Month: December 2003

Why Does Everyone Hate Martin Amis?

Martin Amis on the acid reception his latest book has attracted: “Questions I don’t mind. Then there’s commentary. I seem to attract this heat. I, the book, took a weird corrosive jolt this time. It just got established you could say whatever the hell you liked. In England, I couldn’t avoid reviews. I’d be walking down the street and on the newsstand it would say, up by the publication title, MARTIN AMIS IS S–T. It’s like watching your child being ragged in the schoolyard. What’s truly galling is when you wake up and it is in your head, when what should be in your head is what you’re writing next. But if you answer back, you’re accused of whining. You can’t win.”

Golden Globe Noms Announced

A historical drama which isn’t even in theaters yet is the runaway leader in the nominations for the Golden Globes, Hollywood’s bizarre and inexplicably important awards show. Cold Mountain earned nominations in every major category, and a few minor ones as well. Other films nominated for top awards are Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Seabiscuit, Mystic River, and the animated feature, Finding Nemo.

Everybody Congo!

“In smart discos, sweat-box bars and market-places across Africa, Congolese music is rampant. Local musicians can rarely compete. Even in Lagos, the proud home of high-life jazz, clubs echo with Congo’s trademark throbbing bass, tinging guitars and racing falsettos. And in Europe Congolese music has become almost synonymous with African music. Europeans call it soukous, after secousse, the French for “jolt” or “shake”. In Paris and Brussels, Congolese stars draw crowds of 20,000.” At home, though…

Waiting For A Revolution That’s Already Here

At a recent music industry conference in Aspen, “the divisiveness and panic in the room were evident” whenever conversation turned to the state of recorded music. The problem seems to be that, while most in the industry recognize that a major sea change in the way the public consumes recorded music is upon them, few are willing to hitch their wagon to a particular horse before knowing what the new industry standard will be. In the meantime, the CD market continues to tank, and the people for whom that particular piece of turf is sacred continue to fight like cornered rats to forestall the digital revolution.

Game Boy Symphony

Some avid players of Game Boys, are using the little electronic game consoles to compose and play music. The music is “surprisingly complex.” “The gizmos serve as musical notepads, the modern-day equivalents of Beethoven’s pen on paper. The group then sets up in smoky bars and other modest local concert venues to treat — or subject — their audiences to beeps, buzzes, clicks, recorded-speech snippets and other computer-age sounds, all strung together into assaults on the senses.”

Harvard’s Expansion: Where Are The Architects?

“The people who read the Harvard tea leaves — let’s call them Harvardologists — duly noted the absence of an architect from the World’s Greatest Graduate School of Design on the newly formed task forces president Larry Summers has appointed to map out Harvard’s march across the river into Allston… The word on the street is that Summers has had more than his fill of GSD architecture mavens, who greeted the newly arrived president with Rem Koolhaas’s bizarre ‘Moses Scheme’ for rechanneling the Charles River near Harvard. More recently the GSD championed the Ugliest Building Ever Built, the near-universally reviled 1 Western Avenue, a 235-unit housing facility for students, faculty, and staff in Allston.”

Scotland’s Coming Arts Overhaul

“The launch of a long-promised review of Scotland’s arts policy has been delayed to reflect better the First Minister’s new agenda for ‘cultural rights’… The cultural review – seen as the Scottish Executive’s move to put its post-devolutionary stamp on the arts – is being overseen by the culture minister, Frank McAveety, and his advisers… The review will be closely watched by arts organisations in Scotland, and is anticipated with a mixture of nervousness and hope. The closely guarded consultation paper could pave the way for a shake-up of organisations such as the Scottish Arts Council, which administers £60 million in Executive and lottery funds, and Scottish Screen.”

Paper To Arts Groups: Show Us Why We Should Care

In Detroit, voters and politicians have demonstrated time and time again that they are not interested in a significant public funding program for the arts, and the editorial board at one of the city’s newspapers thinks it knows why. “Cultural leaders should have learned from their election defeats that they’ve not done an adequate job persuading the people that what they offer both enriches individual souls and feeds this community’s comeback.”

What Kind Of Silly Law Is That, Anyway?

City leaders in Cleveland are moving ahead with plans to place a levy on the March ballot with the intention of dedicating a new source of funding to the arts. But there’s a catch: state law prohibits cities of under 500,000 from creating a specific arts district, so Cleveland (population 478,403) must instead use a standard “economic development” levy, which may be used to fund artistic initiatives. The concern with such a non-specific funding plan, of course, is that the ongoing status of the new arts funding would be reliant on the “arts friendliness” of the county commissioners in office at any given time.