Quotulatiousness

January 20, 2022

“The new music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs”

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

As a certified (certifiable?) old pharte, I have to admit I pretty much stopped listening to “new” music on the radio the year my son was born, so I certainly listen to a lot of music from my younger years, but apparently even young people today are also more inclined to listen to music from before they were born:

“Framed Vinyl Album Art: America ‘Homecoming’; Nick Gilder (Studio Copy of Singles From ‘City Lights’ Chosen for AOR); Climax Blues Band ‘FM Live’)” by JoeInSouthernCA is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

I had a hunch that old songs were taking over music streaming platforms — but even I was shocked when I saw the most recent numbers. According to MRC Data, old songs now represent 70% of the US music market.

Those who make a living from new music — especially that endangered species known as the working musician — have to look on these figures with fear and trembling.

But the news gets worse.

The new music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs.

Just consider these facts: the 200 most popular tracks now account for less than 5% of total streams. It was twice that rate just three years ago. And the mix of songs actually purchased by consumers is even more tilted to older music — the current list of most downloaded tracks on iTunes is filled with the names of bands from the last century, such as Creedence Clearwater and The Police.

I saw it myself last week at a retail store, where the youngster at the cash register was singing along with Sting on “Message in a Bottle” (a hit from 1979) as it blasted on the radio. A few days earlier, I had a similar experience at a local diner, where the entire staff was under thirty but every song more than forty years old. I asked my server: “Why are you playing this old music?” She looked at me in surprise before answering: “Oh, I like these songs.”

The reasons are complex — more than just the appeal of old tunes — but the end result is unmistakable: Never before in history have new tracks attained hit status while generating so little cultural impact. In fact, the audience seems to be embracing en masse the hits of decades past. Success was always short-lived in the music business, but now it hardly makes a ripple on the attention spans of the mass market.

H/T to Althouse for the link.

January 10, 2022

English counties explained

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, History, Humour — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Jay Foreman
Published 13 Sep 2021

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I wouldn’t say it explains why my home town seemed to move from county to county every few years since my family emigrated, but at least it provides a few clues about the changes.

January 4, 2022

QotD: Status signalling

Filed under: Business, Education, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The second thing they have wrong, and what I urge you to realize as soon as you can: They are not the “oppressed.” No, I don’t mean by that that there is no oppression in our society. Any human society has people with more power than others. It’s just that the groups and ideas that the left and their violent lap-wolves Antifa have cast as victims aren’t the victims.

In fact, their philosophy — the Marxist ideology they propound and the craziness behind it — has been in control of society, on top, since at least the seventies.

Being a leftist is a mark of being “good” and also well educated. The same way that in Elizabethan England poor mad Christopher Marlowe wrote his stage directions in Latin, to show that he had had an excellent education and deserved respect, so too the leftists of today pepper their works, from movies to TV to books to art, with odes to the oppressed and paeans to the coming revolution. It’s how you show you’re high-class and exquisitely educated.

All the old families, all the rich, all the captains of industry and power brokers signal left as hard as they can, because that’s where the power is — and in my field, the awards, the professorships, and the acclaim. Heck, remember what Trump signaled just to be allowed to do business.

And that’s why I’ve been watching in amusement the left going through the motions of kabuki theater revolution against a society … they control.

Sarah Hoyt, “We’re Seeing the Death Rattle of the Revolution, Not Its Birth”, PJ Media, 2020-07-28.

December 2, 2021

“Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.”

Filed under: History, Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The power of Python compelled Stephen Green to write this:

Stan: “I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me ‘Loretta’.”
Still from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979.

Of all the jokes, gags, and barbs thrown in every direction, Jesus is the only figure shown respect. Monty Python trouper Eric Idle later said of Jesus, “What he’s saying isn’t mockable, it’s very decent stuff.”

For a non-believing, take-no-prisoners comedian like Idle, that’s practically a whole-hearted endorsement.

