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December 19, 2008
Shorties (Rhett Miller, Aesop Rock, and more)
Yesterday's additions to the "best of 2008" online book lists include the Seattle Times' top fiction books and Comics Should Be Good's top comics.
Yesterday's additions to the "best of 2008" online music lists include Tiny Mix Tapes' favorite albums and Notes from a Different Kitchen's best hip-hop albums, singles, and mixtapes.
Rhett Miller of the Old 97's talks to the Washington Times about the future of the music industry.
"Who knows what it'll be? A splintered, fractured, digital, post-apocalyptic thing," he ventures. "Music used to drive the culture so much, and it just doesn't feel that way anymore. I think people still love it. They depend on it more than ever, with their 10,000-song iPods and everything. But when you can carry 10,000 songs in your pocket, the one individual song gets kinda cheapened."
Prefix is looking for a paid intern to music blog.
Amazon has digital versions of the following albums on sale for $5 through Monday:
The Pretenders' The Singles
Various Artists' Nightmare Revisited
Frank Sinatra's A Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra
The A.V. Club interviews Aesop Rock.
AVC: Your lyrics are pretty vivid, and so are your videos. How visually do you think when you're writing?
AR: I try to make it like a setting. Sometimes it's a story, but even if it's not, I'll just try to describe this particular mood that happened on this particular day, in this place. I like it to be visual. I always attached myself to people who wrote that way, and who said stuff that was like—not only said "There's a bookshelf over in the corner," but added an adjective that helped describe the mood or something. It just helps me. People don't stress enough that when they're writing lyrics, they are writing. MCs are authors, and rock musicians who write lyrics are authors, to a degree. There's so much room to do so much more in rap, which we touched on. To take pride and be versatile, to do something they haven't tried before, and just say, "Let me try this."
A blast from the past: Salon's review of the first issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern.
nyctaper lists its favorite NYC live music performances of the year, complete with links to mp3 downloads of the shows.
Daytrotter's Friday session features in-studio mp3s from Annuals.
In the Los Angeles Times, Ann Powers recaps the year in pop music.
Lavinia Greenlaw, "The Importance of Music to Girls," and Carl Wilson," Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste": The year's two outstanding music books.
The Guardian's First Album award went to the Courteneers for St. Jude.
The Independent names its music websites of the year, and also has artists name their favorite albums of the year.
Guitar World lists the 100 worst guitar solos of all time.
The Village Voice is determining the worst song lyrics of the year.
Pitchfork has posted the first half of its annual top albums of the year list.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Online "best of 2008" music lists
Online "best of 2008" book lists
daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
tags: music books popculture indie news
