someone’s fired up today: two blog posts in a day is like a 1400% increase from my lazy once-a-week habit of late. but after a crazy few weeks of work i feel balance returning in several aspects of life, to hopefully include more regular writing. for further evidence, see brian actually getting exercise twice so far this week after a roughly month-long stretch of stress-induced sloth.

that’s not what i signed back in to talk about though. what i was doing was reading the almost always outstanding catbirdseat, on the topic of the evolution of music appreciation, which came up in the wake of the experience music project conference recently concluded.

he wrote several posts which i rush to pull quotes from if only to reflect my total agreement with, and steer whatever traffic i can to his benefit, starting with an outside source which he himself was quoting:

The democratization of music crit– on mssg boards, mp3 blogs, etc.– seems to not be resulting in ppl sharing more ideas with one another, but falling over another just to plant flags.

then a few from his posts:

But the sad part of this situation isn’t the part about the fading of the “thoughtful” critic, it’s the part about the “kids” wanting their music (and their musical discourse) fast. Not only do critics no longer have the luxury of taking time to think about music, they don’t even have time to LISTEN to music anymore. But in today’s age, why should they? The kids are barely listening to it themselves. Music has become a sort of online baseball-bubblegum-cards scene– cheap and disposable, with people more interested in filling out their checklists and talking statistics than investing the time to listen to some music.

Remember that part in National Lampoon’s European Vacation? Where Clark Griswold, pressed for time, rushes around Rome and pauses for just a few seconds in front of each landmark on his list before bolting off to his next bullet point? That’s the “kids today.” I mean, sadly, “Is It Good?” doesn’t even matter anymore; the only thing that seems to matter is “Is It New?”

…and also…

Yesterday I noted my belief that the act of (A.) “Spending Time With An Album/Listening To An Album” is quickly dying at the hands of (B.) “Just Give A Quick, Cursory Listen To As Much NEW Music As Possible.” I would like to point out that I see a direct correlation to this in terms of live music, as well– which is to say, while the list of small independent rock club deaths gets ever longer, the list of giganto-normous music festivals continues to grow. To wit, the experience of the small, intimate show (A.) is quickly dying at the hands of the bloated, endurance-testing, all-you-can eat festival (B.) I mean, Christ, how many “Festival”-related news items has Pitchfork had in the last two days alone? Six? Seven?

which i find terribly interesting and relevant because in the face of the crushingly huge amount of new music that hipster credibility demands i at least try to keep up with, i find myself curling up in what might be deemed a musical foetal position, and consciously limiting my album purchases to one or two a month so that i can actually, you know, get to know those albums a bit. i’m still loving that windmill album i bought off itunes and am almost glad to be hearing nothing about anywhere (but there i go flag-planting), and still playing the new ted leo regularly to find more things to love about it.

in fact, last night as i hopped in the shower, faced with what music to throw on (a luxury relegated to evening bathing as morning music would be too much of a disturbance to sleeping roommates/neighbors), i noticed i hadn’t bought any new albums in several weeks. i considered the aforementioned, then decided to go even more the comfort-food route and queue up some good old tallahassee — a personal classic/favorite, something the modern listening environment described above by mr. birdseat could go so far as to render extinct someday. definitely something to consider.

[as are many of his music finds, by the way. and appropriately enough as i write this, i’m streaming tracks from the new dinosaur jr album of all things, straight from that band’s site, and loving the hell out of them. no flags being planted here, suckas, just some sweet sweet 90’s-style distorted alt rock.]