Instead, the film — Python’s only real film, the others were basically collections of sketches, even Holy Grail — is anti-authoritarian, anti-fanaticism, anti-nihilism, and anti-humorless prigs.

Life of Brian is, however, very pro-funny.

The Pythons even saved their sharpest barbs for political extremists and self-deluded lefties.

Case in point on that last observation: The classic Colosseum conversation between the would-be revolutionaries of the Judean People’s Front.

Or was that the People’s Front of Judea?

Regardless, take two minutes (clip below!) to bask in the comedic good sense that would get the cast and entire production crew canceled in our times.

The postmodern Left should probably cancel everyone who laughed at this scene, just to be safe.

Anyway, point-by-point, Monty Python satirically dissected the then-nascent cultural trends that have since come to dominate not only our culture, but also our politics and even our private lives.

Enjoy … although I will admit that re-watching this today, the laughs were a bit more bitter than they were when I first watched Life of Brian nearly 40 years ago.

November 15, 2021

Sarah Hoyt on what happens when the wheels come off

Filed under: Business, Europe, Food, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, Sarah Hoyt considers the supply chain chaos we’re seeing these days and reminisces about what happened in Portugal when the bakers went on strike, disrupting bread deliveries for most of the country:

Let me explain: to some extent this plan is always stupid because humans are resourceful. Even back in the seventies, in Portugal when the bakers kept going on strike (and to understand how much this touched the normal person, you have to understand that back then we were used to getting our bread delivered to the door before we woke up. Tie a bag to the back door, leave a note of what you wanted, wake up to crackling fresh rolls and baguettes. This is one the things I really missed when I moved here. Then I found bread machines, and made do.) The first couple of weeks were pandemonium and people were deeply unhappy because their routine — worse, their waking up routine — was disrupted.

And then things … changed. So, some people started making their own bread. Some people started making their own bread, other people heard and suddenly they were showing up at the back door and placing an order for the morning, then coming in the morning and knocking a certain way to receive your order. It was annoying, but life went on, and not everyone had to bake their own bread anyway.

Oh, and bonus, you didn’t have to pay taxes on the bread you sold. You were obliging your neighbors, and if they wanted to give you some money in return to help with expenses, it would be rude to refuse. (And since everyone was doing it, they couldn’t chase everyone, even in a tiny country.) Oh, and to understand this one, and the reason I use this expense, I don’t think people in Portugal had baked their own bread (Other than farmers making broa [Portuguese cornbread]) since before Roman times. Artisanal bread wasn’t a thing. But people found a way.

I do realize with so much of our manufacturing in China, and the supply problems, etc, it seems like the world is coming down on top of our heads.

But people find a way. Look, in Cuba, a tiny country, they’ve kept 1950s cars going all these decades. They might be repaired with washing machine parts, but they keep going.

The US is a huge country, with a ton more resources, and perhaps genetically (As we’re immigrants or descended thereof) more adaptable people.

We’re in the first shock, so not much being done to get around this cr*p inflicted on us from above. But in a month or two, probably before the anger reaches the level (alas) that #teamheadsonpikes comes out to play, we’ll adapt, improvise, overcome.

People are already buying direct from farmers. I have no idea how the Christmas gift shopping is going, because since the kids haven’t been little, we usually pick ONE interesting or meaningful thing for them, and anyway, Dan and I always want the same “A book and a music-vehicle (used to be a CD)”. This year, with worry over selling the house, etc. I haven’t even looked. I keep hearing it will be lean, but I suspect Americans will make more stuff/etsy will have a boom year. And life will move on. Heck, I know someone considering going into 3D printing to make those pieces that are stuck in containers or that China is not sending off, or whatever, to repair your car/washing machine/air conditioning. Yeah, copyright problems, but if you market it as a “Stop gap while you wait” and market to local repairmen? I bet it works.

The point is we’re not Portuguese or Cubans. Not a small country, easily stomped. Out in the heartland, people will go over, go under, get around almost by default.

