Thread:
I work in an arcane field where the job requires specific technical knowledge, built on a ladder of understanding and breakthroughs going back over 100 years. It's not immunology but it's not nothing. A couple decades ago there was a christian panic about something the press started calling "backmasking," an outgrowth of the similarly absurd panic about subliminal messaging and advertising, about which I could also talk about for too long but will not now.

I don't know about you, but if I could spend $100 to keep somebody from being strangled to death, I'd happily hand over $100. So if you see someone in distress in public, before you strangle them to death, consider just giving them $100. And if you see someone strangling such a person to death, instead of watching, consider stopping the strangler long enough to give his victim $100, on the chance that that might improve their demeanor enough that the strangler won't feel compelled to continue murdering them.

I will always be the kind of punk that shits on Steely Dan Christ the amount of human effort wasted to sound like an SNL band warm up.

Beautifully lyrical guitarist, underrated vocalist. Television made a new kind of music and inspired new kinds of music. Marquee Moon is a perfect record. Requiescat.
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variety.com/2023/music/obi… My favorite thing about especially the more meandering parts of Television was the way the music held onto a tonal center without having to frame it in "changes" or "heads" or even a fucking riff. You could tell it was still going almost through telepathy...

I don't talk often about the band I'm in, Shellac of North America, because I don't like promotion or anything that feels like promotion. I'm making an exception because Lin Bremer has died, and the affection people felt for him was deserved. (thread)
blockclubchicago.org/2023/01/22/lin… This song uses an extemporaneous litany, phrases and tropes associated with broadcasting, to sketch out several parallel notions. The most important one, the one that makes me think of Lin Bremer, is the way radio personalities use their speaking voice. shellac.bandcamp.com/track/the-end-…

People are dunking on these absurdist demonstrations but I think they're kinda cool. The point they're making is that your most priceless shit is worthless on a dead planet, and while they're not going to change any minds it's a way to get that idea into the discourse.

https://twitter.com/damiengayle/status/1580864210741133312

There's going to be more of this shit happening with people putting themselves at legal risk (or worse) to make this point, and it's going to be great watching who is appalled, who laughs and who smirks and nods.

Gonna do some chip butty tweets. For non UK people, a chip butty is a bap (roll, like a hamburger bun) with some chips (french fries) and a kind of watery fake mayonnaise they call (ugh) "salad cream." This is their sandwich, they eat this. Okay ready? Person: I'd like a sandwich please, and can I have some french fried potatoes with that?
Chip Butty: Excuse me, I couldn't help overhearing...

Baked into the discussion of student debt is the idea that the function of education is to prepare someone to work, that it is a ticket for the ride of employment. This is a dangerously toxic notion that deserves no respect. Education is learning, literally anything. The role of education is to have enlightened, informed people, so their decisions, their values, and their relationships will be comprehensively informed by more facts and ideas, broader philosophy and comprehension. It makes society better when people are educated,

I graduated at 21 with a normal 4-year degree and debt I finally paid off when I was 37. Debt for education is obscene and anything done to alleviate it for anyone should be celebrated. The only thing to get mad about is that there is such a thing as educational debt. Much of this debt is from for-profit trade schools, online "universities" and other institutions that target poor and working people, with the promise that their certifications will pay for themselves in the job market. It is manufactured debt for fraudulent certifications.

When the Moon Patrol buggy fucked the Peavey logo.

https://twitter.com/teslaownerssv/status/1561141259900559361

Absolutely not dumping on the Peavey logotype. Young Hartley Peavey spent many minutes on it in middle school, engraved in ballpoint on the cover of a spiral bound notebook, likely surrounded with flames, and I have loved it since I first saw it. It is pure dork manna.

No, I'm not going to watch his special before I say it is fucked up and sucks. I have seen fucked up things that suck before and I already know the joke. They only have the one joke. Anti-woke trans-bash comedians are cultivating an audience I want very much not to be a part of. I used to like Ricky Gervais. His comedy hinted that he disliked the part of himself he indulged so flagrantly, the boorish, selfish unaware part. Him playing an oblivious creep was a necessary element of comedy critical of being oblivious. But as Kurt Vonnegut observed...

I don't take royalties for recording bands. This is normal ethical behavior in every other industry and should not be exceptional or notable in music. That it comes up every time we discuss how musicians get paid ought to be embarrassing, but for the nth time... I work on a record for a relatively short time, a few days to a few weeks, and it seems unethical to expect a band to pay me forever for a job I do once. Paying for my time is a normal thing, that's how the trades work, and it allows me to decide what my time is worth.

1/ There's an important thread of continuity over time about the exploitation of bands by record labels that deserves a closer look, re the current Spotify debate.

https://twitter.com/Eve6/status/1488158473028202496

Big mainstream record labels have historically exploited musicians dreadfully, using contracts constructed around the notion of recoupment of advances. I've written about it before, feel free to google, but I'll explain it briefly here so we can get to the important part.

An opportune beginning for a beef, but I'm not that funny and none of this stuff really bothers me so the beef kinda fizzled. In lieu of a proper feud, I thought I'd start a thread of awesome 90's era music that strikes me as vulnerable and earnest, sans clip-on dreads.

https://twitter.com/Eve6/status/1477315180333731841

First one that came to mind was this, untutored and unrefined, thank fuck. Starts slow but the middle shank of this album is as good as music about things ever gets.

Genuinely charmed by people trying to "out" me regarding stuff that had print runs in the tens of thousands, bands that toured the world, stuff that was already reported on by Pitchfork... whatever. I am not afforded the luxury of secret shame, guys. Knock yourselves out. I certainly have some 'splainin to do, and am not shy about any of it. A lot of things I said and did from an ignorant position of comfort and privilege are clearly awful and I regret them. It's nobody's obligation to overlook that, and I do feel an obligation to redeem myself...