1. Start with a lede that could just as easily be repurposed for another regular column in your publication—in this case, the "romance among the whiteys" Styles staple known as the "Modern Love" column.

During his freshman year at Point Park University in Pittsburgh a couple years ago, James Acklin, now 20, felt lost among the social cliques on his new campus until he got to talking with a student who was in some of his classes. She seemed unusual, and it wasn't just her look: thick-framed eyeglasses, bangs and vintage dresses. Then, one rainy day in February, the two skipped class and went to her apartment. As soon as she opened her door his instincts were confirmed: she had a turntable. So did he. They both spoke the language of vinyl.

Their bond was sealed as soon as she placed the stylus on an LP by the band Broken Social Scene, he said in an e-mail message.

2. Tie the "vinyl resurgence" trend to another yuppie hobby that's gone from "retro cuteness" to "current, better-for-you hotness." Like growing your own veggies!

"It's almost a back-to-nature approach," Mr. Gagnon said. "It's the difference between growing your own vegetables and purchasing them frozen in the supermarket."

3. Numbers, numbers, numbers! Especially out-of-context ones that merely gloss over larger issues like dwindling shelf space for albums, the increasing price of producing vinyl, etc.

The industry had shipments of 3.4 million LPs and EPs in 1998 and just over 900,000 in 2006, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

But shipments jumped about 37 percent in 2007, to nearly 1.3 million records. Three years ago Warner Bros. Records returned to the format when it opened becausesoundmatters.com, an online vinyl store stocked with reissues and new releases. At first, any vinyl release that sold 3,000 copies was considered a success, said Tom Biery, who oversees vinyl sales for the company. By comparison, the 2007 Wilco album, "Sky Blue Sky," surpassed 14,000 copies.

Mass-market retailers like Virgin Megastore and smaller record stores like Mondo Kim's in Manhattan are devoting more floor space to the antiquarian 12-inch disc of late. Newbury Comics, a chain of 29 music and merchandise stores in New England, has sold 400 turntables since it started selling them in June, Duncan Browne, a company executive, said.

4. Make sure to note that the vinyl resurgence has the potential to be something on which one can plunk down an absurd chunk of change.

Deluxe editions are trophies of sorts for passionate fans, Mr. Biery said. In September, for example, Warner Bros. Records will release a new Metallica album, "Death Magnetic," in a five-record box version — each of 10 songs will get its own side — for about $115.

5. And by spending all that money, your reader can stand out in a crowd! If she doesn't mind toting around a DJ bag all the time, that is.

In an era when "everybody's music collection is the same" thanks to file swapping, collecting expensive, unwieldy LPs is a conspicuous way for the superfans to advertise their cognoscenti status, he said.

"It's a customer who wants to have vinyl in their home the same way they want books in their home," Mr. Wishnow said. For such a customer, he added, the message is, " 'When I can have all the music in the world in the palm of my hand, what does it say about me that I spend $15 to $20 for this format that is a pain to store and move and is easily damaged?' "

6. Close out the piece by soothing the reader, telling her that embracing this trend will not only expand her consumeristic horizons, it'll make her smart.

"I have a ton of music on iTunes," Mr. Karoly said, "but with that music I get A.D.D. really quick. With my LPs, it's like reading a book as opposed to clicking through articles on Yahoo."

"When you put on a record," he added, "it's an event."

Another Spin For Vinyl [NYT]

Kuo's charts have revealed a few tidbits about his likes and dislikes:

• His radio stations of choice: Power 105 or Hot 97. BUT NOT Z100. NEVER.
• He goes to shows at McCarren Pool and other Brooklyn Vegan-approved venues.
• His font choices are similar to those of Wes Anderson.
• He really, really likes Lil Wayne.
• He was clearly scarred by Lollapalooza 2.

And... that's it. You know, it's nice that the Times wants to break up its pages with pretty images, but it would be an awful lot nicer if those charts actually, y'know, said something beyond "Futura is almost as awesome as Da Drought 3, you guys." I don't have a problem with people taking music criticism in new and exciting directions, but I do have a slight issue with a joke being beaten into the ground, especially when said joke wasn't even "ha-ha" funny when it first came out. Clearly, it's time to whip out the response Jess crafted back in January one more time:

Color Them Summer's Hottest Songs [NYT]

[Addendum: Apparently the colors on the Web version are messed up, too. Oh, Times!]

When Dr. White began the summer camp 18 years ago, he expected to attract mainly African-American students from the Southeast. Not only has the enrollment soared to 450 from an initial 90, the geographical and racial range has expanded. . . .

Three busloads of campers came this summer from Michigan alone. Dozens of Hispanic and white teenagers have flocked to the program, including the archetypal slacker this summer who wore a T-shirt explaining, "I'm Probably Late."

Of course, anyone who's seen the Nick Cannon flick Drum Line (which is mentioned here several times: Florida A&M was the inspiration for the movie's main troupe) is aware that numbers are crucial to these teams' success. Still, we like to think of this as one of the few sectors of the music world that is growing instead of shrinking.

