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Posts Tagged “New York Times”

cranky old men

Nick Hornby Learns The Art Of Songwriting From Ben Folds

I liked High Fidelity and About a Boy plenty, but like a lot of people, I have my reservations about Nick Hornby as a music commentator. Those reservations are still present after reading his rather grouchy playlist for the New York Times's online "Living with Music" series: "If you have ever wanted to hear Pee-Wee Ellis playing with Cheikh Lo, and I see no reason why you wouldn’t, then tough. You missed it," he mentions of a memorable London show. So there, You Who Weren't As Lucky As He Was (And It's Your Fault)! The newsy bits: Hornby's long-in-the-works screenplay will be on screens soon, titled An Education; and he discusses an unfinished, unpublished song he worked on with schtickmeister Ben Folds, from whom Hornby has "learned more about the craft of songwriting from the e-mails I’ve been getting than from just about anything I’ve ever read." I don't doubt this at all, but it also makes me wonder how much has been written about the craft of songwriting, outside of how-to-write-hit-song manuals. I haven't read Jonathan Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet, but I'm guessing that has some. What else does? Comments welcome as always. [pic via McSweeney's]

3:30 PM on Wed Oct 29 2008
By Michaelangelo Matos
297 views, 12 comments

Latest by K-Rex: I just finished a Beatles biography called "Can't Buy Me Love" which, despite being about the Beatles, was actually very thoughtful and informative. It not only covers the music, but it covers it well. I suppose that because it was more »

journalism jobs

"The New York Times" Finds Its Bono Vox Populi

Radar reports that The New York Times editorial page will have Bono penning columns for it in 2009; he'll do six to ten (that's an oddly vague commitment) pieces for the Gray Lady next year. (Radar also teases the possibility that this could mean the sacking of Sarah Palin fetishist Bill Kristol, which is a deal I would gladly take.)

Biases up front: I'm a huge U2 fan, and I think that Bono, despite his arrogance, is a saint, a musician who puts his money where his mouth is and works really hard for the things he believes in, like the AIDS crisis in Africa and forgiveness of Third World debt. (We need some of that in the First World, come to think of it.) These articles could be thoughtful think pieces about the geopolitical issues. I've seen him on the Today shows of the world sounding like he knows what he's talking about. Unfortunately, I've also seen him pontificate at awards shows like some godforsaken beat poet-warrior robot that only speaks in bluesy non-sequiturs. Which is why I'm worried that these NYT pieces might end up looking lke this:

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11:00 AM on Thu Oct 23 2008
By Lucas Jensen
333 views, 9 comments

yay, journalism!

"New York Times" Offers Yet Another Lesson In How To Write A "Vinyl Is Back" Trend Piece

This week, the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times took on the "vinyl is back" trend, thus becoming the 1,495th publication in the United States to do so in the past year. Of course, the editors of the fashion-conscious Styles put their own imprimatur on the trend piece that so many other publications have tackled over the past year—and in doing so, they inadvertently provided yet another bend on the angle, one that assures countless pieces about the refound vogue of the LP in fashion magazines, where the pieces will be paired with catsuit-heavy fashion spreads instead of pictures depicting N-E-R-D-S. After the jump, the template provided by the Times for any other consumption-conscious publications who want to hop on this creaky, increasingly pricey bandwagon. (Those of you toiling on Fashion Rocks, take notes now so you'll be ready for the big "vinyl is back" expose that you'll run come 2010!) More »

2:00 PM on Tue Sep 2 2008
By Maura Johnston
793 views, 36 comments

Latest by BBDisk: @bburl: Vinyl can be mastered for The Loudness Wars ... it's just compression, and it's horrible. My LP of Gnarls Barkley (theone with Crazy on it) sounded like sh!t. I've got a few others here that were made from the CD more »

lines and splines

"New York Times" Still Allowing Serial Charticlist To Run Amok

The front page of today's New York Times arts section was overtaken by yet another "whimsicial" music-related graph by Andrew Kuo, an artist who's been making inscrutable charts of his music-consumption habits for Times' readers perusal for a little over a year now. This time, the subject is the ever-popular topic of "songs of the summer." In it, we learn that he really enjoys Hotstylz' "Lookin Boy" and Lil Wayne; also, he has zero familiarity with Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" and thus has no opinion on it, a super-contrarian pose that leads me to believe that he either doesn't leave the house much or only visits bodegas whose ambient radio choices he approves of. (Or he's fibbing to be "funny," but let's give him the benefit of the doubt.) More »

