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

[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.