Something something Kerry is a flip flopper something something should release his military records blah blah blah. I'll try to do better next time.

I'm thinking Miles has become that which he loathd as a young man, and doesn't even know it. I just wish I had been at that Barnes and Noble, where I could have asked some questions the aging hippies in the audience didn't have the awareness to ask, though I'm sure I would have got a dismissing "well, I've not heard of them, as I'm busy these days writing about the past" or something like that. Also, I forgot to mention the humor of someone promoting a book at a fucking Barnes and Noble about counterculture, and how it's not like the good old days.

I can't think of Biafra these days without thinking of the animosity the rest of the DKs have for him following that whole lawsuit thing, and the way he carries himself these days. Someday I'll have to tell my little altercation with Biafra story from 2001 in San Francisco.

Mainstream rap blows goats, but if you're genuinely interested in what's good these days, you should start with anything Def Jux.

I've always held Clapton and his ilk in a fair amount of contempt. Then again, I hate the Beatles, too, for similar reasons of stealing Black music and regurgitating it as more Caucazoid-palatable fare, then reaping all the critical acclaim as if the ideas were theirs, and original. However, I commend you on your grow-up goals, and hope that I am someday worthy of such esteem.

Best of $DECADE collections are going to stop being sold. Or, rather, that the vendors who currently market such things will run out of an audience sufficient to make doing such a thing profitable, and *they* will cease to exist.

I could be wrong; major record companies may figure out a way to sue everyone into keeping them alive indefinitely, but my guess is that ultimately, in twenty years, the people who are going to remember and seek out currently non-sucking acts are the ones who will be seeking out then-contemporary non-sucking acts. It'll be interesting to see how the whole thing develops. On the other hand, I'm *already* having trouble finding non-sucky acts from my youth; for the life of me, I can't find "Sleeper: A Retrospective" by the Creepers *anywhere* in CD form. In fact, it may not have ever existed on CD, as far as I know. Thank ${InvisibleSkyGiant} I have those old Fall retrospective compilations to tide me over until I find one on vinyl. And then find a turntable for cheap for which to use to convert it to digital iPoddy format.

and you're not proclaiming 'new stuff' to be uninteresting crap. My problem is not with people who don't know a lot about music, but like particular things, but rather with people who like particular things, but don't let their lack of knowledge stop them from having strong opinions about things they don't even know exist. If that makes any sense.

You obviously know how to use allmusic.com, which is great, right, but "over-intellectual" to describe Grandaddy? Come on, man. Now I *know* you've never heard them. Not to mention the automatic discrediting you do to yourself by using the word "twee". Twee, indeed. Your comment, good sir, is "twee".

Also, it would behoove you to learn the difference between "influential" (which requires the passing of time), and "interesting", though, if you're defending Coldplay, you may well be beyond hope.

Good day, sir.

Of this, there is no question. The prime difference between myself and Mr. Miles, though, is that I cannot dismiss all modern music as 'pap', whereas he apparently felt comfortable enough to do so, citing as his evidence only the sort of drivel major labels promote so heavily. Where, in Miles' opinion, music stopped being innovative and influential (specifically the 'punk' era of the late 70s), I maintain nothing stopped then except his effort put forth in finding out what's really going on outside of major label output.

The majors definitely picked up on the marketability of 'alternative' rock around the time, and this did some serious damage to the genre as a whole, whereas people who had previously been quite interested in it turned elsewhere for new music. For me, it was a turn to hip hop. Hip hop was later coopted for the same purpose by the same majors, resulting in a lot of sales, again, for said majors, but it didn't kill the genre as far as innovation went; if anything, it incited more innovation that went under the radar of popular culture. Without hip hop turning into a commodity, overall, there would likely have been no interesting experiments like Gravediggaz, or the solo Prince Paul efforts, or Freestyle Fellowship, or, later, Aesop Rock, El P, Company Flow, Aceyalone, and the whole turntablism thing embodied by the Invisibl Skratch Piklz. Anyway, major labels will do their best to usurp whatever they can in order to make a profit, but lately it seems they aren't plugged in enough to know *what* to coopt anymore.

While this diary speaks really only of rock-oriented popular music, there are entire genres out there of material that goes under the radar; the creation of "electronica" as a genre is indicative of the majors desire to cash in on the various actual genres (namely, drum and bass, techno, electroclash, jungle, trance, and the others, to name a few), the effort they made didn't crush those other genres. It created "superstars" like Orbital or Aphex Twin, while LTJBuken continues to maintain a reasonable living doing his thing, off the radar, as it were.

My main point is not so much about influence as it is innovation; influence can only be objectively analyzed after enough time has passed to see influence where it makes itself evident. Innovation, on the other hand, is apparent at the time it happens, if people choose to look for it. When Miles indicates that there's nothing worth listening to these days, it isn't because he's right, it's because he's too lazy to look for it, where he might not have been when he wasn't a silver-haired cultural commentator, waxing poetic about the good old days. I am encouraged, though, to see the precise opposite of what you describe as potential anti-new music bias on the behalf of kids these days, as is evidenced by my not-infrequent trips to see new music, where they are omnipresent, and enthused to see something other than the tripe that passes for culture in mass media.

Who is quoted in this article. Congratulations, you found the hidden RNC Talking Point gem, sir! (Actually, not, but it's the most political point in the diary, wherein my point is, if Matt Toups, former Duke student/current CMU student considers the posting of his enemies personal information to be covered as free speech, then surely he has no problem with me posting his email address.)