November 13, 2021

The patron saint of “Gonzo” journalism was a pretty cruddy human being

Filed under: Books, History, Humour, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post on one of Hunter S. Thompson’s famous early books, I discovered the writer at a particularly susceptible age … teenagers of my generation were generally suckers for counter-culture heroes (being too young to be actual hippies because we were in primary school when the Summer of Love flew past, and therefore feeling we’d missed out on something Big and Important and Meaningful). As a gullible teen, I believed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was mostly factual with some obvious-even-to-me embroideries for dramatic or comedic effect. I could easily forgive the guessed-at 10% fiction, but Thompson eventually admitted that the majority of the story was bullshit. Entertaining bullshit, but bullshit.

Which, as it happens, turns out to have been Thompson’s life-long modus operandi, as Kevin Mims repeatedly highlights in his Quillette review of David S. Wills’ biography called High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism:

In High White Notes, his riveting new biography of Hunter S. Thompson, journalist David S. Wills describes Thompson as America’s first rock star reporter and compares him to Mick Jagger. But by the time I finished the book, I’d decided that Thompson bore a closer resemblance to Donald Trump. The two men were born nine years apart, during white American masculinity’s golden age. Both were obsessed with politics without possessing anything that could be described as a coherent political philosophy. Both men longed for some mythical American paradise of the past. Both men screwed over multiple friends and business partners. Both men would have gone broke if not for the frequent intervention of helpful patrons. Both men were egomaniacs fond of self-mythologizing and loath to share a spotlight with anyone. Both men enjoyed making disparaging remarks about women, minorities, the disabled, and other disadvantaged people. Both men were frequently disloyal to their most loyal aiders and abetters. Thompson’s endless letter writing and self-pitying 3am telephone calls to friends and colleagues were the 20th century equivalent of Trump’s late-night Twitter tantrums. Both men generally exaggerated their successes and blamed their failures on others. Both men mistreated their wives. Both men nursed a constant (and not entirely irrational) sense of grievance against perceived enemies in the government and the media. Both men had a colossal sense of entitlement …

The list could go on and on. Trump actually fares better than Thompson by various measures. For instance, Trump has never had a drug or alcohol problem, as far as I know. Thompson was a drug and alcohol problem. The first US president in living memory without a White House pet seems to have no interest in animals. Thompson enjoyed tormenting them. Rumors have circulated since 2015 that a recording exists of Trump using a racial slur but since the evidence has never surfaced, it might be fairer to conclude (at least provisionally) that this is not one of his many character failings. Thompson’s published and (especially) unpublished writings are full of such language.

All of which may lead you to conclude that High White Notes is not a favorable account of Hunter S. Thompson’s life and work. To the contrary, David S. Wills is a Thompson devotee who considers his subject to have been a great writer and, at times, a great journalist. But Wills is an honest guide, so his endlessly entertaining biography manages to be both a fan’s celebration and unsparing in its criticism of Thompson and his work.

Though impressive, the book is not without faults. Wills relies too heavily on cliché (“This book will pull no punches”; “breathing down his neck for the final manuscript”; “women threw themselves at him” etc.), and has a tendency to find profundity in unnaturally strained readings of Thompson’s prose. For instance, Wills describes a scene from a 1970 profile Thompson wrote of French skier Jean-Claude Killy, in which three young boys approach Thompson and ask if he is Killy. Thompson tells them that he is, then holds up his pipe and says, “I’m just sitting here smoking marijuana. This is what makes me ski so fast.” This sounds to me like standard Thompson misbehavior, but Wills infers something more complex: “On the surface, it appears to be comedy for the sake of comedy but in fact it is a comment on the nature of celebrity and in particular Killy’s empty figurehead status.” And when Thompson describes Killy as resembling “a teenage bank clerk with a foolproof embezzlement scheme,” Wills remarks, “Thompson has succeeded mightily not just in conveying [Killy’s] appearance but in hinting at his personality. He has placed an image in the head of his reader that will stick there permanently. It was something F. Scott Fitzgerald achieved, albeit in more words, when he had Nick Carraway describe Jay Gatsby’s smile.” (The book, by the way, takes its title from Fitzgerald, who used the phrase to describe short passages of writing so beautiful that they stand out from the larger work of which they are a part.)

