Amos Barshad: “It’s been years since the site had the kind of cultural cachet on which it built its empire. But music fans of a certain age can still rattle off the acts that landed notorious reviews and landmark 0.0 ratings – Travis Morrison! Robert Pollard!! Liz Phair!!! … A few months ago, I decided that I wanted to look back at those last moments when critics could kill. … I would talk to Black Kids and to Travis Morrison and to the other targets of Pitchfork‘s most infamous reviews, asking them: How did it feel? What did those reviews do to you?”
Tag: 05.01.18
Jaron Lanier: We’ve Created Tech That Has Disrupted Our Own Best Intentions
“We’ve created a scammy society where we concentrate wealth in ways that are petty and not helpful, and we’ve given them a world of far fewer options than we had. There’s nothing I want more than for the younger people to create successful lives and create a world that they love. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. But to say that the path to that is for them to agree with the thing we made for them is just so self-serving and so obnoxiously narcissistic that it makes me wanna throw up.”
Why I Turned Marx’s Communist Manifesto Into A Graphic Novel
Martin Rowson: “After I graduated I sold a cartoon series to New Statesman titled ‘Scenes from the Lives of the Great Socialists’, based on hideously contrived puns on the defining dicta of Marxism. … I had unfinished business with Marx, and occasionally images would flash into the back of my mind of great geological slabs of History grinding against massive clumps of the Dialectic. Then SelfMadeHero asked if I fancied adapting The Communist Manifesto as a comic book for Marx’s 200th birthday. The whole thing came instantly into my head.”
Corporate Boss Caught On TV Video Singing “We’re In The Money” Undermines His Interview
Intoning lines from a piece called “The Gold Diggers’ Song (We’re in the Money)” was probably not the best way to assuage concerns that shareholders might be making hay on the back of higher prices and job cuts. The song was first written for a 1933 film, but is perhaps most famously used in the musical “42nd Street.”
Art Fairs Are Like America – Broken, Says Jerry Saltz
“As a system, art fairs are like America: They’re broken and no one knows how to fix them. Like America, they also benefit those at very top more than anyone else, and this gap is only growing. Like America, the art world is preoccupied by spectacle – which means nonstop art fairs, biennials, and other blowouts. … This art-fair industrial complex makes it next to impossible for any medium/small gallery to take a chance on bringing unknown or lower-priced artists to art fairs without risking major financial losses. Meanwhile high-end galleries clean up without showing much, if anything, that’s risky or innovative.”
Marilyn Horne At 84
Horne carries her 84 years the way others carry 60. Her mind is sharp, likewise her memory, and her speaking voice retains its unmistakable metal. Dwelling on the past is not her style. “I don’t listen to myself,” she says. “I don’t watch myself.” Yet in anticipation of the move to the West Coast, she has been forced to contemplate her archive of private recordings.
David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle Arts Editor And TV Critic, Dead At 70
“His long career at The Chronicle began when he was hired in May 1992 as a temporary copy editor in the section he would go on to oversee, Datebook. Wiegand distinguished himself as someone with empirical knowledge about every art form, high and low, from opera to ballet to country music to the latest trends in pop culture. Over the past several years, he had added his own voice to the paper’s roster of critics, providing incisive, award-winning television reviews.”
Bankrupt Weinstein Company Has A Buyer
“The Weinstein Company on Tuesday named a Dallas private equity firm as the winning bidder in its bankruptcy sale, spurning an offer by the Broadway producer Howard Kagan. The victor – for now, at least, as a bankruptcy judge still has to sign off and the decision could be challenged by creditors – is Lantern Capital Partners. It entered the sale as the studio’s prearranged bidder, or ‘stalking horse,’ which set a price floor. Lantern offered $310 million plus the assumption of about $115 million in debt.”
Half Of Theatre Company Board Resigns In Disgust Over Management Issues
Five members of the board of directors of the prominent English touring company Out of Joint “have walked out in reaction to a range of issues, including the way Arts Council England treated the company following the departure of [founding artistic director Max] Stafford-Clark, who was accused of inappropriate behaviour by a number of former colleagues last year. … The members are also understood to have become increasingly unhappy with the way the company was being run by new artistic director Kate Wasserberg and executive producer Martin Derbyshire.”
Paris’s Opéra-Bastille Closed For 18 Days Due To Mishap With Fire Curtain
Last week, two 18-ton cables that serve as counterweights to the stage’s metal fire curtain snapped. While no one was injured and the fire curtain did not fall to the stage, Paris Opera management has closed the auditorium until the cables can be repaired and other cables can be inspected. All of last week’s and this week’s performances at the Bastille have been cancelled; the theater should reopen on May 13. (in French)