String Theory Media

brooks: the other education

But on the night of Feb. 2, 1975, I turned on WMMR in Philadelphia and became mesmerized by a concert the radio station was broadcasting. The concert was by a group I’d never heard of — Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Thus began a part of my second education.

via www.nytimes.com

I almost missed this amazing column from David Brooks on Friday. I've long been a fan of his political writing, and this might be the best piece of arts commentary I've read this year. He's talking about our emotional development and music's unique and powerful impact on it. Music is like a personal map and compass for the terrain where we discover ourselves and our relationship with the world. 

Once I got a taste of that emotional uplift, I was hooked. The uplifting experiences alone were bound to open the mind for learning.

It's interesting that Brooks uses the language of addiction, but it's an addiction to a certain kind of mental openness and effort that we need a lot more of. And it's most apt for a project I'm working on that will be described here very shortly. Meanwhile, there's real insight about nothing less than music as a key part of the path to wisdom in Brooks's column. Check it out.

an it that should have been

I was conflicted to say the least when Michael Jackson “died.” I put that in quotes because now it looks like he was killed, but at the time we were led to believe that he’d just expired from some vague, self-destructive accumulation of behaviors. The media jolted into its predictable cycles of speculation, footage loops and computer graphics. So all I knew was that the King of Pop was gone on the eve of his career-climaxing show-to-end-all-shows, and the message I kept getting and the feeling I couldn’t shake was that he’d brought it on himself and it was all just a pathetic end to a remarkable, fraught career.

As much as I respected his music, his dancing and his showmanship, I was mostly angry at the superstar industrial complex of which he was as much a creator as a victim. I couldn’t abide his Peter Pan fetish and I couldn’t excuse his inability to see bright lines where kids and intimacy were concerned. His infinite appetite for attention and love and adulation felt unhealthy, and the armies of manic, weeping girls and boys who fed his ego made me queasy.

Then (last night) I saw This Is It, the posthumous documentary about the preparation for the London swan song shows that were going to happen under the same name. I’m really glad I did, because I feel like I now have a far more truthful take on Jackson and the tragedy of his premature death.

sam's groovy widget

Our video series for Sam Bush can be found at Sam's website of course, but it can also be shared and spread around with this groovy widget designed by our pals and partners at Lotos Nile Media. 

when we measure the wrong things

Last spring, I moderated a panel at the Belmont/Leadership Music Digital Summit about the changing metrics of the music business. I hoped that the panel would convey that when industries change, the very measure of success often changes. Anyway, a good music/metrics story made it onto NPR's On The Media recently, and here it is. 

It features Duncan Freeman, founder of BandMetrics.com who was on our panel. The piece suggests that even if "the charts" once meant something in the pop music business, they mean little today. They've always been something of an illusion, a contrivance meant to serve the needs of an industry interested in getting us to consume a lot of just a few artists rather than ranging across the new and the old for a fulfilling listening life. Before SoundScan, the system methodically and negligently under-represented country and hip-hop. And SoundScan has been far from perfect. The whole Hit Parade concept has gone on to suffuse other industries such that who's on top, who had the biggest share or the biggest opening weekend has defined most of our public dialogue about our culture's art. And that's just a sorry place to be. Every real artist I've ever known wasn't aiming at a chart, and as a consumer, the charts have almost never influenced my purchases. The charts will be used one day to lobby for Rascal Flatts to go in the Country Music Hall of Fame, which would be a farce if they sold 100 million albums. The charts are used to rule out entire genres of American music for wider marketing and distribution and exposure by powerful entertainment companies. Anyway, check out the story.