Thursday, April 26, 2007

Notes for 4/26/07

- Post will be up shortly--it'll be the EMP paper, but I'm working on some additions that may end up being longer than the paper itself, whoops. Stay tuned. Paper is now up, sans italicizing and most music files, which will have to come later.

- Please see the note at the beginning of the paper--can anyone covert Quicktime files so my 1-minute clip isn't 200+meg? Lemme know and I can give you an FTP login or something, it'd be a huge help. Thanks Eric!

- I have some review in Flagpole this week: The Rosebuds, and an Athens band who I love to death called Telenovela. Here's their MySpace if you want to check out the toonz; three of their best songs are there.

- I also had a review of LCD Soundsystem a couple weeks back that I think I missed, talking about the album in terms of sequencing, as well as a review of Adult.

- And yet more reviews in the new issue of Under the Radar, though I don't entirely remember of what. Cornelius and the Danielson DVD for sure; also Bang Gang and...uh...well, I can't remember. Anyway, they're not online.

- Great, broad post about EMP at Dial M for Musicology:

So what looks like soulless professionalism to people outside of academia
is really just a way of keeping things interesting. Still, things have gotten to
the point where aesthetic advocacy (i.e., saying something is awesome) is
considered not only unprofessional but wrong. Saying Wagner is awesome -- or,
for instance, pointing to the opening contrabassoon E-flat of Das Rheingold and
discussing how all the exfoliating little figures that grow out of that one note
create a musical image for creation itself and then saying now that's awesome --
seems politically regressive. I've written about this
suspicion of aesthetic pleasure before. But what struck me about the EMP pop
conference was how most of its participants seemed to be pretty comfortable
geeking out on their topics, and that the fanboy tone that crept into the
sessions didn't make them any less intellectually stimulating.
"Suspicion of aesthetic pleasure"? Uh oh.

Labels: , , , , , ,

posted by Mike B. @ 12:43 AM

1 Comments:

At May 2, 2007 9:18 PM , Anonymous blonde madonna said...

Mike
Great overview on Hallelujah and pop culture and thank you for posting it on your blog so comprehensively.
As a long time Cohen fan (I have to admit to it) I have been suprised by his recent surge in popularity and my theory is that it has been very much on the back of this one song. Yeh the O.C. I say. Buble has even done a Cohen cover on his latest album and if that doesn't scream mainstream.
Another intersong reference I picked up is Damien Rice (a big Buckley fan) and his song 'Delicate', from the album O, that has the chorus
'So why'd you fill my sorrows
With the words you've borrowed
From the only place you've known
And why'd ya sing Hallelujah
If it means nothing to ya
Why'd you sing with me at all?'
I think it is an apt lyric for some of the uses I see the song put to on TV.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home