The Serenader. Roberto’s long moon-shadow stretches absurdly across the walls of the house as he plucks prettily at his guitar while his drunk client swaggers like a cat... Like many men in San Cristóbal, Roberto holds two jobs. At night he plays and sings the love songs that men use to woo women; in the day he teaches guitar to young men who may someday be his competition. Of the two jobs, serenading is far more lucrative.
posted on Apr 18, 2008 - View this thread

Atomic Platters :: Cold War Music from the Golden Age of Homeland Security
posted on Feb 15, 2008 - View this thread

...Japanese hip hop has become a significant national, cultural, and business genre since the late twentieth century, and this phenomenon has been applied and has succeeded by using almost the same ideology that was historically used by other Japanese industries like automobile manufacturing. The pioneers in the Japanese hip hop industry like Buddha Brand learned their skills in the U.S. and have successfully been influencing the contemporary Japanese music scene. As a result, the imported hip hop has become a ''Japanized'' products. Many hip hop industries in Japan have modified the American hip hop into Japanese ways, and their businesses, like the hip hop dance schools, have succeeded.

The Japanese Hip Hop Movement: Its Cultural and Economic Impact
posted on Jan 19, 2008 - View this thread

Breakfast looks different to different people. That alone made me wanna post this cuz that's just hella cool, but after I saw that, I started wondering what does breakfast sound like? Why should we even bother with breakfast? Here's some more thoughts on breakfast. Hungry yet? This was a great movie by the way. I guess that one was okay too. So what did you have for breakfast? [previously]
posted on Oct 8, 2007 - View this thread

NickCaveFilter: Fifty years ago this very day, Nicholas Edward Cave [previously] crawled from the womb and started to plot.  At 16 he formed his first band which evolved quickly into the Boys Next Door [Shivers].  This in turn mutated into the Birthday Party (1980) who terrorised the post-punk soundscape in Australia and the UK [Release the Bats | Nick the Stripper].  The Birthday Party relocated to England and in 1984 the band imploded in an orgy of drugs and booze.  Shortly after Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were born [The Ship Song - video & solo live | The Mercy Seat - video & live | Where the Wild Roses Grow], and 23 years and 11 studio albums later (not to mention a best selling book, a great screenplay, some acting and several soundtrack projects) he is still going strong.  But, instead of sitting on his musical laurels he decided to get back to basics and, in 2006, grew a huge moustache and formed Grinderman – a four piece with a primeval hybrid Birthday Party/Bad Seeds sound [No Pussy Blues | Honey Bee].  Fellow Mefites, I ask you to raise a glass to Mr. Cave… And, especially if you are not familiar to his work, don’t forget to “look inside” for my primer on the enigma that is Nick Cave, one of the finest song-writers on the face of this miserable planet.
posted on Sep 22, 2007 - View this thread

Some more great french guitar players. Nelson Veras first came to France to meet Pat Metheny (he was 14 then, it has been documented on video by Frank Cassenti) but upon meeting some other jazzmen , he decided to stay in France and to experiment in various settings. Robert Crumb isn't exactly a "great french guitar player", but his decision to move to France (his or his wife's decision) and later his responsability in the creation of Les Primitifs du Futur has played a part in the rebirth of ancient french styles ("musette") and the renewed interest in old jazz and blues forms.
posted on Sep 10, 2007 - View this thread

While Courtney pulled an Albini, Jeff handed out the bread. Are the peasants acting like emperors, or do they still want something shiny, aluminum, plastic, and digital? Debacle or cage, something's got to give (pdf). Alternatively, you can just roll your own.
posted on Feb 4, 2007 - View this thread

Striking photographs of the masked wrestlers of Mexico, Lucha Loco by Malcolm Venville. [via the amazing everlasting blort] [more inside]
posted on Feb 3, 2007 - View this thread

The New York Times on Being Black and Indie You're an African American, but you prefer Bloc Party to 50 Cent. Fear not, young "blipster," you're no longer the only black guy at the indie rock show! [via]
posted on Jan 28, 2007 - View this thread

All I wanted was a pepsi.
posted on Nov 18, 2006 - View this thread

Rainbow in the dark: Gays in Metal From the best metal magazine around, Decibel.
posted on Aug 16, 2006 - View this thread

