Canned Dragons

Pitchfork recently revised ratings on 20 albums from the past, mostly raising scores, but also lowering some, as well. It was a kind of a strange move, but to be fair, some albums are sleepers and you can’t always tell which ones will stick with you. I’ve long wanted to do a classics review blog post series where I only write about albums that have stood the test of time. There’s a different kind of love that you have for music with longevity that carries you through different seasons of your life.

It’s easy to be cynical about what Pitchfork is doing here, though. They’ve long held themselves as arbiters of taste, deriding work that falls outside the bounds of what they’ve identified as cool-in-the-moment. This sort of temporal attribution lends itself to revising history to fit whatever new parameters of cool have been introduced. Certainly, when the emperor had no clothes, which has been the case in many a Pitchfork fascination, he is easier to expose later on, once the mass hypnosis has worn off. When cooler heads prevail and senses lost in the rush of trendiness are back working, a more judicious appraisal of the work of art can be made. Maybe, though, just maybe, judgment is still clouded, but by whatever new trend has taken hold.

Freddie Deboer is having none of it.

Which they are very close to explicitly admitting is the point: not that there was some deficiency in how the original scores were awarded, but rather that the scores look less like what a cool person thinks now. One little snippet helpfully points out that liking an artist was not cool when the review was written but is cool now; honest, but perhaps this should have been removed in the editing process!

Deboer’s thoughts on the revisions are cutting, but insightful, as usual. He gets deep when he writes about Pitchfork’s performative aspect. In his mind, the writers at the publication would rather signal that they like cool music than listen to music they actually like. I guess you have to give something up in exchange for cultural capital (and ad dollars).

Which, of course, is what Pitchfork has always been about, projecting a certain kind of image of yourself to your peers. Pitchfork is the apotheosis of music purely as signifier, signifier of being the right kind of person, the cool kind, the knowing kind.

Except for the occasional feature that gets linked to from somewhere else, I stopped reading Pitchfork years ago. I think it was when they were intellectualizing low-brow, mainstream hip-hop. Things like “When Chingy says, ‘I like the way you do that right thurr,’ he’s really launching a scathing critique of contemporary sexual mores.” They probably still do that kind of music criticism. I’m just not tuning in to find out.

Revenge bedtime procrastination came up as a topic of discussion on Micro.blog a little while ago (I believe it was brought up by @omrrc and @jean). It’s easy to fall into this practice, which is one in which you stay up late doing all manner of meaningless things just because the time before you go to bed is the only time that feels like your own. You mindlessly scroll through Twitter or vapid news headlines. You play a dumb game on your phone. Many times, this procrastination is done to counteract a day full of meeting demands and the expectations of others. For me, the late evening is sometimes the only part of the day when I don’t feel bad. So, even as my health improves, I’ve still found myself in a pattern of looking at that time as window of opportunity.

Anne Helen Peterson recently took on the subject in her newsletter. She dives into the ways this behavior is a self-sabotaging, because of course losing sleep doesn't help us in the short of long run.

It’s illogical and annoying and only makes things worse. But it’s also what our souls do when we refuse to nourish them. They sabotage our most perfect intentions for sleep, because sleep is not the same as leisure.

A commenter, Leah Libresco Sargeant, noticed the parallel between this behavior and this particular passage in The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.

As the uneasiness and reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures the vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo...you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say...”I now see that I spent most my life doing in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.”

This passage, of course, is the voice of the reliably bad Uncle Screwtape, teaching his dear demonic nephew Wormwood how to ruin a person’s life. Given the strength of Lewis’ apologetics in the book, and the arguments for resisting temptations, I truly now have a different perspective on the putting off bedtime.

Link source: kottke.org

A couple of years ago, I compared contemporary Christians who expressed their desire for an authoritarian ruler to the ancient Islrealites who wished for a king. In both instances, the groups had lost faith in God to protect them and wanted to rely on a strong man. In the biblical book of Samuel, a king was requested of the prophet, a request which he initially rebuked. Eventually, after Samuel spoke with God, on the Lord's command, he relented and found the people a king in the form of a man named Saul. His change of heart came with a strict warning to the people of how a king would treat them.

Consequence of Sound has a post about a “music man” who played show tunes to tame then president Donald Trump when he was at his most difficult.

According to a new book by former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, the “music man” was the only person who could manage Trump’s “terrifying” temper, playing hit songs from musicals to help calm him down.

