String Theory Media

Lists Served

From last Sunday's Guardian, another definitive list of the most influential pop albums. Gotta love a list that makes Lou Reed more important than Elvis. The authors are, reassuringly, Beatles-lovers.

50 albums that changed music

Fifty years old this month, the album chart has tracked the history of pop. But only a select few records have actually altered the course of music. To mark the anniversary, Kitty Empire pays tribute to a sublime art form, and our panel of critics argues for 50 albums that caused a revolution. To see the 50, click here

I'm Finally Current

Haven't posted in a while, despite or because of some good projects and adventures. The Telluride Bluegrass Festival was spectacular. I got my WSM book manuscript off to the publisher. But more about those later. I was moved to post because of how blown away I've been by CurrentTV, which is I guess Al Gore's cable channel with mostly viewer-produced content. Music related stories are common and everything I've seen has a vital, visceral quality that proves the media revolution is real. But what really impressed me last night was a segment on the recurring "Current Controversy" about payola. In three minutes and fifty-five seconds, producer Christof Putzel explains radio promotions and AG Spitzer's investigation in easy-to-understand English. He even ended with a sweet elbow in the eye of celebrity-industrial-complex projects like Lindsay Lohan's music career. We're watching for more like this.