Navig [...]

There was also an amusing coincidence in the show. Chris suggested that iPod shuffling might logically lead to individuals making their own music, and actually used the phrase “garage band.” When we Mac users bought iLife that included iTunes (even though you can download it separately for free), we get an application called Garage Band that lets you make incredible music (and podcasts, as well.) It was a bit excruciating that the two uses of the phrase “garage band” were not explicitly connected.

Heard the show today and really liked it. Michael Bull was really interesting – keep his name in the books.

As Bob Marley says, “There’s one good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.”

But I didn’t catch more than a touch of the Swing bug until I after realizing I could augment my couple of CDs with more from the local library. That first ’shuffled’ playlist fired my enthusiasm and led to my purchases of dozens more CDs. Those bigger and bigger shuffles allowed me to compare the sounds and styles of the performers – and THAT led to my ordering of books byGunther Schuller, Scott Yanow, and the biggest beauty of all called Jazz: A History of America’s Music.
And it’s all good too.

To each his own. Shuffle helped my appreciation. It fired my enthusiasm.

And again: it COULDN’T HAVE done so for my 18th century appreciation. But flatly to condemn it as execrable seems pretty short-sighted to me, in light of my own experiences.

As for Lady Day: sure. Good choice. Wonderful choice. (I’ve no shortage of her songs in my hard drive.)
But I’d nearly kill to hear Anita and Little Jazz live in ’42.
Sigh…

Randy says: Dog, u da bomb, but I got to be real, right?

How is shuffling teaching you anything?

When I built a jazz collection, I studied Jazz from books.

When I built a classical collection, I volunteered to be the treasurer of a chorale/orchestra.

Can we all agree that music is art?
It’s peculiar art too, because only until the invention of the phonograph was it anything other than the most fleeting of art: in the air and then gone. The recording of music changed everything. Suddenly it became consumable without the necessity of the musicians presence within one’s earshot.

After pondering this thread a bit longer, I’m increasingly inclined to argue hard that if “popular culture is destroying art”, “Shuffle” isn’t the culprit – or even a symptom.
To best offer the argument without clogging this thread, I’ve made two off site posts:
1. A Classic Era Jazz & Blues shuffle – 1917-1931 (more or less)
2. A Swing Era shuffle – 1932–1946.
At the bottom of this second list comes the main substance of my argument.
Feel free to comment. (Especially you, jazzman – I expect the two lists will read like musical ‘erotica’ for you!)

Kuspit’s book is a rant and the questions you raise are precisely what he should have addressed in his book, but did not.

Joseph Beuys defined art thusly: Everything is art and everyone is an artist.
In order to define something you must exclude something. His answer is not really a definition.

The problem for critics is that they are not leaders, they are followers. Someone has to do something and then they go to work. There is some unanimity between Perl, Danto ,and Kuspit that the NY art scene is corrupted by money – there is no merit. There are no critics like Clement Greenberg

http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/

to tell people what is what. Nonetheless, he and modernism were ultimately corrupted by hubris.

Charlie Rose had four Macarthur awardees on his show. One was woman who put potted plants in an abandoned psychiatric hospital. I think she said her theory was that people do not get flowers for mental illnesses. Charlie asked her what she would do with the money. She said: “Paint ! I am trained as a painter.”
Her inflection was saying: “You don’t think I’m going to keep doing the same crap I did to get the grant ?”

Kuspit writes in a very round-about-way, but he always gets to the point of saying: we are getting the art we deserve.

Now you know why I speak against the inanity of shuffle – someone has to do it – I think we deserve better.

Ps. I’ll try to propose an ROS on art – not sure I can top Sex Drugs and ….the religious right

Maybe it is. I’m unqualified to opine on that. But those five words stimulated my curiosity –
Is art an independent entity that can be ‘destroyed’? Is ‘art’ a thing unto itself (think about the conversation regarding ‘evil’ in the Arendt thread), or simply a reflection of the culture it is indigenous to?

If art is, “… that which is made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind or spirit”, are video games art?

I really don’t know the best answer, but I suspect that video games are ‘art’ forms symptomatic of contemporary ‘digital’ culture. If that’s so, you and I would probably agree that our rapidly advancing technology is paradoxically debasing our culture. But then, ‘debase’ is a subjectively loaded term.

