[contextly_auto_sidebar] THE conquest of the music industry by a small number of technology companies has continued on schedule, but there has been some resistance by musicians and their advocates. One of the most stalwart has been Camper van Beethoven leader David Lowery, who led a lawsuit against Spotify for royalties. Much of the push-back from Lowery and fellow travelers like Blake … [Read more...]
Documenting the Athens Music Scene
[contextly_auto_sidebar] ONE of the first things I saw when I moved to Athens, GA, two years ago was a gallery -- okay it was the landing of a rock club, the Georgia Theatre -- devoted to large, beautifully produced photographs by a guy named Jason Thrasher. Plenty of Athens musical heroes -- R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, for example, and members of the Elephant 6 bands -- were here, as well as … [Read more...]
The Murder of the LA Weekly
[contextly_auto_sidebar] SOUTHERN Californians have been bludgeoned with bad news lately, as a number of media outlets -- LAist, BuzzFeed, Los Angeles magazine, the LA Times, and the OC Weekly -- have either shut down or seen major layoffs. (In Orange County, editor Gustavo Arellano resigned after being asked to machine-gun his staff.) Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the fresh murder … [Read more...]
Rolling Stone, Music Journalism, and the Baby Boom
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LIKE a lot of people I know, I've just finished the biography of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner. Sticky Fingers is more than just the story of one man, though it gets close to its subject: It's a real cultural history of English and American music, of American magazines, of pop culture in general, and a shadow biography of what I call Boomer Triumphalism. Wenner, … [Read more...]
Arts Funding, US vs. UK, and Chamber Music
[contextly_auto_sidebar] ONE of the key issues which underlies this blog and the book which inspired it is the role of public funding in the arts. I hate to give the end away, but one of the concluding points of Culture Crash is the need for more funding in the US, and something closer to a British or European model. (This is hardly an unpopular opinion among my colleagues.) Similarly, I am … [Read more...]
Unions, Journalism, and the Creative Class
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IF we needed another reason to disdain the billionaires who increasingly dominate our political and cultural life: The Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts shut down several news sites, including Gothamist and LAist because the New York staff tried to unionize. This is from a new New York Times op-ed by Hamilton Nolan, "A Billionaire Destroyed His Newsroom Out of … [Read more...]
2017 PEN USA Literary Awards
[contextly_auto_sidebar] TYPICALLY, the PEN awards, held at a fancy hotel in Beverly Hills, ends up as one of the best parties of the year for literary and journalistic folk. The group and its events, of course, also have a bloody point to them: PEN is, mostly, a free-speech group, and its annual banquet is an attempt to honor artistry and freedom of expression and to raise money so they can do … [Read more...]
A Turning of The Tide?
[contextly_auto_sidebar] SINCE I turned my book Culture Crash in four years ago, a few things I described have proven me a bit pessimistic. (Visual art may be healthier than I predicted, and music steaming has become a bit more artist-friendly.) In some cases, though, even this grim tome of mine was a bit rose-colored. Even though I wrote -- against the advice of my editor -- a cautionary … [Read more...]
The Mess We’re In: Politics, Economy and Journalism
[contextly_auto_sidebar] OVER the last few weeks, I've been asked on several occasions if I can explain what the hell happened to this country. (I've been in London and Ireland for some of that time.) The simple answer is that I am as shocked as anyone by the turn in the US (and to some extent by the related idiocy of Brexit.) But I do have some hunches. So while I try to keep this blog … [Read more...]
“Money is a kind of poetry”: Lee Siegel’s The Draw
[contextly_auto_sidebar] ONE of the finest memoirs I've read in many moons comes from veteran literary and culture critic Lee Siegel. His book The Draw tells the tale of an intellectually serious young man in a family w/ a messy, complicated relationship to money and class, which set repeated roadblocks before him. It's lyrical, succinct, at times painful. Here is my Q+A with Siegel, who is … [Read more...]