[…]

Thompson’s big break as a writer came in 1965 when he was hired to write an article about the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang for the Nation. The piece was so popular that Thompson found himself besieged by publishers who wanted him to expand it into a full-length nonfiction book. The Thompsons moved into the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco and Thompson set about writing Hell’s Angels, the 1967 book that would make him famous. Even in that first book, written before he had fully formulated the concept of Gonzo journalism, Thompson was already tinkering with the truth and engaging in the kind of self-mythologizing that would become a hallmark of his work. And that didn’t sit well with the Hell’s Angels themselves. According to Sonny Barger, a founding member of the Angels, Thompson “would talk himself up that he was a tough guy, when he wasn’t. When anything happened, he would run and hide.” Barger’s assessment of the book was terse: “It was junk.”

Wills notes that Thompson “tended to write about himself in ways that built his legend … to prove his machismo on paper. The back cover [of Hell’s Angels] describes him as ‘America’s most brazen and ballsy journalist’ and in the book he tells the story of first meeting the Angels and trying to impress them by shooting out the windows of his own San Francisco home. Such moments of bravado tend to enter the story very briefly and seem to serve little purpose beyond this self-mythologizing.”

But it was exactly this kind of self-mythologizing — the bragging about his drug use and general misbehavior — that editors of American magazines found so exciting about Thompson’s work, so it’s no wonder that he engaged in so much of it. It was his wild man persona that made Warren Hinckle of Scanlan’s Monthly want to unleash him among the socialites of Louisville. Still, Thompson didn’t fully emerge as a countercultural hero until he began to write for a small start-up publication in San Francisco called Rolling Stone.

November 9, 2021

Led Zeppelin IV, fifty years on

Filed under: History, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Monday’s NP Platformed newsletter, Colby Cosh helps a lot of “late Boomers” and Gen X’ers to feel even older:

This very day, friends, marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Led Zeppelin’s fourth studio album, whose title is technically a series of glyphs representing the band’s four members. Frustrated writers and editors usually just call it Led Zeppelin IV, and will have to go on doing so until the Unicode Consortium comes to its senses.

Zep IV is generally considered the band’s strongest LP, and it contains the song “Stairway to Heaven”, which has been played so often over 50 years of life that it is now somewhat divisive. It’s possible the species can be split into people who are sick of “Stairway” and those of us who still have to let it play all the way through, every time, even though it has nothing left to disclose and no remaining power to surprise. (How could it? We all know every note, every overtone of every chord, every syllable of incomprehensible Robert Plant doggerel.) NP Platformed is cheered by the thought that there are babies being born every day who will, at some time or other, get to hear “Stairway” for the first time. It’s not like they’ll get very far without hearing it.

“Stairway” makes for a hell of a cleanup hitter, but on Zep IV the lineup is immense from top to bottom. There are those who would argue that other Zeppelin studio LPs are stronger on the whole. If you like the heavy-blues side of the group, you might be tempted to vote for Zeppelin II (1969); folkies appreciate Zeppelin III (1970).

The fifth record, Houses of the Holy (1973), was once called “Zeppelin’s best record” by Chuck Klosterman, an undoubted authority in such matters … but please note that Klosterman wrote this in a listicle about the greatest metal albums that had Zeppelin IV No. 2 overall, with Houses of the Holy altogether omitted. Later, when trendsetting music-review site Pitchfork.com did a listicle of the top 100 albums of the 1970s, they ranked Zep IV seventh and spent a couple hundred words apologizing for not putting it first. (“We must be lying to ourselves …”) Zep IV: too big to ignore.

