Frere-Jones, Frere-Jones, Dormez-Vous?

I have to admit that I like New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones' blog. I've wavered on his articles—shy hosannas when they're good, Gladwellishly dry when not. But the blog is cool, in the most fundamental sense, but spare and genuinely modest too. Most of it is photos, and interesting ones; I like his records of graffiti and signage especially. Most appealing are his acknowledgments of his own peculiar stature and posturing: "Liz Maynes-Aminzade let me cuss in this short profile for the Columbia Spectator. My wife maintains that profanity looks dumb on the page, and that I should give it a rest. This is probably true."

(The Spectator profile is quite a bit better than I remember the paper being when I was an undergraduate, besides, of course, the radical takeover of the arts section by Jordan Davis, Max Winter, Tim Griffin, and fellow Kochophiles.)

Speaking of S/FJ (as he calls himself in his title bar—a little silly, but it must be tough to have a complicated last name), I noticed as I was reading his piece on ring tones today on my laptop that my mind kept wandering, and not because the piece was boring. I always get mad at people who say they can't read onscreen, who inevitably say "I'm a paper person," as if I'm not! But I know I would have given it more attention, and retained more, if I'd been reading the magazine. Or maybe it was because I was in Atlas Cafe listening to "Maneater," which may literally be the first pop song I ever listened to in full and consequently the beginning of my early-adolescent top-40 rampage, and glancing at an appealingly scruffy guy who was talking on the phone about writing something for New York. I'll be there again tomorrow, stranger.

As that weren't enough epiphanies, tonight I heard a reading of collaborative poems by Shafer Hall, Daniel Nester, Maureen Thorson, Shanna Compton, Jen Knox, Ada Limon, Erica Kaufman, and John Cotter (several of whom will be reading at the April 17 Feast—see sidebar over yonder for details). It melted my socks, as my high school band teacher used to say. I won't say there's hope for poetry after all, since, contrary to stereotype, poets have considerably more hope than most people I know. I'll say it gave me hope for humanity, which could use a good dose of it just about now.

Jazz? Pop? Musicals? Anne Waldman singing "Uh-Oh Plutonium"? '80s bubblegum? Sad cowboy songs? Sad cowgirl songs? It is, at least as the soundtrack, all on www.emdashes.com.

Article Author: emdashes

emdashes.com has a New Yorker fetish and doesn't blush about it.

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