Spring is here, and meat is in the air!
From the category archives:
Music
In a desperate effort to stay afloat bold and forward-looking move, napster (which shares only a name with the program from the glory days of 2000 and 2001) has made (most of) its 2 million tunes available for free. The catches: 1. you need to register (or find a clever way around registration); 2. it pops up a flash player so you can’t download them (unless you’re much more clever about these things than I am); 3. there’s an occasional ad; 4. you can only play each tune 5 times (on each registration, I’m guessing); 5. it is relatively low quality.
It may not be as convenient as various internet radio stations (especially customizable ones like launchcast) that you can just leave on, but if you’re looking for a particular song – say, after soaking in Bruce Springsteen’s version of “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” you want to hear Ry Cooder’s version, or the original by Blind Alfred Reed (or the one by the Del Lords that I just found) – this is the place for you.
Austan Goolsbee writes in the _NYT_ that France’s efforts to make iTunes inter-operable with non-Apple music players is a bad idea.
bq. In iTunes War, France Has Met the Enemy. Perhaps It Is France.
bq. … The legislature paid no mind to such analysis and seems not to have considered innovation at all. Therein lies the danger. Apple largely created the online market for legal music. The record labels’ own attempts flopped embarrassingly. Until iTunes, virtually no one paid for online music. Since then, iTunes has sold more than one billion songs. Its success comes largely from two crucial innovations. First, Apple’s music store is simple and works extremely well with the iPod. Find the music. Click “Buy It.” Drag the files onto the iPod icon. That’s it. Experiences with other players and music stores are far more complicated. Further, iTunes keeps getting better. Apple has added video capability, celebrity play lists, exclusive music, the ability to convert home movies into iPod format, and many other features — all free. Second, iTunes has lots of music. Largely because of the innovative iTunes FairPlay copy protection and digital rights management software, Apple persuaded major record labels to let them sell much of their best content online. The combination of simplicity and variety proved a huge winner. … If the French gave away the codes, Apple would lose much of its rationale for improving iTunes. … Opening the codes threatens that link. Apple would need to pay for iTunes features with profits from iTunes itself. Prices would rise. Innovation would slow. Even worse, sharing the codes could make it easier for hackers to unravel Apple’s FairPlay software. Without strong copy protection, labels would not supply as much new music.
The issue is moot – it appears that the French proposal has been very substantially weakened – but I’m not convinced by Goolsbee’s underlying claims. There seem to be two elements to Goolsbee’s arguments. First he makes a claim about the need to protect Apple’s quasi-monopoly in order to protect innovation. There’s a reasonable argument to be made here, but as far as I’m aware, economists have very considerable difficulty in coming up with convincing arguments about the appropriate level of protection necessary to encourage innovation. Even if you buy the basic claim, it’s hard to come up with a convincing rationale for the claim that Apple’s protections are just right for encouraging innovation, and that a weakening of those protections mightn’t have salutary effects. Indeed, there’s a plausible economic case for skepticism about the value of intellectual property protection _tout court_: see the discussion in Benkler’s _Wealth of Networks_.
Second, Goolsbee claims that sharing codes would make it easier for hackers to break FairPlay. This seems to me to be even less convincing. As best as I can tell, the main reason why hackers aren’t interested in breaking FairPlay isn’t because it would be difficult, but because it’s unnecessary. There is a very well known security hole in Apple’s system – you can burn your music to an unprotected CD, and then make mp3s, Ogg Vorbis files or whatever to your heart’s content. Hence, I suspect, the abandonment of PyMusique and other efforts to circumvent Apple’s controls – there’s no point to them.
All this said, I think that there’s a plausible rationale to support Apple’s power, but it doesn’t flow from mainstream economics or from the purported virtues of DRM. It comes instead from Galbraith’s idea of countervailing powers. As the FT reported yesterday, Apple seems to have done what antitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have failed dismally to do – to make it more difficult for record companies to collude in setting prices and reap the ensuing oligopoly profits. It’s forced the record labels to commoditize albums by selling them at a price which is considerably lower than the price that the record companies would prefer – given sagging sales of CDs, the labels have had little choice but to accede to Apple’s terms. None of this is to say that Apple may not abuse its position in the future – but for the moment at least, it appears to be having a valuable chastening effect.
This is the title of a 1929 song by Blind Alfred Reed that was covered by Ry Cooder on his first album. Bruce Springsteen now has a version that includes one original verse and three new ones, (apparently) written in preparation for his performance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. The key lyric:
He says “me and my old school pals had some might high times down here
And what happened to you poor black folks, well it just ain’t fair”
He took a look around gave a little pep talk, said “I’m with you” then he took a little walk
Tell me, how can a poor man stand such times and live?
