Elsewhere …
Post Cereal, television advertisement (still). 1970s
- The Quietus turns in a lengthy editorial fighting for Lady Gaga as the successor of—not just Madge and Bowie—but Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. Hm. They also seem to think her critical reception has been largely negative—which, well, I dunno?
- On Pitchfork, Tom Ewing gets tangled up in distinctions between art and commodity. (I think there is a failure to satisfactorially define what constitutes “art” in this column, and that gets the better of him in the end—but, as always, there are plenty of fine observations.)
- In the New York Times, Jon Caramanica covers a performance by Frankie Rose, who he calls “a sparkplug for all-female, lo-fi garage-rock.”
- An appraisal of the ambiguities in the music of Chopin on the occasion of the composer’s 200th birthday, by Anne Midgette in the Washington Post.
- Two from The Guardian: a review of Best Music Writing 2009 (which mentions David Remnick’s profile of jazz personality Phil Schaap, which I found delightful); and a review of The Music Instinct, by Philip Ball which attempts, with apparently limited success, to come to terms with the neuroscience of music.
New York—February 2010