Posts by Matthew Littlewood
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Agree it never took off - but some of the production styles and knowledge sure seemed to sweep through hip hop and other forms. And it featured in adverts and background music on tv shows because of its general lack of vocal distraction. Perhaps that silence was part of its failure to go big, even in the face of some very average and even flaccid rock at the time?
Yes, there's something in what you say there. I think the fact it's a very fragmented form of music had a lot to do with it. That and the fact that the longer it's continued, the more insular it seems to have got as a scene.
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/correction to the digression on Ted Kennedy
*There's also other stuff that could make one queasy, such as his donations to the IRA during the 70s and 80s, although to be fair, he became increasingly cool on the organisation as time went on. As I said, a complicated figure, but a giant all the same.
Okay, it should also be mentioned that he was vocal against their terror acts and had a hand in the 1998 Easter Agreement, but still, his dealings in that quagmire were...complicated.
/end digression
Last decade, I had the privilege of stumbling into what I'm told was the second biggest drum'n'bass scene in the world - in Auckland. Admittedly, London was first as you say but I believe New York barely rated.
Just as an aside, has there ever been a more insular musical movement than drum 'n' bass?
Really, its moment to go big- as in mainstream supernova big- passed more than a decade ago, and yet it still keeps rumbling and cropping up in the least expected places (it seems to be big in ChCh, or at least it was a couple of years back), even as its offshoots--grime, dubstep, whatever you want to call them --get more mainstream/aternative press and bigger sales and maybe even bigger gig turnouts. It just doesn't go away.
It boggles the mind, really. I mean, you could call it a sleeping giant were it not for the fact that sleeping giants usually wake.
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Sorry for the jack, but Teddy Kennedy's just died. I might have deeply disagreed with him politically, and the man had a lot of SOB-ness in him, but you had to respect him on some level.
The Chappaquiddick incident will always hang over his legacy*, and his I don't think he should ever be forgiven for that, but to focus on that entirely would be to ignore the fact that most of the good and great progressive legislation passed through the Senate had his hand on it in some way- and there were fewer more tireless champions in the house of LBGT rights (and civil rights in general) and environmental protection than him.
He also earns a lot of credit for calling bullshit on the Iraq War long before most of his fellow Dems, as well as for leading the (failed) fillibuster against GWB's warrantless wiretapping.
In all his flaws and triumphs- and he had many of both- he was a giant of US politics.
I guess the news of his death shouldn't surprise- after all, he had been sick for a very long time- but his passing is significant, not just because he was a Kennedy, with all the baggage that entails.
*There's also other stuff that could make one queasy, such as his donations to the IRA during the 70s and 80s, although to be fair, he became increasingly cool on the organisation as time went on. As I said, a complicated figure, but a giant all the same.
(Btw I'm not really responding to your post as such Craig, more adding my own tribute :) )
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It's a tribute to Finlay Macdonald's wonderful quip about the ultimate contemporary Listener cover line being 'Will your mortgage make you fat?'
Ahem. I think a little linkage is in order ;)
Anyway, to carry on with the "what's wrong with the Listener" discussion, here's what I feel about the points addressed.
The thing with Joanne Black is that she's a columnist. And a good columnist invites the reader into his or her headspace for a short period. In the case of Braunias, his headspace is somewhat wry, slightly eccentric, perhaps a little repetitive in its obsessions with birds and teahouses, but ultimately a very inviting, funny and generous place. It'sfun to visit, even if sometimes you don't want to stay too long.
In contrast, Joanne Black's is maddeningly insular, deadeningly pedestrian, and often quite mean-spirited in an offhand way. It's like being trapped in a dinner party where the only two subjects discussed are houses and the person's daughter.
As Russel Brown said, they really could've got someone with a livelier style as a columnist- Graham Reid or Roi Colbert would've been perfect for the job.
I also feel that perhaps they could bring in a lot more new blood, too- one thing that stuck about Finaly Macdonald's period was the number of (relatively) new names he brought into play, such as Felicity Monk, Olivia Kember, Bianca Zander, Mark Revington, Tim Waktin and the like, as well as rising stars such as Braunias, to go with seasoned talents such as Witchell, Easton, Clifton, Campbell, et al.