Camp Leads a Drumbeat for a Marching Band's Style [NYT]
[Photo via Florida A & M]

If anything, this constant pressure on Madonna to push at the boundaries of pop culture has made it increasingly difficult for her to actually influence much of anyone. In her prime, she embraced subcultural trends in music and fashion in a way that seemed like a personal expression of taste and inspiration, but since she's been saddled with the expectation to constantly break new ground, she just can't win. She either flits around from one image or sound to the next without connecting with it or her audience in any meaningful way, or she settles into her age, and she gets slammed for no longer pretending to be the sassy libertine she was back in the '80s. It's most depressing when she attempts to reconcile the two impulses; in those cases, we get bland, confusing compromises like Hard Candy that doesn't seem to please anyone, including herself.

If people really do want Madonna to be meaningful, we as a culture need to give Madonna the permission to give up on her quest for eternal youth and relevance, and to reconnect with her muse. It would be far more interesting to watch her embrace her advancing age, and to find ways to shatter our preconceptions about mature femininity. She could be profound and fascinating again, but only if we stop expecting her to be permanently 26.

Madonna, Once A Fashion Leader, Is No Longer Daring [NYT]

Mine is the 21,120,387th visit to Coldplay's MySpace page. I am not greeted warmly. The British band — which is known for giant pop hits, a sheen of fakery and the marriage of its lead singer to Gwyneth Paltrow — does not exactly rush out to greet me. The page is rudimentary and indifferently decorated, like the apartment of four couchbound soccer addicts who barely look up when a girlfriend comes in.



So Coldplay is that kind of band. I thought it might be the other kind. MySpace offers only two design choices for pop acts who create pages there, meaning every single pop act in the world (almost). You can create a lazy, placeholder, MySpace-is-idiotic page, barely shuffling your feet to the social-network tune, like a goth kid at a school dance. Or you can kick out the jams, expand the brand, offer free downloads and revel in the sound and light of multimedia narcissism. What's an attention-hungry, ridicule-averse rock band to do?

If Coldplay were really "that kind of band" —the kind to nonchalantly brush off the importance of a flashy MySpace—their page would look like Bright Eyes' standard-issue "maintained by Saddle Creek" profile, which is a lot closer to "a goth kid at a school dance" than Coldplay's slick layout.

So in the last several years, virtually everyone trying to sell music has found it necessary to keep a presence on MySpace. It's there that music fans and A.& R. people alike play new songs, watch music videos, check concert information and chat with cybergroupies. And no matter how intensely rock stars balk at every part of the commercial-studded site that is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, they cave in and post a page. (Oh, yes, even the musician identified as "Bob Dylan — NEW YORK, New York — Classic Rock/Folk Rock — www.myspace.com/bobdylan" has one.)

So Bob Dylan's record company set up a MySpace under his name. You don't say!

How, then, to interpret Coldplay's standoffishness? On its MySpace page, the backdrop is plain white with a close-up of red-and-black brush strokes. Then, in the collagist style that holds MySpace in a chokehold, this black-white-and-red-all-over image is overlain with orderly boxes. One box is a banner ad. It reads, in turns: "Violet Hill video," "We're playing another free concert . . . ¡Barcelona!" and "Preorder new album on iTunes." These words seem to be scratched in a streak of the red paint in essay-exam handwriting that looks somehow both rushed and forced.

What Heffernan describes as "standoffishness" is really just the work of a pro web designer looking to make the page easily accessible to the wide variety of people who tend to enjoy Coldplay—the kind of MySpace that wouldn't seem daunting to a 50-year-old mom who heard some songs from the band's new album during a feature on All Things Considered. Why this rather obvious fact isn't apparent to a professional media critic for the flipping New York Times is anyone's guess.

Two other boxes are sparsely furnished. One brings to mind the postcollegiate bedroom of a guy who keeps nothing but a futon and a clock radio. Scroll down and it frames a photo of the band, sitting (it seems) on the kind of tufted, circular sofa you might find in the waiting area of an old train station. I turn to the commentary on this photo in hopes of an ID — "Ah, Victoria Station!" — but I'm scolded in a red MySpace typeface: "You must be someone's friend to make comments about them." Hmm. Quite.

This paragraph reads as if Heffernan is a Victorian-era English gentleman who's taken a time machine to present day and, upon recognizing the couch from Victoria Station, yearned to connect with his own time period, but was cruelly denied by modern technology. Quite distasteful indeed!

Why does Martin bow and scrape in this cringing way on MySpace? (Compare Coldplay's page with that of Nas, another performer with a hit record; it's all filmic strutting, with center-stage Nas in the superhero role, the Zeus role, the Christ role, the Barack Obama role.) One explanation for Martin's assertive humility is that Coldplay's music, for all its thundering and sparkling atmospherics, is often about one man's wretched interior life. A lone individual's grandiose psyche is typically the terrain of a solo artist, not a band. The fact that Martin has deputized his bandmates to help him carry out his own schemes and self-expression — like a full mariachi band called in for a romantic serenade — is maybe a little uncomfortable for him.

Coming from my computer's built-in speakers, Coldplay's music would sound tinny if I weren't also staring at Coldplay's screen-size MySpace "environment" — the scribbles, the spare illustrations. Because it lacks the conviction of a real, florid MySpace page, the environment is obscurely embarrassing. Yet, in a straightforward way, it underscores the embarrassment of Coldplay's music — the mawkishness, suppressed arrogance, halfheartedness and squeamishness about rock stardom. When illustrated by the graphics here, embarrassment seems like an entirely worthy theme for very hard soft rock.

