Janelle Monae, performing “Let’s Go Crazy,” in front of Prince, at last night’s BET Awards. Me, last Friday at the Voice, wondering if she’s too weird to cross over into wide acceptance. Much more to come from me on her, soonish.

Also more to come from me/here/soonish on M.I.A. and Drake, both of whom I chatted a bit about, in a hurried bloggish manner, last week.

I was there doing the same thing two months ago, too, which you can see if you click here and scroll a bit.  This being the highlight, of course.

I was asked by the editor, Mark Deuze, to offer my take on the shape of the current music industries, with a slant toward how careers are taking shape.  Naturally for me I skewed indie, but I also get to lay into 360 deals, chat for a bit about what Radiohead and Trent Reznor were really doing, note briefly how up-and-coming rappers are getting screwed by major labels, go over what “mp3 blogs” are/were/will be, and so forth.

Hopefully it’ll be of use for some folks.  The book, as I understood it while writing my chapter, is a broad survey intended for undergrads to get a grip on the state of things, which you can definitely tell by perusing the TOC.  I’ve read a few of the chapters included, and I can also strongly claim that its contents don’t necessarily hew to the dry practicality of the title.  It’s not, in other words, a book full of dry management advice for budding entrepreneurs.  It’s more a guide for those seeking to understand and critique the current state of things.  More to come on this, I’m sure.

About 40 years later, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett were watching television in their flat, and had the same epiphany: “Everybody on TV’s a fucking zombie,” Albarn told Wired back in 2005.  “The Gorillaz cartoons seem more real to me than the actual people on TV.”  In four decades, then, “vast wasteland” becomes “fucking zombie,” but Albarn and Hewlett’s contribution to public culture has proven to be much more successful.  The two dove headfirst into Minow’s cultural landfill at a time when “public interest” had expanded to incorporate a global audience, and sold more than 10 million albums of post-apocalyptic, polycultural melancholy patched together from “western bad men,” “gangsters,” “violence” and of course, “cartoons.”

Which leads to “Stylo” (click for more).

Even better!  A few of my favorite Pitchfork writers wrote about some of my favorite LPs:

Amy Granzin on Beast Rest Forth Mouth: “If Bear in Heaven’s reps weren’t working New Moon ticket queues with sound vans and promo swag, they missed a brilliant opportunity. No one’s nailed adolescent melodrama this well since, I dunno, My Chemical Romance?” By the way, there’s this, if you’re into that sort of thing.  More importantly (and relatedly), there’s this awesome extract from the before thing.

Douglas Wolk on Bird-Brains: “The album was very clearly made with nothing more than the tools at hand– a ukulele, a couple of pieces of percussion, a yard-sale keyboard, a loop pedal, a crappy cheap mic, some free audio software, and Garbus’ larynx, which gets to express everything her machines can’t take care of. The whole thing is held together with duct tape, but that’s what makes it shiny.”

Mark Richardson nails The Visitor: “The Visitor sometimes feels more like a perplexing sonic game than a proper album. It keeps pulling you back in, partly because you want to take another crack at it.”

Rob Mitchum on jj n° 2 (the album is not a huge favorite, but this passage nails it, and “Ecstasy,” so well): “Never mind that the centerpiece of the record is “Ecstasy”, which over the most enjoyable piece of copyright infringement this year manages to simultaneously recreate the experience of being on MDMA and hanging out with someone who’s rolling and can’t stop telling you about it. But it’s the other songs, with woozy stray passages of Toto and Taylor Dayne, blurts of movie dialogue, and moments of fashionable Afropop and acoustic folk slipping in and out of focus, that make this album fail its urine test.”

We’ll end there.

And because the song’s now in my head:

But that’s not the best part. At the end of 07, I got the chance to write about Sublime as the ninth-best album of the year, and made reference to “10-minute epic ‘The Deal’,” which “floats an ethereal Elisabeth Fraser-sounding vocal over the softest, slightest rhythmic variations.” Looks like Willner’s gone and done me one better on “More”: after that break at 3 minutes, he shifts the piece perfectly, and loops in a huge sample of the ever-lovely “Lorelei” (particularly Fraser’s vocal at about 2 minutes into the original). I probably don’t need to over-emphasize how appropriate I feel this is.

Elsewhere, here’s me on Gentleman Reg’s Arts & Crafts debut Jet Black, and me on the new SFA song “Inaugural Trams.” ]]> http://www.marathonpacks.com/2009/04/as-im-sitting-here-watching-my/feed/ 4 http://www.marathonpacks.com/2009/04/hopefully-soon-ill-be-able-to-post-two/ http://www.marathonpacks.com/2009/04/hopefully-soon-ill-be-able-to-post-two/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:45:00 +0000 marathonpacks http://174.132.200.226/~marathon/mpax/2009/04/769.html Hopefully soon, I’ll be able to post two things: some thoughts on 2009 songs and albums thus far (Phoenix, “My Girls,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs, AC Newman, Royksopp), and more excitingly, my take on some of the best stuff to come out of Indiana lately (the Broderick, We Are Hex, Push/Pull, I’m looking in your direction[s]). For now though, some plain-old link-enabled narcisissm (much more to come this month, too).

Obi Best jumped out at me immediately late last year, then faded a bit, then re-emerged early this year. The closer I got, and the more I realized the template from which she was working, the more my enthusiasm waned. Still, though: Capades is about as solid as vaporous lady-pop gets. The record took a few years to get out in this form, which means, at least to me, that it’s a bit of a yard sale. Hopefully the followup comes from a briefer moment in time–I think that will reward her talents a lot more.

Who knew how much I’d still like Beth Orton, after 12 years? The first time I heard “She Cries Your Name” came in the midst of my Portishead thrall, when the girl I was dating opened a mix with it, and I dismissed it as too “resolutely Lilithy” to play around my friends. Guess I needed a few years of de-douching before I could properly recognize its proper merits. Revisit!

I’m not entirely overwhelmed with the new John Vanderslice single, but he’s a hard guy to be overwhelmed by. This is about as Vanderslician as he gets–impeccably crafted, sensitive, that balance between over-obviousness and obscurantism–and that’s…just fine.

Micachu and the Shapes seem destined for a ridiculous backlash, which is unfortunate. Jewellry (sic) is very good, not the kind of thing that could be called “great”, though it no doubt will be. “Calculator” isn’t the best track on the record (”Curly Teeth” is), but it’s the one that grabbed me first (the Champs riff, doy). The component parts of Music Blog Voltron went a little nuts over the record a month ago. ]]> http://www.marathonpacks.com/2009/04/hopefully-soon-ill-be-able-to-post-two/feed/ 0