antimeria » music http://antimeria.com/blog a complete impediment to understanding Wed, 16 May 2012 15:51:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 “Pretty sure I could fuck up any dinosaur the size of a chicken or smaller.” http://antimeria.com/blog/music/pretty-sure-i-could-fuck-up-any-dinosaur-the-size-of-a-chicken-or-smaller http://antimeria.com/blog/music/pretty-sure-i-could-fuck-up-any-dinosaur-the-size-of-a-chicken-or-smaller#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 15:46:09 +0000 martin http://antimeria.com/blog/?p=3791 More potentially-related posts:
  1. *Cha-ching!*
  2. Coming in 2011: Tesla coils, mammoth tanks.
  3. Linkwad.
]]> Steve Albini did an AMA last week. As you’d expect, it’s tremendous and enlightening.

On the record industry:

There won’t ever be a mass-market record industry again, and that’s fine with me because that industry didn’t operate for the benefit of the musicians or the audience, the only classes of people I care about.

Free distribution of music has created a huge growth in the audience for live music performance, where most bands spend most of their time and energy anyway. Ticket prices have risen to the point that even club-level touring bands can earn a middle-class income if they keep their shit together, and every band now has access to a world-wide audience at no cost of acquisition. That’s fantastic.

On voicemail:

I detest voice mail. Answer your goddamn phone or don’t have a phone. We have an answering machine at the studio for when everybody’s gone, but otherwise I answer the phone and I expect other people to. I detest the whole system of using the phone to manage/frustrate callers with menus and voice mail and all that. It’s a cop-out and it sucks and if you do that to people you’re an asshole. Answer your phone.

His political views:

As a realist, I tend to vote against the most destructive candidate, which generally means the Republican, in any election. I refuse to vote for a candidate with no chance of winning unless the election is a cinch. For judicial retention elections my wife compiles a cheat sheet of recommendations from various groups with whom we sympathize on womens’ issues, prison reform, GLBT issues and corruption.

My political perspective is progressive. I believe a society with a conscience should actively try to incorporate, liberate and support as many of its people as possible, and the story of our country is a lurching, faltering progress toward that ideal. Gradually, eventually, our side always wins. Slavery ended, women are no longer property and can vote, children no longer work in mines (although we still send them to prison), institutionalized racism is dying, we got out of Vietnam, being Queer is no longer criminal… It can take decades, and there are obviously still fish to fry, but the moral, generous and forgiving nature of mankind expresses itself piecemeal as the stones in the right-wing reactionary wall, sexism, racism, class identity, greed, exclusivity, violence and revenge all erode over time.

The progressive positions are all eventually adopted not because we’ve overpowered our opposition, but because the positions themselves resonate with the American identity; we want everybody to have a fighting chance at happiness and to live a fulfilling life of his own choosing. Whenever the right wing scores a victory on an issue, it is (in the words of the poet John Houlihan) a small, temporary victory won by small, temporary men. The right wing seizes territory during its season of power, which is ceded back to civilization and then some when its season ends.

Basically I think selfishness and revenge are the ugliest human impulses and I root for anyone who helps quiet them.

Anarchism is interesting intellectually and engenders some interesting discussion but that’s about it. Libertarianism, pfft. Me-me-me bullshit for selfish little pricks who have a child’s conception of property and liberty. Communism has a humane underpinning but basically can’t be implemented in groups larger than maybe a hundred.

Whenever I hear somebody bitching about taxes I want to punch him in the mouth. “It’s MY money!” Shut up, no it isn’t. It’s money, and it’s a fluid resource (or should be) just like air. It isn’t YOUR air just because you’re breathing it some of the time. Fucking children.

I find the notion and reality of a for-profit corporate prison system absolutely horrifying.

Other tidbits:

  • “France has a ridiculous 95dB sound limit in performance spaces.”
  • Asked for five words on the Pixies: “Five words? That’s going to”
  • “Shellac will play in Chicago in August.”
  • The inspirations for Songs About Fucking were “Songs and fucking.”
  • “[O]nce you get into baseball other team sports just look like variations on a theme. Dogs fighting over a rag doll.”