This reminds me of Saul, who would go into deep boughts of depression that were only relieved by the music of his successor to the throne, David. Psychology Today has an account of the healing properties of music, using this biblical example.

The verses told the story of King Saul who had become tormented by a feeling of melancholy. Saul’s servants suggested that they find a musician who could play for him to soothe his psyche. One of the servants suggested a young man named David who he heard was a skilled musician. Saul was in agreement and so the servants went to find the young David and brought him to King Saul. It then says the following: “And it happened that whenever the spirit of melancholy from God was upon Saul, David would take the lyre (harp) and play it. Saul would then feel relieved and the spirit of melancholy would depart from him” (I Samuel, 16:23).

Saul was not only melancholy, though. He was frequently calmed from great anger by David’s music. The piece goes on to refer to David as a “musical therapist.” I’m intrigued by the continuing parallels between Saul and DT beyond just the demands of their constituencies. The fact that both of them, who came to power in similar circumstances, needed musical therapy, proves to an even greater extent that ancient stories have current applications.

Garrett Martin writes for Paste Magazine about the seminal year for indie rock that was 1995 and the top 20 albums in the loosely knit genre from that year.

After a brief period where the distinction between major labels and indie labels blurred, the value and significance of independent music became clear again. Indie labels gave both musicians and fans a legitimate alternative to the bland, cookie-cutter rock music that had taken over MTV programming and alternative radio station playlists by the start of 1995. That freedom resulted in an unusually fruitful year in 1995, with some of the best bands of the era releasing some of their best music.  

That year looms particularly large in my memory because it contained the latter half of my first year of college and a battle with cancer. The nostalgia factor from this piece almost gives me goosebumps. I either owned or borrowed most of these albums in 1995. Of particular importance to me were Wowee Zowee, The Dirt of Luck, Get Lost, Me Me Me and Electr-O-Pura. I had Wild Love by Smog, but couldn’t process its darkness through the ordeal of my cancer diagnosis and treatment.

When Martin writes about the acts from Lollapalooza that year, I remember having to make the tough choice to see Built To Spill on the side stage instead of Beck on the main stage. To this day I've never seen Beck play. I've seen Built to Spill several times, but I've never regretted choosing what was one of my favorite bands at the time. Local heroes Superchunk joined Built to Spill on the side stage and were hyper enough to get the crowd going.

Due to my cancer treatment, my dad was able to wrangle me seats in the handicapped section, which was pretty close to the main stage. Pavement played a bit later on in the day, and for that we took seats near the front (though not in the handicapped section). The PA's were blasting electronic music when the band came out and Steve Malkmus strode up to the microphone and promptly said, "turn that sh*t off." It would be years and a life lived in Berlin later that would finally bring him around to that genre. It was a good show, though Pavement was never the tightest live band.

I spent a lot of time reading that summer. There wasn't much else to keep me occupied and the internet had not yet become ubiquitous. One of my favorite reading experiences was poring through A Prayer for Owen Meany. It reminded me that even adversity has a purpose in life and helped strengthen my budding faith. My then ex-girlfriend from high school (now wife) has recommended it and had a passion for John Irving novels. I remember the Magnetic Fields' Get Lost LP being the soundtrack to much of that reading. That was a recommendation from my best friend, who later conversed with Stephin Merritt on the subject of crying.

It's taken for granted that any time spent with cancer and scorched earth chemotherapy is going to be tough, but I'll always remember that as one of my favorite summers. Music from that time of my life is still the surest way to bring back the memories of 1995.

Duett has been around for a while, but just came to my attention via Bandcamp's Instagram account last week. I was drawn in by the stylized artwork and colorful pastels on the album cover of their newest offering, Leisure. The contents of the album sound exactly like you would expect from looking at the cover. Over-the-top synths bathe the listener in the color palette of the 1980's. The aesthetic is so completely intact, that the opening track, "Gallery," sounds like it was pulled from an 80's film about Wall Street.

At times, the synthisizer parts sound a bit like a softer, more radio friendly, Com Truise or a band on Jim Smith from Teeel's Synth Recordings label. While the synths dominate, though, there are other instruments that also cling tightly to the sounds of the Regan era. Ostentatious guitar solos pop up in places like the track "Lifetime" and remind you of the chase scenes that were a staple of blockbusters and b-movies alike back then.

Most of the album is instrumental. It's a surprise when, the vocals appear four songs into the affair, in "About You." With vocals in the mix, the band reminds me of Sophie and Peter Johnston, albeit with less range and variation.

