As a New York Times weekend subscriber who happens to think that there’s more to music out there than those artists who reside at the intersection of “tasteful” and “indie,” I’ve often been disgruntled with the Sunday Magazine’s choices for music-related features, which for the most part seem to crib their ideas from Pitchfork’s Best New Music listings. (Daniel Radosh’s insanely in-depth piece on The Beatles: Rock Band was well worth the read, but the feature well has also seen articles on Andrew Bird, Stuart Murdoch, and Neko Case this year—all fine artists, but definitely pitched to a similar target demo, or, hell, a single side of a mixtape.) Well, a Q & A session on the Times site with Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati went partway toward solving the mystery of why—and surprise, surprise: It has something to do with Marzorati’s own, sordid music-writing past! More »
Some day, The New York Times‘ Sunday magazine will cover a musician who isn’t beloved by NPR, who isn’t on a major indie. This weekend, alas, will not see that day. (The title of the piece about Stuart Murdoch’s God Help The Girl project does sum up the sort of schmindie the NYTM likes to cover, though: “More Songs About Feelings And Women.” Tee hee!) [NYT] More »
Think music piracy is a product of the internet era? The New York Times archives contain a story–dated June 13, 1897–-with the title “Music Pirates in Canada” (warning: link leads to a .pdf). More than a century ago, our supposedly friendly neighbors to the North were taking our sheet music, copying it, and selling fakes to consumers in the United States looking for a cheap deals on music. The original asking prices ranged from 20 to 40 cents per piece, while the copies were sold for two to five cents. In May of 1897, around 5,000,000 copies were made and sold. What’s strange is that the publishers of these pirated works were Canadian newspapers, who used their PO boxes as covers! American music publishers decided to combat this by attacking through the post office, using the completely harsh treatment of sending back the pirated material. That’ll show ’em! And the consumer doesn’t get their money back afterward. More »
There seem to be two discrete ways of approaching the new U2 album. One, exemplified by a review on the Jim DeRogatis/Greg Kot radio show Sound Opinions, is to look at the fact that they’ve employed Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois for some tracks and write off the big stadium rockers to paint the album as an embrace of texture and mood, and a general triumph. The other view, however, is more dubious. Being a rock star is great, but it can’t help but seem less important when you’ve been doing what Bono’s been doing, and the five-year gap between albums would seem to indicate Bono’s changing priorities. Certainly he doesn’t seem very connected to his bandmates anymore. It’s like Bono woke up one day and realized he was turning into Bob Geldof: someone whose social activism overshadows their music, and consequently seems like a fraud. And so, it was time to update his brand with a new album. Unfair? Maybe. But let’s look at the evidence.
Lily Allen was profiled by The New York Times‘ Milena Ryzik earlier this month, and while some people found the piece a bit problematic, the pop singer herself thought it was “great, a really nice piece with a picture of me sat on my sofa,” according to the latest post on her blog. So why, then, is the entry in question called “The New York Time [sic] are cheap skanks”? That would be because the photographs that the paper didn’t use—which were shots of Allen at home—were licensed to the very downmarket tabloid OK!, which plastered a “World Exclusive: At Home With Lily Allen” banner over them. And she didn’t even get a cut of the profits from the photos!
William Safire‘s “On Language” columns have gotten a lot more enjoyable since he stopped writing op-eds for The New York Times, but when he steps into a field with which he is not entirely familiar, the results cross that fine line between charming and cringey. Of course, it’s also hard to tell when he’s kidding—he self-consciously begins one sentence here with “I recall a letter written to Gov. William Scranton…”—but, well, he’s writing about “mashup.” And “remix.” You can probably tell where this is going.
Under the heading “Jidda Journal,” an article about music appears on the front page of the paper of record today–but the jump takes you to the Middle East section, not what now passes for the paper’s Arts section. The piece is about an all-girl rock band in Saudi Arabia called The Accolade, which is fronted by sisters Dina and Dareen. They practice every weekend, have pierced eyebrows, and wear a classic rock ensemble of jeans and a t-shirt. None of this is unusual, of course, except that the band is in Saudi Arabia, where religious police used to patrol the streets and punish anyone violating morality codes. The article uses the Accolade as a way of demonstrating how those strictures have been loosened, and how the country has hesitantly modernized as a way of placating their massive youth population after the unfortunate events of 9/11. But of course, the band also makes music. What’s that like?
I liked High Fidelity and About a Boy plenty, but… More »
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:
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!)
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.)
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. 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. More »
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:
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.
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.)
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.
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!
Former New York Times journalist John Rockwell