3:30 PM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Maura Johnston
547 views, 13 comments

Latest by kicking222: I assumed that he meant re: "I Kissed a Girl" that he didn't understand why it was ever popular in the first place, not that he'd never heard it. I like Kuo's charts. I tried to find an archive of them more »

The New York Times continues walking the marching-band beat, this time with a piece on the Bath Municipal Band of Brunswick, Maine, which has been pumping out the Sousa beats since 1961. [NYT / Photo via Bath Municipal Band]

3 comments

higher education

"New York Times" Gets In On The Drum Line

Good NYT piece today by Samuel G. Freedman, who reports on the spike in enrollment for Florida A&M University's summer band camp, in which some 450 students compete for a spot in the school's famed drumline corps the Marching 100. It's an illuminating look at how stylized marching bands are continuing their work into the digital age, and often enhanced by it. (Students like the Seattle teenager Freedman centers his story around often get into the camp after seeing the Marching 100 online.) It's also got some intriguing numbers: More »

2:00 PM on Wed Jul 23 2008
By Michaelangelo Matos
244 views, 7 comments

Latest by The Illiterate: When I was at the movies this weekend, there was an ad for the drumline championships, which are going to be broadcast in theaters around the country. It's obviously become a very big deal. more »

prescriptives

"New York Times" To Madonna: Aging Is No Reason Not To Skank It Up!

Today, The New York Times' style section takes Madonna to task for no longer being a fashion leader, and—better steel yourself for this one—wearing sensible, loose-fitting clothes in her downtime. It's a fairly mystifying piece, mainly because the writer seems to willfully ignore the obvious: Even if it's kinda your job, you can't remain young and ahead of the curve forever, especially when it comes to women's fashion. Madonna may be in peak physical condition and have the money and resources to appear 10 to 15 years younger than she actually is, but there's no way for her to single-handedly reverse our cultural bias against older women. More »

1:30 PM on Thu Jul 17 2008
By matthew perpetua
810 views, 6 comments

Latest by ARP: @cosmiclove: I have to agree, her desire to always be the center of attention, always be cutting, edge, etc. have given rise to a constant expectation that she will. It's a cycle that feeds itself, and when it fails, we more »

web 2.no

"New York Times" Writer Needs A Lesson In MySpace 101

Of all the disastrous MySpaces I've seen, Coldplay's current page does not exactly merit a second thought. It's simple, tasteful, professionally designed, and easy to read. Perhaps the only thing remarkable about it is how good it looks for a MySpace. Yet New York Times media critic Virginia Heffernan seems to think it's some sort of menacing pariah of the online world, a crudely cobbled-together middle finger to all those who crave browser-crashing Flash from their favorite artists' online presence. Her piece in yesterday's NYT Magazine is borderline embarrassing to read if you've ever so much as visited a MySpace page, not to mention rife with misconceptions about how the site actually works. But in the end she finally gets down to the bottom of Coldplay. Sort of. (Not really.) More »

2:45 PM on Mon Jul 14 2008
By Kate Richardson
1,218 views, 25 comments

Latest by BRATMix: I maintain a few band MySpace pages. As in my normal web design, I despise Flash. There's no need for it, especially on a site already filled with bugs and headache like MySpace. What's wrong with simple and clean? Hell, I turned more »

reading room

The "New York Times Magazine" Thinks CocoRosie Is The Bee's Knees

I don't know about you guys, but yesterday's New York Times Magazine profile of the trying-so-hard-to-be-bewitching duo CocoRosie was excruciating to read—I actually only got through it on a third pass—thanks to the "how does it feel to be so incredibly awesome???" vibe given off by profiler Fernanda Eberstadt, coupled with the Casady sisters' overarching preciousness. They eat lots of hard-boiled eggs! They have their own blend of tea! And a kooky entourage! I'm not 100% sure if the goal of this profile was anthropological, i.e. showing Times readers what two young women who were fully hatched from a place of complete privilege look like right before the end of our nu-Gilded Age, but I did know that every time I tried to sit down and really read the damn thing I kept getting flashbacks to the Sunday Styles bro-down with Vampire Weekend from a few months back. A few choice quotes after the jump. More »

