No Radio Free Lunch

Placeholder!

2012-02-12T13:18:00.001-06:00

Placeholder! This is a placeholder post, because having a video come up on my homepage seems to be making Chrome very slow. I will try to find something more interesting to put up here later. I've also simplified the design to a generic blogger template. I don't like it much but I wasn't crazy about the last one either. Look for a retooling in the near future.

The Alabama Shakes

2012-01-18T23:30:00.001-06:00

I'm just going to post a song by this band everyday until...something happens, I don't know what.

The Whole World

2011-12-11T10:31:00.001-06:00

Alright. I am finishing up writing 19,000 words and change about authenticity and the blues, and just realized that, in some ways, this video says it all. Well, maybe not all of it, but what it does say it says more succintly.

Phonographic Revivalism

2011-10-01T15:06:00.001-05:00

Note: I'm trying to get something right in the chapter I'm working on, and sometimes it helps to lay it out in a few paragraphs here, so, here: As a musical form, the blues is often defined and discussed in terms of authenticity. There is the blues, the real blues, the deep blues, and the real deep blues. There is the race-haunted question of whether white folks can really play the blues,

"Please don't make me face my generation alone!"

2011-09-17T02:17:00.001-05:00

Is that a great line or does it just sound like its supposed to sound like one? It works just fine in this song: Is this band (fun.) huge? They seem like they should be. Watching this video, I'm struck by the way that,for me (and I imagine other members of generation video ground zero), the pleasures of watching a music video include a nostalgia for the unsatisfying. This

2011-09-13T09:06:00.001-05:00

Genre is the wisdom of crowds.

Thank you for watching.

2011-09-11T00:53:00.000-05:00

I have to write this because I don't know where it goes but I don't want to lose it. I've commented on this before, but for anyone interested in the history of pop music, material culture, and technological sociability, videos like this are a gold mine. I think that they might constitute some heretofore unknown genre of video. I'm going to start collecting them, and the collection starts here

Union Man

2011-09-06T01:32:00.000-05:00

Well, Labor Day, or as Barrett calls it, "fake May Day" is almost over, but I still want to say something about a certain song. "Union Man" by the Cate Brothers, from their 1975 album, Cate Bros. (pronounced "Cate Brothers"), produced by Steve Cropper, who also plays guitar on several tracks, including this one. Here's the the songs, before we get much farther in: Its easy, in the first

2011-07-04T18:20:00.001-05:00

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass July 5, 1852Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me,

Blues Revival

2011-04-27T02:28:00.000-05:00

I'm channeling the blues revival of the late 50s/early 60s, specifically the interest in what was called the Country Blues (by Sam Charters) in 1959, but which had, by 1964, become the Delta Blues, though much of it was not from the Delta at all. Anyway, a few things are clear: 1. Despite all the rhetoric about folkie authenticity, communal song archives, and primal individual expression, the

Sunday's page(s)

2011-04-04T08:53:00.001-05:00

While the band asserted their own definition of “American” values offstage, the real opportunity to complicate the tour’s narrative came during performances. I have spoken previously of “crossover narratives” as discursive formations intended to authenticate individual performers whose career or body of work is held to defy genre boundaries. I have argued that, more often than not, it is more

Megraw's Recipe

2011-04-03T02:09:00.000-05:00

for finishing = 1 page a day. Every day.

Marshall Stearns: The Story of Jazz

2011-03-19T13:58:00.002-05:00