rebarbarised

Useless and pointless knowledge

I'm packing to move house, and it's hard not to pause and reflect on stuff you've forgotten you had. I last made a major move four years ago, so I had a big prune then -- discarding half a skip's worth of stuff. Some of what I chose to keep now seems remarkably irrelevant. Masses and masses of proceedings of conferences, real and virtual, about online community. Of course, not one of them mentions MySpace or Bebo.

The sadness is that it's more than six years since I recognised that I was learning too much ephemeral crap and needed to concentrate more on skills that last: like foreign languages and playing musical instruments. But I've got drawn back to the fly-by-night business.

69 Love Songs book now out

69lsbook

LD Beghtol has written 69 Love Songs — A Field Guide, an illustrated history of the album. LD was a member of The Magnetic Fields for the recording of the album, singing on several of the songs. He has also contributed several comments to the 69 Love Songs wiki that I started a few years ago. So you are warmly encouraged to buy his book (Amazon UK, Amazon US).

Painting with Sound: the life and music of Hans-Joachim Roedelius, by Stephen Iliffe

I can't add this to the books section of this blog, because Vox seems so US-centric that it denies the existence of the book, even though you can order it from Amazon.com. Order it from Meridian Music Guides instead.

This is a labour of love, a brilliant book, that has something for the Roedelius novice and for the aficionado. As the subject of the book has produced over 60 albums in a music career that only started in his late 30s, few people can be familiar with it all.  Iliffe draws on several other critics and collaborators who have followed Roedelius's journey. But he also brings to bear a wide range of cultural references in his own in-depth appreciations of each album. Iliffe is openly affectionate towards his subject (and has secured Roedelius's participation and blessing for the book), but he doesn't flinch from saying when the music is below par. His account is rarely pretentious, if occasionally repetitive. The pictures are fantastic too.