PondaBlog

RIP Bill Dixon.

a sad commentary on the times, indeed.

an ace piece on a lucky fellow (well, perhaps not so lucky…) who owns the greatest record collection in the world. plus, the dude is from pittsburgh – home of my beloved Steelers!

sports jingoism aside, this video raises all sorts of troubling questions. the collection’s estimated to be worth $50 million…and he’s asking for a mere $3 million (by the way, if anyone wants to send me the asking price, please feel free…tell you what, all you need to do is send me $2,995,000, and i’ll kick in the remainder).

despite Paul Mawhinney’s astounding collection, so far, there have been no takers. it’s like he says…no one gives a damn.

it’s a scathing indictment of these virtual times, when everything is accessible with the click of a mouse or the touch of an iPad screen. the consummate pleasures of digging for treasures amongst crates of vinyl, or even CDs, is fast becoming an anachronism. and in the process, whole eras are simply disappearing. as he says, more than 80 per cent of his collection that dates from 1948 to 1966 isn’t even available on CD. whole histories are being vaporized. and are we the poorer for it? absolutely.

really, it’s a commentary on late-stage capitalism, a phenomenon where all that matters is acceleration. what’s left behind is detritus, whole eras forgotten, discarded to the dustbin of the past. history just doesn’t matter anymore, and music has become pure commodity.

don’t get me wrong…i’m not a luddite, and technology has made an incredible amount of music available to me personally that i never would have been able to find otherwise. my love of electronic music is based on hardware and software that keeps evolving incessantly. and every week – actually, nearly every day – i manage to get turned on to all sorts of sounds via downloadable mixes and the like – that i never would have been able to find by myself.

but there’s also an essential spirit that’s being lost in this endless rush for ease and accessibility. no one has to actually try anymore. and the pure pleasure of the fetishism of the object – and let’s face it, so much of collecting has to do with this fetishism – is rapidly disappearing. vinyl records, and even CDs, on a smaller scale, are not just objects to listen to. they are (well, at least some of the time) artworks in their own right. they are physical, visual entities – entities that can be held and examined and read and observed in a way that no MP3 download can replicate. they engage us, and we engage them.

our whole way of listening is changing as well. with vinyl records in particular, one typically listens to a full side of one record, then flips it over and listens to the other side. yes, tracks can be skipped, but the action required to do so is laborious. it’s simpler, and often more pleasurable, to listen to the record in its entirety.

this process was radically altered with CDs, which allowed listeners to simply fast forward to whatever track they wanted to hear. and yes, i have done this countless times myself. but still, one is presented with a single object that can be played from beginning to end, amen.

today, listeners don’t have to bother with such constituent and bothersome units. they can download whatever track they want from a particular release and forget the rest. instant gratification, no personal investment required.

in 1982, Walter Ong wrote a fascinating treatise entitled Orality and Literacy, which examined the shift from oral societies to the culture of the written word. we’re now well into the next stage…moving into some post-physical aether where ease is everything and the difficult yet consummate pleasures of existence – what we used to know and experience as the human condition – are being consigned to the ontological sidelines.

things keep changing.

and after all this, i like the fact that Mawhinney’s most valuable record is from the Rolling Stones.

Cannonball from California is a place. on Vimeo.

the best of times, the worst of times. a fascinating and beautifully filmed piece on the economic meltdown in california, where endless abandoned abodes have led to a nirvana for skaters hungry for pools and concrete coping. it’s the end game of capitalism…everyone thought they could have everything, then it all fell apart. now cali is considering legalizing pot to garner desperately needed revenues. perhaps the downturn has some upturns. the end of history, indeed…

is FACT the greatest mag/site of the moment? their podcasts alone make me say a big phat yes. first up is seattle’s the sight below, who provides a lovely shoegazy mix (note the mbv t-shirt) that starts off with the perenially underrated slowdive. sure, there are  a few odd choices along the way (iggy’s “nightclubbing?” really?) but any session that ends with clan of xymox is a winner in my book.

then there are the other goodies - mixes courtesy of berlin’s techno auteur marcel dettmann and dub occultists demdike stare. and i’ve just seen that the latest mix is from ariel pink’s haunted graffiti. go on, take me i’m yours (apologies to David Gedge)…

not a bad week for releases, then. first, nearly four decades after its coked-out blues buzz crawled out of a basement in villa nellcôte, perhaps the greatest rock ‘n’ roll record ever in the history of the universe gets reissued. plus, there’re 10 bonus tracks that purists are griping over (see the comments section in the article) but whatevs – i’m salivating over this one. i want gram parson’s spoon though!

i was wondering how pitchfork would rate exile (yes, these thoughts actually occur to me…). lo and behold, they’ve given it the good ol’ 10-spot. but don’t let that scare you off.

then there’s mr. James Murphy, pictured above, who just happened to put out two of the past decade’s best discs. now, his third offering as lcd soundsystem – this is happening – is out and once again, it’s getting rave reviews.

the pitchfork review quotes a curious line from murphy: “I spent my whole life wanting to be cool… but I’ve come to realize that coolness doesn’t exist the way I once assumed.”

now normally, if someone told me they’d spent their whole life wanting to be cool, i’d probably run for the hills. and really, lcd’s pop-culture mining cachet and knowing winks make me almost want to not like the band. but i simply can’t argue with the output – two stunningly good albums, and hopefully another one to complete the triumvirate.

now where’s that new mbv album?

came across this ace video whilst reading in the ny times about the pending demise of the brooklyn banks, a legendary street skating spot.  included is some classic footage from powell peralta’s future primitive video. and it’s great to see Vallely reminisce about the banks, skateboarding in the ’80s and his early days. i remember Vallely coming on the scene when i was a teen – about 18 centuries ago – and just blowing me away with his stylish, aggressive, avant-garde moves. it’s like he says…back then, stuff was happening so quickly, especially in terms of street skating, that it was hard to keep track of who was pulling which sick new trick. it’s cool to see him now too – older but no less passionate about his calling.

great skate spots are sacred places. and now another sacred place is gonna be gone. what a shame.

http://www.youtube.com/user/DirtyFunkStepper

with thanks to lovely sheryda…

another interweb revelation – a bizarre but rather fascinating piece, by John Leland, in the new york times about female porn addiction and a movement that seeks to save those who have strayed.

content aside, i was pleasantly surprised to see leland’s byline once again. as a fan of music criticism (at least some of it), i remember that some of  the earliest pieces that really made an impression on me – and yes, i’m dating myself here – were from leland during his days at spin. back when spin meant something.

leland’s piece for that mag on public enemy – and the shitstorm that ensued following professor griff’s anti-semitic slurs back in the ice age (aka the late ’80s) – was a masterwork, and it remains one of my fave pieces of music writing. i hadn’t read it in ages, but this post made me dig it up online. and well, the wait was worth it. what an opening sentence! and what an opening paragraph!

leland brought analysis, passion and ol’-fashioned reportage into the mix. and he was a great writer. after spin, he went on to edit details for a bit, wrote a book called hip: the history, and then, well, i don’t really know.

except now i do – he’s with the times. perhaps that’s been the case for a while, i’ve no idea. but i sure look forward to reading more of his pieces.