It’s not included on his new cd, but is available (at a low bitrate), recorded live at one of his rehearsals, here (turn down your volume and stop the tracks that play automatically – then play the tune in the format of your choice.)
I apologise in advance for lowering the tone, but I have recently discovered in myself a hitherto unimaginable and frankly rather disturbing liking for 70’s rock. I sometimes blame Steve Harley, but its not really his fault. It all began with me whimsically picking up The Best of the Seventies
Prog rock, folk rock, glam rock (of the less cerebral variety (Slade
Arbitrage?
I’ve just come from a seminar given by Michael Tierney, who before launching into his paper on the Very Serious Subject of principal-agent relations in multilateral development agencies, encouraged us to visit and contribute to his list of international relations themed music. Apparently, he begins his early morning classes by playing a song appropriate to that week’s topic so as to wake up the students. Contributions include “One is the Loneliest Number (Three Dog Night)” for the class on Polarity/Hegemonic Stability Theory and “Peace, Love and Understanding (Elvis Costello)” for Democratic Peace Theory. He pleads for alternative suggestions “to rectify the bad musical tastes of my colleagues,” which are indeed rather impressive. Sounds like exactly the right sort of silliness for a blog’s comment section – I’ll start the ball rolling by suggesting Tom Lehrer’s MLF Lullaby for a class on multilateral alliances, and indeed that Lehrer’s We'll All Go Together When We Go replaces Metallica’s _Blackened_ as the theme song for the week on Nuclear War and Its Consequences.
Kieran Setiya announces the results of his competition to find the best exquisitely mean review. The criteria were:
1. The review must have a worthy target. Thus, I was forced to ignore, among other things, A. O. Scott’s review of Gigli.
2. The review may be grossly unfair, but…
3. It has to give good arguments, or memorable ones that contain a grain of truth.
4. Finally, preference was given to reviews that made good use of sarcasm.
Kieran’s readership is composed mostly of philosophers, and his list of reviews reflects this. The prize has already been awarded, to Miles Burnyeat's enfilading of Leo Strauss’ _Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy_. But I have a late entry from another field. For sheer mean-spirited, grossly unfair (not to say misguided) but nevertheless well-written and funny attacks on worthy targets, you can’t beat Philip Larkin's criticism of modernist Jazz, especially his stuff on John Coltrane and Miles Davis. He thought Coltrane was “possessed continually by an almost Scandinavian unloveliness.” For example, here he is reviewing _A Love Supreme_:
It is of course absurd to suggest he can’t play his instrument: the rapidity of his fingering alone dispels that notion. It would be juster to question whether he knows what to do with it now that he can play it. His solos seem to me to bear the same relation to proper jazz solos as those drawings of running dogs, showing their legs in all positions so that they appear to have about fifty of them, have to real drawings. Once, they are amusing and even instructive. But the whole point of drawing is choosing the right line, not drawing fifty alternatives. Again, Coltrane’s choice and treatment of themes is hypnotic, repetitive, monotonous: he will rock backwards and forwards between two chords for five minutes, or pull a tune to pieces like someone subtracting petals from a flower. Apart from the periodic lashing of himself into a frenzy, it is hard to attach any particular emotional importance to his work.
And on Miles Davis:
bq. He had several manners: the dead muzzled slow stuff, the sour yelping fast stuff, and the sonorous theatrical arranged stuff, and I disliked them all.
The NYT has a piece about a new Nickelodeon show called Wonder Pets, which follows the adventures of guinea pig, a turtle and a duckling, three schoolroom pets. The show’s main innovation is its music. The program is “a series of operettas.”
“We wanted to find a way to have the music drive the show,” Mr. Selig said … “we found that kids responded well to having music at the center of everything,” with characters singing rather than simply speaking their parts.
Brown Johnson, Nickelodeon’s executive creative director for preschool television, said she believes operetta is an art form particularly suited to children. … The “Wonder Pets” music does not feature the tinny, saccharine melodies that often infect children’s television shows. Rather, each episode uses an original score recorded by a live orchestra overseen by Jeffrey Lesser, the Grammy-winning record producer … Which is not to say that the music is not repetitive. Like many operettas, “The Wonder Pets” is full of hummable recitatives that linger in the minds of both children and adults long after the performance ends.
In light of this, let me just come out and admit that my two-year-old is a slave to Gilbert and Sullivan. She seemed to like choral music whenever it was on the radio, and I remembered that a friend had told me a few years ago that his kids liked it a lot, too. So, like an idiot, I went and bought a CD of Gilbert and Sullivan favorites on the off chance one day. Now it’s all she listens to in the car. The other day in the supermarket she solemnly came out with “Stay close to your desks never go to sea … ha ha ha … and you all may be rulers of the Queen’s Navy.” It’s a mixed blessing. On the one hand, my daughter is perfectly happy. On the other hand, I now know all the words to “I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major General.” Next stop, Götterdämmerung.
