Frank Kogan

Can you imagine Teena Marie writing for The Singles Jukebox? —Well, she's dead, but I mean someone of her social type and sensibility.

Or Trey Songz or Ty Dolla Sign or Taeyang or Sturgill Simpson or Enrique Iglesias?

Actually, I could imagine a few Sturgill Simpson types doing so. Not the others, though I don't know much about them so perhaps I'm wrong. But a combination of selection and self-selection would keep most of them out.

I'm six days late on this, but The Singles Jukebox is looking for writers — go here for the full pitch, and yes I encourage you to try. Here's an excerpt:

We are not a Pitchfork or a Rolling Stone; we are an international site that thrives on diverse voices and opinions. We are particularly interested in applicants who are under-represented in music writing and strongly encourage women and people of color to apply.

Except the additional women and people of color they get will end up resembling the people who already write for the site, and I don't think the Jukebox could do anything about this even if it (they/we) wanted to. Don't know how many people involved in the site know how to go about wanting to, though.

I don't know if I know how to go about wanting to, but I do have a good idea what "wanting to" means. It means wanting the Jukebox to read more like the comment threads on gossip sites and YouTube but ideally, in utopia, with even more self-reflection than the Jukebox already has.

Gossip sites and YouTube comment threads frequently scare me.

If you're going to think about diversity you have to have to have to think about social class and social types and social conflict, or you're just not serious. How many bank officers write for The Singles Jukebox? How many house painters? How many who back in high school had been called rocks, hoods, greasers, grits, burnouts, dirtbags, jells, farmers, rednecks? (Showing my age here. Don't know the current terminology.) How many of the socs, debs, preppies, jocks?

The Jukebox is volunteer; nobody gets paid; so it's all in people's spare time. What sort of people are socialized to do this in their spare time?

In the pitch, the Jukebox asked applicants to blurb two from a list of tracks. That's where I got my performers above. Here are all of them. So, how many of these performers — i.e., members of their social sets — can you imagine writing for the Jukebox? Or posting on a koganbot comment thread, for that matter? Or posting at Freaky Trigger?

Trey Songz
Nicki Minaj
Migos
Brett Kissel
Kira Isabella
Blake Shelton
Gwen Sebastian
Skepta
JME
Kasabian
Faith Evans
Missy Elliott
Sharaya J
Annalisa
Black M
Jennifer Hudson
Timbaland
Taeyang
Zoe Muth
Ty Dolla $ign
Wiz Khalifa
Sturgill Simpson
Enrique Iglesias

To my embarrassment, there are six names here I don't recognize. I can kinda imagine Nicki Minaj and Blake Shelton getting a kick out of doing something like the Jukebox, though don't know how many in their prime audience would want to themselves.

Teena Marie "Lips To Find You"

Watch on YouTube

[I'm not at my home computer, so I don't have the quote exact, but I'm doing a variation on an old riff of mine from 1987, from my fanzine Why Music Sucks, some of whose readers and writers also wrote for or edited at the Village Voice. I said that coverage at the Voice was broad but tone of voice wasn't. Could you imagine Teena Marie or Merle Haggard writing for the Village Voice? Music editor Doug Simmons read this and told me he'd love to print Teena and Merle. But over the years, Teena and Merle types never ended up as Village Voice writers. Fuller Teena quote, from the liner notes to Emerald City: "Once upon a time there lived a little girl named Pity who decided more than anything in the world she wanted to be green."]

*I could be someone helping to run the Jukebox, if I had time and made it a priority. But have barely even posted in half a year.

Might as well get these going, though I guess as a prediction this is pretty safe and obvious:

Taylor Swift joins Pistol Annies, who incorporate dance steps, harmonies, and raps using Bell Biv DeVoe/Backstreet Boys as template, w/ Big Bang and Danity Kane as modern analogues but Big-&-Rich tight country harmonies mixing with the R&B. Most parts are sung but brief raps are interjected and there's always a rap break prior to or as the middle eight. Rap styles are developed from each individual Annie's speaking style, as Taylor did on "Lose Yourself" — Teena Marie the model for keeping raps in the singer-songwriter ethos. Chapman-Shanks-Liddell-pop-rock-style production abandoned; Teddy Park and Shinsadong Tiger called in to produce and co-write.

Teena Marie "Lovergirl"


http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/12/ta-nehisi-coatess-appreciation-of-teena-marie.html

And Brad on an issue that I think it's imperative that voters make other voters pay attention to:

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/12/a-time-to-spend.html