Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Solicitations For A Month Full Of Content

Last year, there was M.A.R.C.H., and it was good. My distinguished colleague set a deadline to write a new blog post every week, which resulted in gems like these.

This year, I'll try something similar, but (in Mountain Dew parlance) more x-treme. It's called February (no acronym this time--I'm not a masochist). Starting today, you should see new content from me for an entire month, every day, sometimes a little at a time but hopefully enough to increase traffic around these parts.

I have some ideas and some writings in the pipeline, but any suggestions you have for music-related issues you'd like me to write about would be greatly appreciated (in the comments or through email). For the next week or so, I'm going to take the template of our track-by-track reviews and apply it to an older album, namely The Clash's triple album Sandinista! Why that overstuffed album of all albums? There are a few reasons, some of which will be explained over the course of this project, but it mostly has to do with its insane length and manifold genre-crosses. Given that there are 36 songs total on three records (amounting to six tracks per side), I'll spread out these reviews over the course of six days.

Otherwise, you should expect a review of Glee's post-Superbowl show (I'm no fan, but recent comments made by show creator Ryan Murphy re: Glee's contributions to music education have me thinking I should check it out). Given that it will be February, I suppose I should probably do something about Valentine's Day, but I'm not sure what--the only thing lamer then a Valentine's Day mix is an anti-Valentine's Day mix (maybe I'll just post this Replacements song, the only I can think of that qualifies as neither). By the end of the month, I hope this will all lead to one gigantic post which would be a grand, extended scholarly exegesis on the socio-political factors guiding Brooklyn music criticism, borrowing the template and some of the terms first posited by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen in this PressThink piece on the supposed political biases of the Washington press corps. This project in particular will be different from anything featured on Rockaliser so far, I think, in that it would be a less colloquial and more reasoned longer piece complete with footnotes and sources and the like. Interested? I can explain it to you in more detail upon request, and would love to get you involved.

2 comments:

  1. I think it's time for another Critical Beatdown, so that could be something. As long as you're writing Super Bowl-related reviews, you might pan the Black Eyed Peas concert.

    Rockaliser's 100th post is coming up (this one is number 97), so I was thinking about doing something special for that, maybe just picking a few posts I remember fondly, linking to them and reflecting briefly on why I wrote them or what I like about them. And maybe sharing the list of most-read posts that Blogger tracks. Care to collaborate--I guess that'd have to go up on Friday?

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  2. To be honest I think I'd rather read your take on the Peas show--you know how to describe their awfulness as well as anyone. I don't know if there is a way to accurately put into words the agony this will probably cause untold generations.

    You sure that's 100 published posts? Make sure to catch the unpublished drafts. As for the rest, I'm down for it all.

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