February 2012
1 post
3 tags
Music Dump - All Lana Del Rey All The Time Edition →
Well, the title’s self-explanatory, isn’t it? Jessica Hopper, Jonathan Bogart, Maura Johnston, Sasha Frere-Jones, Katherine St Asaph, Amy Klein, Nitsuh Abebe and Liz Phair have had their say, and I’ve done me some hyperlinking. I’ve been amazed at how many people on my Facebook have been arguing about her - she really is some sort of phenomenon. (I don’t have a strong...
January 2012
12 posts
8 tags
Robot Clitoris Teachers Became Hebephilia Primed
Let The Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car Of The Future Is Here by Tom Vanderbilt (Wired): Heard about Google’s self-driving car? Well, more and more car drivers are seeing cars as autonomous, and if you wanted, today, you could buy a Mercedes which is more or less a self-driving car - it automatically brakes if it sees something in the road, it buzzes the steering wheel if you cross lines...
9 tags
Sexual Humans Between Good Military Aches
With proper descriptions:
Between The Lines by Dave Gardetta (Los Angeles Magazine): You know how you get shitty at having to pay for parking? I mean, it must be bad for businesses and stuff, right? Actually, no - it’s good for business, seemingly, and it turns out that actually not having to pay for parking generally makes life that little bit more annoying - it leads to people behaving...
Plane King Shrinking Between Lust Crows
With descriptions care of @tiredjadeysays:
Between The Lines by Dave Gardetta (Los Angeles Magazine): Between the lines are other lines! And between those lines are even more lines! And more lines between those! What does it mean!? Whoa.
The First Sexual Revolution: Lust And Liberty In The 18th Century by Faramerz Dabhoiwala (The Guardian): “Imma sex you in the naughty bits.”...
7 tags
Number Ones: Flo Rida ft. Sia's 'Wild Ones' →
In which I try to explain the appeal of Flo Rida with reference to Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. No, seriously. In the process I discuss Johnny O’Keefe, Newt Gingrich, Jack Kerouac, the man who survived after a railway spike was fired through his head, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Oh, and why it’s weird to hear Sia in this context...
3 tags
The Australian Alternative: 1995-1998 →
This is a mix of mid-to-late 1990s Australian alternative rock that I threatened to make when I linked to my 1 Song A Day piece on Custard the other day. My rule for this compilation was five songs from each year, in chronological order, with two songs at most from each band. I’ve generally gone for very well known songs by very well known bands, with only a couple of songs that are...
5 tags
Music Dump - Lana Del Rey's Skrillex Abuses Lady... →
Elmo Keep joins the KISS Navy, and it’s a supposedly fun thing she’ll probably do again; Nitsuh Abebe on the way emo kids are probably going to bring that aesthetic to other forms of music and create something new; Carles on his abusive co-dependent relationship with Lana Del Rey; examining the myths of self-destruction in an old interview with Townes Van Zandt; Lady Gaga’s...
3 tags
1 Song A Day: Custaro - 'Music Is, Crap' →
In which I pine for the glory days of the late 1990s, when Australian alternative music was thriving just as stuff like Britpop and American alternative rock was going down the toilet. And, of course, seeing as how I think that kind of thing is awesome (possibly because of the age I am and where I grew up?), I picked a song called ‘Music Is Crap’.
If anyone cares, I’ll post a...
4 tags
Number Ones: Foster The People's 'Pumped Up Kicks' →
The current Australian number one is ‘Pumped Up Kicks’, largely because it was recently featured in a commercial for XXXX beer, I think. (The song is 18 months old, Australians knew about it at least a year ago, and it’s almost comical how much the world has changed in the last 18 months). So in this piece I talk about advertising and music, and about the song being about a...
7 tags
Cambridge Genius Untangling Darwin's Apostrophe...
The Shocking True Tale Of The Mad Genius Who Invented Sea Monkeys by Evan Hughes (The Awl): Harold von Braunhaut was on the surface an amiable inventor, the man behind sea monkeys, X-ray spex, the game Balderdash, and Invisible Goldfish. He was also a Jewish man who was a member of racist right-wing group Aryan Nation. [via]
Inside Darwin’s Tumor by Carl Zimmer (The Loom): We see cancer as...
10 tags
Prime Violinists Leave Baseball Game Cells
Insider Baseball by Joan Didion (New York Review Of Books): This essay just nails the ways in which politics is basically upmarket reality TV (in that almost everything about what most people see and read about politics is content which has been deliberately manufactured to fill in TV newstime), where the journalists and politicians have an unspoken knowledge of the rules of the game. All of which...
