Tell me what to write in my next column

[koganbot]

I am in Connecticut for Thanksgiving hence have only library access to a computer hence no listening to or downloading music on it and also all my music is in Denver obviously and I have no idea what to write for the column that's due next week? So you people should tell me what to write about. Please suggest many things. Perhaps I will write about all of them. Or maybe we could do this as Ask Frank Kogan, which was a pretty good thread on ilX once because people kept asking me about things I knew nothing about, and I would answer.

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Just because *your* music is in Denver doesn't mean there isn't music in Connecticut! What's playing in the shops right now? Or in the pub down the road? Are they constantly repeating old Christmas tunes already like in London? What about music on adverts (or music BEING advertised), or music in lifts, or music the dude infront of you on the bus is humming to himself? What are people *actually* listening to, in contrast to what telly/shops/dudes on the bus are inflicting on them?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

*Trying* to inflict on them, I mean.

Miranda Lambert song title contained within this post

[koganbot]

There isn't a pub down the road. There's barely a road. OK, that's an exaggeration, there's a major university just down the road (up the road, actually, and that's where I am right now), but I have no idea where or if there are any bars. This was a DRY TOWN when I was growing up here, the theory being that the students would be happy and healthy if they had to drive to Coventry or Willimantic and drink there and drive back drunk. The town then voted to become damp rather than dry which means you could be a bar but only if you were a restaurant as well, but the town made rules preventing bars and package stores - which is what Connecticut is willing to call liquor stores - from locating within several thousand feet of any place that might actually have people such as schools and churches. Not sure what the laws are now, but if I were to go bar hopping I wouldn't have a clue where to hop to.

But you're right, I can hear what's being pushed on the adverts - Get Your Collection Of The 50 Greatest Country Songs Ever About Being Stuck In A Dry Town! - or for that matter I can listen to the soundtrack music that is used to accompany "The World's Fastest Police Chases" (I chose not to have a TV in my Denver apartment on the theory that without a TV I might actually get some remunerative writing done, so TV background music has, sadly, been all but ignored in the Frank Kogan contemporary musical commentary oeuvre; so this week in my parents' house provides me with the means to make up for this lack, now that I am staying in a house with a TV (with Court TV being practically the only non-local station in my parents' basic cable package).

Re: Miranda Lambert song title contained within this post

[koganbot]

within several thousand feet of any place that might actually have people such as schools and churches

Actually, most schools and churches are not, in fact, people, no matter how I like to anthropomorphize them. I should have written, "within several thousand feet of any place, such as a church or a school, that might actually have people.

Re: Miranda Lambert song title contained within this post

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Sour. My hometown now has 4 pubs, not counting the golf club bar that would serve you alcopops without asking for ID.

I think a column about 'not listening to music' would be interesting. What soundtrack is playing in your head when nothing is coming through your ears?

Re: Miranda Lambert song title contained within this post

[koganbot]

Last night I watched "Hot Pursuit" and then "Investigations" and then a bit of "Cops" on Court TV. "Cops" was a relief because there was no music except for "Bad Boys" as the Theme Song and a few interstitial guitar chords. Everything else - shows, commercials - had continually low-volume music in the background, felt like static, mildly irritating. "Hot Pursuit" is a terrible show, bunch of chases clipped together with a narrator making remarks about the stupidity of criminals who think they can outrun the police. A lot of synth drums, w/ blues-boogie guitars for emphasis, or metal chords.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

omg i heard xmas tunes in boots the other day and got SO ANGRY.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I put the Girls Aloud Xmas CD on the other day and felt a warm glow :) It was mostly the warm glow of smugness for finishing my Christmas shopping 6 weeks in advance!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I haven't even thought about starting AGH

[koganbot]

I downloaded last year's Aly & A.J. Christmas album several weeks ago; I'd heard it streamed when it came out. Kinda well sung but so what on most of the carols, though they get something genuinely movingly sad out of the not-all-that-sad "I'll Be Home For Christmas." And then of course we've been gushing about the two originals on that album for the last fourteen months, "Not This Year" being one of the greats.

Xhuxk really likes the Taylor Swift Christmas album, while Jimmy Draper likes it too but with less enthusiasm. I'm looking forward to Miranda Lambert's rendition of "I Put A Scorpion In Your Stocking."