November 2, 2021

Sandhurst 1975 – The Royal Military Academy

Filed under: Britain, Education, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

British Army Documentaries
Published 21 Feb 2021

Filmed in 1975, this documentary is set at Sandhurst, the officer training academy. It follows a group of young men preparing for a life of leadership in the Army. These “managers of violence” will be expected to perform to the very highest of traditions of the British Army and be prepared to apply their professionalism on British soil should the need arise.

© 1975

This production is for viewing purposes only and should not be reproduced without prior consent.

This film is part of a comprehensive collection of contemporary Military Training programmes and supporting documentation including scripts, storyboards and cue sheets.

All material is stored and archived. World War II and post-war material along with all original film material are held by the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive.

October 28, 2021

Identifying victims over 40 years later

Filed under: History, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Wednesday’s NP Platformed newsletter, Colby Cosh goes back in time to a very different era: the 1970s, when they still hadn’t formally defined the term “serial killer”.

Des Plaines Police Department mugshots of John Wayne Gacy, 22 December, 1978.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The 1970s are another country, and it is the one your correspondent comes from. We have always been interested in the unidentified victims of John Wayne Gacy because it shows just how distant that country really is, even though it seems, in memory, close enough to touch. People who know Gacy as merely the killer clown may not understand how unbelievable the details are when viewed from 2021.

In 1968, Gacy was actually convicted of raping a 15-year-old boy in Iowa and served 18 months in prison. There were sexual assault complaints against him in Chicago — where he had been sent on probation — beginning in 1971. And when he told his surviving victims that the police wouldn’t believe them, he knew what he was talking about, having become respectable enough to be an honorary police precinct captain. One rape-murder victim whose family was searching for him found that he had done work for Gacy, who simply told them the boy had “run away from home”. In other case, a missing boy’s car was found at Gacy’s house. Gacy just admitted to having bought it from the kid, and the trail ran cold.

About half of Gacy’s victims were minors. In a modern city, you couldn’t have more than a few young people vanish from the street or the bus station without the cops realizing they had an enormous investigative problem. But in the ’70s, there was no awareness of anyone “vanishing” at all. Teenagers really were running away from home in simply inconceivable quantities, bouncing around from city to city, and picking up odd jobs like the ones Gacy offered. In the social environment then existing, parents often just accepted the disappearance of children. And runaways still happen, obviously, but now if some 16-year-old stays out too late and doesn’t call home, there’s an official bulletin on Twitter within a few hours.

Police forces still had not quite formulated the concept of a “serial killer”. Gacy’s luck running out was a major reason this finally happened. He was caught only because someone had seen him speaking with a 15-year-old later reported missing; a local cop happened to have a child who was a high school classmate of Gacy’s last victim, and he did extra legwork that nobody had bothered with, finding out about Gacy’s old sodomy conviction.

The minds of professional crime investigators simply did not have room to accommodate the idea of Gacy — or the dozens more like him who began to turn up in the ’80s. NP Platformed is the first to bewail a world of “helicopter parenting” that is creating stunted, fragile adults; but sometimes we remember the fractured, strange, disorderly post-’60s society from which we ourselves came, and we shudder.

October 19, 2021

Semiauto FAMAS F1 Rifle

Filed under: France, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 9 Aug 2016

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

The French FAMAS was one of the first bullpup rifles to be adopted and built in large numbers by a military power. It was adopted by France in 1978 at right about the same time as the Steyr AUG was being adopted by the Austrian military. Bullpup rifles offered a short overall length without sacrificing barrel length, an advantage that seemed quite valuable for troops who were to spend significant amounts of time in vehicles, where space is at a premium. In French service, the FAMAS was also made the formal replacement for both the MAS-49/56 rifle and the MAT-49 submachine gun, thanks to its compact nature.