3 tags
The Highest Selling Oz Singles of 2011: 10 to 1 →
Here’s the top 10 selling singles in Australia in 2011 (including Adele, LMFAO, Gotye, Maroon 5, etc), and my thoughts about them.
3 tags
Top 20 Highest Selling Oz Singles Of 2011: 20-11 →
I discuss the songs that were the 20th to the 11th biggest selling singles in Australia in 2011, including songs by Rihanna, Bruno Mars (The Lazy Song argh), Katy Perry, and David Guetta/Sia. 10 to 1 is on its way, of course.
December 2011
16 posts
10 tags
Stumptown Depression Fathers Trap 2011 Straw...
The Fat Trap by Tara Parker-Pope (New York Times): You know how there’s all those yo-yo dieters who take it off and put it back on pretty soon? Turns out there’s a biological reason for this: our bodies (to different extents) try very hard to put the weight back on by using less calories and making it harder to resist the calories. [via]
Stumptown Girl by Margaret Talbot (New Yorker):...
10 tags
Southpaw Antidepressants Catch Cross-Wired...
The Great Train Robbery by Mark Pullham (Crime): For me, the Great Train Robbery in England in 1963 is one of those things that I’ve been vaguely aware of - mostly because of the publicity around Ronnie Biggs - but never really knew the details of. So here’s the details (including that the police might have planted evidence on some of the suspects). [via]
As Permafrost Thaws,...
12 tags
Santa Women Failing Teenagers Viral Hunger
Trials And Errors: Why Science Is Failing Us by Jonah Lehrer (Wired): Lehrer makes the interesting case here that science - at least, in the area of medicine/pharmaceuticals - isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Scientists have worked out a bunch of stuff to do with how cholesterol works in the body, and as a result of this research, a pharmaceutical company put together a drug that was...
1 tag
2012 Best Music Writing →
Right now, the (newly independent) annual Best Music Writing series of books is looking for nominations of music writing from 2011. If you read this blog, you probably read a lot of music articles this year, because I linked to 8 pieces of music writing a week in my ‘Music Dump’ series on the Vine. So if some of these really did it for you, nominate!
(I also wrote some things if you...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-12-18) →
Karen Dalton (28)
Sebadoh (21)
Lambchop (16)
Peter Gabriel (16)
Bill Callahan (16)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
11 tags
Multitasking Kings Want Semi-Naked Prozac...
The Bioterrorist Next Door by Laurie Garrett (Foreign Policy): You know how there’s scientists who’ve created very-deadly and very-contagious versions of influenza based on bird flu? No? Well, scientists have already created very-deadly and very-contagious versions of bird flu. And the techniques for doing so are simple enough, and Al Qaeda are already advertising for people willing to...
3 tags
Top 10 Of 2011 - Best Little Moments In Music →
When it comes to best of 2011 kind of stuff at the Vine, Marcus the editor encourages us to avoid the typical top 10 albums, to go for something different. I wrote this one late last week and now feel slightly embarrassed at having to follow Ian Rogers’ amusing foray into his psyche circa 2011. But here I’m going for the best little moments, the bits of songs that I liked the best. So...
13 tags
Overjustification Machine Inside WEIRD...
The WEIRD Evolution Of Human Psychology by Eric Michael Johnson (The Primate Diaries): It’s important to remember that most psychology research has been done on American undergraduates. And that even some perceptual findings that most psychologists would assume were due to very basic properties of the visual system - like the Muller-Lyer Illusion - are actually sometimes not found in...
1 tag
1 Song A Day: Dawes - 'If I Wanted Someone' →
sallyo:
o-song:
Except that Dawes – however respectfully, considering the pastiche – disagree with Neil Young’s old ode to chauvinism. Depending on your point of view, Neil Young’s song will either evoke thoughts about a) how abjectly hopeless men are, how we need women to ensure we don’t fall apart or b) how a woman’s place is in the home, looking after these abjectly hopeless men. As a...
3 tags
1 Song A Day: Dawes - 'If I Wanted Someone' →
Another piece for 1 Song A Day…this time I’m thinking about critical thinking and pop together, and one of my favourite songs of the year. Oh, and by the way, I signed the acceptance page of a job offer yesterday, so I’m now a Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland. (For US audiences, Lecturer in Australia is, I think equivalent to something like...
11 tags
Mystery Doctors Master His Comity Christians
Out Of Body Experience: Master Of Illusion by Ed Yong (Nature): Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist in Sweden, does these amazing experiments which really question our senses of selves; in 10 seconds, he can make people think that they have left their bodies, or that they have three hands. Which says very interesting things about the way psychology works.
Standup Comity by Steve Macone (The Morning...