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

ans my question from your last column ;-)

[koganbot]

I don't know the answer, though given that the purpose of my column is to ask questions that I don't know how to answer, the question may be a good topic.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

You could write about this bit of ridiculousness, possibly in combination with a discussion of the country stations in CT.

[koganbot]

I don't know if there are and country stations in Connecticut. None were in earshot here when I was growing up. (No soul stations either, as I recall.) That blogger is funny for assuming that country listeners are rural. (I'll bet the vast majority live in the 'burbs, given that 'burbs and cities are where you find the vast majority of people. I read in Krugman's blog, also in the NY Times, that only something like 4 percent of the U.S. population works in agriculture.)

By coincidence, the my column I just finished is on country music (assuming that LV Weekly even received it - I put "Country Music WTF" in the subject line, only realizing later this could result in my email addy being put on their spam list).

Did you read David Brooks today on the fragmentation of the music audience? Quotes some dipshit scholar trying to force students to listen to Muddy Waters. (Not that people shouldn't know about Muddy Waters, mind you. But they should also know about Fanny Brice and Dinah Washington.)

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my professor who used to be the pres of WNBC in NYC is a big country fan. It's the #1 radio format in the country! A lot of the southeast has been megalopolized anyway, so those are urban audiences listening to country. Calling it authentic covers up the way that it's selling an image to people with no direct contact with the situation being described, and that this is what makes it good art rather than just reportage.

I saw the Brooks mentioned on ILM today but haven't had a chance to process it. That guy! Yeah, the last thing kids need in a musical education now is Muddy Waters. He won already.

[koganbot]

Actually, I'd misremembered the Brooks; the dipshit setting up the curriculum is Little Stevie, and he's probably not really a dipshit, just a bit narrow.

I actually like Brooks. He's totally in over his head on cultural matters, but he's the only Times columnist other than Maureen Dowd to understand that hairstyle matters, and he's genuinely curious. Like a clueless but curious uncle. Of course, that's what I should be.

[koganbot]

And actually good accounts of Muddy Waters wouldn't be a bad thing. Don't know if Muddy's sensibility "won," in that I doubt that it [whatever it is] is shared by the many white musicians who drew on him.

[koganbot]

OK, there are (is) country stations here. Top ten on WWYZ in Hartford:

1 JASON MICHAEL CARROLL Livin' Our Love Song
2 CARRIE UNDERWOOD So Small
3 DIERKS BENTLEY Free And Easy(Down The Road..)
4 GEORGE STRAIT How 'Bout Them Cowgirls
5 TAYLOR SWIFT Our Song
6 GARTH BROOKS More Than A Memory
7 JOSH TURNER Firecracker
8 KEITH URBAN Everybody
9 CLAY WALKER Fall
10 SARA EVANS As If

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Can you get actual PBS there? You could see what's on it.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

there's a documentary about rockism and its influence on hauntology

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

You mean Nova's MASTER OF THE KILLER ANTS?

[koganbot]

Ghostliness isn't what it used to be.

[koganbot]

You can get actual PBS anywhere in the U.S. And my parents' TV was tuned to one of the PBS stations when I turned it on: A documentary about Athenian military misadventures and their influence on the ingestion of poison by Socrates.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Write about Britney Ashlee Celine PBS uh...why complicity makes for such a good story, and if there are stories in which complicity has no (primary) role. How come everything's gotta be potentially contaminated before you can enjoy it, anyway? The same certainly does not hold true for hamburgers. (In fact, if someone told me "this hamburger is potentially contaminated," I would probably eat something else entirely.)

[koganbot]

Well, don't know that everything's got to be contaminated, but it's a better story if the badass outsider Hero (I'm currently reading one of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels) can find himself potentially compromised and made effete and ass-kissy by the Establishment on the one hand, or made vicious and angry by the murderous scum he has to deal with on the other. Not sure what that exactly has to do with rock critics, of course, but I'm sure it does.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

"Effete and ass-kissy" versus "vicious and angry" is interesting! And it makes sense that something particularly annoying would be "vicious and angry to please the teacher," though I'm not sure why (why is it more annoying than doing anything else to please the teacher? And who's the teacher?). So I guess in HS parlance it's the difference between a teacher's pet and a bully? ("Teacher's pet" is another of your key phrases that I've never totally been clear on -- in part because I think I AM a sort of teacher's pet.)