The AVC rounded up some more gems, including the title quote, his PT Cruiser and his “Normal John Travolta sized” dick. HT: Ed.

More potentially-related posts:

  1. *Cha-ching!*
  2. Coming in 2011: Tesla coils, mammoth tanks.
  3. Linkwad.
]]> http://antimeria.com/blog/music/pretty-sure-i-could-fuck-up-any-dinosaur-the-size-of-a-chicken-or-smaller/feed 0 Linkwad. http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-141 http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-141#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:52:55 +0000 martin http://antimeria.com/blog/?p=3756 More potentially-related posts:
  1. Linkwad.
  2. Linkwad.
  3. Linkwad.
]]> Honeymoon photos coming soon! Promise.

  • I don’t know if I buy the “Internet is killing serendipity” argument, but this essay makes the case as well as any I’ve read.
  • The history of the reeeeemiiiiiix.
  • Just FYI: “Everyone else is just as bad” isn’t really a good defense, Internet commentariat.
  • Obviously, the answer to “Why do we need SOPA?” is, “We don’t.”
  • Pitchfork’s impact and history. For you lazy-ass TL;DR types: “A Pitchfork review may ignore history, aesthetics, or the basic technical aspects of tonal music, but it will almost never fail to include a detailed taxonomy of the current hype cycle and media environment. This is a small, petty way of thinking about a large art.”

More potentially-related posts:

  1. Linkwad.
  2. Linkwad.
  3. Linkwad.
]]> http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-141/feed 0 This seems appropriate. http://antimeria.com/blog/music/this-seems-appropriate http://antimeria.com/blog/music/this-seems-appropriate#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:24:32 +0000 martin http://antimeria.com/blog/?p=3758 More potentially-related posts:
  1. Linkwad.
  2. Baltimore, don’t ever change.
  3. There’s no end in sight.
]]>

See you in a few weeks. Photos will be posted intermittently on the tweet machine.

More potentially-related posts:

  1. Linkwad.
  2. Baltimore, don’t ever change.
  3. There’s no end in sight.
]]> http://antimeria.com/blog/music/this-seems-appropriate/feed 0 Linkwad. http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-131 http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-131#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:42:39 +0000 martin http://antimeria.com/blog/?p=3667 More potentially-related posts:
  1. Linkwad.
  2. The 2010 top 20, play count edition.
  3. Linkwad and an update.
]]>
  • Growing pot has a huge carbon footprint.
  • Saw Jeff Mangum on Monday night. Thoughts soon, but here’s the Awl’s report. Also, opener The Music Tapes were really intriguing.
  • All about Kindle’s new $200 Fire tablet.

    • Here’s “Minister of Longitude.”

    More potentially-related posts:

    1. Linkwad.
    2. The 2010 top 20, play count edition.
    3. Linkwad and an update.
    ]]>     http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-131/feed 0     The ones you try to forget. http://antimeria.com/blog/music/the-ones-you-try-to-forget http://antimeria.com/blog/music/the-ones-you-try-to-forget#comments Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:37:10 +0000 martin http://antimeria.com/blog/?p=3637 More potentially-related posts:
    1. Linkwad.
    2. A concerted effort.
    3. The No Fun League.
    ]]>     Double Dagger, one of Baltimore’s better punk bands, is calling it quits after nine years. If you’re in Chicago1, DC, NYC, or Baltimore2, you should check out one of their last shows.

    Update: I totally should have called this post “Our history has no future.” Oh well.

    1. The Oct. 14 show is with Call Me Lightning, another excellent and underappreciated band. ↩
    2. That covers about 90% of the people who read this blog. ↩

    More potentially-related posts:

    1. Linkwad.
    2. A concerted effort.
    3. The No Fun League.
    ]]>     http://antimeria.com/blog/music/the-ones-you-try-to-forget/feed 0     Linkwad. http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-126 http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-126#comments Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:47:19 +0000 martin http://antimeria.com/blog/?p=3612 More potentially-related posts:
    1. Mare Tranquillitatis.
    2. I got problems.
    3. Fuck up the party before it even starts.
    ]]>
  • The AT&T-Mo deal looks like it just got shot down. Good news.
  • What is even happening with music this year? Jack White and ICP? Doing Mozart?
  • To get that out of your head, I recommend either M83′s new “Intro,” ft. Zola Jesus, or the Dresden Dolls’ cover of “Dance Me to the End of Love.”

