The Carnival of Music #20


Welcome to this week's best blogging about music

I blog about a lot of subjects, many of them because they have something to do with my business. More and more, lately, I find myself enjoying to blog about music. What I'm buying; what I think about it. And there is no business-oriented excuse for it...it is simply sharing something extremely subjective and quite personal with my anonymous readers. Why should anyone care about my musical tastes? Or what concerts and musicals I see in my little corner of the physical world?

Because don't you just love it when you unexpectedly find a like mind out there in the virtual world?

Recently I posted about how iTunes had turned me into a one-click-purchasing, music-downloading addict. I find myself buying music I would never buy in a brick & mortar store, and not even on Amazon.com, where you still have to wait for the package to show up. The instant gratification of downloading has turned me into someone willing to pay $9.99 to find out whether or not I like an album! And then I feel this relatively new compulsion to share my impressions of all such music purchases with the (not-so) waiting world.

Well, Ross over at The Ministry of Minor Perfidy has the same compulsion I have to list out what he's listening to and what he thinks of it! (If you're into music lists and rankings then there's no better blog for you than FreewayJam. The list of note for this past couple of weeks is the Top 25 women in rock list. How can I not love a music writer who unexpectedly includes such favorites as Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, Bjork and Joni Mitchell?)

And, Carnival of Music host TexasBestGrok finds himself with the same lack of impulse control...when it's not cash, but a gift certificate he's spending. In both our cases we found music we actually liked by suppressing our impulse control, so let your music-buying inhibitions go, people! You might just discover something new and interesting. (TexasBestGrok even finds the new and the interesting via iTunes Celebrity Playlists...I'll have to check them out.)

And for new and interesting it's hard to beat The Assimilated Negro, a guy who's been blogging for all of 3 months and has already gotten picked up by Gawker.com. How does he manage that? Oh, by posting his own original hip-hop creations on his blog. And by using said creations to "pitch" his freelance work targets. If nerve.com doesn't take a meeting with TAN after hearing his hip-hop pitch to them, they're smoking crack.

TAN reminds me a bit of my SF podcasting buddy MIchael Rice and his Cool AS Hell Theatre podcast...MIchael likes to add his own hip-hop flavor to the end of his podcasts with "shout-outs" to various online buddies. He does these podcasts purely to share what he loves with the world and to market himself in a, you guessed it, new and interesting way.

With music there's no getting around that it's all a matter of personal taste. Your brilliant masterpiece is my piece of drivel. Change the ingredients slightly, and you gain and lose fans instantly. Koan Bremner offers a perfect example of this by examining why most music-related reality shows leave her cold...all but one, the UK-based Fame Academy. She likes to see the behind-the-scenes professional coaching and training that the contestants receive. I confess that although I am hooked on American Idol, it was a significant plus that Rock Star: INXS did have a similar "workshop" occur each week, and that the contestants were made to write songs and play instruments too if they could. But with both shows, the fun for me was in analyzing their performances, seeing performers grow and writing about it. It was amazing to me how people I thought were talentless jackasses were the absolute favorites of other people. But there you go. Koan is disappointed that of all the reality shows, it seems like Fame Academy is not coming back, and I have a funny feeling Rock Star may have spawned its one and only re-formed band as well.

Music fandom can stir up strong feelings. I get more anonymous flame mails when I diss a concert or recording (or American Idol singer) than over any other topic. Check out Daily Dose of Denise and how she does a thorough examination of her fandom for one artist...its ups and downs, complete with a major working knowledge of the artist's off-stage life.

Other random, interesting, musical bloggy, things:

Thorough, straightforward post on how a musician should run his or her career from the business side. Source: 43 Folders

The musical you never thought you'd see...a musicalized version of Strunk & White (yes, the English gramar gurus.) Source: Darren Barefoot

Celebrity Death Match: ex-Genesis vs. Coldplay as the Prog Rock Princes want to close a famous Liverpool recording studio. Source: No Rock & Roll Fun

On a closing note, I'd just like to remind everyone that Kate Bush has her first album in 12 years coming out tomorrow! Buy it. In this San Jose Merc via LA Times story [Sorry, reg. req'd.] it sounds like Kate is returning to the style of her Hounds of Love release...disc 1 being individual songs, and disc 2 being a concept piece.

Can't. Wait.

Check out last week's Carnival of Music at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

And get out there and submit to next week's Carnival at Owlish Mutterings.

Posted: Mon - November 7, 2005 at 08:44 AM       EmailFeedback

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