Here’s Glenn Branca saying that nothing new has been done in music for the last 50 years. Chris Milam thinks that Garden State has irrevocably damaged American culture.
Yawn. I won’t even bother, their commenters have done the work for me.
Category: Journal
Someone needs better focus groups
Ad campaigns like this one, public service ads directed at “youth” financed by LG about the dangers of inappropriate text messaging, make me wonder about the people making the decision to go ahead with this (ad website here).
First, the print ads that reference the gag in the videos don’t make any sense without that context. Warden Gentle’s beard is not a pop culture icon that people recognize apart from its owner (but it is amusing to think of some that people do: Elvis’ hair? Jay Leno’s chin? Pamela Anderson’s hooters? Robin Williams’ arm pelts?) and I can’t imagine being anything more than confused if I saw those posters out and about.
Second, I guess it’s something that they are playing lip service to the existence of the internet with a dedicated twitter account. I would imagine that they hoped their videos go viral, but there’s a reason why they wont. And it’s the same reason that they need better methodology or data about what their target audience finds appealing. It’s lame.
I’m guessing that they chose James Lipton as an “ironic” choice; maybe they thought that the juxtoposition of his distinguished diction with the mundane and un-James Lipton-like subject matter would be enough to be funny. It seems a little too bizzare to be the usual “pick someone the kids will look up to” model of PSAs. If that is the case, then they didn’t push it far enough. It comes across as awkward and disturbing.
I really wonder if they road-test these with real people. It doesn’t seem like it.
Alexander Street Press
For those of you out there who have even a casual interest in classical music, I reccomend the free bi-weekly downloads from Alexander Street Press, an online subscription classical music database. The recordings are always one complete piece, and range from short chamber pieces for solo instrument to full symphonies. Their blog has RSS and there is an e-mailing list if you want to be updated when new recordings become available.
TTT: We Will Become Silhouettes
by The Postal Service
There will be more on this as more time passes, but I have been working through a list of albums I compiled from various end of the decade lists. I intended to just use it as a guide to the last year or so of music that I had missed because I have been focused on school music, but I’ve been surprised by the number of early in the decade albums that I missed or never listened to all the way through.
One of these albums is The Postal Service’s Give Up. It’s amazing to me how ubiquitous their style has become. I can hear not only the freshness of the music, but the different threads that other artists picked up and ran with. No track is particularly “deep,” but each is in its way a masterpiece.
This is nothing new to anyone, but it’s my 2¢.
Give Mass Taste Some Credit
I hadn’t seen the Muppet’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” until I read this article in the New York Times about it. I wasn’t disappointed. I especially appreciated the meta-humor of the (now) vintage characters, some of which are references to just-past-their-sell-by-date popular culture trends (Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem referencing psychedelic rock), performing a song that is almost exactly contemporaneous with the original run of the show (The Muppet Show premiered 1976, “Bohemian Rhapsody” 1975); not to mention the sly wink at the end to contemporary technology.
I was even more pleased, however, to see another confirmation of one of my closest held beliefs: quality is not dependent on audience, medium or style. Since everybody’s in the mood for sweeping generalizations about this decade, I’ll throw one out there: this decade has been terrible for children’s movies. I understand that Pixar has put out a run of films this decade that stand up with the greatest family films of all time, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Children’s entertainment is subject to the same economic forces as all other facets of the industry, but they also have to live with executives’ belief that children will like anything (and they’re not entirely wrong). That’s why cheap production values, bad writing, and alternative distribution schemes are so much more prevalent in this sector. Another idea that studio executives can’t seem to let go of is that children are more attracted to media over content. The commercial success of the Pixar films, as well as the surprising popularity of Shrek in 2001, ensured that any project that wasn’t computer animated got axed or had its budget cut. When you consider how new computer animation was to the Disney machine (Toy Story opened in 1995), their 2004 decision to close their traditional animation department is astounding.
So it’s nice to see 30 year old characters being put to good use with high quality production value. I don’t know if there was any commercial purpose to that video, but I imagine its place as the most watched video of the week with over 7 million views in its first week has to send some kind of message to the suits. Another good example is the Goofy short How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, released in theaters with National Treasure: Book of Secrets. It’s a conscious effort (check out Steamboat Willie in the logo) to tie current entertainment with the institutional legacy of Disney Studios, and it’s a form and medium that’s been a part of the company since the 1920’s. Popular culture has moved on from the days when Disney theatrical shorts were the only mass form of children’s cinema, but if you execute the formula well enough, children will choose it anyway.
hammer & jack 