Weekend Reads (November 23): The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Nerds Gummy Clusters, Kum & Go
Recommended weekend reading material for November 23, 2024.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Toby Manning makes the case for Hatful of Hollow — which was released 40 years ago this month — being The Smiths’ best album.
Hatful Of Hollow captures this mannered, doleful band at its most exuberant and joyful — nothing sounds overly deliberated over among these odds and sods. There are fewer guitar overdubs and no keyboards, the rhythm section sounds like it’s making an inspired first grab at the tracks, while Marr spins out sparkling riffs seemingly at will (better songs would kill for the intro to “Girl Afraid”). An almost callow Morrissey, meanwhile, articulates a wisdom and wit that hasn’t yet descended to the novelties which deface more obvious “best album” contender, The Queen Is Dead (or connoisseur’s choice, Strangeways Here We Come). Lines like “No, I’ve never had a job because I’m too shy” are perfectly poised between precious and humorous. So, Hatful offers a route to recapturing The Smiths as they were when they first entered public consciousness: cockily charming, curiously ingenuous, alive with possibility, not pinned and mounted (like a butterfly).
Listening to The Smiths nowadays is bittersweet. The songs are so good as to be timeless, thanks to Morrissey’s droll lyrics and the band’s immaculate pop sensibilities. But then you see the kind of man that Morrissey’s become in recent years, openly embracing far right and racist rhetoric. Which doesn’t exactly ruin the magic, but does dispel it somewhat.
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, The Stone Roses were poised to become one of the biggest bands that England had ever seen — until it all fell apart.
The Stone Roses were born in Manchester in the early 1980s at the same time as New Order and The Smiths. In fact, Peter Hook (of New Order) produced one of their first singles, Elephant Stone, and some of its members shared early groups with members of the Smiths. However, in 1989, when the Stone Roses’ first album was released, the Smiths had already developed their entire career and Morrissey had released his first solo album. Amorín’s thesis is that Ian Brown (vocals), John Squire (guitar), Gary “Mani” Mounfield (bass) and Alan “Reni” Wren (drums) were very ambitious, but were never willing to take on the responsibility of being ambitious. In other words, they had the attitude, but lacked the work ethic that others of their generation possessed. They were able to arouse the curiosity of the British media, but they did not live up to expectations.
Via Canned Dragons.
Joe Dilworth’s Everything, All at Once Forever captures the grimy yet vibrant indie scene that existed in England before Britpop.
The photos in Everything, All at Once Forever capture a lost north London in which everything looks infinitely grimier and grimmer than today: you can almost smell the live photos, the distinctive tang of cigarette smoke, sweat, stale beer and small rooms untroubled by the concept of a cleaning rota that was the grassroots gig venue’s default scent 35 years ago.
The photos of pubs, meanwhile, speak of a world before guest beers and gastrofication when, in the unlikely event that food was served, actually eating it involved taking your life in your hands. But it also looks somehow more alive and exciting. As Dilworth points out, things were happening in Camden that couldn’t happen now, supported by a preponderance of pubs with music licences, people scraping by on the dole (“the best arts funding the British government ever provided”) and the capacity to live rent-free if you didn’t mind the privations of squatting.
Reading this reminded me of the local concerts that I frequently attended during the late ’90s and early ’00s. Some of them were at actual venues with honest-to-goodness stages and sound systems. Most, however, took place in warehouses, park shelters, and dingy, smoke-filled basements — just as God intended when He created punk and indie-rock.
If you’re looking for some new music to help you through the upcoming holiday season, the Treble staff highlights 20 albums that you might’ve missed in recent months.
It’s an annual tradition: We kick off our Best of Year season with a roundup of albums that probably slipped under your radar, and probably ours too. Hey, we’re not perfect, and the sheer volume of music being released in 2024 means that we simply don’t have enough hours in the day to hear everything. That’s just math. But we’re getting caught up now with a set of albums that merit a second (or first) listen. Catch up on some great albums you might have missed from summer and fall 2024.
