A Popular grab-bag.
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30 August 2009Guilty feet and tribal rhythms at Popular.
Not Dead Yet
The site Information is Beautiful did the rounds yesterday (MeFi), and this post of an infographic from the New York Times about music formats piqued my interest. Music sales across the board seem to be falling off a cliff, with the implication that nobody will be buying any music at all in a few years. No doubt the RIAA would blame it all on file-sharing, but there are surely other equally or even more significant factors, some of which the graphic itself suggests.
Another Popular recap, in which an unlikely teenage obsession is revealed.
À Paris
Last month we went to Paris for the first time in five years, to meet up with my sister-in-law at the end of her European trip. We weren’t sure what to expect with a toddler in tow, but actually it was fine; quite a few Parisians have children, funnily enough, so we weren’t the only ones pushing a buggy around. The playgrounds around the city are très bien, with lots of shady trees and some good sandpits. (They were preparing the annual sandpit along the Seine while we were there, too.) The Metro was a bit of a nightmare, though, with hardly any lifts or escalators. Good thing there were three of us to carry him up and down the stairs. Trying to get an early evening meal at a brasserie was also a challenge; it wasn’t quite Spanish mealtimes, but close.
X Marks the Spot
This site turned ten last Thursday. Others would have held a party or something, but I’m too cool for that. Or, no, not cool... forgetful, that’s it.
Other things that turn ten this year: The Matrix, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club, Election, Three Kings, the South Park movie, the Chemical Brothers’ Surrender, Muse’s Showbiz, Beck’s Midnite Vultures, Matthew Sweet’s In Reverse, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, Futurama, and of course MetaFilter.
So Last Year
For someone who used to post about new-ish releases fairly often, I seem to have become trapped in an early-’80s musical timewarp here. It’s not all the fault of Popular, although that has had a big retro-influence on my listening for the past couple of years. A lot of the problem is that the parental lifestyle no longer allows much space for listening to whole albums. I rarely get a chance to listen to stuff on the stereo, because a certain two-year-old objects to anything that isn’t Madness’s “Driving In My Car” or Feist’s The Reminder (“the lady”, as we know her; thank God it’s a good album, or by now the lady would have driven us nuts). On the trip to and from work I listen mostly to podcasts (Adam and Joe on 6 Music, Radio 4’s Friday night comedy, and a few others), and even that has stopped while I’ve been cycling to work in the good weather. Apart from that, my listening has mostly consisted of single tracks gathered here and there, almost all of them through iPod headphones.
Relax, it’s red alert time at Popular. Hello?
July 2009