and piracy, they've been making nice with a new generation of online distributors known as "audio bloggers." Why the discrepancy? You've probably already guessed. The industry views audio blogging as a potentially lucrative tool which has the power to galvanize record sales. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 5:47 am
PBS Chief Support Investigation Of CPB Boss "PBS President Pat Mitchell said Tuesday she supports an investigation of what she called a "very troubling" use of federal money to track the political leaning of programming on public television..." Yahoo (AP) 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 5:11 pm
Box Office Blues? It's Those Damn Liberal Media Elites! Why is movie box office down? One actress has a theory: "Hollywood's ruling liberal elites keep going out of their way to offend half their audience. Constant gibes about Republicans, Christians, conservatives and the military litter today's movies and award show presentations like so many pieces of trash on theater floors. Did we really need to hear another anti-Bush diatribe from Chris Rock at the Oscars this year?" Los Angeles Times 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 4:52 pm
CPB Ombudsmen Offer Ringing Endorsements Of Public TV Now public broadcasting has four ombudsmen. And the two appointed by Kenneth Tomlinson to point out bias? They have been "positively glowing in their assessments of the journalism heard on NPR and seen on news shows distributed by PBS. So glowing, in fact, that [there] reports, which are posted on CPB's Web site could easily be excerpted in the shorthand style of a movie ad quoting favorable reviews." Washington Post 07/12/05
Posted: 07/12/2005 4:25 pm
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ABT's Leading Lady To Retire Amanda MacKerrow is retiring from Washington's American Ballet Theatre this week. "McKerrow's performance of the title role in Giselle tomorrow will cap a career of uncommon distinction. She has interpreted just about every leading role in ABT's repertoire of story ballets... She rocketed to worldwide renown in 1981 when, at 17, she became the first American ever to win a gold medal at the famed Moscow International Ballet Competition." She danced with ABT for 23 years. Washington Post 07/13/05
Posted: 07/13/2005 6:35 am
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