Helen Nianias muses art, the student stereotype and our supposed intellectuality...
To choose the high life, the low life, or somewhere respectable in between? Helen Nianias pontificates.
Music! Blog! An very old word and a fairly new one. What happens when old meets new? Find out in our weekly look at two of the internet's receptacles for music and opinion.<br />
This week's foray into the grimy world of music blogs turns up London-based '2ManyScenes' and an American view of British indie from 'In Search of Arcadia.'
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Pop Justice is absolutely the best thing the internet has ever produced. Ignore all the people in the "what is the internet for" debate that say it is a democratising tool, a channel for pornography or a repository for the knowledge of mankind - the internet is for irreverent music journalism concentrating solely on pop, and the pages of PJ are all you need for proof.
The site was started by Peter Robinson, a name you might recognise from his regular appearances in The Guardian music review pages, or the Peter Robinson Versus feature in NME. After a modest beginning the site now sits like a gigantic wheat bag over the sore muscles of pop, rejuvenating what looks tired and turning it into a huge flexed tool of modern culture. The site is often compared to the late Smash Hits magazine for its sense of humour and a knowing smile as it presents pop as the most important thing on earth, and once you get used to this writing style you could find it creeping in to your everyday chat. "CLANNNG" each time someone name-drops is a particular favourite round these parts.
Away from this tongue-in-cheek look at the world of pop music is the rather more serious Music Is Art. If Pop Justice views music as a unique form of entertainment and the premier form of artistic endeavour, then Music Is Art presents it as just a part of a world of arts, where different art forms can interact with ease. Often the mp3s posted inspire visual artworks displayed on the site, and occasionally it is the other way round. This means that the music available is a really mixed bag, with a number of surprising gems. The real pleasure here, like the wonderful 1.618 that we featured last term, is seeing how different artists interpret different pieces of music, and whether their vision corresponds with your own.
Recent Music Is Art posts have included short essays on Jack Kerouac, soundtracked by Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, and a Halloween themed feature on The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the artwork on the album sleeve. Admittedly, some of the posts stray into self-indulgence, but if you can bear a little of that the quality of the art, both music and pictures, really shines through.
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