« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
November 2, 2008
Shorties (Best Circadian Novels, Nikka Costa, and more)
The Minneapolis Star Tribune lists its favorite albums of summer and early fall.
The Toronto Star examines the rise in protest music aimed at the current U.S. president.
The Press of Atlantic City examines the emergence of video trailers for books.
Amazon is offering several mp3 albums for $5 apiece through tomorrow:
Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
Carl Orff: Carmina Burana
Slipknot: All Hope Is Gone
My Bloody Valentine: Loveless
David Bowie: Scary Monsters
The Huffington Post examines U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama's support of the arts in his platform.
In Senator Obama's opinion it appears the arts have become essential to reengage our standing in the world. According to an article in Bloomberg, he is the first White House contender to include a far- reaching arts-plank in his platform. Quoting Robert Lynch, president and chief executive officer of "Americans for the Arts" a highly respected Washington based arts advocacy group, "no presidential candidate in recent times has addressed cultural issues in such detail."
The Guardian examines the connections between the literary world and the U.S. presidency.
"You would be surprised," the young JFK was informed by his ambitious father, "how a book that really makes the grade with high-class people stands you in good stead for years to come." But nothing in Dreams from My Father hints at such up-market self-promotion, or indeed at the ghost-writer who actually authored JFK's Pulitzer-winning book Profiles of Courage. Rather, its taut, sharp sentences reveal a remarkable capacity for self-examination and a finely developed negative capability; and its frank confessions of doubt and ambiguity make it possible to see Obama's paeans to American exceptionalism as election-time expediency.
T-shirt of the day: 1996 Obama for State Senate in Illinois shirt
NPR's Weekend Edition profiles the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
"Clive Davis felt that too many executives in the music industry were simply operating from a purely corporate point of view in terms of the making of music," King says. "What he wanted to do was establish a school at NYU where students would be trained in a number of different areas: production in the recording studio, business, as well as the history and criticism aspects. But he wanted to train the sort of well-rounded creative entrepreneur."
At the Guardian, John Mullan lists 10 of the best circadian novels (books where the action takes place in one day).
At NPR's Weekend Edition, Evan Eisenberg ponders the sci-fi future of music.
More than 20 years ago, Evan Eisenberg looked at how recorded music had changed human society. His book, The Recording Angel, examined the idea of music as a commodity, and the evolution of how people make, buy and listen to it. But with recorded music going digital, Eisenberg felt it was time for an update. The book was recently republished with a new afterword, which projects the future of music in a science fiction fantasy.
Minnesota Public Radio's The Current has Nikka Costa in the studio for an interview and performance.
also at Largehearted Boy:
daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
this week's CD releases
tags: music books popculture indie news