Inner City Youth, London "In 2002, Simon Wheatley began photographing London's publich housing developments...and was able to obtain a level of intimacy with his subjects that provides a true picture of the daunting project of growing up in the intimate confines of drug use, societal neglect, and poverty." This (Flash-based) narrated slideshow features Wheatley's work, and is a look at the culture...and also the music (grime) "as an artistic response to the place and circumstance, an expression of the violence, bleakness, and neglect..." (via Future Feeder)
posted on Jul 20, 2006 - View this thread

Taylor Hicks wins American Idol.... It could be something worth talking about given how powerful the show has become: #1 show on television, contributed to over 30 million records (records -- yes records not itunes singles) sold, and a show where Queen, Rod Stewart, and, tonight, TAFKAP (or he could be Prince again) are clamoring to be on it. Moroever, some conventional wisdom seems to support that the show is not karaoeke-izing pop music and instead contributes to it surprisingly positively. While it might not lead to debates on metafiler, arguments as to what makes a good Idol can be seen here.
posted on May 24, 2006 - View this thread

Culture Catch is an online "magazine" featuring vid and podcasts of musicians such as Mark Kozelek, American Music Club, Les Paul and Tony Visconti. Plus: Todd McFarlane, Sir Richard Branson, Henry Rollins, Gisele, David Cronenberg and more.
posted on Mar 30, 2006 - View this thread

Wade in the Water In 2004, Smithsonian Folklife Festival featured the maritime cultures of the Mid-Atlantic region, from Long Island to North Carolina. Now, this site gives a home on the web to the cultural documentation gathered for the festival -- music, recipes, stories and oral history, an interactive map, the occupational folklore and natural history of regional fisheries, photos, video, and more. The material, ably compiled by folklorists and educators, creates a lasting and very accessible archive of festival highlights as well as an excellent overview of the distinct coastal culture of the Mid-Atlantic. Don't miss the great menhaden net-hauling chantey Help Me to Raise 'Em (links to mp3).
posted on Mar 27, 2006 - View this thread

More 60's Euro Pop
posted on Feb 1, 2006 - View this thread

Hippocamp Ruins Sgt Pepper's A group of electronic artists have worked on a "ruined" version of the Beatles Sgt Pepper's classic. Designed to accompany and contrast with the ".... Ruins Pet Sounds" release from earlier in the year .... this ruined release exists to be compared and contrasted to the original album and its artistic competitor Pet Sounds. The original classic is recontextualised through the humour and vision of these artists whose approaches to the tracks aims to re-examine Pepper's through a filter of 2005 technology.
posted on Dec 10, 2005 - View this thread

The Streets of Laredo: The Cowboy's Lament was originally written as the Irish drover balled Bard of Armaugh (or Armagh), which later mutated into A Handful of Laurel, about a young man dying of syphilis in a London hospital, musing back on his days in the alehouses and whorehouses. Immigrants settling in the Appalachians brought their own version, The Unfortunate Rake, sung as early as 1790, about a young soldier dying of mercury poisoning, a result of treatment for venereal disease, who requests a military funeral - a slight but important evolution from the previous version. The current lyrics are most popularly attributed to cowboy Frances Henry "Frank" Maynard, who copyrighted them in 1879. While various versions of the song were popular in the US before Maynard took pen to paper and needle to wax cylinder (under such titles as Locke Hospital, St. James Infirmary Blues, Tom Sherman's Bar and Way Down in Lodorra), his version is the one with which we are most familiar today.

beat the drum slowly, play the fife lowly / sound the death march as you carry me along / cover my body in sweet-smelling posies / for I'm the young (rake, soldier, man, girl, lass, etc) cut down in (his/her) prime (or and I know I've done wrong)

The song has been recorded by pretty much every country, western and folk-identified musical artist since recording music became practical, although the most popular versions must be those by Arlo Guthrie (who once said it was "the saddest song I know," and who sings it on his album Son of the Wind) and Johnny Cash (who added a few verses to his 1965 version, improving the song a bit and making it more emotionally complex). Roger McGuinn's creative commons-licensed version is one of my personal favorites, as is Bobby Sutliff's version.
posted on Aug 3, 2005 - View this thread

