EVENTUALLY EVERYTHING WILL BE HAPPENING AT ONCE

Remember when the days were long and rolled beneath a deep blue sky.
Babycakes: Group Therapy

I'm still convinced the internet is changing everything. A pretty boring idea by now to anybody reading this blog, I guess. But like, everybody 20 years ago got their information from newspapers, radio, basic TV, cable TV, movies, CDs, tapes, records... many people still do. Not long before that, there wasn't even cable TV. As recently as a decade ago, even the most dedicated information junkies still had relatively few sources: just add to the list Salon, Slate, and the like, and online versions of news outlets from other mediums. (There were chatrooms and message boards, too, of course but those were different somehow, especially chatrooms. I'll have to think how -- this is a hole in my idea so far.)

Anyway, nowadays, as everybody has probably noticed, there are like a gazillion more voices. These new voices are less authoritative, maybe, but they also have revealed to us that the older media weren't as authoritative as we had assumed, so the shift is self-reinforcing. And just the fact that there are more of them opens them up to previously unheard or even suppressed perspectives (although the simple financial and social requirements behind computers and blogging still pose a class barrier of sorts, for now). I don't know whether it's all a good thing, for society, as an economic issue, or on an artistic level. But it's what's happening.

The blogosphere, too, is different than it was just a few years ago, with the discovery of an audience leading to corporate financing for some, copycat moneymaking schemes at others, and the entrenchment of publications you "have" to read because everybody else does, whether you like them or not. Just like the traditional media. And now, as more of us use RSS readers, the blogs that we actually read via RSS are privileged, too. We aren't as likely to see their comment sections, to interact with them, to click through their blog rolls. When we see random-ass, ugly, live journaly blogs like this one on Google, we're think of them as random-ass, ugly, live-journaly blogs-- different than the bigger blogs. As blogs become more established, we interact with them more the way we did with traditional media than the way we interact with a less-established voice.

But there's no requirement of expertise or journalistic responsibility, at all, for any of this. People sensationalize headlines worse than the New York Post just for clicks, and nobody writing or reading even seems to realize this is essentially lying for money and reprehensible. We can say whatever we want, hold forth on how, like, New Edition were sorely underrated, or how New Edition were totally shitty, and you have no idea whether I've actually spent time listening to the group for hours and hours or not (not as much as I should, mostly know them through the new jack soul-type groups they influenced and then the white boy bands that followed, but hope to revisit). Everybody can at least know all the names now, though, thanks to having so many sources at our fingertips. And everybody always has an opinion. But then again, how did we know "real" journalists weren't full of shit? We thought they weren't, we went to journalism school to be like them only better, but then the more closely you follow what went on in media right before the dawn of the blogosphere, the more ways you find out that people you respected let you down.

People used to sit for hours in front of, like, MTV. In the early 1990s, Disney was a big powerful brand. (People bought NEW Mickey Mouse t-shirts, unironically.) But now, as David Brooks, my sweet Brooksy, finally discovered, we're all deeply fragmented. The cultural capital is in knowing whatever is in the sources that the people you're arguing with don't also follow. So the process may be towards ever greater fragmentation, ever greater loss of authority by the existing authorities. Which brings me to a quote from an old New York Times clip from 2005 that was recently brought to my attention again.

"By weekend's end, it was clear that Intonation had succeeded on its own terms. But it was hard not to think about what was missing, namely the swagger and ambition and hunger of musicians ready to take over the world, or at least the country. Many of these acts seemed happy to stay right where they were, making music for fans who accept them as they are. Any park where Deerhoof is a crowd favorite can't possibly be a bad place. Still, two days is a long time to spend there, let alone a whole career."

What's weird is this was only two years ago. Almost all of us, even some of the most media-savvy, thought there was something bigger. There might not be ever again. It's possible that the age of the transcendent star is pretty much behind us for pop music, and the changes of the past few years are going to accelerate until the media universe becomes infinite, unprofitable, and unreliable. Or it could be that the sub-trend of the new-media establishment starting to act like old media will continue, and by decade's end culture will again be as stifling as it was under Reagan and Thatcher. Or maybe this is 1990, and next year we're going to get Nevermind and the year after that The Chronic. Until then, a successful band now is just a cult band with a really big cult. Bob Lefsetz, of course, doesn't get it:

"Radiohead is a cult band. The cult is quite large, but there's a distinct line around the group of people who care. Beyond that, no one gives a shit. Guy Hands and the media care about the business story, but they don't care about the music."

He contrasts this with the Eagles. Do people really care about the Eagles album? Well, yes. Do people really care about the Radiohead album? OF COURSE, it's great, especially disc 2, but Bob hasn't listened so he doesn't know. And I probably shouldn't admit this, but I haven't listened to the Eagles album.

This is how the future works. It's terrifying, but at least the Eagles are closer to dying than I am unless I die young or they live forever. Which is possible, given whatever deal they made with Satan to get them to the point where even some of the people closest to me kind of like them. It's you or me, Henley! Or David Brooks!

There was a new Robyn album out in 2005. It has since come out in the UK, and it will finally come out in the U.S. soon, or so I've read in the usual places. One way of succeeding in the new environment might be to constantly maintain your cult's interest through touring, blogging, new music, etc. Another way might be the Robyn route-- put out a really good album, and make sure everybody hears about it, so eventually you find the big cult you deserve.

Humpty Dumpty will not be put back together again.

Other recent clicking recommendations:
- This old piece about Bob Dylan (and lager) by David Stubbs. I like how he's honest about his meager background with Dylan (and I like lager).
- Bradford Cox is a better interviewer than I am.
- Jonas Game shows up on Sweden's P3 Live radio show, which is occasionally hosted by Hello Saferide and Sakert's Annika Norlin. Link is to the recent archives, where you'll find a few other familiar names, as well.


We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky as we lie in fields of gold.
Pete Townshend & the Deep End: Hiding Out