    • More potentially-related posts:

    1. Mare Tranquillitatis.
    2. I got problems.
    3. Fuck up the party before it even starts.
    ]]>     http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-126/feed 0     Riveting whirlwinds gripping the world. http://antimeria.com/blog/music/riveting-whirlwinds-gripping-the-world http://antimeria.com/blog/music/riveting-whirlwinds-gripping-the-world#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:33:04 +0000 martin http://antimeria.com/blog/?p=3600 More potentially-related posts:
    1. EFF the RIAA.
    2. Yeah, that’s about right.
    3. Wake me up from a coma summer.
    ]]>     It just occurred to me that Irene is an ideal time for Latyrx’s “Storm Warning,” off the mostly-forgotten Quannum Spectrum:

    It also gives me an excuse to post the Lyrics Born earworm “I Changed My Mind.”

    More potentially-related posts:

    1. EFF the RIAA.
    2. Yeah, that’s about right.
    3. Wake me up from a coma summer.
    ]]>     http://antimeria.com/blog/music/riveting-whirlwinds-gripping-the-world/feed 0     Linkwad. http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-123 http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-123#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2011 18:14:28 +0000 martin http://antimeria.com/blog/?p=3581 More potentially-related posts:
    1. Linkwad.
    2. Linkwad.
    3. Linkwad.
    ]]>
  • I missed the news the first time around, but Breaking Bad got picked up for a final season. So we have at least a year before the inevitable Scarface/Soprano ending.
  • Best of the Jay-Z and Outkast discographies, in tournament form.
  • The best hip-hop-related drink ads. Stuff like this is more compelling than anything Grantland’s headlining writers have come up with (see also: Katie Baker, who earned huge points with me for coining the phrase “asymptotes of insanity“). Bonus: have you seen the best thing on the Internet yet?
  • Also, thanks to Scott, I have been enjoying the adultolescent train wreck that is Thought Catalog. I suggest you do the same.

    • More potentially-related posts:

    1. Linkwad.
    2. Linkwad.
    3. Linkwad.
    ]]>     http://antimeria.com/blog/music/linkwad-123/feed 0     Round and round. http://antimeria.com/blog/music/round-and-round http://antimeria.com/blog/music/round-and-round#comments Mon, 22 Aug 2011 19:07:15 +0000 martin http://antimeria.com/blog/?p=3578 More potentially-related posts:
    1. Linkwad.
    2. The 2010 top 20, play count edition.
    3. RIP K-Swift
    ]]>     Via @AnnieLowrey, an awesome year-by-year infographic showing “how the download killed the CD that killed the cassette that killed the LP.”

    As a nerd, it’s amazing to me that CD sales still accounted for almost 50% of 2010 music purchases.

    More potentially-related posts:

    1. Linkwad.
    2. The 2010 top 20, play count edition.
    3. RIP K-Swift
    ]]>     http://antimeria.com/blog/music/round-and-round/feed 0     “Unique to say the least.” http://antimeria.com/blog/music/unique-to-say-the-least http://antimeria.com/blog/music/unique-to-say-the-least#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:27:44 +0000 martin http://antimeria.com/blog/?p=3531 More potentially-related posts:
    1. Logicking away irrational fears.
    2. 18. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
    3. The luckiest.
    ]]>     That’s the verdict on A. Samuels, “55-year-old casino executive” mastermind who’s “Livin De Life”1:

    Via Chris, who also “has a respectable amount of self esteem.”

    1. If he’s legit. I was also unable to find any evidence of his existence. ↩

    More potentially-related posts:

    1. Logicking away irrational fears.
    2. 18. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
    3. The luckiest.
    ]]>     http://antimeria.com/blog/music/unique-to-say-the-least/feed 0