2 tags
Music Dump - Flying Nun's Public Enemy RnB Carols... →
Christmas carols are a good primer on the history of Western music; an introduction to Stereolab; Public Enemy’s Apocalypse ‘91 revisited; how those songs get on your favourite TV show; trollgaze and the art of the stream; Billboard asks, does selling out matter anymore?; is Flying Nun really that good?; and is R&B music so anti-love these days?
(All of these articles were written...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-12-11) →
Tori Amos (18)
The High Llamas (12)
M. Craft (11)
Sam Prekop (11)
Nina Simone (11)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
2 tags
LMFAO's Cyndi Lauper Semisonic Lana Del Ray Jazz →
Steven Hyden on why Semisonic’s ‘Closing Time’ is still omnipresent; Jonah Weiner, author of “Why Creed Are Totally Underrated”, on why LMFAO are brilliant; the story of the 1930s girl jazz band International Sweethearts of Rhythm, and why they’re a major motion picture waiting to happen; mainstream pop is, like, mainstream and pop; Chunklet on Jason...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-12-4) →
Bobby Charles (37)
Paul Simon (28)
Steve Miller Band (27)
Rilo Kiley (26)
Shearwater (24)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
9 tags
Thames Amoebas Survey Broken Islamic Nakedness
The Psychology Of Nakedness by Jonah Lehrer (The Frontal Cortex): There’s a lot of controversy about ‘slutty’ clothing and slutwalks and whatnot, and one of the reasons for this is the idea that men objectify women who show a bit of cleavage, that they stop seeing women as people and see them as objects. But the research Lehrer discusses here suggests that men don’t...
November 2011
23 posts
2 tags
Music Dump - The Beatles' Softcore Coldplay... →
The link between the Muppets and 1960s Italian softcore porn; Courtney Love and fraud; Miley Cyrus’s Party in the OWS; the yin and yang of George Harrison; rock is no longer pop; the link between Brandy and dubstep; Lee Ranaldo on the future of Sonic Youth; the gender politics of Drake.
4 tags
1 Song A Day: Elton John - 'Take Me To The Pilot' →
I wrote about Elton’s ‘Take Me To The Pilot’ for 1 Song A Day. Excerpt:
It may well be that upcoming years will be unkind to your current favourite artists, the way they were unkind to Elton. They were pretty unkind to plenty of the bands I grew up with as a teenager – for example, being a Smashing Pumpkins fan is pretty embarrassing these days, considering Billy Corgan’s been...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-11-27) →
Billy Bragg (32)
Paul Simon (26)
Elton John (24)
Richard Hawley (23)
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings (23)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
6 tags
Number Ones: Reece Mastin - 'Good Night' →
I kind of knew there’d be a new #1 this week - six weeks seemed long enough for ‘Sexy And I Know It’ - but I was thinking it might be either Ed Sheeran’s ‘The A Team’ (currently #2) or Lloyd’s ‘Dedication To My Ex’ (currently #6). Of course, I suspect if I had watched The X-Factor I wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest.
...
11 tags
Cheap Slut Strivers Swapping American Medicine
Maybe You Do Need A Hole In The Head - To Let The Medicine In by Carl Zimmer (Discover): There is a thing called the ‘blood-brain barrier’, which basically stops most stuff in your bloodstream from getting into your brain. Which is a good thing - your brain is pretty important and pretty fragile, and you don’t want any old stuff getting into it (bacteria, for example). Of course,...
2 tags
Music Dump - Whitney Houston's Cat Death Tumblr... →
Sex on tour isn’t as fun as you’d think, according to Ellen Campesinos!; Suggs from Madness’s weird cat death, and his odd upbringing; Radiohead get sampled by a surprising amount of rappers; the authenticity of Gillian Welch; how John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas embraced failure; Tom Waits reviewed via .gif; Tumblr’s reblogging sort of reflects how people make music;...
12 tags
Forgotten Brain Teaching Two Dogs Sarcasm
Teaching Good Sex by Laurie Abraham (New York Times): Incredible article about sex educator Al Vernaccio and how he teaches sex education to kids at a private school in Philadelphia. Instead of teaching ‘abstinence only’ or ‘abstinence preferred’, he is more interested in teaching teens what sex is like, and in getting them to understand the very adult responsibilities and...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-11-20) →
the bird and the bee (36)
Dave Graney and The Coral Snakes (27)
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings (23)
Robyn Hitchcock (21)
Roy Orbison (20)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr…
4 tags
1 Song A Day: Tragedy - 'Stayin' Alive' →
Excerpt:
Which is why Tragedy totally works as a concept. Their album We Rock Sweet Balls And Can Do No Wrong is all Bee Gees gone metal, from a very Spinal Tap spoken word metal section in ‘You Should Be Dancing’ to the Led Zeppelin-y ‘Too Much Heaven’. And the Bee Gees, for all their sleek disco rhythms, are a 1960s pop band at heart, a bunch of Beatles fans done good. The guitar riffs in...
