Here’s the thing, though: I know who Fugazi is. And you will never grow beards because of the xenoestrogens in your plastic water bottles. Don’t be fooled by my comfortable and supportive footwear, my tie-dye rainbow Crocs; I know a lot about music.
Fantastic writing about music and generational divides in this essay by Elizabeth Bastos. 🎵 ✍️
Sacking faculty and programs...never the useless administrators
Taken together, “GADPY” was seen as a collective triumph, a Good for something that a lot of people understood even by 2009 as being Very Bad – a decade where music criticism was largely shaped by online media and their semi-obscure favorites. Or, in short, “blog rock.”
[…]
To wit, “music that had gained popularity through MP3 blogs — specifically those giving coverage to the more leftfield, less image-obsessed artists ignored by the mainstream press.”
Source: https://uproxx.com/indie/blog-rock-best-albums-all-time-list/ (Ian Cohen)
Currently reading: The Lucky Ones by Rachel Cusk 📚
So far, uneven. She has some remarkable insights and crafts beautiful sentences, but the story arcs aren’t yet cohering. But I’ve more than half the book to go, so it hopefully comes together.
🎙️ Matt Haughey:
I know it’s petty but when you boycott a favorite podcast after it moves exclusively to Spotify for a couple years then learn they’re finally changing course and releasing their podcast normally again, it’s a pretty good feeling.
Welcome back to the internet, podcast. Eat shit, Spotify.
The common thread linking these musicians is that they don’t treat “pop music” as a commercial category, but as a discrete musical lineage with its own codes and conventions to be plundered and reinterpreted. It’s a point of view made possible by the kind of fame the internet has built and fostered: the idea that the term “pop star” is a measure of clout or name recognition, not a badge that directly correlates to commercial success.
I always have a book of fiction going while I read various poetry and nonfiction volumes. The question today is: The Lucky Ones (Rachel Cusk) or Fingersmith (Sarah Waters)? No connection between them except their happenstance place on a nearby shelf.
Finished reading: The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns 📚
Stephen Dobyns has long been a favorite poet, but I had no idea what to expect from this, the first novel of his I’ve read. It’s a literate thriller, and a great read, though I wouldn’t have guessed the author was a great poet.
Christopher McCaffery’s guerilla typesetting project to republish Infinite Jest as 3 portable volumes, and with per-page footnotes. Get it while it it’s extant.
Reading: Opinion Men Are Lost. Here’s a Map Out of the Wilderness
We can find ways to work with the distinctive traits and powerful stories that already exist — risk-taking, strength, self-mastery, protecting, providing, procreating. We can recognize how real and important they are. And we can attempt to make them pro-social — to help not just men but also women, and to support the common good.
I can’t say I agree with everything in the article, but I do concur there is a simmering, transitional crisis that is going unaddressed.
Reading The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams In between bouts with Paradise Lost. Excellent read so far! Love the depiction of the OED’s “Scriptorium” and Dr. Murray, who I already regarded as Gandalf-like. 📚
Halfway through Paradise Lost, and it resonates so much more than it did with my 25-year-old skim reading self. I appreciate the poetry more—some astonishing stuff there alone—and am having fun (as an atheist-leaning agnostic) untangling the theology/mythology. But the language…chef’s kiss 📚
New 📚 Day: Letters of Ted Hughes. I’ve read bits and bobs here and there and it was well worth it! Brilliant poet, whatever his now-irrelevant personal baggage might be (I don’t have any insight into that and do not want to). 📚
Finished reading: Gallows View by Peter Robinson. The first Inspector Banks novel. Not great, but I understand it gets better. The dated attitudes toward women and sexual assault doesn’t help the thin plot and 2D characters. TBF, it’s also hard to get beyond my TV image of Inspector Banks! 📚
The current chaotic poetic choir in my head, some since I was a teen: #Keats, #Hopkins, #Berryman, Stanford, Blake, Clifton, Szymborska, Larkin, Cummings, Tracy K. Smith, Kevin Young, Tranströmer. But that first trio, which is about to be made into a quartet with #Milton, most of all. #poetry 📚
Paradise Lost is astonishing. I wasn’t ready for it in grad school, and it took most of the first book to get comfortable with the syntax, but…wow! There are some savage, sardonic moments, and more puns than I expected. 📚