I don't think we've seen that same level of "blooding" of diversity of opinion under this editorship. Even Matt Nippert seems to be writing for someone else these days, mostly.
Don't get wrong, there are still some talented features writers contributing to the Listener, but I don't know whether the magazine is nuturing new talent at the moment- which unfortunately has left the magazine struggling for variety. Maybe I'm wrong.
Witchel, Easton, Rae and Clifton are still good though.
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One thing that struck me about the wingnuts gnashing their teeth about Obama and all that he does and their totally batshit crazy fixation with his birth certificate, is the fact that they seem to get all their opinions from a media mogul that hails from Australia. Murdoch became a US citizen for the sole purpose of controlling a vast media circus which is now corrupting the thought processes of the feeble minded.
In the case of FOX news, I don't know how much (if any) editorial control Murdoch actually exerts over the channel. The received wisdom is that he's left operations of the channel almost exclusively to Roger Ailes, and if Murdoch has any say over it, it's probably more likely to be in terms of corporate and profit matters. He's probably just happy that FOX News seems to be rating well and offsetting the losses he's making in the newspaper industry.
Which, of course, shouldn't absolve him completely from funding and profiting from such a genuinely deranged news network. But I'm not sure whether it's completely cut and dry.
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The other thing that many of the opponents are doing is deliberately conflating anger towards the bailouts (passed under Bush) towards the general public's desire for proper health reform.
Erm, just to clarify something here, what I'm saying is that the GOP talking points seem to suggest the public's anger at how sloppily the bank bailouts were handled (and how little regulatory reform was actually passed) somehow has led to opposition towards healthcare reform and the stimulus plan.
I've gotta admit, it's quite impressive how they've managed to pass the GOP's failings onto the current administration as if they're one and the same thing.
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I wonder if members of the public are concerned about the healthcare proposals because they're believing the unreconstructed falsehoods being circulated by a lot of unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies and their bought-and-paid-for lackeys in the Congress and Senate? (Aided and abetted by a news media apparently incapable of doing some basic analysis to go along with their endless punditry.)
Quite.
I think this Tom Tomorrow cartoon sums up the insanity of their current of system pretty nicely.
The other thing that many of the opponents are doing is deliberately conflating anger towards the bailouts (passed under Bush) towards the general public's desire for proper health reform.
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It's different of course, but Helen Clark took New Zealand to war in Afghanistan in the knowledge that it would split the Alliance, and then used the opportunity to declare an early election (despite having the confidence of the House).
Fair point- I was thinking about that as soon as I posted my comment. I must admit, I was very disappointed to see Alliance collapse in the way they did, not least because parliament lost Laila Harre as a result.
(Although, to be fair, her and McCarten have done well for themselves since then. Still, like the late Rod Donald, she was one of those politicians that genuinely seemed in it for the greater good).
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I got that -- but if you want to throw that kind of snark around, it can be turned around. What is keeping Anderton and his meta-fictional party in Parliament besides a little over four thousand folks in Wigram?
True, but it's the way that Hide's willing to risk his role over this issue, and how seemingly unaware that the reform pass without his party's vote. It's politically tone-deaf and oddly megalomaniacal. And that's even allowing for the fact I disagree with Hide here.
As I/S says on his blog "National also has confidence and supply from the Maori Party, which gives them the freedom to tell Rodney to go take a hike (and they'd probably gain public support by doing so). After all, what is ACT going to do - vote against right-wing policy purely out of spite?"And I don't remember Anderton behaving like this in his ministerial roles during the fifth Labour Government.
But maybe we're talking about different issues here.
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And for those who can't get enough of Obamacare-related crazy, the Wall Street Journal is now printing very bad science fiction on the op-ed page. Jesus, there are days I miss being un-medicated..
Meanwhile, the Onion's latest report, Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care seems to be too close to the truth for comfort...