Another tack: is popular culture destroying art, or, instead, is this culture’s ‘art’ simply and accurately reflecting its cultural milieu?

Is it possible that our culture’s technology is advancing much more rapidly than our society can adapt to it? Isn’t it strange that the same technology allowing you and I to have this sort of heavy conversation, effectively anonymously and effectively instantaneously, without so much as leaving our homes, let alone bothering to engage the human service-system called ‘the Post’, is also enabling the creation of image-games that seem to offer hallucinations of violence and mayhem?

Again, I’m not a deep thinker regarding art. I barely understand what that word means to me, let alone to others. I do, however, suspect that our culture is producing valid ‘representative art’. It’s not perhaps recognizable as ‘traditional’ art, and we can agree to decry this. But its function might be more or less the same as that of the arts whose apparent diminution—in quantity, quality, and impact—we agree to lament.

I’m interested to read your thoughts, and those of any others. (Peggy Sue?)

Shuffle is like the Sinefeld show: much about nothing. Jobs is a genius. He will load all music on a thumbnail sized unit (SNL) and then… you are correct, the process will reverse and the reduction in quality of experience will have to be dealt with.

It is all good, but I see too much of it first – didn’t buy a CD changer until it went back to 1x sampling.

If you can get through Kupsit’s book (terribly written) End of Art, he sums up how popular culture is destroying art.

The key to enjoying – really enjoying – a shuffle is new music – or, at least, music new to you. If you can mix your 40 old faves with 40 fine albums from 1997 to 2007, the shuffled results will likely please the heck out of you.

And to reiterate: I’m discovering the matchless joys of the Swing Era (1932 to 1946, more or less) via “Shuffle”. It’s perfect for that music, all of which was released as singles. (And it’s abominable for Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, & Schubert.)

Shuffle is the logical descendant of the ‘single’, and of singles played on radio. It’s great for popular music, but not for all music uniformly. As pln indicated, it turns multi-movement classical playlists into unlistenable gibberish – the musical counterpart of a “Shuffle” novel, I suppose.

I guess I’m saying simply: relax. Let this new music-listening option run its faddish course and then ebb back into its only valid domain: allowing listeners to experience their popular music collections in fresh, unpredictable sequences.

I don’t expect “shuffle” amounts to another sign of the Second Coming. Give it a couple of years. Don’t be surprised if a reaction emerges in the coming months: popular music arranged as suites – and listened to by its consumers as the musicians intend. See Sloan’s new album for evidence. It’s arranged like the awesome final sequence of Abbey Road. (It’s good, too.)
Take a breath, buddy. The fad will ebb. Fads always do.

I very much like and appreciate Shuffle (the blues form too, jazzman ). Like most boomers, I grew up listening to full albums, learning quickly – and unforgettably – the ‘proper’ order of the songs. I appreciate that, but don’t worship it.
Perhaps my veneration is tempered by having worked for two decades in a bar where we played albums – entire albums only – on cassettes over an excellent house stereo. We had thousands of albums to choose from, yet after a few years, even that uncommon selection began to lose its luster.

I have no profundities to offer on “the meaning of shuffle”. To me, a music lover with tens of thousands of songs, it’s simply an optional randomizer whose output very much pleases my loving but somewhat jaded ears.

Not all shuffles are equal however. Unable to afford an i-Pod, I own a Sony Walkman that plays proprietary ‘Atrac’ CD’s, each of which holds a bit more than 600 songs. I run and work out while wearing the Walkman (which also receives Seattle’s NPR station, which airs ROS), and though 600 songs is plenty of variety, even that can get old if I don’t change the CD fairly regularly.

Here’s what doesn’t get old: 12,656 songs in my (currently) longest WinAmp playlist. The screen informs me that’s over 836 hours of music – with no repeats, were I to play it nonstop. It’s everything in my possession released (as new) between 1957 and 2007.
That’s 34.83 days, says my calculator. Think about it. And I like most of the songs, love many of them too, and, well, wrinkle my nose at a few of the others.

That playlist doesn’t include any of my classical, galant, baroque, or medieval music. Nor does it include any of my ambient stuff (great for writing fiction).
Nor any of my burgeoning collection of classic jazz and Swing music – which, because it was ALL released as 78rpm singles, is completely perfect for ‘Shuffle’. For example, one of my favorite (and growing) playlists holds all of my tunes released between 1935 and 1945, and it’s nearing 3000 tracks. “Shuffle” is ideal for that era’s classic blues, jazz, big band blast, and pop vocals too.