2:30 PM on Mon Jul 7 2008
By Maura Johnston
1,246 views, 22 comments

Latest by Maciej: @Lax Danja House: Is "mind-numbingly" inane at Cocorosie or the writer? Either works, I'm just wondering. While Cocorosie's quotes in the interview deserve all the snark in the world, I'm surprised the sycophantic, boring, stupid, etc. writing by Ms. Eberstatd isn't more »

government names

Does The "New York Times" Have A Double Standard When It Comes To Hip-Hop Artists' Stage Names?

Sure, we've all had a laugh when the ever-staid The New York Times has made second references to "Mr. Pop" and "Mr. Loaf" in its cultural reporting. But why, the Columbia Journalism Review wonders, are the stage names of hip-hop artists like Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and Diddy not given the same treatment? Instead, they frequently get their birth names swapped into stories right away—even though artists in other genres who hide behind aliases, from Alicia Keys (nee Alicia Augello-Cook) to Clay Aiken (nee Clayton Grissom), don't get the same treatment. Is it because no one in the copy department wants to put a definitive entry in the stylebook on how to properly punctuate "Mr. Z," or is there something more nefarious at work? CJR demands answers! More »

4:15 PM on Tue Jun 24 2008
By Maura Johnston
2,567 views, 5 comments

Latest by imnotthatguyanymore: I remember my friend telling me about going to the movies with his dad and having his dad say, "Ice Cube? Who the hell is Ice Cube?" For some people, Mr. Cube would be a little to weird. more »

Former New York Times music-biz reporter Jeff Leeds resurfaces on Sasha Frere Jones' blog at The New Yorker, and the two discuss a few topics, including the current state of the art/commerce divide. This quote from Leeds, in particular, resonates: "I always think of music as Patient Zero in all the disorder that is changing everything in entertainment and media, including, by the way, newspapers." SFJ says that if the e-mails keep coming, he'll keep posting 'em, and surely I'm not the only one who hopes that this conversation stretches for a while. [Sasha Frere-Jones]

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the more things change

The Ideal Indie Rock Woman: Still Pale, Still Malnourished, Now With Slightly Better Bangs

Far be it from me to expect anything resembling forward-thinking discourse from a "chicks rock!" fashion spread, but it was more than a little disheartening to see the end result of New York Times Magazine's style section giving itself over to "girls who play together sashay[ing] in the season's pitch-perfect ensembles." Said spread featured five all-female bands, 80% of which were full of Feist archetypes who wore mostly dour expressions under their Emily The Strange makeup. (Only the two members of Yo Majesty were allowed to actually pose in a way that had the buoyancy suggested by the word "sashaying." Perhaps that was because Shunda K. told the interviewer that she knew God loved her? Or maybe it's just that their look doesn't really fit with the perpetual-schoolgirl affect that the other four pictures were obviously going for?) More »

10:30 AM on Tue May 27 2008
By Maura Johnston
1,609 views, 17 comments

Latest by jfury: @MTS: I don't give a crap what photo 101 dictates. What's more cliche -- chicks modeling clothes and looking bored out of their tits OR chicks rocking out with their instruments? Give me a break. more »

bobos in paradise ii: the boboing

Is David Brooks' Next Half-Baked Pop Sociology Book Going To Be About The Super-Geeky "A-Punks"?


