Neil Diamond is being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Neil Diamond? Rock and roll?
Brain smokes, sparks, goes into sleep mode.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
No ID Required
Because of the radio station switchover I mentioned the other day, I'm back to listening to the regular dismal radio stations available in Oklahoma City when I drive. Sure, the former Spy has been replaced by a jazz/pop standards station that plays some really good music, but something may have changed about the broadcast signal because it's not as easy to pick up anymore.
So earlier today I had the radio tuned to one of the "classic rock" stations in town -- I can't remember which one and it doesn't really matter -- and the disc jockey followed up a performance of Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" by saying, "That was Fleetwood Mac 'Go Your Own Way' off their album Rumours." That made me laugh.
Really? You play a 34-year-old song that probably gets air on your station at least four or five times a week and you feel like you have to identify it? The whole point of the classic rock format is to never play anything new: Who in the heck is not going to know "Go Your Own Way" when they hear it? I kept listening, and the DJ subsequently identified Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" and the Rolling Stones "Brown Sugar." Good thing, too, because it takes probably a full second of either song before it's obvious what it is.
In the earlier days of radio, DJs often selected the music they played. Bands and artists would send songs to the station and the DJ would pick some, see if people liked them, and keep them in rotation if they won approval. At the very least, the DJ had the role of telling you what song you had heard, because you might not have heard it before. Now they rarely if ever do the former, and it seems like 80 percent of the time, they don't need to do the latter.
Nowadays, DJs seem to do very little beyond yammer, either in the studio or at some remote broadcast with a sponsor. Maybe them yammering is preferable to some car dealer yammering during a commercial, but not by much. When it comes to the classic rock format, disc jockeys are rapidly nearing the screen-door-on-the-Nautilus stage. One more step towards "Radio Nowhere."
So earlier today I had the radio tuned to one of the "classic rock" stations in town -- I can't remember which one and it doesn't really matter -- and the disc jockey followed up a performance of Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" by saying, "That was Fleetwood Mac 'Go Your Own Way' off their album Rumours." That made me laugh.
Really? You play a 34-year-old song that probably gets air on your station at least four or five times a week and you feel like you have to identify it? The whole point of the classic rock format is to never play anything new: Who in the heck is not going to know "Go Your Own Way" when they hear it? I kept listening, and the DJ subsequently identified Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" and the Rolling Stones "Brown Sugar." Good thing, too, because it takes probably a full second of either song before it's obvious what it is.
In the earlier days of radio, DJs often selected the music they played. Bands and artists would send songs to the station and the DJ would pick some, see if people liked them, and keep them in rotation if they won approval. At the very least, the DJ had the role of telling you what song you had heard, because you might not have heard it before. Now they rarely if ever do the former, and it seems like 80 percent of the time, they don't need to do the latter.
Nowadays, DJs seem to do very little beyond yammer, either in the studio or at some remote broadcast with a sponsor. Maybe them yammering is preferable to some car dealer yammering during a commercial, but not by much. When it comes to the classic rock format, disc jockeys are rapidly nearing the screen-door-on-the-Nautilus stage. One more step towards "Radio Nowhere."
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Gravy in the Thermos?
This chart can help you determine which baseball team you should root for. As a Royals fan, I apparently carry a Thermos filled with gravy, but I didn't know that. My Cardinals fandom is somewhat more complicated.
Of course, a quick glance shows that there is only one qualification necessary to be a Yankees fan.
(H/T Yeah Right)
Of course, a quick glance shows that there is only one qualification necessary to be a Yankees fan.
(H/T Yeah Right)
Thirty
Whether you agreed or disagreed with his position, you could almost always count on columnist David Broder to have presented you with the path he took to get there as well as the information on which it was based. You could decide for yourself if he hit the target or missed, and be able to point to where you thought his interpretation went astray.
I also don't remember Broder buying into much of the hysteria of bashing folks with whom he disagreed -- at least, if he did, it was done in a low-key genteel manner that showed more respect than enmity. Mr. Broder's long-serving keyboard falls silent, as he passed away today at 81.