Some shuffles are better than others!

Now, back to the album issue: Shuffle is an option. I can very easily reset to ‘All’ whenever wanting to hear an album in the classic order its musicians intended for it.
But Shuffle is fine option. Here’s what I heard while settling in for our 9 PM PST airing of ROS, and then on throughout the hour of listening to Chris, Brendan and their guests:

1. Detroit Cobras – “Hey Sailor” – from Life, Love, & Leaving, 2001
2. Erykah Badu – “Apple Tree” – from Baduizm, 1997
3. The Guess Who – “Truckin’ Off Across the Sky”, 1972
4. The Sights – It’d Be Nice (To Have You Around) – from Got What We Want, 2002
5. Little Feat – “Time Loves A Hero” – from Time Loves A Hero, 1977
6. The Dirtbombs – “Fox Box” – from Horndog Fest, 1998
7. The Challengers – “K-39”, 1964
8. The Beatles – “I’ll Get You”, 1963
9. Dire Straits – “The Bug” – from On Every Street, 1991
10. Led Zeppelin – “D’yer Maker” from Houses of the Holy, 1973
11. Johnny Winter – “Johnny B. Goode” from Second Winter, 1969
12. Mark Knopfler – “Who’s Your Baby Now” – from Sailing to Philadelphia, 2000
13. Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell (?)– “My Mistake (Was to Love You)”, 1974
14. The Dirtbombs – “Start the Party” – from Dangerous Magical Noise, 2003
15. The Sugarcubes – “Coldsweat” (remix) from Life’s Too Good, 1988
16. Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – “Yester Love”, 1968
17. Eric Clapton – “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” – from There’s One In Every Crowd, 1975
18. The Come-Ons – “Stars” from Stars, 2006
19. Kristin Hersh – “Peggy Lee” from Learn to Sing Like A Star, 2007
20. Junior Walker & The All-Stars – “These Eyes”, 1969
21. Traffic – “Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring” – from Traffic, 1968
22. Johnny Winter & Rick Derringer – “On The Limb” – from Johnny Winter And, 1970
23. Bill Frisell – “Cold, Cold, Ground” – from Good Dog, Happy Man, 1999

Since then, while writing this up, I’ve had the additional pleasure of (in order): Wilson Pickett, Toots & The Maytalls, Cat Stevens, L7, The Stones (“Shattered”), Blondie, The Clash, Stevie Ray Vaughn & Double Trouble, Count Basie (“Li’l Darlin’”), Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Pearl Jam, T. Rex, The Strokes (overrated!), Country Joe & The Fish (why, exactly, did we ever like these guys???), Lou Reed, Sheryl Crow, The Who, Thee Minks, Peter Green’s ‘Original’ Fleetwood Mac (the awesome blues band version), Elvis Presley, Mountain, Ron Wood & Ronnie Lane, 50 Foot Wave, Aerosmith, & The Allman Bros. Band.

Some shuffles – particularly big, varied ones – are just plain better than the others.

Lastly, big time congrats on your MacArthur grant!

The guests seemed confused.

Fetishism – Consumerism – Hyperreality

Ps. I have 450 songs ordered in a narrative way, but I’m an artist, order matters to me

Jazzman says:
I believe the shuffling urge is a form of ADD and the reason for the most of virtual epidemic of ADD/HD diagnoses (besides misdiagnosis, lack of appropriate analysis, and the rewards for drugging the patients) is: Most Americans today are bombarded by a 24/7 stream of eclectic secondary information and lack the ability to focus on a task or thought except for brief periods until they are interrupted by other stimuli and they’re off on a new tangent.

In the end it always ends up relying on a set sequence.

I still do not believe that iPod shuffle is truly as random as, say, if it was determined by a human rolling some dice.

Shuffle is for people who can’t make sense of the mass of songs except to say : MINE !

….this has me reading Baudrillard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

the shuffle aspect reminds me of high school when we had double periods and days off certain subject. yesterday my ipod fed me 4 straight german lessons, then some BBC comedy. I appreciate the possibility of using my ears to learn while my eyes and hands (and not brain) are busy, and i also appreciate the iPod’s sense of humor.

regards
Genevieve Shapiro