For the first time, staring at the bad MySpace page and listening to songs on a computer, I understand Coldplay's music.

For the record, Nas' MySpace—which takes 45 seconds to "initiate"—is the very definition of hot mess, with text spilling out all over the layout, endless video content, and header animation that sends lesser browsers like Safari into hysterics. It's not exactly the pinnacle of web design, and arguably much less user-friendly than Coldplay's page.

The one thing Heffernan seems to get right here is that Coldplay's MySpace is supposed to reflect the band's sound and personality. But it's not "mawkishness, suppressed arrogance, halfheartedness and squeamishness about rock stardom" that come through; it's bland stylishness and mass appeal—which, here, are reflected by the band's unwillingness to crash users' browsers for the sake of having an animated graphic at the top.

Coldpage [New York Times]
Coldplay [MySpace]
Bright Eyes [MySpace]
Nas [MySpace]

Sierra: "If there's a poetic to our work, a weird continuity of deliberate mistranslation, it's what comes off the streets and is purified and reduced by the dollar stores. I've been reborn by the idea of artificial paradise, an urban hustle. We are finding our way to God through the dollar stores of this world." To which Bianca added an "Amen." While wearing "a pair of supersize purple-and-gold Adidas sweat pants in velour, with matching sneakers, a black XXL T-shirt bearing the logo Black Pit Bull and a riding coat constructed from two quilted nylon dressing gowns, one of them red tartan, the other pink-and-green-flowery, with large Japanese Manga-esque appliqués sewn on them." And one fake pink eyelash. Wait, they sell pink eyelashes at dollar stores? Dude.

Sierra: "[I] wanted to finish high school, go on to college, but my parents wouldn't let me. They said it would destroy my creativity. They were so right." So, so right. Imagine if she'd wound up at Columbia—she'd be singing about Oxford commas instead of roller skates!

Bianca: "We never listen to music. Maybe, like, Arvo Pärt, Nina Simone, but that's it. Music's just our ticket onto the rollercoaster. We don't understand people who always have music blasting in the background. What we like is silence." This would seemingly contradict the assertion of friend and fellow teenage homeless person hanger-on Danielle Stech-Homsy, who said that Sierra was always singing, as well as Sierra's past studies of opera. But perhaps the music they create is just on another level.

There's more, but trying to cut and paste them is giving me serious agita. At any rate, I'm just sad that Eberstadt, during her full-on sloppy kiss to the sisters Casady, didn't find out whether or not they're still palling around with the Pumpsta. (Although I guess this story points out that Bianca's tendencies toward "not[ing] her wordliness" haven't subsided one bit.)

Twisted Sisters [NYT]

Sam Sifton, the Times's culture editor, says that while such decisions are handled on a case-by-case basis, rap artists often get special treatment. "There's a big difference between [Houston rapper] Bun B and Tony Bennett," Sifton says, referring to Bernard Freeman and Anthony Dominick Benedetto, respectively. "Tony Bennett took a stage name, which I think is a little different from taking an alias. Someone like Jay-Z can be Mr. Carter, certainly, or he can just be Jay-Z, but he's never going to be Mr. Z."

But is there a meaningful distinction between a "stage name" and an "alias"? That Sifton made an example of Jay-Z—rather than someone like, say, Ghostface Killah, whose chosen moniker is further outside the mainstream nomenclature—suggests that at the Times, at least, there is, and that rappers are in a class by themselves. Why else would Alicia Keys, a performer from beyond the rap realm—who took a stage name (or devised an alias) based on the instrument she plays—have never been outed as Alicia Augello-Cook? In Kelefa Sanneh's October 5, 2003, Times CD roundup, Outkast rappers André 3000 (André Benjamin) and Big Boi (Antwan Patton) got name-dropped, while Erykah Badu's birth name (Erica Wright) was never mentioned.

Even more confusing are articles that seem to follow no logic whatsoever: a December 3, 2006, Times profile on celebrity Sirius Radio hosts refers to rap personality Ludacris as Christopher Bridges (and as "Mr. Bridges" in subsequent references), but allows Eminem (Marshall Mathers), Snoop Dogg (Calvin Broadus), and Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) to use their stage names. On second reference, though, Bob Dylan is "Mr. Dylan," while Eminem remains Eminem; Snoop is only mentioned once, but judging by former Times treatments he would have been called "Snoop" or "Snoop Dogg" had his name come up again.

I suspect that some of the reason Ludacris was referred to as "Mr. Bridges" was that there's at least some precedent; his movie and TV credits frequently refer to him as Chris "Ludacris" Bridges. But what, pray tell, could be the difference between a "stage name" and an "alias"? Is it one of those "I know it when I see it" tests, where "Erykah Badu" can pass as a reasonable entry on a legal document while "Andre 3000" couldn't, at least not until we all start getting our official numeric aliases for easier bad-credit spotting?

Name-Dropping [CJR via Gawker]

Maybe I'd be less offended by the whole thing if the online presentation wasn't just flat pictures accompanied by T. Cole Rachel's even flatter text; you'd think the multimedia presentation of an article that's nominally about musicians would attempt to provide some musical context for why these bands were featured, or at least try somewhat half-heartedly to convince the readership out there that these five acts weren't just picked for the spread on the basis of how they fit into the Marc Jacobs samples lying around the Times offices. (It's not like a link to, say, an Electrelane video is all that hard to find on the Web.) But given that, after I showed this spread to a friend, he asked me "So, was this week's issue of the New York Times Magazine secretly the 'cool hipster girls' issue?" I'd say that this spread is probably the sign of what's to come at the Times, because a good Web editor knows that even if their readership is alienated or turned off by its unrelenting coverage of certain fake trends, at least there'll be someone out there to irritably blog about it.

