This is another round-up post of various notes and fragments, prefaced again with apologies for not having written something more substantial. Flavorlessness “It’s hard to imagine that nothing at all could be so exciting,” according to the Talking Heads song ‘Heaven,” but what if “nothing at all” could be made into a lozenge?
I'm reading you because I just found some brilliant things you wrote about John Phillips back in the day. And here you are quoting Justin E H Smith whom I started reading recently because of relatable music views. It's a small world, but it works.
Fwiw I think authenticity is still a value and I will keep looking for it and responding to it in the new.
I am even older than Gen X so I have been irrelevant for even longer. I am indeed old enough to know that that almost all 78 records were made of shellac, not vinyl. Yet it has been millennials (albeit of a particular alternative bent) who have extended their crate digging all the way back to some of the earlier forms of music contained therein (hokum, traditional jazz, country blues, pre-Nashville country, etc.) perhaps in search not of authenticity but of a romanticized conception of the past they can construct their American identity upon. Or may it was just the "O Brother, Where art Thou" soundtrack?
Every generation seems to be fumbling away power, millennials are continuously infantilised but 40 is a has been. At 30, I long for the ability to take a tiny bit of responsibility.
Odds and ends
I’m slightly younger, I just turned irrelevant. https://kunstkritikk.com/not-too-annoying/
I'm reading you because I just found some brilliant things you wrote about John Phillips back in the day. And here you are quoting Justin E H Smith whom I started reading recently because of relatable music views. It's a small world, but it works.
Fwiw I think authenticity is still a value and I will keep looking for it and responding to it in the new.
I am even older than Gen X so I have been irrelevant for even longer. I am indeed old enough to know that that almost all 78 records were made of shellac, not vinyl. Yet it has been millennials (albeit of a particular alternative bent) who have extended their crate digging all the way back to some of the earlier forms of music contained therein (hokum, traditional jazz, country blues, pre-Nashville country, etc.) perhaps in search not of authenticity but of a romanticized conception of the past they can construct their American identity upon. Or may it was just the "O Brother, Where art Thou" soundtrack?
Every generation seems to be fumbling away power, millennials are continuously infantilised but 40 is a has been. At 30, I long for the ability to take a tiny bit of responsibility.