I also don't remember Broder buying into much of the hysteria of bashing folks with whom he disagreed -- at least, if he did, it was done in a low-key genteel manner that showed more respect than enmity. Mr. Broder's long-serving keyboard falls silent, as he passed away today at 81.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Winnah Winnah Potluck Dinnah!
The good folks at Christianity Today magazine took a look at a lot of old hymnals for an article in their March issue, which focuses on worship.
They wanted to see which hymns have lasted through the years in the American church, and came up with 13 hymns that appeared in 28 different hymnals throughout the history of several U.S. denominations. Nine others made it into 27 of the 28 hymnals and five were in 26 of 28.
So I'll do a little non-scriptural denominational boasting and note that of the 27 hymns CT listed, four were written by Charles Wesley, co-founder of the Methodist movement with his brother John (The movement wouldn't become a separate church until after the American Revolution when its Anglican base became a wee bit unpopular). Ol' Chuck is one up on his next competitor, Isaac Watts, and those two are the only hymn writers to make the list more than once. Isaac does, however, put two hymns in the 28-for-28 list while Chuck only has one. John Mason Neale's two appearances are as a translator of older hymns, although he also wrote some of his own, such as "Good King Wenceslas."
John Newton appears on the list, as might be expected, but with "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken" instead of his best-known hymn, "Faith's Review and Expectation." Of course, most of us know that one better as "Amazing Grace," and one reason it may not have made the list of appearing in all of those hymnals is that it developed its popularity later than a lot of other hymns. Steve Turner wrote a sort of biography of "Amazing Grace" that outlines how both the poem and the tune connected to it grew together until it reached its modern ubiquity.
Anyway, congrats to Chuck Wesley, writing the hymns everybody sings in church since the 18th century!
They wanted to see which hymns have lasted through the years in the American church, and came up with 13 hymns that appeared in 28 different hymnals throughout the history of several U.S. denominations. Nine others made it into 27 of the 28 hymnals and five were in 26 of 28.
So I'll do a little non-scriptural denominational boasting and note that of the 27 hymns CT listed, four were written by Charles Wesley, co-founder of the Methodist movement with his brother John (The movement wouldn't become a separate church until after the American Revolution when its Anglican base became a wee bit unpopular). Ol' Chuck is one up on his next competitor, Isaac Watts, and those two are the only hymn writers to make the list more than once. Isaac does, however, put two hymns in the 28-for-28 list while Chuck only has one. John Mason Neale's two appearances are as a translator of older hymns, although he also wrote some of his own, such as "Good King Wenceslas."
John Newton appears on the list, as might be expected, but with "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken" instead of his best-known hymn, "Faith's Review and Expectation." Of course, most of us know that one better as "Amazing Grace," and one reason it may not have made the list of appearing in all of those hymnals is that it developed its popularity later than a lot of other hymns. Steve Turner wrote a sort of biography of "Amazing Grace" that outlines how both the poem and the tune connected to it grew together until it reached its modern ubiquity.
Anyway, congrats to Chuck Wesley, writing the hymns everybody sings in church since the 18th century!
Monday, March 7, 2011
Cyber-Silly?
I suppose I sometimes sound like an old grump when I wonder whether or not everything on the web is an unalloyed good. Or maybe a wee bit hypocritical, since this is a blog and it wouldn't exist except for the web. People who have no web access will never be able to read it! And to answer your question, my door still stands, unbeaten-down by the hordes of web-less folks demanding access to airport-novel reviews, Firefly-inspired rants and grouchy ramblings.
I do wonder, though, whether we are really giving ourselves the time to think through the changes and such that moves to the all-digital realm bring about. This long article for The Nation highlights some of the problems that come from believing such changes are only good and have no down side.
Recently, my favorite local radio station, The Spy, left the airwaves and went to web-only content. The station manager felt the company offering to sell him their transmitter was charging more than it was worth and decided to make that change rather than spend too much on something that was assessed at a lower value than the asking price. There's really no room to quarrel with a decision like that; it's his money and even if it hadn't been, how do you argue with a responsible decision like not paying inflated prices?
