Irrit8
This week Apple bestowed upon us iTunes 8, boasting a feature called Genius, which is supposed to recommend purchases based on the stuff you already have.
“If I’d wanted that,” I snapped, “I’d have gone to Amazon,” and toggled it off. And then: “Geez, Lileks will tear them a new one for this.”
Well, he didn’t, but he did have a point to make:
The new iTunes program is designed specifically to annoy detail-oriented people. (I prefer that term to “anal retentive.” Everyone uses the term without knowing exactly what it means. You could use a synonym — Oh, he’s such a rectal hoarder — and you’d just get blank looks.) The new iTunes has a grid window that lets you see all your album art in groups of several dozen, and that shows which albums don’t have album art. GOD FORBID you don’t have album art. But it also has a new feature: Genre View. This demonstrates how many stupidly named duplicative genres you have. Rock. Rock’n’Roll. Rock & Roll. R ‘n’ R, R & R, R&R. I tend to group everything by decades, since that’s how I see music. Era is more important than Genre. It’s an artificial distinction — the music of 1948 belongs to 1951 more than it belongs to 1940 — but we see the past in terms of decades, even if we know how much ideas and trends overlap and slosh around. My least favorite Genre: “Instrumental.” Yes, when it comes to music, that certainly narrows it down.
My own definition of the Sixties runs from JFK at Dallas to me at high-school graduation, a period of five and a half years.
I have items identified as “Grunge” and “Post-Grunge”; perhaps I should tag some “Pre-Grunge” tracks. My unofficial cutoff has been the late 1940s, which means I’m missing out on something:
It’s easiest to write and work to music from the 30s these days, simply because it’s not intended to be scrutinized. That was another gift of the Boomers: you couldn’t just hear pop music, you had to really listen to it, because it was important. In the 30s, a good piece of dance music was something that went along with moving your feet and holding your partner and getting a whiff of perfume or shampoo. After the 60s, you had to immerse yourself in the experience — comfy chair, lights just right, album in your lap so you could study the totally amazing Roger Dean art, or follow the lyrics — because these guys were, like, poets.
Which is another justification for my Sixties definition. In 1960 and 1961, Chubby Checker was doing dance tunes simultaneously squeaky-clean and hedonistic, stuff that would get at least a 90 on American Bandstand’s Rate-A-Record; in the wake of the British Invasion, the Chubster — and Bobby Darin, fercryingoutloud — found themselves on the urban-folkie beat. Not that there’s that great an emotional distance between “Mack the Knife” and “If I Were a Carpenter,” but the latter-day Darin was careful not to swing.
While typing, I switched on CoverFlow, a feature that Apple has offered for a while; if nothing else, it reminded me of how little album art I have, partly because singles, at least the singles that most interest me, don’t have album art, and partly because Apple tends to think in terms of the albums it actually has, not the albums where the songs actually originated. I can’t really blame them for that, but more than once I’ve overridden their choice with one of my own.
Jennifer »
12 September 2008 · 6:31 pm
This has nothing to do with anything, but I like the new look. And I’m late in saying so because your feed totally quit on me. Fixing post haste.
Old Grouch »
12 September 2008 · 8:09 pm
Charles, if you haven’t explored the 30s stuff, you’re in for a treat. It’s very different from what folks used to call “big band”… for one thing, a lot of the groups have strings. Think “radio orchestra.”
Dutton/Vocalion has collected a lot of the British stuff. There also (used to be?) a bunch of titles on the ASV/Living Era label, but Universal recently bought the company and, I believe, killed the nostalgia series.
CGHill »
12 September 2008 · 9:14 pm
Weirdly, I have more grounding in the 20s and 40s than in the 30s, and I’m not quite sure why. (Best guess: grandparents were born right around 1900, and twentysomethings have always seemed more devoted to “their music” than most other age groups legally able to drink; parents were born in the 20s.)
fillyjonk »
13 September 2008 · 8:24 am
I second the Old Grouch. A lot of the 30s “radio orchestra” stuff (especially some of the bordering-on-”Classical”-designation British stuff) is very enjoyable and a real discovery.
But then again, I like the Big Band and swing band stuff, too. Like it more, in fact, than the music of what is ostensibly “my” generation. (that would be groups like INXS and Violent Femmes… or at least that was what the “cool kids” listened to when I was in high school). Then again, I like doo-wop better than the music of “my” generation…
CGHill »
13 September 2008 · 9:52 am
I have always found it gratifying that the experimental-to-the-point-of-self-indulgence Frank Zappa was a major doo-wop fiend: apart from Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, there was that Penguins single “Memories of El Monte,” back in ’64 or thereabouts, which he produced and cowrote, suggesting that had he come along ten years earlier he would have done well for himself in the days of R&B group harmony.
Mister Snitch! »
14 September 2008 · 4:05 pm
I don’t see self-indulgence in Zappa. He was an iconoclast, though. WIth me he gets major props for skewering a lot of the record industry’s sacred cows. Smart guy who wouldn’t pander to anyone, including his fans.
BTW, have you checked out the new Sitemeter? McGehee has.
CGHill »
14 September 2008 · 4:34 pm
Yep. I fully expect them to throw away this entire new
crapfestinterface, simply on the basis of user complaints.There was a period, roughly around Sheik Yerbouti, when it seemed to me that FZ was going for the easy cheap shot.
CGHill »
14 September 2008 · 5:02 pm
Well, whaddaya know:
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/14/sitemeter-hears-its-critics-rolls-back-to-old-system/