Some alt-country updates on my blip.fm postings. Thanks to Sunday Morning Come Down. Good stuff.
In my search today, came accross this blog post
http://swill-merchant.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-ever-diminishing-hipness.html
It reads:
I have never claimed to be cool. Ever. But now I think even the last remaining particles of hipness in body are slowly dying a slow, uncool death. And I am OK with it. I just don't have the time,energy, or desire to unearth the latest MGMT remix or the next big thing(usually some obscure Brooklyn band.) I am at peace with my lameness and I choose to listen to stuff like Charlie Mars.No, Mr. Mars doesn't reinvent the rock n'roll wheel nor does he have superstar indie bands lining up to remix his songs. He just makes really, really good music and I really like his album 'Like A Bird, Like A Plane'...and as the song below displays, he can make something as simple as listening to a classic Pink Floyd record sound so inviting
Hits a little close to home. Now, I a spend as much energy (not as much time) as any hipster looking the latest and the greatest, but he lands a punch on the hipster scene good for a standing eight count. Charlie Mars aint the next big thing, but point taken.
3 comments:
I think a big part of it for me is that I actually don't listen to music anymore … it's just kind of on, somewhere there in the background. And, y'know, it's been like that for years, and maybe, in my case, pretty much forever.
Somewhat obvious realization driven home recently by the article about the guy and his Sufjan Stevens listening parties and just this week on Toast-N-Jam, where the interviewee, mostly in the context of the loss of quality with everybody listening digitally on little earbuds, notes that nobody just sits down with an album anymore.
Well, you once championed techno as good music because "it sounded great in the background."
As far as digital quality, i've read that it's a matter of mixing right. When tapes and cd's first came out, people thought they sounded horrible but after producers and engineers adjusted, it became acceptable. I've read that digital music is going a similar thing - unfortunately the right mix seems to be "loud." And bass never sounds as good as live.
I loved that article on SS listening parties. That people case so much about music inspires me. Likewise, that the digital music makes music relavant as something other than commercials or soundtrack or background (no slight intended) is great too.
I dont want to go back when your musical universe was bordered by a couple record stores, a couple friends and a couple of magazines. At this point, I will not go a tangent on the great music that is out there.
Googling around trying to find that WSJ article, ran across plenty of hate for that dude and his listening parties. I thought it was a pretty cool idea, but I guess that many feel that the music … wants to be free.
I think that a lot of the loss in digital comes from the compression, and then the fact that we're all just listening on cheap earphones (or the built-in computer speakers), so the compensation is just making it, as you note, loud. And the real problem is that's what we're getting used to.
Today's background music provided by, as usual, Indie. And, I agree, there's so much good stuff out there -- and the discovering and hunting down of it can be good fun.
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