3 tags
Music Dump - The Fall Of Nicki Minaj's Rollins... →
Mark E Smith is a strange, but very entertaining, man; why Nicki Minaj’s appeal to the LBGT community totally makes sense; tips for female music writers wanting to include token male artists in their end of year best of lists; why do you think some music is boring?; Keef still thinks Mick is a diva, and Charlie Watts still doesn’t care for rock and roll music; becoming culturally irrelevant at the...
12 tags
BB King Curious At Leichhardt Sexuality Fraud
Fraud Scandal Fuels Debate Over Practices Of Social Psychology by Christopher Shea (The Chronicle Review): A Dutch social psychologist, Diederik A. Stapel, has been discovered to have made up a bunch of his data. Which is awful. But unfortunately it is very easy for psychology experiments to be fraudulent in less obvious and deliberate ways, either where researchers cherry pick data, or make too...
11 tags
Good Human Ate Conspiracy Prophet Friend
Is The Brain Good At What It Does by Christopher Chabris (New York Times): There are two different arguments about the brain being put forward in pop psychology books at the moment: a) the brain is awesome and capable of anything; and b) the brain is a rigged together pile of junk that mostly only works accidentally. So who’s right? The metaphor Chabris prefers is that it’s like a good...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-11-13) →
XTC (28)
Gillian Welch (27)
Jerry Lee Lewis (25)
McKay (22)
De La Soul (21)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
3 tags
1 Song A Day: Jerry Lee Lewis - 'Great Balls Of... →
The other day, @1songday tweeted that they were sad nobody had written about ‘Great Balls of Fire’ on their site yet. I decided I could rectify that.
Excerpt:
So what would be the closest 2010s equivalent of ‘Great Balls Of Fire’ be? The equivalent would have to be a) by a white person from the South of the USA; b) a style of music that adults find distasteful; c) which is loud and...
11 tags
Scant Kids Publishing Shakespeare Violence...
William Shakespeare, Gangster by Mike Dash (Past Imperfect): There’s not very much evidence about who Shakespeare was - only a few bits and pieces here and there. So it’s surprising in some ways that Shakespeare scholars have ignored one of the mentions of his name found in now-ancient records; the henchman of a corrupt businessman once requested a restraining order against Shakespeare...
2 tags
Music Dump - Cold Chisel Punkademia Loathes Lana... →
Maybe all that 1990s angsty woman music is better than you thought; the webcam porn gaze of Lana Del Rey; misinterpreting Nitsuh Abebe; Lex Luger is the current hip hop producer de jour; why do people hate Nickelback?; what do the poets of America think of Jim Morrison of the Doors?; what happens when the punks storm academia and end up as professors?; Barnesy from Chisel fucken hates triple J…and...
14 tags
Cocaine Scholars Lure Delicious Music Conundrum
The China Conundrum by Tom Bartlett and Karin Fischer (New York Times): Universities in America are starting to actively court Chinese students, but there is sometimes a wide divide between American university culture and Chinese scholastic culture. Plenty of students have no qualms about paying people to write their admissions essays and cheating on the English test (and then are bewildered where...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-11-6) →
The Kinks (40)
Sherbet (24)
The Yardbirds (20)
The Rolling Stones (18)
The Clientele (18)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
10 tags
Mind-Goggling Papal Brain Dismembered Unhappy...
A Mind Dismembered: In Search of The Magical Penis Thieves by Frank Bures (Harpers): Koro is a mental disorder whereby men become convinced that nearby witches have stolen their genitals. They become convinced that their penis has disappeared, and become very agitated as a result, often resulting in the lynching by bystanders of the person accused of being a witch. Though strangely the penis...
2 tags
MTV's Faith No More In Rolling Stone's Loutallica... →
Are Wilco and Feist adult contemporary? (yes); an oral history of MTV, including Lionel Richie’s reaction to the bust of his head in ‘Hello’; the paradox of U2 – why do people like them even though they know Bono is a tosser?; Chuck Klosterman on why Loutallica is not designed for people who like music; what happens when bands sell less and less copies of each album; Janet Manley tells of making...
3 tags
One A Day - Gillian Welch's 'Tennessee' →
I wrote about ‘Tennessee’ by Gillian Welch on a guest post on the music blog One A Day.
Excerpt:
But the most interesting, most ambiguous, part of the chorus is the last line, ‘sweet heaven when I die’. It’s an important line; the song ends on it, unresolved. And for a song that mentions how ‘dancing with damnation is a ball’, that mentions being kicked out of Sunday school, you’d...