national_highway_31

I spoke too soon. Joyful Noise Recordings, the label that released the completely pointless Dinosaur Jr and Of Montreal cassette boxes (home taping your own versions from the records would have been way more faithful), are doing a single-sided flexi-disc series (which you can't subscribe to as it's sold out in advance). Talk about pointless elitism. Pity, as they have some great bands lined up (Lou Barlow, Tortoise, Deerhoof), and flexi-discs last about four plays.

So says their webpage;

''All of the songs featured in the series are 100% new and unreleased and will never be released in any other format. So kiddies, there isn't even a chance you already have this in your iTunes... Literally the only way you will hear these songs is to sign up for the Flexi subscription.''

I always thought a good principle for independent music distribution was to have as many people hear your work as possible, for as cheaply as possible. How stupid I was.

By which time hipsters will have moved on to doing lathe cuts, flexi-discs, or edison cylinders (no gramaphone needed, download code included).

I spoke too soon. Joyful Noise Recordings, the label that released the completely pointless Dinosaur Jr and Of Montreal cassette boxes (home taping your own versions from the records would have been way more faithful), are doing a single-sided flexi-disc series (which you can't subscribe to as it's sold out in advance). Talk about pointless elitism. Pity, as they have some great bands lined up (Lou Barlow, Tortoise, Deerhoof), and flexi-discs last about four plays.

I love how this ''debate'' is sponsored by ''Cool Coupe'' Hyundai Veloster. Selling cars and selling cassettes, it seems they're not so different after all. Instant collectible.

Cassettes sound shit, have crap artwork, degrade quickly, and replacing your magnetic heads will cost a bundle in ten years. By which time hipsters will have moved on to doing lathe cuts, flexi-discs, or edison cylinders (no gramaphone needed, download code included).

In the early '80s UK post-punk scene and early hardcore in the US, tapes were effective because they were made from cheap materials available at your supermarket and everybody had a cassette player. In the late '80s labels like Xpressway, Shrimper, and early K records used tapes because they could dub-on-demand and operate on no budget. Today, the ''it was easy, it was cheap, go and do it'' motto applies more to the CDr than to cassettes, as everyone has a CD player, and it's easy to get access to a CD burner. In contrast cassettes are thoroughly elitist, difficult to manufacture, and can't be played by everybody.

I had no idea Bikini Kill played Sumersault, did they play Sydney? If so I wish I'd seen them.

Yeah they played the second stage (there were only two stages), pretty early on in the afternoon.

national: complete bullshit. The rules around writing are mostly (i) accidental or (ii) arbitrary. Good communication and clarity arise from familiarity with style and form; look at how the prescribed rules of writing have evolved and changed and differed over time.

Guess it depends on how much you subscribe to the theory of Universal Grammar. My point is more that 90% of style and grammar problems are accidental or clumsy, rather than some sort of poetic tropological play. Read through a pile of undergraduate essays, and it becomes very clear how much more pleasurable and easy to read the well written ones are. On the other hand, good poetry subverts linguistic convention in interesting ways. I'm reading the compilation of early writings of Byron Coley at the moment and it's a classic example.

(b) was meant to be ''have been'' (''en'' got dragged up to line above)

Notions of correct spelling and grammar are partly to do with class and cultural capital, but there are pragmatic reasons as well. Good writing is simply good communication, clear in composition and technically unambiguous. For example, if you don't have agreement in number and case, or use the wrong tense, your writing will be harder to cognitively harder to process, leaving less attention for engaging with the substantive content.

The lead article on The Age website right now;

''‘At the moment there is some showers moving in from the north-west and there has been one or two lightning strikes detected in that band but its mostly showers,’’ duty forecaster Peter Newham said. ‘‘So we’re expecting showers and possible storms over the next few hours as that moves through.''

In the space of two sentences; (a) change ''is'' to ''are''en (b) change ''has been'' to ''have be'' (c) insert comma after ''band'' (d) change ''its'' (should be it's) to ''it was'' (e) change ''we're'' to ''we will be'' (f) change ''that'' to ''those''

Booking my plane tickets for Sydney already...

v; are an absolutely amazing band, took me ages to track down their records (well, one 7'', one 12'', and a comp 7'') because of the name. Fortunately though, because if their name were easier they'd be KBD'ed out by now. On the topic of amazing artsy early-'80s Boston post-punk bands, 21-645 have a name that it's always hard to remember what the numbers should be (like Voigt/465).

OFF on right now.