You won't find a shortage of bands showing their allegiance to the sonic staples of the 80's. I'm not tired of it yet, though. I need that nostalgia to get me through this decade. I'll happily daydream of John Hughes movies and DeLoreans while listening to Duett.

I recently started listening to the much-acclaimed podcast on the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, produced by Mike Cosper. Mars Hill is the Seattle-based church that was founded by hyper-masculine pastor Mark Driscoll. I always found Mark Driscoll to be deeply suspect and wondered where he fit into Christian theology. In many clips I see or hear of him, he's yelling "who do you think you are???!!!" or "how dare you!!!"¹ He sounds like me when I think my wife has eaten the dark chocolate marshmallows I got from Trader Joe's.

In the podcast, Driscoll goes on about running people at his church over with a bus and there being a pile of dead bodies behind the bus. I could see Driscoll being a drill sergeant or the coach of a sports team, but repping for the Prince of Peace?² It always puzzled me that someone would actually buy into that.

There are indisputably those who benefit from Driscoll’s message of personal responsibility. It resonates strongly with young men. It can be helpful, but like the teachings of Jordan Peterson, it’s not especially Christian in its nature. It could come from a motivational speaker. It could have come from Matt Foley.

I love Mike Cosper and he does a fantastic job with the production values of his podcasts, but I pretty quickly realized I had no interest hearing about this particular figure and his job church. The whole situation is alien to my experience of the church, since the denomination that I am part of, PC(USA), doesn't have celebrity pastors. You won't find dudes in thousand dollar sneakers trotting around a stage. Instead, you will find people (women included) typically preaching in traditional vestments, preaching from behind an old fashioned pulpit.

I've witnessed this behavior in multiple documentaries.  ↩︎

He would be the Bobby Knight kind of coach, throwing chairs and screaming all the time.  ↩︎

The new photo sharing app, Glass, has been getting a lot of attention. One particular corner of the internet where it has received significant buzz is the Micro.blog community. The attention is both surprising and not surprising. It's not surprising because that community tends to be very tech literate and have a great curiosity for new apps and platforms, such as social networks, email tools, blogging services or note taking apps. A well made app like Glass with a new community that already seems to be passionate is bound to be a discussion on the M.b. network of federated blogs. The enthusiasm is also expected because Micro.blog has quite a few very talented photographers.

What is surprising, though, is just that Micro.blog already has a vibrant photo sharing community and an app that specifically supports it. People are already engaged in photo sharing and discussions that grow around that activity on Micro.blog.

In fact, Glass has adopted many of the same design principles that power Micro.blog. You might even call it "opinionated software." Matt Birchtree lists some of the elements of Glass in his post on the app, and I've pulled out the ones that match Micro.blog.

• If you do want to find someone to follow, there is a whole other tab with a list of suggested accounts. These appear to be accounts the app makers like, not ones based on who you already follow.
• There are basically no metrics in the app. You don't know how many people liked a photo, how many followers people have, and you can't even see how many followers you have! In short, this is not a popularity contest.
• You can't even like a photo in the first place. The only interaction is to leave a comment. This makes it harder to show appreciation for the shots you like, but it also makes it feel more engaging since you find yourself trying to think of something to say to people. Why did you like it? Do you have a question about the gear used? It's very clever.
• There are also no hashtags. This is actually something I hope they add in some form later, since finding types of photographers is always nice. Let's just lock it down maybe so we don't get 30 hashtags in every post like you have to do on Instagram.'

It almost seems like the plot of a movie where the protagonist searches for love, only to realize that they had it the whole time in someone who was already their best friend. It will be interesting to see how the Glass community grows and if it offers additional value to the folks already using Micro.blog.

I've included some samples of photos shared on Micro.blog, so that you can get a sense of the kind of exceptional output on the service.

Got my hair cut from a sweet, wise, bubbly lady called Yvonne. I’m sure we’ve all had confusing experiences in hairdressers. This time it was wonderfully smooth and fun. Spending time getting pampered was lovely too. Looking forward to finding my feminine side once more.

You can’t go to Seattle and not shoot the Space Needle. Shot this from our hotel terrace few streets down one evening. I love that you can zoom in and see people on the deck.

I had quite the hills are alive vibe even while shooting this picture.

