WhoSampled.com

~ Mark

We’re building the ultimate
database of sampled music, remixes and cover songs. Dig deeper into music by discovering direct links among over 116,000 songs and 44,000 artists, from Hip-Hop and R&B via Electronic Music through to Rock, Pop, Funk, Soul, Jazz and beyond.

I wish I’d known about this site a long, long time ago.

WhoSampled.com

Interview with Andrew Potter: Travel and the Search for Authenticity – World Hum

~ Mark

I think we need to keep in mind that the backpackers you’re talking about, who go to new areas and beat new paths by living close to the people and close to the earth and so on, they are in a sense—and this isn’t my line, this is from an old book I came across—the shock troops of the mass tourism industry. They’re the ones who go into a place that has no infrastructure for tourism and basically create the market for other people to come in behind them. And that may or may not be a bad thing. But we need to be aware that that’s actually what’s going on.

Interview with Andrew Potter: Travel and the Search for Authenticity – World Hum

~ Mark

When an artist brings me their work, I treat it like food — like a frozen chicken. Like, I have my stove and I didn’t make the chicken, but I can put the right spices on it, and put my stove at a certain degree.

DJ Drama in an interview with Brandon Soderberg/@notrivia.

Idler Q&A (3) | HiLobrow

~ Mark

Mark Kingwell and Joshua Glenn discuss their sequel to The Idler’s Glossary, The Wage Slave’s Glossary. Kingwell:

The idler/slacker distinction is a powerful lever. It makes clear that idling, unlike slacking, is not about work at all: it’s not avoiding work, or resenting work, or hiding from parents or spouses who think you should be working more. Idling offers an independent value which, in being independent, constructs an implicit (sometimes explicit) critique of the work-world’s norms. […] The idler says, don’t grow (if growth just means bigger markets). Instead, play! We are trustees of our time here, not owners of it. When it comes to selfhood and our time here, there is no property; there is only care.

I loved Mark Kingwell’s book In Pursuit of Happiness.
Idler Q&A (3) | HiLobrow

~ Mark

There’s no such thing as not playing. Music has rests in it. So you’re on a rest right now, and the music will begin shortly.

Tom Waits. Via austinkleon. Cf. Ralf Hütter of Kraftwerk:

We have to start the concert at 8:00 and we have to stop sometime because the halls are rented for a certain time but the music goes on in your mind before and after you play. It’s really just an agreement you make to stop at a certain time. On record, it goes for 40 minutes because an album has these dimensions. It’s just an agreement. But really the music goes on.

~ Mark

Oh you have a dream? You should pay a lot of money for that dream and maybe at the end of a lot of debt you’ll be better at that dream.

Annie Clark on education at Berklee College of Music. Another take in an earlier interview:

At some point you have to learn all you can and then forget everything that you learned in order to actually start making music.

I think a lot of people, if they’re not careful, can err on the side of the quantifiable and approach it like an athlete. Run that little bit faster, do that little bit more and think you’re being more successful. But the truth is that a lot of times it’s not necessarily about merely being the best athlete, it’s about attempting a new sport.

~ Mark

It is hardly surprising to find that the two areas of human enterprise most concerned with sincerity as opposed to truth–namely, politics and advertising–are also the two areas most steeped in bullshit. Or would it be better to say that politics and advertising are the two areas most concerned with the appearance of authenticity? This might be a distinction without a difference.

Andrew Potter.

Baseball Umpires Aren’t Perfect, OK? – NPR

~ Mark

Corresponding to the umpire-as-instrument idea is External Realism. According to External Realism, there are umpiring-independent facts of the game — balls are really fair or foul, runners are either safe or out — and the questions we face are merely epistemological, how best to determine the facts, how to find out.

Corresponding to the umpire-as-player idea is Internal Anti-Realism. According to Internal Anti-Realism, umpires don’t call them as they see them; umpires, through their calls, make it the case that a pitch is a strike or a ball, a runner safe or out. There are no umpire-independent facts in baseball.

