A few weeks ago, I started reading the collection of essays The Rose and the Briar, which re-imagines America through the lens of its ballads — mostly from the twentieth century, though the origins of some go back much further (and to parts of the British Isles). As soon as I started reading, I realised […]
Playlists
Incense and Playlist #2
An anecdote from yesterday evening’s Twisted Folk gig. Arriving a few minutes early, and alone, I went straight to my seat rather than hang around in the bar. There were only four or five people in the stalls when Devendra Banhart jumped down off the stage, and criss-crossed the rows of seats carrying a smoking […]
Playlist #1: Neil Young celebrity playlist
I’d lay a large bet that Neil Young doesn’t have an iPod. He’s been waging a war on digital compression since the early days of CDs, and is on record as saying that MP3s are even worse than CDs: “MP3 is a dog; the quality sucks. It’s all compressed and the data compression — it’s […]
Teaching as performance
Doug Brent has written an interesting paper in last month’s First Monday on how historical trends are being played out in online education. He draws a distinction between “knowledge [or, more strictly, teaching] as performance and knowledge as thing” (emphasis in the original). Loosely speaking you could map this onto my process-versus-product distinction in e-learning. […]
Recommendations for enhancing iTunes’ sharing features
Since my posting on research into iTunes music sharing, I’ve got a copy of the full paper and found time to read it on a recent train journey. Last time I focused on how people manage the impressions that others get from their music collections, but the research also has interesting things to say about […]
The Roots of London Calling
A few weeks ago, I advocated the creation of ‘imaginary’ celebrity playlists, which could become an interesting form of musical essay on both the celebrity and the acts in his/her playlist. I’m working on one for Neil Young, which so far may include tracks from The Shadows, Roy Orbison, Otis Redding’s cover of Satisfaction, Bobby […]
Radio David Byrne and Celebrity Playlists
Following the thread of my last-but-one posting, about sharing music in an office, it’s interesting to see how David Byrne introduces his Radio DavidByrne.com: A friend who relocated to California from NY said she missed hearing all the odd variety of music that was played around the office here. “I miss hearing what you all […]