Group Dynamics [NYT]
Earlier: The Ideal Indie Rock Woman: Pale, Malnourished, And With Really Bad Bangs

Nerds had their own heroes (Stan Lee of comic book fame), their own vocations (Dungeons & Dragons), their own religion (supplied by George Lucas and "Star Wars") and their own skill sets (tech support). But even as "Revenge of the Nerds" was gracing the nation's movie screens, a different version of nerd-dom was percolating through popular culture. Elvis Costello and The Talking Heads's David Byrne popularized a cool geek style that's led to Moby, Weezer, Vampire Weekend and even self-styled "nerdcore" rock and geeksta rappers.

I, personally, would have name-dropped one of those Nintendo cover bands instead of Moby, but I guess going to all those Bobo-ish Play-playing wine bars in the early '00s really had a long-lasting effect on Brooksie. Also: When I searched for "Geeksta" on YouTube, this piece of NSFW garbage came up:

People, people. This is yet more evidence as to why the rise of the geeks is not a good thing for music. At least if you're going to write a "dirty" rap about robots, at least have decent flow.

The Alpha Geeks [NYT; HT MC]
Vampire Weekend - A-Punk [YouTube]

With its Piggly Wiggly markets and dusty pawnshops, the Texas college town of Denton does not look the part of a Woodstock in waiting. A Romanesque courthouse juts out of the central square, as in that fictional town in "Back to the Future." And whenever the local college football team plays at Fouts Field, the entire town seems to put on Mean Green T-shirts.

...At last count, more than 100 bands were polishing their sound in the city's dive bars, rooftop spaces and fraternity basements. Even the local record store, a converted opera house called Recycled, has a section devoted to Denton bands. The bin dividers read like a Lollapalooza T-shirt: Lift to Experience, Centro-matic, Jetscreamer, Vortexas, Robert Gomez, Stanton Meadowdale, Mom, Mandarin, and Matthew and the Arrogant Sea, to name just a few.

Not bad for a college town of 110,000, prompting more than a few music industry insiders to call Denton the next Austin.

"There's this combination of artistic fervor and small town naïveté," said David Sims, a music columnist for The Dallas Observer. "Artists here don't know they're not supposed to be Bob Dylan so when they start a band, they shoot for the moon."

...Much of the musical genius can be traced back to the University of North Texas's College of Music. Walk through the college's leafy campus and you can eavesdrop on any number of lab bands polishing their chops, or pianists pounding away on a Steinway in the racquetball-court-like rehearsal studios.

Denton is also one of the fastest growing cities in America. Here's hoping that "small town naïveté" that allows bands like Lift To Experience and Jetscreamer to "shoot for the moon" won't be lost when the Piggly Wiggly gets replaced with a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Oh wait, there are already two in town.

An Indie Scene That Comes With a Texas Twang in Denton [NYT]

What we know (assuming this isn't bullshit):

• He's cute.

• He hangs out at NYC karaoke nights.

• Karaoke nights where you can do "Christmas Wrapping" by the Waitresses.

• He doesn't use capital letters in e-mails.

• He has sharp cheekbones.

• "He's an indie rock dreamboat. His voice is transcendent and he writes lovely lyrics. He has a nice face, he has a kid and he tours a lot. He's a star in his world."

• His music is "typical emo stuff: droney, thick, exhausting, but obviously heartfelt."

• His babymama lives overseas.

Seeing as how the little boy has yellow hair, I want to assume it's Evan Dando. Sure, I don't know if Evan has a kid, and it's probable that Klausner would have known of him already, but still. Evan Dando. Mmmm.

Here's a clip of Julie Klausner singing "Honky Cat" with some cats.

She performs at Joe's Pub looking that good, and this is the first time a rock musician not looking for commitment tried to hit her up? Really?


Was I on a Date or Baby-Sitting? [NYT; HT Jami Attenberg]
Honky Cat by Julie Klasner [MySpace]

IT'S 11 p.m. in the Plaza del Ángel in Madrid, and the strains of a jazz sax solo can be heard seeping through the plate-glass windows of Café Central. Inside, couples and small groups huddle around the 20 or so tables set amid mirrored pillars that seem to multiply the ambience without blocking the view of the stage.



Just down the street at Populart a crowd of jazz aficionados sip gin and tonics from giant goblets. A few young Turks in leather jackets stick to beer at the far end of the bar as the West Africa-born Justin Tchatchoua and his Afro Group warm everyone up with selections from their new CD of African fusion beats.



Similar scenes — some rowdy, others refined — are replicated nightly all across the city. Within a 10-minute stroll from the Puerta del Sol, the center of historic Madrid, music lovers can take their pick of live jazz, rock, flamenco or folk-rock, or an ever-growing fusion of all the above by top Spanish artists like Manu Chao or the rising flamenco star Esperanza Fernández. Mixed in you might find international names like Busta Rhymes or the Strokes.

