Monday, September 10, 2007

the night of the living roast-chicken-skinned baby-boomer rock performers

John [Hollenbeck] handles the tension between dissonance and consonance, density and transparency, structure and freedom, darkness and light, repetition and transformation, etc., better than just about anyone else writing small-group jazz right now. I think this is because he really gets that these concepts aren't mere abstractions -- they are all deeply emotionally meaningful, and anyone who wants their music to actually communicate needs to learn how to blend them effectively.
- Darcy James Argue, Claudia Quintet, Todd Reynolds @ The Stone
I’ve been downloading masses of old albums that aren’t available for sale in any form. These things were never released on CD, they were deleted in the 70s, and they just don’t exist anymore. But there are these guys who have collections that they’re ripping off vinyl, tidying them up and putting them up on their blogs at 320kbps.’

‘I’d never have got to hear any of this stuff otherwise — and it’s like archiving them, only backwards. It’s making sure they don’t ever disappear by releasing them into the wild, rather than locking them up in a vault.
- anonymous musician, in New Music Strategies, Three Conversations About Music
If you’re a no-talent wannabe, who needs publicity to get noticed as you sell singles and never generate any touring income, the major label is FOR YOU!
- Lefsetz Letter, More Rubin/Columbia
I genuinely believe that this current generation of clean living, still performing, stage hogging, liver spotted and roast-chicken-skinned baby-boomer rock performers will not only live on for decades - thanks to advances in computers and robotics they will live forever.

Welcome to a nightmare world where Elvis Costello never ever stops releasing albums. Where Sting is constantly 're-sleeved' into newer, blonder, smugger bodies, like in that sci-fi book Altered Carbon. Where Phil Collins shags your great great granddaughter. Where the babyboomers live on into eternity, sucking all the oxygen out of the pop sphere.
- Steven Wells, Sting, where is thy death?