November 2008
26 posts
Give me something to read →
I’m a big fan of Instapaper and logging in just now noticed a link to this site which takes the articles most frequently ‘papered by people and offers them up as suggestions for everyone else.
Hope is Important, dissected →
Half of the songs were written throughout 1997 and around the same times as those that appear on Captain, the other half (including most of the singles) were written between tours in the first months of 1998, when we’d been branded as the ‘next big thing’ by much of the UK music press, and had given up university/employment to concentrate on touring etc. It was a time of...
RIP Richey →
The disappearance in 1995 of the Welsh rock musician Richey Edwards, then aged 27, became a major British media event and, in the years that followed, supposed sightings of (or messages from) Edwards, akin to those of Elvis Presley in the US, lent a bizarre aspect to his supposed death. Edwards, whose parents have been granted a court order declaring him to be presumed dead, was himself a student...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-11-23) →
Arctic Monkeys
Bloc Party
Broken Social Scene
Ladyhawke
Dizzee Rascal
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
It certainly wasn't like this when I made a porn... →
Victoria Coren comparing her experiences of making a porn film to those of Zack and Miri in the film.
My youthful brush with Baader Meinhof →
Observer columnist Henry Porter writing on a close encounter he had with possible Baader Meinhof associated when in Italy in the early 70s.
Wall-E Screenplay →
Mr. Kottke has a link to the entire Wall-E screenplay, which is pretty cool.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-11-16) →
Ladyhawke
Róisín Murphy
Jaguar Love
Tim Fite
Santogold
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
The Good Life of a New-Media Guru? →
Ron Rosenblaum for Slate with a hatchet-job on Jeff Jarvis. Jeff’s reply “There, there, Ron”:
Sadly, Rosenbaum doesn’t debate the idea and history and fate of journalism, which might be productive or at least provocative. Instead, like a pissy third grader, he attacks me. Because of my opinion, he says he doesn’t “like” me anymore. Take that, Jarvis! You can’t sit at my lunch...
Failure is an Option →
I worked at several magazines where we were told to reduce or eliminate (!) the number of kills (btw, eliminating the kills always amounted to pretending like it was going to run in a future issue and when that future issue never came–2 years down the road–we killed it). Kills have always been a part of making magazines and I would argue an important part of how a magazine is different than a...
No other country could have produced the Specials →
Terry Hall grew up with Jamaican culture as well as English culture, that’s the only way The Specials could have happened. It couldn’t have been Jamaican music on one side, and English music on the other, then you’d just have had reggae and punk rock. They bled into each other. In America I know guys who’ve got Jamaican parents and they can’t understand a Jamaican guy talking, but Terry Hall...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-11-9) →
Bloc Party
The Kills
Tim Fite
Crystal Castles
Girl Talk
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Hellaween →
Bit late, but Kitsune Noir has another mixtape up for grabs dedicated to Halloween. This time though put together by someone else.
FOWD →
Tina “SwissMiss” Eisenberg is blogging the FOWD conference that’s taking place in New York today, Ryan from 37signals so far on how designers can work better with other people, particularly programmers:
He believes in empowering designers by no longer having them just hand off pixelperfect designs but to take a stab at the code and therefore not giving up control. Like in so many...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-11-2) →
Metronomy
The Kills
Crystal Castles
Wolf Parade
Blood Red Shoes
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz