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Online Music – Industry Trying To Catch Up

The success of Apple’s music downloading service has surprised recording industry execs. But why? “People in the entertainment industry are traditionally Luddites – they don’t understand technology and they don’t use it. They didn’t perceive the danger [from file-trading sites] until too late in the game, and now they’re trying to play catch-up.”

Sampling The Legal Online Music

A reporter tries out various legal online music services. It’s a mixed success. “Should I take it as a sign that trying to sample the wares of several of the leading legal music sites for PC users crashed my computer and wiped out its hard drive?” On the other hand, some of the sites are downright fun.

A Celebrated Writer Who Isn’t In Top Form (He Admits It)

It’s been 17 years since Larry McMurtry won his Pulitzer. He admits he’s not been in top form for some time now. That doesn’t stop him from writing. “He allots only 120 hours of writing time to every novel now, a breakneck pace even for a prolific writer like McMurtry, who also revises his first drafts more lightly than most writers. In his autobiographical ‘Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen,’ he revealed two things, one intentional, one not: He considers himself only a shadow of what he once was, the greatest western novelist of his generation. The second, unintentional revelation? His nonfiction of the past decade has far surpassed his fiction.”

Understanding Orwell

A conference debates the work of George Orwell. “Celebrated (and often sanctified) for his antitotalitarian novels ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four,’ Orwell’s reportage in ‘Homage to Catalonia’ and ‘The Road to Wigan Pier,’ and for scores of essays on everything from communism to brewing a proper cup of tea, Orwell succeeded in his stated ambition – ‘to make political writing into an art.’ He was also a writer of dazzling range. As Thomas Cushman, the Wellesley sociology professor who organized the conference, put it, ”There was nothing that he didn’t turn his guns on.’ But at the conference, participants frequently turned their guns on each other…”

What Happened To TV Arts Programming…

The BBC will attempt to launch new arts programming later this year. Good, but “why should arts television need relaunching? Whatever happened to the arts on television? What happened was, in part, a loss of nerve. This has taken various forms. First, expelling the arts from the main channels. We have seen the almost complete disappearance of the arts from BBC1.” Second, the tone of TV arts shows in recent years has shifted dramatically. “The heyday of arts television was the product of an era with different values and assumptions, reflected in several great landmark series.”

The Music Critic Problem – Hearing It On Radio Is Better

What’s wrong with contemporary music criticism? “The customary practice is that anyone can be approached for his or her opinion on the latest film, play, novel or exhibition. Behind the convention is an ideology: that the less you know about the subject in advance the better, since your ignorance connects you to the audience.” On radio, however, one can hear and compare the music and be guided by someone who knows what they’re talking about…

Looking For Canadian Art

Sarah Milroy goes looking for what’s new in Canadian art across the country. “Art schools in Canada pump out more than 23,000 graduates a year, and a zippy, techno-friendly bunch they are too. After a few days on the trail, though, I started to realize that most of the best artists I spoke to, or heard about, shared a common tendency: an interest in the disposable, the futile, the abject, the slightly unravelled.”

Florida Philharmonic Ceases Operations

The Florida Philharmonic has laid off “all but five of their 111 employees and suspended operations Friday, saying the symphony had run out of money. The Philharmonic’s 80 musicians and the rest of the orchestra’s employees received their final paychecks Friday, two weeks before the scheduled end of the season. Eight concerts were canceled.”

Where Are The Romantic Leading Men?

“Romantic comedy used to mean grown-up sex appeal, dazzling wit and fizzy, sparring dialogue, typically delivered at a breakneck pace.” Not anymore. And why not? A lack of male actors who are good at it. “Few seem to want to risk playing romantic leads, and one suspects few could pull it off. In part, this is because film acting styles have changed over the past 30 or 40 years. The long shadow of Method acting hangs over actors today. Men need to look deep inside themselves to plumb their characters’ motivation; it’s a serious business, and hard to square with classic romantic comedy, which calls for deadpan devilry, a barely controlled madness, and a willingness to don a tuxedo and look suave and silly simultaneously. Who’s up to it?”