Salon (with letters) on Gwen Stefani's clueless appropriation of Japan-ness.
posted on Apr 13, 2005 - View this thread

Not hip to to new trends? Avril Lavigne's music sounding terrifyingly alien? APM ("Music Solutions for Business™") explains Punk (and other current trends), with helpful original music.
posted on Mar 2, 2005 - View this thread

The best music videos ever produced. A list, for those that like to watch.
posted on Feb 23, 2005 - View this thread

While culling my clippings file for the big move, I came across Ragtime: No Longer a Novelty in Sepia, which led me to the The Rag-Time Ephemeralist, a labor of love by one Chris Ware , whose 'The Acme Novelty Library' and Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Boy In The World I had long admired. The Ragtime Ephemeralist's mention of Out of Sight - The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889-1895---here's a review from Musical Traditions--and, its very own links page, as a consequence, led to this post about Ragtime, Cakewalks, Coon Songs and Vaudeville, with a slight nod to Barbershop Quartets. There's more, of course...
posted on Jan 21, 2005 - View this thread

Eminem is Right If yesterday’s rock was the music of abandon, today’s is that of abandonment
posted on Dec 11, 2004 - View this thread

The best essay on hip-hop I've read...
posted on Dec 3, 2004 - View this thread

For Westerners, the index case of subculture has to be the 1960s UK conflict between the razor-sharp, tailored mods and their mortal enemies, the greasy rockers.

Difference was critical to these first self-identified youth subcultures: difference in dress, in music, in drug of choice, in the favored mode of transport...everything. This obsessive focus on not just standing out, but standing out just so - on showing the world precisely the right angle of a hat, length of a coat, shortness of hair - has defined many a subculture since. We recognize b-boys, ganguro girls, and straightedge punks by such deployments, among many, many other identifiable groups. (It's not just a youth thing, either: leathermen and the delightfully recrudescent roller derby culture are largely adult phenomena.)

To a devotee of a given subculture, such matters, far from being a "narcissism of small differences," are a matter of pivotal import in framing how one presents oneself to the world: how we want to be seen, how we want others to understand us. But I'm getting older now, and further out of the loop, and I realize that just maybe I'm losing the ability to discern these differences in the people I pass walking down the street. I find myself asking, who and where are the new subcultures? And how do they choose to present themselves to us?
posted on Sep 25, 2004 - View this thread

A Kind of Innocence We'd Never Seen Before: Thoughts on the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, and Collective Consciousness
posted on Aug 29, 2004 - View this thread

Nick Hornby discusses pop music in this NY Times essay: "Maybe this split is inevitable in any medium where there is real money to be made: it has certainly happened in film, for example, and even literature was a form of pop culture, once upon a time. It takes big business a couple of decades to work out how best to exploit a cultural form; once that has happened, 'that high-low fork in the road' is unavoidable, and the middle way begins to look impossibly daunting. It now requires more bravery than one would ever have thought necessary to try and march straight on, to choose neither the high road nor the low. Who has the nerve to pick up where Dickens or John Ford left off? In other words, who wants to make art that is committed and authentic and intelligent, but that sets out to include, rather than exclude? To do so would run the risk of seeming not only sincere and uncool - a stranger to all notions of postmodernism - but arrogant and vaultingly ambitious as well."
posted on May 26, 2004 - View this thread

From Abba to Zappa
posted on May 21, 2004 - View this thread

Jimi Hendrix's National Anthem, on acoustic cello. Plus Bach at CBGB (to mixed reviews), and a national club tour, and an album.
posted on Dec 27, 2003 - View this thread

The Song Is You: If ever there was a perfect singer - and I do mean perfect - it was Ella Fitzgerald. Her Songbooks (please scroll down for the listings and samples) are still - and will always be - the best collection there is of the great American standards. That is, if you don't mind crying and having the little hairs on the nape of your neck stand up and revolt. And swing. They'd be the last records objects I'd be willing to part with: they're the mother's milk of American Western popular culture. So imagine my surprise when I found their perfect counterpart on the Web: the best-ever collection of lyrics to the songs of the greatest American composers: Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Richard Rodgers. Admirably, the compiler has gone way beyond his duty and included wonderful standards (quite a few unknown to me) that even Ella never got around to singing. Thank you, Todd. And God bless you, Sir!
posted on Sep 22, 2003 - View this thread