Sk8er Boy

With liberty and justice for all. Looking out from Upstairs at Caroline. 🍸

My name is Robert, and I have a knowledge management problem. As I mention in my bio, I'm a prolific notetaker. I would consider myself a digital pack rat, if not hoarder. Very few articles make it through my reading cycle without some highlighting and marginalia. Not a whole lot of meetings go undocumented. I collect, I share.

It wasn't until recently that my patterns of behaviors became a problem. It's not an issue to hoard digitally, you can do it at very little expense and keep things nice and tidy. It's not like accumulating physical assets, where you run out of space and crowd yourself out. Unfortunately, I haven't been keeping my data organized. Here are some examples of the messiness of my digital life.

1. Sites that I want to return to may be added to Pinboard, or to a Bear note, or to Drafts, or as bookmarks in my browser.
2. Quotes that I want to keep or reference later may be in Instapaper as highlights, in Drafts as a draft, in a blog post in iA Writer, etc.
3. Photos and screenshots that I've collected for a blog post might be in Photos or somewhere in my files.

At some point in the last few years, my digital garden has grown a lot of weeds.

After the titular character in Voltaire's Candide had traveled the world, witnessing the atrocities and ridiculousness of mankind, he settled down in a home to mind his own business. The metaphor for his state of domesticity is tending a garden. It couldn't be more apt right now, when we have disruption and human beings at their worst in the chaos we read about every day. A place to withdraw and manage could be therapeutic indeed.

Candide, as he was returning home, made profound reflections on the Turk’s discourse. “This good old man,” said he to Pangloss and Martin, “appears to me to have chosen for himself a lot much preferable to that of the six kings with whom we had the honor to sup.” … “Neither need you tell me,” said Candide, “that we must take care of our garden.” “You are in the right,” said Pangloss; “for when man was put into the garden of Eden, it was with an intent to dress it: and this proves that man was not born to be idle.” “Work then without disputing,” said Martin; “it is the only way to render life supportable.”

~ Candide by Voltaire

I don't have a lot of energy to expend, these days. A solid system to manage information can actually save me work. So I listened to the hype around Obsidian from those I follow on social networks and decided to give it a try. At first I was skeptical, and feature for feature, could find most of its power in other tools. The app is cross-platform and it shows. You can tell by the UI and controls it's not a native app on MacOS/iOS. However, I still like the design with the Minimal theme installed. It certainly doesn't stick out like running Emacs on a Mac. It looks better than some native apps like Scanner Pro on iPadOS.

Once I started to watch videos of how people, like Chris Wilson, were using Obsidian for Bible study, things started to click for me. You can checkout Chris' newsletter, Biblically Connected, here. It is a good source for collections of his and other's ideas about personal knowledge management (PKM). It's focused around biblical study, but is broadly applicable. The user base for Obsidian is growing, and its fans are devoted. They're using their Obsidian vaults for keeping track of all kinds of data.

If you like plain text and markdown, give Obsidian a look or two.¹ The whole system is comprised of plain text files using markdown, so it's future proof, and the risk of adopting the app is low. It might help you beautify your digital garden.

Don't give up on the first try. ↩︎

Last week, I chose a live recording of Pictured Resort covering Craft Spells "After the Moment" for the Friday Night Video. I had also searched last week for a Bandcamp link for Work Drugs "Drive" as my lady friend and I had picked that as a standout on my playlist of new songs. I couldn't find the track to share. However, when I went to Bandcamp to search for more tracks by Pictured Resort, I came across the split EP with Work Drugs and the lead track just happened to be "Drive."

This song sounds like it would be perfect in a movie like Mannequin, as Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall cruise around the city streets at night in a sports car (although I believe in the movie it was a motorcycle). "Don't @ me," as the kids say. When a mannequin spends her existence locked in a store, and only becomes animated at night, there is a lot of life to be lived during the hours when the sun is down. The lyrics reflect wistfulness, but the song still promotes the power of relationships to break us out from the mundane.

Film School just dropped a single for "Isla," from their upcoming album We Weren't Here (9/24). Their Bandcamp page describes the song as "is perfect, washed out, glimmering pool side hazy ease." In other words, just right for summer. The track is a departure from their typical sound, and brings to mind Wild Nothing, and even some of their influences, such as Fleetwood Mac and Roxy Music.

"Superperfection" starts awash in feedback and guitar noise. The reverb and distortion pedals are put to good use on this song, which sounds more in line with the typical shoegaze we're used to from Film School. The chorus reminds us of "wild times" while the laconic delivery suggests anything but. Perhaps the morning after.