The FAMAS is interesting mechanically, as it is one of very few production delayed-blowback rifle designs (the other common one being the CETME/HK series). The FAMAS uses a lever-delaying system, which allows a very simple bolt and action mechanism. The F1 model (adopted by the French Army and still in use today, making up the bulk of FAMAS production) has a 1:12″ twist to its rifling, effectively limiting it to 55 grain projectiles — and it also requires steel-cased ammunition to run reliably. The G2 variant (adopted in 1995 by the French Navy) changed to a 1:9″ twist, introduced a full-hand trigger guard, and also uses NATO standard AR15 magazines instead of the proprietary 25-round magazine of the F1.

In the late 1980s a small number of semiauto FAMAS rifles were made by St Etienne and imported into the US by Century. Most people say 100-125 rifles, although serial number suggest this may have actually been 225-250 rifles. Regardless, they are quite scarce and expensive today.

October 3, 2021

The Triumph Spitfire Story

Filed under: Britain, Business, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Big Car old account
Published 8 Mar 2019

To help me continue producing great content, please consider supporting me: https://www.patreon.com/bigcar

Help support my channel through these Amazon US affiliate links:
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The Spitfire is a beautiful automobile, a thing of wonder penned by an Italian genius, but it almost never happened. If not for a chance find in the dusty corner of a factory it would have remained merely a “could have been”. But Triumph produced a car that still inspires new creations today and has a strong and loyal fan base around the world, nearly sixty years since it burst on the scene.

#TriumphSpitfire

August 25, 2021

Tanks Chats #121​ | The Cascavel | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Americas, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 2 Apr 2021

The Tank Museum’s Curator David Willey presents a Tank Chat on the EE-9 Cascavel, a Brazilian Armoured Car developed during the 1970s, primarily for reconnaissance. David also touches upon the EE-11 Urutu, which shares many of the Cascavel’s components. Join him to find out more.

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August 5, 2021

Gordon Ingram’s Westarm .308 Battle Rifle

Forgotten Weapons
Published 2 Apr 2021

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons​

https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…​

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…​

In the late 1970s and early 80s, Gordon Ingram came close to producing a military rifle in one of the most convoluted international arrangements I’ve yet heard of. Prototypes were made in Italy using British raw castings, to be tested in Somalia as part of a project to build a rifle factory there with Dominican Republic expertise from the San Cristobal armory. Somalia actually ordered a large quantity of rifles in 7.62x39mm, but Ingram prototyped the design in .223 and .308 as well.

Mechanically, the rifle was essentially a scaled-up M1 Carbine with a long stroke gas piston instead of a gas tappet. The production guns were select-fire, but the handful or prototypes brought into the US were semi-automatic only, to meet import requirements. In .308, the rifle used FAL magazines, while the .223 ones used AR magazines and the 7.62x39mm ones AK magazines.

Unfortunately for Ingram (but predictably), the project fell apart as the result of financial corruption among the many interested parties. The Somali government ended up paying out something like $5 million US and all they got for it were 10 unreliable prototype rifles.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

July 29, 2021

QotD: An opera called Margaret

Filed under: Americas, Britain, History, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Margaret Thatcher had a great deal of time for Andrew Lloyd Webber. In August 1978, while she was still Leader of the Opposition, her speechwriter Ronnie Millar took her to see Evita. “It was a strangely wondrous evening yesterday leaving so much to think about,” she wrote to Millar the next day. “I still find myself rather disturbed by it. But if they [the Peronists] can do that without any ideals, then if we apply the same perfection and creativeness to our message, we should provide quite good historic material for an opera called Margaret in thirty years’ time!”

Dominic Sandbrook, The Great British Dream Factory, 2015.

July 6, 2021

QotD: Generational dislocation

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The first generation to experience a cultural innovation, and almost every generation is the first to experience something, usually takes it hard. There is no parental wisdom on offer. There is no “oral culture” that records the misadventures of the previous generation. There is only a new imperative that has to be satisfied. (Personally, I believe this is the only way to explain the disco clothing innovations of the 1970s.)

Grant McCracken, “Gender Watch”, This Blog Sits at the, 2005-03-24.

Update: Link had rotted since I first posted this on the old blog. The link has been updated to the current location. H/T to WarEagle82 for calling this to my attention.

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