Hold the phone! Afro fusion beats? I'm so there, although Populart's use of blackface on their Web site is disturbing (even if it's just meant as a reference to The Jazz Singer). But in my experience Spain doesn't entirely grasp the concept of American racism and all its accoutrements (i.e. blackface, etc.), so I'll just assume it's an ill-informed choice.

"Madrid is an easy place to get hooked on live music," says Curro González, an owner of La Boca del Lobo, as the local band Funk Attack clears the stage after midnight on a recent Thursday evening, and the crowd of about 100 drifts toward the bar in this compact multilevel club. He says the live-music scene works because so many of the people involved are industry insiders — producers, agents, music critics and, of course, the artists themselves — and their enthusiasm doesn't disappear when they leave the office. "People do this because they love the music," says Mr. González.

It also doesn't hurt that Madrileños love night life and being out among the masses, so with cover charges that are rarely more than 10 euros ($15 or so) and typically include a drink, a live performance from 10 p.m. to midnight gets people into the bars and into the mood. Many bars also serve relatively good and reasonably priced food, providing the possibility of a one-stop evening. The jazz club Café Berlin has a whole menu of "Bird" salads and "Stormy Weather" sandwiches and offers wine tastings of standout Spanish vintages.

See, the difference between my approach and the Times' approach to covering a music scene is that my entire drinks budget for an evening is about 10 euros. But I have been meaning to make an exception and pay the cover at El Sol, where the Times diligently slummed for an evening:

Around the corner is El Sol, a joint whose most commonly applied modifier is "mythic." Open since 1979, it was the backdrop for much of the famous movida madrileña, the post-Franco punk-rock, pop-culture explosion that gave the world Pedro Almodóvar and Agatha Ruiz de la Prada. Even today, the large basement club — with it's all-white décor glowing with pink neon tubes — still feels like an underground carnival. Nightly concerts can range from rock to pop to salsa or flamenco, and the place rocks to at least 4:30 (on weeknights).

And just to prove that they're dedicated to providing coverage beyond the jazz-and-mojito scene, the Times even ventured up to the city's residential/financial/not-so-guay El Viso neighborhood to report on where the bourgeois youth spend their Friday nights:

Yet another constellation of late-night revelry awaits north of the old center, near the Bernabéu Stadium, where Real Madrid plays its soccer. At Moby Dick, the sleek neon-lit facade conceals a rollicking nautical interior, complete with lighthouse next to the stage. With bands that rock and a youthful crowd that comes to move, it reads Jersey Shore, and is very likely the closest thing Madrid will ever have to the Stone Pony.

To be fair to the Times, a Spanish music blogger did recommend Moby Dick to me as a good venue. All in all it's a fairly thorough report, though tragically lacking in suggestions for the budget crowd. They do offer up a tip on a quasi-flamenco bar where glasses of wine are "just 2 euros," but come talk to me and I'll tell you where you can get them for 60 cents; for just 6 euros you can get drunk enough to provide your own entertainment, musical or otherwise.

From Jazz to Fusion, Late and Live in Madrid [New York Times]

*Going this route in Spain is definitely not as wretched as in the U.S. There's a brand of box wine called Don Simon usually sold for around 95 cents that's surprisingly inoffensive and easy to drink.

A Queens resident's postscript: Isn't Brooklyn's "alt-anything" status sort of played by now? I mean, anyone who wants to really go against the alt-monoculture grain knows that the place to go isn't Brooklyn, but Staten Island.

All Hail Brooklyn: Alt-Rock Thrives In Alt-Borough [NYT]
[Photo via brooklyn-usa.org]

^* FYI: The behavior you describe/decry is actually referred to by the term "being a reactionary asshole, or a bored blogger." It's not as zingy as "rockism," but perhaps you could work on that.

The Projected Longevity Of 2007's Top 10 Songs [NYT]

^* Call it a hunch, but I bet you this prediction will be tossed aside come May '08 or so.

THE GOOD: Queens Of The Stone Age finally make a year-end Top 10 that doesn't have the word "hotties" in it. And perhaps a well-placed Times endorsement will finally break that Tracey Thorn solo album out of sales purgatory.
THE BAD: Blah blah Feist blah blah shrug. No real beef here. It's the Christmas miracle.
THE WHAAAA? "In a year with shockingly few big albums..." Sales-wise, perhaps true. (Perception-wise among the mass public, perhaps also true, since pop perception is always tied to sales to some extent.) But allowing for us having to redefine the world "big" in a niched-to-death music industry, didn't most of the high-placers on 2007's year-end lists (Radiohead! Arcade Fire! M.I.A.! Bruce!) prove we had the usual crop of traditionally crit-friendly, statement-making, and/or zeitgeist-exploiting/exploring "Big Albums"?