FWIW, I’m listening to Louse’s Passions Like Tar as I write this and so far, I really like what I hear. Thanks, Treble!
Spotify is awash in AI “slop” as fake artists and albums steal revenue from actual musicians.
Streaming platforms like Spotify don’t work like your Facebook page — Mena and other artists aren’t logging in and adding albums to their accounts directly. Instead, they go through a distributor that handles licensing, metadata, and royalty payments. Distributors send songs and metadata in bulk to the streaming services. The metadata part is important; it includes things such as the song title and artist name but also other information, such as the songwriter, record label, and so on. This is crucial for artists (and others) to get paid.
But this whole process effectively works on the honor system, and for something like the fake Standards album, this is where the problems begin. A distributor takes you at your word that you are who you say you are, Spotify takes the distributor at their word, and boom, there’s a fake album on a real artist’s page. Most of the time when this happens, it’s an honest mistake. In the recent spate of fakes, though, it seems like artists are directly targeted.
Via Waxy.
Contra AI-generated images and computer animation, Matt Zoller Seitz has developed a newfound appreciation for the cartoons of his youth, including Bugs Bunny and Friends, Scooby-Doo, Speed Racer, and Super Friends.
All of these cartoons had a style, and it wasn’t that soulless, puked-out texture that all Gen AI visuals have in common. Just like handwriting (another nearly lost art form) if you watched enough of these shows, you could tell the different signatures apart. You got to the point where you could tell Hanna-Barbera from Filmation from Terrytoons, or Warner Bros. from MGM from the Walt Disney shorts, at a glance, from the other side of a room. Every member of the Scooby-Doo gang had their own distinctive body language and way of running. The renderings in the first season of the adventure series Jonny Quest are gorgeous, with thick, dynamic lines and hard shadows reminiscent of film noir. Shaggy’s baffled or frightened reactions are genuinely amusing even today. Even a less memorable animated character like Captain Caveman or Snagglepuss had a life force of some sort. They didn’t seem to have been spit out of an algorithm.
I feel something similar when I watch “classic” hand-drawn anime from the ’80s and ’90s like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor, and Iria. Those titles might not look as crisp and clean as modern anime, which has grown increasingly reliant on CGI’s perfection, but they possess an immediacy and sense of style and personality that computers just can’t match.
In order to address accusations that it holds a monopoly on internet search, Google may have to sell off Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) last month filed court papers saying it was considering enforcing “structural remedies” to prevent Google from using some its products.
The DoJ will reportedly push for Google, which is owned by Alphabet, to sell the browser and also ask a judge to require new measures related to artificial intelligence as well as its Android smartphone operating system, according to Bloomberg.
Not surprisingly, Google is less than happy with the prospect and claims that selling off Chrome would “break” the browser and make it less secure.
Related: Platformer’s Casey Newton covers the potential Chrome brouhaha. “I’m not fond of forcing Google to divest Chrome: it was built in house, and earned its spot as the most popular browser in the United States fairly: by being meaningfully better than its competition. No matter who owns and operates it, most US users will probably set Chrome’s search engine to Google. It’s hard to see that shaking up the search market too much.”
Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian — better known as the banana duct-taped on a wall — sold for a whopping $6.2 million at a recent auction.
For some viewers, the artwork is emblematic of the decadent, opaque dealings of an elitist art world, where value is arbitrarily assigned. It has spawned memes and parodies, merchandise, and for Sotheby’s, a dramatic marketing campaign. But it’s very much within the wheelhouse of its creator, who is himself something of a comedian. A central aspect of Cattelan’s work is based on the “idea of his sculpture breaking in to a place in which it does not belong,” another specialist says in a promotional video for the work. Now, though, it has certainly secured its place within the hallowed halls of art’s elite.
Interestingly, the winning bid didn’t actually win Cattelan’s artwork, not exactly.
Bidders won’t be buying the same fruit that was on display in Miami. Those bananas are long gone. Sotheby’s says the fruit always was meant to be replaced regularly, along with the tape.