Baseball Umpires Aren’t Perfect, OK? – NPR

High Plains Drifter

~ Mark

High Plains Drifter. This is one of those movies where you have to remember that the protagonist doesn’t always reflect the values of the real, actual live human being director. Here, the Stranger kills three guys and rapes a woman within, oh, 10-15 minutes. It’s not the most subtle movie you’ll ever see. Honestly, I finished this one out of a sense of obligation and curiosity because I love westerns and I love Clint Eastwood. This was the second movie he directed, after Play Misty for Me. Aside from a few excellent parts here and there, this one is more enjoyable when reading and thinking about it after you’ve watched it than while actually watching. It doesn’t all hold together so well. Comparing this to his directing work in the 1990s and 2000s is like night and day. That said, objectively awesome bits include a great opening mirage entrance scene, a spooky, eerie score that would fit right in with a horror or 1950s scifi movie, and the tough guy one-liners. Speaking of tough guys, I really need to make some time for the Dirty Harry flicks…

~ Mark

By seven everyone is gone. They all offered to help, and you waved them away. There is a shabby nobility in failing all by yourself.

Excerpt from Bright Lights, Big City, a swift, often funny book with a terrible ending. Another favorite bit:

You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you can clean it up a little you don’t want to invite anyone inside.

Blue Valentine

~ Mark

Blue Valentine. My first reaction: it’s a snuff film. My second reaction: it’s not entertainment. Which is right and wrong. Tragedy isn’t fun, but it is appealing in that train-wreck-in-slow-motion kind of way. The shifting back and forth in time lets you see, in parallel, their courtship (including a falling-in-love montage I will lazily/accurately describe as “cloyingly indie”) and their crumbling. Nice to see signals of their growing union fall into place (e.g., She starts wearing his jacket. One tune played is later revealed to be “their song” from back in the day. Etc.). Ebert observes wisely: “Dean thinks marriage is the station. Cindy thought it was the train.”

Man’s Search for Meaning

~ Mark

I got curious about this one after seeing Austin’s post. Good read. Author Viktor Frankl says:

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life–daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

This reminds me of a favorite blog post I came across several years ago: You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem (original blog now defunct?).

Screw your plans. Work on your skills. Apply them to a problem that is biting you. Flush and repeat until people believe you had a plan.

I love the sense of *action* that Frankl gets at. Meaning doesn’t happen to you or arrive through talk or navel-gazing, it’s something you do. You have to scratch around a bit. It’s part of a process, which itself is part of the fun, if you’re doing it right: Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing. Doesn’t mean it’s easy. Opportunity comes dressed in overalls, as they say. You’ll have to spend some time groping, listening, testing, accepting, discarding. And if you’re doing it right, it won’t feel good a lot of time: you can tell if it’s your own plan by how lost you feel.

Doesn’t mean you have to be super-choosy (although Family. Friends. Health. Work. Pick any three is helpful to keep in mind). Be careful what parts of yourself you give up on: “You can cut off a couple passions and only focus on one, but after a while, you’ll start to feel phantom limb pain.” And you have to keep in mind that, if you do ever succeed, having found your life’s purpose/calling/vocation/mission, it’s not going to extend your life and not necessarily make you *happy*. One year’s answer might not do for another. And by the way, “Don’t let yo’ happiness make somebody sad!”

Man’s Search for Meaning

Mystic River

~ Mark

Mystic River. Great movie. Dang. I was immediately convinced this one would be worth it. On the surface it’s a whodunnit crime thriller kind of thing, but by the end it’s beside the point. It’s about hurt and healing, history and fate. My respect for Clint Eastwood grows with every film I watch. My overall impression is that he just seems to use his time really well, which is not a small compliment. I also realized during the movie that the score was recognizably Eastwoodian–I hadn’t known he wrote it before I started watching, but it’s definitely got his touch there, too. And I can’t not mention the kickass cast that kicks ass like you think they would: Penn, Robbins, Bacon, Fishburne, Linney. Good stuff.

My updated rankings for Eastwood’s directing:

  1. Unforgiven
  2. Gran Torino
  3. Million Dollar Baby
  4. Mystic River (or maybe one ranking higher, not sure)
  5. The Outlaw Josey Wales
  6. Changeling
  7. Play Misty for Me
  8. Bird
  9. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

I think I’ve seen more movies directed by Eastwood than anyone except for Hitchcock (also 9 movies) and Spielberg (20-something!). Buster Keaton and Tim Burton come in at 6 and Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan at 5, if I’m remembering correctly. Can’t think of anyone else with more than 4 right now.