JON PARELES
Top Albums
1. RADIOHEAD: 'IN RAINBOWS'
2. FEIST: 'THE REMINDER'
3. AMY WINEHOUSE: 'BACK TO BLACK'
4. IRON AND WINE: 'THE SHEPHERD'S DOG'
5. CALLE 13: 'RESIDENTE O VISITANTE'
6. ROBERT PLANT AND ALISON KRAUSS: 'RAISING SAND'
7. LUPE FIASCO: 'THE COOL'
8. BATTLES: 'MIRRORED'
9. PANDA BEAR: 'PERSON PITCH'
10. QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE: 'ERA VULGARIS'

Top Songs
M.I.A. "Paper Planes"
SHAKIRA "Hay Amores"
JONI MITCHELL "Hana"
KANYE WEST "Stronger"
NEIL YOUNG "No Hidden Path"

BEN RATLIFF
Top Albums
1. JOSHUA REDMAN: 'BACK EAST'
2. GILBERTO GIL: 'GIL LUMINOSO'
3. ROBERT PLANT AND ALISON KRAUSS: 'RAISING SAND'
4. BILL MCHENRY: 'ROSES'
5. NO AGE: 'WEIRDO RIPPERS'
6. FEIST: 'THE REMINDER'
7. SAM YAHEL TRIO: 'TRUTH AND BEAUTY'
8. KARTET: 'THE BAY WINDOW'
9. ALICIA KEYS: 'AS I AM'
10. NINA NASTASIA AND JIM WHITE: 'YOU FOLLOW ME'

Top Songs
RIHANNA "Umbrella"
VON SüDENFED "The Rhinohead"
SPANISH HARLEM ORCHESTRA "Sácala Bailar"
CAFé TACUBA "Volver a Comenzar"
JESU "Conqueror"

KELEFA SANNEH
Top Albums
1. FEIST: 'THE REMINDER'
2. TURF TALK: 'WEST COAST VACCINE: THE CURE'
3. PANDA BEAR: 'PERSON PITCH'
4. JOE NICHOLS: 'REAL THINGS'
5. UGK: 'UNDERGROUND KINGZ'
6. TRACEY THORN: 'OUT OF THE WOODS'
7. JENS LEKMAN: 'NIGHT FALLS OVER KORTEDALA'
8. PROJECT PAT: 'WALKIN' BANK ROLL'
9. MARNIE STERN: 'IN ADVANCE OF THE BROKEN ARM'
10. THE-DREAM: 'LOVE/HATE'

Top Songs
RIHANNA "Umbrella"
R. KELLY FEATURING T.I. AND T-PAIN "I'm a Flirt (Remix)"
MARTINA MCBRIDE "Anyway"
SOULJA BOY TELLEM "Crank That (Soulja Boy)"
LINDA SUNDBLAD "Lose You"

EDIT: Dudes, I totally misspelled Ben Ratliff's name in a post where I was making fun of the Times for getting my name wrong. God (or Santa) just pantsed me on the Internet. As usual, I blame the nog.

Of Radiohead and 'Rehab,' '1234' and Calle 13 [NYT]
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/arts/music/23ratliff.html?ref=music [NYT]
Few Big Albums, but Small Ones Sounded Just Fine [NYT]

Technology drives some of the fragmentation. Computers allow musicians to produce a broader range of sounds. Top 40 radio no longer serves as the gateway for the listening public. Music industry executives can use market research to divide consumers into narrower and narrower slices.

But other causes flow from the temper of the times. It's considered inappropriate or even immoral for white musicians to appropriate African-American styles. And there's the rise of the mass educated class.

People who have built up cultural capital and pride themselves on their superior discernment are naturally going to cultivate ever more obscure musical tastes. I'm not sure they enjoy music more than the throngs who sat around listening to Led Zeppelin, but they can certainly feel more individualistic and special.

I knew there was a reason music sucked these days that we hadn't happened upon yet, and of course, it's because people are too smart! Plus they can listen to whatever they want rather than being stuck with the top-down playlists of media conglomerates. Brooks' solution? The heretical teachings of Bruce Springsteen's guitarist.

[Steven] Van Zandt has a way to counter all this, at least where music is concerned. He's drawn up a high school music curriculum that tells American history through music. It would introduce students to Muddy Waters, the Mississippi Sheiks, Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers. He's trying to use music to motivate and engage students, but most of all, he is trying to establish a canon, a common tradition that reminds students that they are inheritors of a long conversation.

Establish a canon?

The Segmented Society [New York Times]

(Mr. Dengler is worried that his Italian greyhound, Gaius, a publicity photo star, is suffering from too much attention.)

Mr. Dengler, of course, is Carlos D, the band's bassist and attention seeker. And frankly, we're surprised that he's trying to pull Gaius out of the spotlight so close to the album-release schedule: We were looking forward to the dog's "Guest List" in Pitchfork, the Animal Fair Q&A, maybe even a wink-wink interview with the Cobrasnake's Shar-pei in Vice. Don't reign him in, Carlos D! You were once a young, Hitler-haired pup yourself!

A Band Minds Its Manners, but Is Coy About Its Suits [NYT}

And, as with all articles written about music-scene trends within the past year, this one invokes the Hold Steady:

[The Hold Steady guitarist Tad Kubler] regards fan interaction as an obligation that is cultural, almost ethical. He remembers what it was like to be a young fan himself, enraptured by the members of Led Zeppelin. "That's all I wanted when I was a fan, right?" he said. "To have some small contact with these guys you really dug. I think I'm still that way. I'll be, like, devastated if I never meet Jimmy Page before I die." Indeed, for a guitarist whose arms are bedecked in tattoos and who maintains an aggressive schedule of drinking, Kubler seems genuinely touched by the shy queries he gets from teenagers...