Since it's web-only, that means no listening in the car. Unless, as the station's many Facebook fans suggest, you use the iPhone app to get the signal and them plug your phone into your car's sound system. And other smartphone apps are on the way! And then car stereos will start including 4G streaming as a part of their system. And if Obama's universal 4G plan passes, it can be everywhere! When? How? For whom? We don't know, but it will be really cool. And so on and so on, adding more and more what-ifs that, should they happen, will turn the currently exclusivist web-only format --that needs you to buy a new phone or a new stereo or a new car or whatever -- into something that resembles the far more inclusive format of broadcast radio. Right now, a significant portion of the web and its benefits remain the province of the relatively wealthy. Sure, a homeless person can get online through a local library, but any community that can afford a library with power, computers and internet access is wealthy by the world's standards.
But aside from that, there's the loss of the happy accident you might have of searching along the radio dial and finding something really interesting. Few radio dials anyplace offer that anymore, to be sure, as preprogrammed formats safely hide behind consultant-created playlists. The difference is that to listen to online content, you have to already know about it and point your web browser there. I might have been scanning my dial and found The Spy when I was intrigued by, say, the version of Camera Obscura's "French Navy" that they recorded at the station's studios. But not now. Now, I don't have to search and seek to discover something; I just click what I already know online and there it is.
Is the loss of unexpected discovery in radio the worst thing? Probably not, but there are other changes an all-digital world will bring that will have a much bigger impact. Is it possible that new formats will offer benefits that outweigh that loss or create new avenues for those kinds of discoveries? Perhaps so. But if not, will we be able to recover what we lost? I don't know, and it doesn't seem like many other people, a lot smarter than I am, know either. Maybe we should start asking.
I do wonder, though, whether we are really giving ourselves the time to think through the changes and such that moves to the all-digital realm bring about. This long article for The Nation highlights some of the problems that come from believing such changes are only good and have no down side.
Recently, my favorite local radio station, The Spy, left the airwaves and went to web-only content. The station manager felt the company offering to sell him their transmitter was charging more than it was worth and decided to make that change rather than spend too much on something that was assessed at a lower value than the asking price. There's really no room to quarrel with a decision like that; it's his money and even if it hadn't been, how do you argue with a responsible decision like not paying inflated prices?
Since it's web-only, that means no listening in the car. Unless, as the station's many Facebook fans suggest, you use the iPhone app to get the signal and them plug your phone into your car's sound system. And other smartphone apps are on the way! And then car stereos will start including 4G streaming as a part of their system. And if Obama's universal 4G plan passes, it can be everywhere! When? How? For whom? We don't know, but it will be really cool. And so on and so on, adding more and more what-ifs that, should they happen, will turn the currently exclusivist web-only format --that needs you to buy a new phone or a new stereo or a new car or whatever -- into something that resembles the far more inclusive format of broadcast radio. Right now, a significant portion of the web and its benefits remain the province of the relatively wealthy. Sure, a homeless person can get online through a local library, but any community that can afford a library with power, computers and internet access is wealthy by the world's standards.
But aside from that, there's the loss of the happy accident you might have of searching along the radio dial and finding something really interesting. Few radio dials anyplace offer that anymore, to be sure, as preprogrammed formats safely hide behind consultant-created playlists. The difference is that to listen to online content, you have to already know about it and point your web browser there. I might have been scanning my dial and found The Spy when I was intrigued by, say, the version of Camera Obscura's "French Navy" that they recorded at the station's studios. But not now. Now, I don't have to search and seek to discover something; I just click what I already know online and there it is.
Is the loss of unexpected discovery in radio the worst thing? Probably not, but there are other changes an all-digital world will bring that will have a much bigger impact. Is it possible that new formats will offer benefits that outweigh that loss or create new avenues for those kinds of discoveries? Perhaps so. But if not, will we be able to recover what we lost? I don't know, and it doesn't seem like many other people, a lot smarter than I am, know either. Maybe we should start asking.
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