Category: Tech & Leisure

Enhanced Guralnick Bios

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“Mr. Guralnick’s e-book project is a particularly ambitious example of what seems be a growing trend in the publishing world. As the technology for adding ‘enhanced content’ like music, video and documents to the electronic versions of books advances, publishers are incorporating more of that material into work about popular music, whether critical assessments like Mr. Guralnick’s or the autobiographies and memoirs written by musicians…

“Mr. Guralnick, of course, doesn’t control any song copyrights, but he did preserve tapes of many of his interviews, and excerpts have been inserted into the e-book versions of Feel Like Going Home and Lost Highway. They provide both context and atmosphere: In an interview with Muddy Waters at his Chicago home, his grandchildren can be heard scampering around in the background, and during a conversation with the blues songwriter and producer Willie Dixon, conducted at the business offices of Chess Records, the telephone is constantly ringing.”
– Music Writer’s Opus, Now With Sound: Video and Audio Being Added to Peter Guralnick’s Books (Larry Rohter, NYT)

lost-highway

“What’s so Great About Pauline Kael?”

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Don’t ask me why, but the library around the corner had a mint condition soft-cover copy of Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon on their remainder rack for $1 (I know, I know, how utterly poetic of them), so of course I bought it, but then I got to wondering, “Didn’t Pauline Kael once have something to say about Harold Bloom?,” which led me to Google (“harold bloom pauline kael”), which led me to this potentially interesting Kael thread (at MUBI.com), the interest of which I note is “potential” because all I’ve done is scan a few bits from it (and I still don’t know the answer to my original question).

Tools of the Trade

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Jack M Silverstein at Chicago Now says YouTube and smart phones are the music journalist’s new best friends:

…you don’t have to be a pro with a pro set-up to leave your mark in the music journalism game. I don’t know if evilmonkey679 is a rock journalist or just a music lover, but who cares? The Evil Monkey’s channel is FILLED with great you-are-there concert footage. Whatever the intent of evilmonkey679, she or he is now, with the help of a smart phone, a music journalist. Certainly there is more to good journalism than just point and shoot — backstage access, a larger outlet than social media, and the ability to interview and write are still essential tools — but at for base-level reporting, someone like evilmonkey679 is invaluable: on the scene, collecting footage, and distributing quickly.

Update, sort of

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Future of this site is very much up in the air at the moment — plans are underway to soon start moving anything substantial here on the main page over to the archives, with the intention of not renewing the main site in 2012. I may make use of this space in the meantime, not yet sure.

However, at least for the time being, I’m going to try to disable further comments. It’s mostly just spam at this point, and I’m deleting a few a day. If there ends up being new content, I’ll reconsider.

Muxin’ It Up

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Decided to do something a little different with my latest “muxtape” – posted some interviews and spoken word stuff, including a two-parter with Lester Bangs. Listen to it here. [Note: I’m not sure muxtape appreciates the length of all these… previewing some of them at work, I noticed that they cut off early.]

And while on the topic of old interviews, Pacifica Radio Archives, in a tribute to 1968, recently posted a discussion with Pauline Kael (among a bunch of other interesting clips), which you can download or stream here.

Information Highway OD and the User-friendly Remedy

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 We’ve all heard the declarations before; Internet websites are killing print media and print outclasses the net by being the most traditional, convenient and often better quality form of news. It’s like the cable versus major network argument, except with more public participation. All these forms of information sharing and interaction, yet one big communication breakdown. So, what are readers, and especially writers, to do?
Jason Gross, Perfect Sound Forever editor and freelance writer, offers his considered assessment along with some imaginative solutions in his guide, “Surviving the Net Crunch: A Practical Guide for Print Publications in a Digital World,” at PopMatters. One-quarter good hearted “stop sniveling” and three-parts solution focused, there is great for thought, practice and interaction, as respondents have already replied to the article. Both bring up the possibility of symbiosis; how the two media forms may not only coexist, but become a beneficial compliment, playing off the other for innovative content and readership ideas. Why not discuss amongst yourselves here, or there?