Yet Kubler sometimes has second thoughts about the intimacy. Part of the allure of rock, when he was a kid, was the shadowy glamour that surrounded his favorite stars. He'd parse their lyrics to try to figure out what they were like in person. Now he wonders: Are today's online artists ruining their own aura by blogging? Can you still idolize someone when you know what they had for breakfast this morning? "It takes a little bit of the mystery out of rock 'n' roll," he said.

Indeed, there's little mystery left about any performer nowadays: Big-name stars are analyzed in-depth by the tabloids and countless TV shows, while lesser-known acts commit every single semi-relevant detail of their daily lives to the Internet; as a result, there are only a handful of artists about whom we can maintain more than five seconds of passing curiosity. For proof, check out this Mystique-O-Meter:

STILL SOMEWHAT INTRIGUING
Prince
Björk
Thom Yorke
Jack White
Trent Reznor
Morrissey

LOSING INTRIGIBILITY DAILY
Bono
Timbaland
Brandon Flowers
Beck
Bright Eyes
David Bowie
Iggy Pop

NO LONGER INTRIGUING
Moby
Pete Wentz
Chris Martin
The Gallagher brothers
Flavor Flav

WE CAN'T EVEN TELL ANYMORE
Madonna

Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog [NYT Magazine]

Director, Senior, A+R (Manhattan) Oversee, initiate, and develop creative repertoire for established artists; manage and oversee recording budgets including producer deals, artists deals, and production deals; responsible for establishing a joint venture with a major record producer; screen, handle, and deal with A+R for President of company; oversee and manage song testing process for all acts, including result analysis Must have experience in managing artists with multiple platinum plus in sales and for marketing budgets of over $5,000,000+, Reqs; Master of Communications degree plus two years experience as Music Marketing Analyst or a Bachelor of Communcation [sic] degree plus five years progressive experience as Music Marketing Analyst. Must also have managerial experience in A+R Send resume and letter of interest to: Room 1587, Attn: Senior Director, A+R, SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, 550 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE.

At first we assumed this was just a requirement-fulfilling formality, but then we started to think about the dozens of heavily experienced A&R folks we know—people who have spent ten years and more than $5 million on their artists, and yet still sit at home, waiting for the phone to ring. This could be their time to shine!

Director, Senior [NYTimes Job Market, via the Velvet Rope]

Sia Michel, Top Pop Chick Once More [Gawker]

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a lengthy Sunday Styles piece on the perceived prominence of black musicians (specifically, members of TV On The Radio, Bloc Party, and the Dears) within the indie-music scene. Because the subject of race tends to get indie-types all hot and bothered—after all, it's a genre that seems to be produced and consumed almost exclusively by white people, a fact of which everyone seems to be aware—the story has been met with considerable debate, and one passage in general seems to have drawn the most ire:

But 40 years after black musicians laid down the foundations of rock, then largely left the genre to white artists and fans, some blacks are again looking to reconnect with the rock music scene.

Ooof! While there's no doubt that rock has been primarily a whites-only enterprise for decades, we're pretty sure that black musicians didn't voluntarily "leave" the genre: rather, they were all but forced out when record labels realized that Pat Boone's version of "Tutti Frutti" could make them a lot more money than Little Richard's rendition. And since when does urbandictionary.com—which is credited in the story for legitimizing the term "bilpster," or "black hipster"—count as a credible Times source? Does that mean we should expect a William Safire essay on "Wentz face"?

Truly Indie Fans [New York Times]

Thanks to the phoned-in half-day yesterday, we're only now catching up with the weekend's less-essential New York Times sections. So we were surprised to notice the Sunday Styles' above-the-fold piece on MTV's reality-show insta-dud I'm From Rolling Stone. Why? Because the article was written by a Rolling Stone contributor, a fact that everyone convenientally forgot to mention.

Although the story is about the media's interest in portraying magazine-office life, it's pegged to I'm From Rolling Stone, and even includes a quote from the magazine's founder, Jann Wenner. That's all well and good, except that nowhere is it mentioned that the author of the piece, Lola Ogunnaike, last year wrote a Rolling Stone cover story on Kanye West. So, in essence, she gets to write about (and quote) a guy who could eventually help her land future plum RS assignments, something that no one at the Times deemed worthy of disclosure.

Look, we realize that writing about the industry that feeds you can get messy. But lordy, does anyone care about conflict-of-interest rules anymore? Or is the Times giving every contributor a permission slip to write about their former and future bosses? Yay, asleep-at-the-wheel editing! Yay, bad journalism!

TV Drama Rips The Cover Off Magazines [NY Times]

THE GOOD: A surprisingly strong showing from Beyonce's B'Day (Sanneh's No. 4, Ratliff's No. 5), although we're not sure how she's going to take having her album described as "gremlinlike." Plus, how can you not love a year-end singles list that—like Ratliff's—contains Slayer, Scritti Politti, and Branford Marsalis?
THE BAD: Sanneh's list grabs from all aisles of the record store, but the Arctic Monkeys at No. 1? Is the NME hyperbole from January still ringing in his ears?
THE WHAAA? Only one mention of Justin Timberlake across all six tallies? Come on now, guys. Surely each of you got freaky to "SexyBack" at least once in '06.