“What you buy when you buy Cattelan’s Comedian is not the banana itself, but a certificate of authenticity that grants the owner the permission and authority to reproduce this banana and duct tape on their wall as an original artwork by Maurizio Cattelan,” Galperin said.
The winning bid was placed by crypto mogul Justin Sun, who described Comedian as “a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community” and said he “[looks] forward to it sparking further inspiration and impact for art enthusiasts around the world.” And yes, he plans to eat the banana in order to “[honor] its place in both art history and popular culture.”
Also, I can feel you rolling your eyes through the screen.
One of Alan Noble’s favorite authors is Cormac McCarthy. Like many McCarthy fans, he’s now reeling from the recent revelation that the author — who wrote such classics as The Road, No Country for Old Men, and Blood Meridian — committed statutory rape.
Sadly, this problem is an old problem in literature. Eliot had anti-semitic views. Some of our greatest American authors held racist and sexist views which were popular at the time. At 53, J.D. Salinger had a relationship with an 18 year-old fan. Franny and Zooey is still one of my favorite novels. Great literary figures do truly awful things and sometimes believe awful things. This is a fact about history which we must reckon with or have little great literature left to enjoy.
South Korea’s “4B” movement began as a response to gender discrimination and sexual harassment and violence. The movement — which encourages women to “decentralize” men in their lives by swearing off dating, marriage, sex, and having kids — has been garnering attention in the States following Trump’s election.
At time of writing, there were over a hundred thousand videos about the movement on TikTok; Google registered a massive surge in the search for “4B” starting on Election Day. “I’ve been waiting for everyone to catch up to speed for a while,” Alexa Vargas, a 4B adherent, said in a TikTok video posted last week. In a less restrictive interpretation of the movement’s tenets, Vargas encouraged women not to engage in “hookup culture” and to wait at least three months before considering having sex with new romantic partners. “Decenter men from your life,” she advised. “Get off the dating apps.” Another TikTok user said that she’d been keeping her participation in the movement private but decided to speak about her experiences publicly after the election: “As somebody who’s been 4B for two years now…at thirty-six years old, it is the best thing I’ve ever done for my mental health,” she said. “We are not alone in this.”
Via MetaFilter.
Tony Campolo, a Baptist pastor well-known — and controversial — for his advocacy for the poor, died earlier this week at the age of 89.
Campolo popularized the term red letter Christian — a reference to the way the words of Jesus are printed in many New Testaments — as an alternative to evangelical. He felt an alternative was needed because evangelicals had turned their backs on the good news, embracing right wing politics and comfortable, middle class conformity. But the best cure for evangelicalism’s ills, he said, was Jesus.
As he traveled relentlessly, speaking to up to 500 groups per year, Campolo urged people to let their lives be transformed by Jesus. And he told them that if their lives really were transformed, it would be good news for people who were hungry and oppressed.
Nerds products earned $40 million in 2018. In the past calendar year, however, that figure increased to a mind-blowing $800 million. The reason for this incredible success? Nerds Gummy Clusters, of course.
At first, the idea of the Nerds Gummy Cluster got mixed reviews in conceptual consumer testing trials, Ms. Duffy said. But the company took “the risk to press ahead,” she said, and in 2020 launched the new product in stores.
And in January 2021, one particular customer got her hands on a bag.
“These?? NERDS Gummy Clusters??? This is next level.”
That customer was Kylie Jenner, a mogul, a model and the youngest Kardashian-Jenner sister. She shared her rave review in an Instagram story that essentially served as free advertising directed at the more than 200 million followers she had at the time.
Via Kottke. My family has certainly contributed a lot to that $800 million. My daughter is obsessed with Nerds Gummy Clusters, and I always help myself to a few because — let’s face it — they’re irresistible.
Finally, here’s a bit of sad news for us Midwesterners: the iconic Kum & Go gas station chain is being rebranded.
The company’s rebranding announcement follows its acquisition by rival chain Maverik back in 2023. The rebranding will consist of combining the two chains together to reflect the Maverik brand.
The article mentions something about immature sexual innuendo but I have no idea what they’re talking about.
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