Lurking within today's New York Times' op-ed section is David Brooks' attempt to get in early on calling the rise of the "geek" in society, no doubt because he's looking for another genre of well-off people to sucker into buying a book that shows "who they really are" in the grand sociological scheme of things. (Oh, for the days when people read and wrote in an effort to experience cultures that may have been at least one degree removed from their own.) Brooks' column about the "nerd ascendancy" name-drops Tina Fey and Jason Kottke, notes that the new geek uniform eschews pocket protectors for "text-laden T-shirts," calls Barack Obama "the Prince Caspian of the iPhone hordes," and, of course, runs down the sort of cultural product that people who experiment with fonts for fun consume in their spare time: More »

1:00 PM on Fri May 23 2008
By Maura Johnston
780 views, 11 comments

Latest by littlemoose: Love this post's tag. That is all. more »

y'all come back now, ya hear?

New York "Times" Surprised To Find Bands In Large College Town

The New York Times' Travel section this week ran its music issue, which had polite descriptions of festivals in Mali and Morocco, as well as rundowns of the music scenes in Stockholm and Istanbul. More local exoticism can be found in the podunk town of Denton, Texas. Seems that beneath the country bumpkin facade of "Piggly Wiggly markets and dusty pawnshops" lies a thriving and eclectic music scene! How did that happen? Maybe it's because of the University of North Texas' music school, or the presence of the largest state-funded women's college in America, or the city's population of over 100k. Wouldn't it be more shocking if Denton didn't have a band like Midlake living there? More »

12:00 PM on Mon May 12 2008
By Anthony Miccio
988 views, 23 comments

Latest by MrStarhead: Sadly, Denton is about 10 years away from being swallowed up by the DFW megalopolis. more »

Monday morning headline-scanning just won't be the same now that music-business reporter Jeff Leeds has been let go from the New York Times. Leeds, who was the only Times writer covering the industry's inner doings, had been employed by the paper since 2004; he'd worked at the Los Angeles Times before that. [Deadline Hollywood Daily / Pic via PBS]

2 comments

she's not with the band

Blind Item! Which Indie Rocker Made The Mistake Of Screwing A Times Writer?

The Sunday NYT features a gripping "Modern Love" column in which comedienne Julie Klausner has sex with an indie rocker who doesn't text back promptly. Even though found his stereotypical, passive shtick annoying, she thought he was cute and was mildly disappointed when it turned out he was only interested in casual sex. Aside from his having an illegitimate child, most of the details regarding this awkward singer are pretty damn universal. Universal enough that one might wonder what the hell she was expecting from the dalliance, and definitely universal enough that there's no guarantee that this guy is even famous. But we can dream. More »

2:30 PM on Mon Apr 28 2008
By Anthony Miccio
2,054 views, 22 comments

Latest by lossleader: doesn't anyone else find it in awfully poor taste for her to write about his son in any fashion? i mean, really. leave the kid and any custody battles out of your woe is me public bashing. more »

idolator goes to spain

The "Times" Stays Classy In Madrid

If you're planning a trip to Madrid and feel as if my "box of wine* and a half-assed Google search" approach to the city's music scene just isn't cutting it, The New York Times has a nice writeup of Madrid's jazz/funk/fusion scene that provides a more well-rounded (and better-funded) report. More »

9:00 AM on Thu Apr 24 2008
By Kate Richardson
152 views, 2 comments

musical chairs

Who Will Replace Kelefa Sanneh At The NYT?

According to John Koblin of The New York Observer, the main candidates for the now-vacant pop critic job at the New York Times are Jon Caramanica (who is departing his post as Vibe's music editor this week) and Jody Rosen of Slate (and, frequently, Blender), though there are others allegedly in the offing: Sam Sifton, the paper's culture editor, says he's "looking at a lot of candidates." Still, Sanneh's departure to The New Yorker (he'll be a culture writer there, not the pop critic—that's still Sasha Frere-Jones' job) hasn't made him lose any perspective, as he tells Koblin, "It's also a job that's impossible to complain about, partly because it's the opposite of boring, and partly because no sympathy will ever be offered to someone who goes to concerts for a living." [NY Observer]

1:30 PM on Wed Mar 19 2008
By Michaelangelo Matos
245 views, Comment