I had tickets to Welsh National Opera ‘s production of The Flying Dutchman last night (my second trip in a week, having seen Figaro on Wednesday). We Bristolians had been feeling slightly sore, since Bryn Terfel had sung the lead in Cardiff but had been replaced by Robert Hayward for later dates on the tour. Just before the was due to rise there was an announcement: Hayward was unwell and couldn’t sing. So now we get the third choice….? Not a bit of it! They had located Terfel on a golf course in North Wales that afternoon, put him in a car and rushed him down the M6/M5! Apparently it was touch and go whether he would make it in time. When the announcement was made the audience went wild (which made me feel extra sorry for poor Hayward). Terfel was, naturally, simply fantastic. A great singer with a tremendous presence. And a great guy … thanks for stepping in.
I’m going to be in Boston on Saturday for a conference on Equality and Education, with papers by Debra Satz, Elizabeth Anderson, and me and Adam Swift, plus commentators. It should be very good; I’m looking forward to what Anderson and Satz have to say. I presume from the fact that there’s a webpage about it that it is open; whether so or not I always like meeting readers and hearing their complaints…
On unrelated news I got a lovely packet the other day from a former student, containing a signed copy of Loudon Wainwright III’s Here Come the Choppers
Likely you don’t remember me, as I was only a (mostly unmemorable) student in one of your classes 3 or 4 years ago. However, one thing you did was introduce me the the music of LWIII. I’ve always remembered that, and my life is better for it. Here is his latest CD, signed, and sent with my regards.
I do remember him, in fact, and am very touched by the gift. Even better, this is LW’s best in years; not as good as History
The question. I’ve wondered for about 15 years whether the Chaim Tannenbaum who plays on many of Loudon Wainwright’s albums is the same Chaim Tannenbaum who is acknowledged in “The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom”. If none of our readers can enlighten me, I’ll give up wondering.
I’m linking to Ian Sanson's piece on Johnny Cash from the LRB [via the Virtual Stoa ] both because it is entertaining and perceptive, but also — in the light of John Q's Blonde post below — to report that Chuck Klosterman’s “hilarious sociobiological explanation for Led Zeppelin”, as referenced by Sanson, is freely available to the moderately ingenious via Amazon.com’s “search inside” feature.
In my role as a music reviewer for Bristol and Bath’s Decode magazine, I got to see Buddy Miller on Tuesday night. I’m not sure that music reviews are my forte, but you can read my effort here . Miller really is a remarkable guitarist and a pretty good singer too. I guess he’s “officially” “country” (whatever that amounts to) , but he’s really someone who transcends genre. He’s made some important records with some famous people (he’s Emmylou Harris’s guitarist) , but his own material (and that with his wife Julie ) is also fantastic. His religious affiliations (Christian) are pretty much to the fore in his most recent record — Universal United House of Prayer — though they weren’t on Tuesday. UUHP is sort of country/rock/gospel crossover (if it even has a genre) with the highpoint being his cover of Dylan’s With God on Our Side (Miller plainly doesn’t think that God is a Republican). Anyway, check him out.
If there is one firm rule I have in life, it is never to make an important decision in February. (For those in the southern hemisphere, I advise caution in August.) February is the darkest of months, especially in Brussels where we haven’t seen sunshine in 5 months and an outbreak of killer smog is felling 30 people a day, or so they say. In February, the only rational response to circumstances is obviously to chuck in the job and emigrate. Which I’ve done. Twice.
I’m currently listening to Bob Dylan and The Band, Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, 30 January 1974, Madison Square Garden on Vault Radio . The stream is from the archive of live shows recorded by Bill Graham at the Fillmore and other venues … now on to Jefferson Airplane, “White Rabbit”, Fillmore Auditorium, Feb 1967 … Elvis Costello, “Radio Radio”, Winterland 1978 … this is too good!
Via Flop Eared Mule . Thanks Amanda!
I m pleased to see that Norman Geras is linking to an interesting essay by David Carithers on Steve Earle . The essay links Earle to the pragmatic tradition, and especially to Emerson. Though the essay verges on the pretentious, it is certainly worth a look. As Geras mentions:
bq. Section II of Carithers’ essay is about Earle’s opposition to the death penalty. He discusses two of his powerful songs on the subject, ‘Billy Austin’ from The Hard Way, and ‘Over Yonder (Jonathan’s Song)’ from Transcendental Blues.
As Geras doesn’t mention, section III of the essay is about John Walker’s Blues, Earle’s disturbing meditation on the fate of the 19-year-old John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban”. If I recall correctly, Earle’s own son was the same age at the time, a fact that gave Earle a different perpective on the calls for vengeance and retribution that were widespread after Lindh’s capture.