(Featured image: Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash)
Bigger: Not Necessarily Better
This came up in my feed earlier:
This has been coming for a while – the pandemic has driven up the costs of publication, due to supply shortages and shipping hikes. It was a topic of discourse in academic publishing last summer, and I definitely feel as though it’ll hasten the digitization of publications. My biggest gripe with that, of course, is that the casual readers I know don’t think electronic publications are ‘real.’ Of course, they don’t think print publications are real either, unless they’re on an endcap in a major chain bookstore, and even then they’ll pass on it unless it’s been made into a film/TV series/AAA video game. Maybe that’s a little overblown, but I’ve literally given away copies of Interstitial Burn Boy Blues (Across The Margin, 2017) and gotten nearly no uptake on it. If you’re into shorter work, by the way, that one’s a novelette.
Beside the point, of course. Publishers want shorter – maybe even into the realm of what Stephen King once called “the banana republic of the Novella.” Novellas have been a big splash in the horror world lately – especially from presses like Tenebrous and Cursed Morsels – and I’ve thought for a while that, in the attention-fractured modern world, shorter reads will end up winning out over ponderous doorstop tomes. That didn’t prevent me from churning out a novel of 109,000 words, of course, ha ha, but we all make our little mistakes. If you happen across this and you have a favourite novella you’d like to shout out, put it in the comments and I’ll see my way toward reading them.
Toxic Algae Blooms in the Meme Ecosystem
Call it a learning moment: instead of making memes about the funny crack smoking rapper with obvious mental illness issues, maybe think about getting them some help. To be fair, “Viper holds a woman against her will for half a decade” is incredibly on brand for the guy, whose 2008 album You’ll Cowards Don’t Even Smoke Crack became a 4chan-fueled meme in 2013. It was incredibly clear from the beginning that there was something incredibly wrong with him, and the creepy stuff he’s done since, including trying to lure people talking to him to come work for him in Houston on increasingly unhinged projects, only added more gas on that particular bonfire.
Eventually someone’s going to to do a documentary along the lines of “Memes: Where Are They Now” that will have a big section on Lee Carter, and it should focus on the way the terminally online – channers but others, too – take people having ongoing mental crises and make lolcows out of them. Much as Joseph Heller explored in Catch-22, things are funny until suddenly they aren’t.
On the other hand, there’s a comment in there from a Redditor that once knew a guy who only listened to Viper and Death Grips. Can you imagine? I mean, I like Death Grips and all, but having them as the legit option alongside Viper’s cracked-out outsider art lo-fi is shudder-inducing. How do you talk to a person like that? Do you talk to a person like that, or do you just back away slowly. Try to get them some help. That’s the theme here.
Wherein Buying A Copy Of Family Guy Season 6 On Blu-Ray Is Somehow Like Buying A House
The things you find on social media. Let me preface this by saying that buying physical media is, in fact, nowhere near anything like buying a house. I can afford $5 at a thrift store to buy a Blu-Ray. I cannot afford $700,000 to buy a house. That’s it, that’s the difference: much of my generation and the generations following will never own their own home. If you cannot afford $5 to buy a disc, consider that you may have bigger problems than owning physical media. You can also get a library card – your local library is amazing and has more than just books available. You can check out board games from mine! It’s amazing, because you want to talk upfront costs? Board games have insane upfront costs. Even something as common as Settlers of Catan costs $80 these days. Of course, a box of crackers costs nearly $4, so maybe we should stop addressing the costs of individual items and start making noise about how expensive everything has gotten.
How Long Could You Put Up With Billy Corgan?
Do you want to be the other guitarist in Smashing Pumpkins? No, you don’t. To paraphrase Craig Finn, think about the things Billy Corgan pulled on James Iha and D’Arcy Wretsky, then think about how long he knew them, then think about the kinds of things he’d try to pull on you and me.
Winning Bid Gets Cloud Rap As Well
Remember when Soundcloud was the destination for hip hop artists who were too experimental (or crap) for the regular platforms? It went through a rough patch a few years back in 2017 where it was going to go belly up and then some angel investors came in to save it. Those same investors, a Singaporean investment firm, has reportedly decided to put it up for sale. So you, too, can own a piece of musical history. It’s actually profitable now, though, so expect stiff competition from the labels, who tend to like to eat up these sorts of things.
Anyway, here’s hoping the service sticks around, for a couple of reasons. First, because it’s a good repository for people to post music they’re working on, especially now that the future of Bandcamp is up in the air.
And second because it is the only repository I know that has Father John Misty’s cover of Taylor Swift’s “Welcome To NY”. Ryan Adams, as you might or might not remember, did an entire album cover of 1989 in the style of Bruce Springsteen circa 1989. Misty, who thought the project odd, responded with “Welcome To NY” in the style of the Velvet Underground.
Notable Anniversaries
Albums turning 60:
January 10th: The Rolling Stones – The Rolling Stones (EP) (Decca) – Peaked at #1 UK
For a fuller look at The Rolling Stones at 60, don’t miss this discography guide!
Albums turning 50:
January 2nd: Graham Nash – Wild Tales (Atlantic) – Peaked at #34 U.S.
January 6th: Foghat – Energized (Bearsville) – Peaked at #34 U.S.
Albums turning 40:
January 9th: Van Halen – 1984 (Warner Bros.) – Peaked at #2 U.S., #15 U.K.
January 13th: Judas Priest – Defenders Of The Faith (Columbia) – Peaked at #18 U.S., #19 U.K.
January 13th: The Pretenders – Learning To Crawl (Sire) – Peaked at #5 U.S., #11 U.K.
Albums turning 30:
January 4th: Lagwagon – Trashed (Fat Wreck Chords)
Albums turning 10:
January 7th: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Wig Out At Jagbags (Matador/Domino)