The Glam, the Baroque and the Gritty [NYT]

Yesterday's New York Times featured a front-page story on Tom Finn, a DJ to the upper crust who spins mostly for fancy-shmancy high-society events (he also was a member of the '60s rock group the Left Banke, and served as one of Studio 54's in-house DJs). For years, Finn's been appearing at big-money Manhattan parties like the New York Botanical Garden's fund-raising Winter Wonderland Ball, where no doubt rakes in some of that blue-blood green. So surely, if he's in such high demand, he must be playing some of the most groundbreaking, daring, unexpected sets in the city, right?

At the Wonderland ball, he kicked off the dessert hour with Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You," then, halfway through it, segued into "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Baby" by Barry White. Three couples took to the dance floor and did a few modest twirls.

Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" prompted a few more women to drag their husbands and dates onto the checkerboard, and they held the trains of their dresses and swung their elbows. Mr. Finn played "Bad Girls" by Donna Summer — "Paris Hilton's mother loves when I play this, and I always play it with the vocals low, because she likes to take the microphone and sing over it," he said — and then Madonna's "Vogue," "Dancing Queen" by Abba and "Bust a Move" by Young MC.

By the time he got to "What I Like About You" by the Romantics, just about everybody who was still in the tent — perhaps 175 of the original 250 guests — was cutting a rug....

"I learned at Studio that yuppies really like to dance to the music of their adolescence," Mr. Finn said, as if to apologize for the lack of originality in his selections. "It's not my job to educate them."

Granted, no one wants to go to a holiday party and be treated to a 40-minute Philip Glass suite. But "What I Like About You"? "Bad Girls"? Why not just nix the DJ, and instead put Jock Jams Vol. 2 and the mix tape Jenny's Awesome Farewell to '82 on a continuous loop for three hours?

The D.J. Who Moves the Movers and Shakers [NY Times]

Today's New York Times review of Nas' Hip-Hop Is Dead, written by Kelefa Sanneh, is a must-read for a number of reasons: It uses a recent anti-Nas rant by Young Jeezy to illustrate the regional/generational divide among rappers; it quotes a Pitchfork interview; and it clocks in at over 1,000 words, which ain't too shabby for a publication that years ago was still pumping out story after story about Bavarian opera houses.

Most interesting, though, is that Sanneh combines a critic's detached appraisal with a long-time fan's enthusiasm-slash-frustration: He calls the album "impressive" and "grumpy [and] lovable," but also notes that Nas grown into a "humorless scold"; clearly, Sanneh loves the guy, but you can almost hear his eyes rolling to the back of his head when Nasir pumps out his umpteenth bar of braggadocio (it makes a slow, squishy sound).

And if that's not enough to convince you to read it, it also uses the term "ghetto verisimilitude," which has not been printed in the Times since the Gay Talese era.

Nas Writes Hip-Hop's Obituary [NYT]

For musicians, a deal with AARP is a different matter than a deal with a hip coffee house or a fashion retailer. No matter how hard the group may try to change its image — even with the likes of Paul McCartney and Susan Sarandon on the cover of its magazine — some people still associate it with the Saturday-night-bingo set. And many musicians may want to keep their distance, even if it means sacrificing enormous sales.

"The problem is going to be getting the artists to allow, next to their name, those four feared initials," said Jonny Podell, the longtime talent agent who books appearances for artists including the Allman Brothers Band, Alice Cooper and Peter Gabriel. "I'm the agent for half a dozen acts they're going to want," Mr. Podell said, and "short of saying, 'In addition to your normal fee we're giving you $1 million in cash,' I don't think they'd have one taker." For the artists, he said, "It's about not admitting they're old." For his part Mr. Podell, who is 60, said he has been receiving AARP entreaties for years, and each time "I drop it like a hot potato."

If the AARP is really looking for older-skewing artists who will perform for a cut-rate price, we have a few suggestions. That said, the piece is a surprising reality-check for anyone who assumes the world is run by a bunch of barely legal High School Musical expats: Consumers who are 45 and over now account for a quarter of yearly sales, partially because they can't figure out how the hell to download. But please, dear God, don't let these people start up a music blog—the world isn't ready for teasing frame grabs of the Captain & Tenille sex tape.

Rock Of Ages [NY Times]

We always assumed that husky-voiced singer Cat Power—aka Chan Marshall—liked to get a little blotto before going out on stage; after all, this is a woman who once took a mid-concert break to frolic with a squirrel. But an astonishing profile in today's New York Times details how her boozing, pill-popping, rodent-chasing lifestyle went completely out of control this year, just around the time she was promoting her excellent white-soul album, The Greatest:

About two weeks before its release in January, Ms. Marshall said, she lost her mind: "I was looking at death. I wanted to die." Holed up in her Miami apartment for seven days, she turned off the phone, played Miles Davis on repeat, stopped eating and sleeping. She drank to oblivion and prayed to die.

Susanna Vapnek, a painter, came over to check on her friend. Ms. Marshall was acting bizarrely, obsessively chasing "bad spirits" around her apartment with a lighter and sage. Ms. Vapnek bathed her and stayed by her side. Eight hours later she took Ms. Marshall to Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, where she was admitted.

And that's just the beginning: Read on to find out about Marshall's refusal to bathe, her desire to audition for Saturday Night Live, and the financial dire straits placed on her record label, Matador Records: They blew more than $100,000 pushing the record, which is more than double what they pay Belle & Sebastian's scarf wrangler.

9 Lives And Counting: Cat Power Sobers Up [NYT]
Cat Power - The Greatest [MP3, link expired]