Music Links Du Jour

These links have been making the rounds on lots of blogs lately, but since I definitely go through long periods of being out of the music loop because I’ve disappeared down some other rabbit hole of obsession (more on this in a future post if I decide I’m not too embarrassed to write it), I figured I’d put them here too in case any of you happen to be like me.

Also, I know my recent posts have been nothing but photos, and although I’m really happy with how my photography’s been going I think I should remind myself that it is also good to write words.

  • Pitchfork Reviews Reviews: Where has this blog been all my life?! Here’s the rationale for the blog, and a sample post I particularly enjoyed. I’m sure it has much better posts, but having only discovered it yesterday I have not gone through its entire archives. Yet.
  • Kanye West: Project Runaway: The unfortunately-named Noah Callahan-Bever writes about getting invited to Hawaii to spend a week watching Kanye make My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. At the bit where he describes the trip as settling “into a fairly routine pattern, if by ‘fairly routine’ you mean ‘a succession of both magical and mundane moments starring the musicians who defined your adolescence alongside the most exciting artists of today’,” I would suggest you open Microsoft Paint, create a blank canvas and fill it with green. Ta da, you now have a photo of me as I was reading this article.
  • Various music journos write about their “comfort albums” at Capital: There’s something about the premise of this that has innate appeal to any music nerd, and where I think the feature especially succeeds is in the breadth of music represented (though I will admit to being not quite metal enough to find Death’s The Sound Of Perseverance comforting).
  • Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation?: A well-written ongoing series on 90s alt-rock. If the navel-gaziness of Part 1 annoys you, go straight to Part 2 to be entertained by the feuding between Nirvana and GNR. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every part of the series so far even though it takes a while (Parts 4 and 5) to my favourite bands of that genre (Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden). Highly, highly recommended reading if you ever enjoyed any of the music.

Clearing Decks

I’m all “New laptop! New start!” at the moment and totally geeking out over reinstalling all my favourite software (which of course also includes copious online research on whether all these programs are still theeeee best ones for me), and since I spend more time surfing the web than any responsible adult should, a big part of this is achieving optimal Firefox zen. But before I went on a trawl for shiny new extensions to fill surfing needs I never knew I had, I decided I needed to do a little bookmark pruning. I haven’t been the best at keeping my bookmarks under control over the years, which became a lame reason for me not to use online bookmark syncing services like Foxmarks because I felt like this would only encourage me to perpetuate my disorganized shitpile rather than lick it into shape, and this needs to change soon.

A particularly mucky sump in my bookmarks toolbar was the folder I’d called “To Blog”, where I would happily drag links with every intention of blogging them but then blithely continue surfing and never get round to writing the entry. Once the dropdown list of bookmarks in this folder reached the bottom of my screen, I ostriched my head in the sand and just stopped adding bookmarks there. To the best of my recollection, the contents of this folder have not changed since maybe 2006. But upon exploration I found there was still some good stuff in there! Just so that I can delete it with peace of mind, here it is:

Articles:

  • Grief, Gratitude and Baby Lee: Beautiful, poignant article about perinatal hospices. I hope people know that the anti-abortion community isn’t actually all about murdering doctors and hating on women.
  • Soulseeking: From now-defunct (and sadly missed) Stylus magazine, Nick Southall writes about the conundrum of loving music so much that you sometimes forget how to love it, something I’ve grappled with for years. In 2005 when the article was written, there were definitely some readers of this blog who would’ve identified with it. I’m not sure if they’re still here any more but if the article resonates with you, holla.

Poetry:

Photography:

I only mentioned File magazine once here before but loved way more photographs than I linked to at the time.