The Synchronicity Archives includes the well known synchronization of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon with a viewing of The Wizard of Oz, as well as other entertaining combinations. Has anyone tried Led Zeppelin and Lord of the Rings ?
posted on Jul 9, 2003 - View this thread

Pop Culture vs. War!! (avert eyes) So Madonna pulls her anti-war video at the last minute, "never to be seen again". Have to say, it sounds just as finely-wrought a piece of art as G.Micheal's Shoot the Dog. Meanwhile, Lil' Kim attempts some bridge-building between the cultures with this subtle intervention. In times of peace, we expect pop musicians to shoot their mouths off about anything - that's what we pay them for. But I haven't been impressed by anything from rock'n'pop yet in this war. (Micheal Moore's press conference at the Oscars rocked harder than any of them). Is it straight forward fear of career death (see Dixie Chicks)? Or is it just that nobody can do this (dylan) or this (Starr) anymore?
posted on Apr 2, 2003 - View this thread

Race/Music: Corrine Corrina, Bo Chatmon, and the Excluded Middle. Bo Carter is not the household name that, say, Robert Johnson is but he first recorded and most likely wrote one of the standards of the 20th Century. The essay linked deals with him, his song and the push me-pull you of race and culture in America. It's a post graduate thesis rife with postmodernist terminology--yet full of ideas and insights, not all of which I necessarily endorse or agree with--but which I've found thought provoking. (Details Within)
posted on Aug 1, 2002 - View this thread

French politicians polish cultural credentials. France's presidential hopefuls have begun pledging to defend the country's cherished culture, hoping to drum up support from artists worried that American films and music will steamroll finer French productions. This rhetoric makes it sound like American films are picking up guns to massacre poor defenseless French culture. Maybe American films are so successful because they give people something that the "finer French productions" don't, and if so, then is that such a horrible thing? After all, we are just giving the people what they want, right? And if that takes money away from more artsy productions, then whose fault is that anyway?
posted on Apr 8, 2002 - View this thread

Rock Stars who Sell Out. The days when musicians made headlines by wrecking hotel rooms, raging against the establishment and disparaging corporate America seem long gone.
posted on Mar 5, 2002 - View this thread

Fighting Words on White Rap: but not what you'd expect, especially from the Village Voice:

Our children—are in crisis, trapped in the grip of a culture that glorifies drug use and debauchery, slovenly dress, and lack of respect for authority. A culture whose worship of antisocial behavior and debasement is rivaled only by its amoral concessions to the dictates of mammon.

This can largely be attributed to the unfortunate dominance of black popular culture, and—more specifically—hip-hop. In the past, mainstream culture refined raw black cultural materials, resulting in musical zeniths such as the recent neo-swing movement, which briefly presented a viable outlet for young dancers unwilling to subject themselves to the degrading influence of rap and rave music. This has got to be a put-on . . .
posted on Nov 29, 2001 - View this thread

Is the music industry headed in a new direction after the events of last week? And I'm not talking about the release of the new Jay-Z album.
posted on Sep 20, 2001 - View this thread

Wall of Sound shuts down on Friday, June 1. The music news and reviews site, a long-time (4 years+) gem of the Internet, is going away. Visit while you still can.
posted on May 31, 2001 - View this thread

«Êtes-vous un mod ou un rocker?» At the earsplitting industry schmoozefest I attended this week (which I am forbidden to link to because I blogged it at one of my sites), I beelined toward the more interesting-looking people. One fella had a full-on mod look. I listen to the show Mods & Rockers on CIUT, and I claim to understand Blow-Up. But I was impressed as hell by an explanation of the origin of the terms mod and rocker. It's the sort of cultural introduction I wish more people would write – after you teach yourself what a concept is, you document that self-teaching for others. Hey, it's the Internet gift kulcha, innit? (Also: Mod films!)
posted on Jun 25, 2000 - View this thread