Mark Likes Music

Ann Powers complained recently that a popular-music critic has never won the Pulitzer for criticism , but with resignation: This snub is par for the course for those of us lucky to do a job that's long been derided as extraneous AND self-indulgent," fumes Powers, "a substitute for the real mojo musicians possess. Marginalized within most newspapers as neither money-making (film critics bring in ads) or enriching (get thee to the symphony, philistines!), and scorned by many living the 'rock and roll lifestyle' as overly pointy-headed, pop critics are caught in a hallway between the high and the low. See her full article here. If she doesn't like the nods for criticism, she should look at the music choices . This year, Zhou Long won for his opera Madame White Snake ( it's not what you think ) based on a Boston performance that received lukewarm reviews. This in a year that saw some pretty amazing rock albums ( not Contra ; see Pitchfork's list , or N...

On Monday, Zhou Long won the Pulitzer Prize's music award for Madame White Snake , his epic Tawny Kitaen bio-opera. Next up for Zhou: an oratorio based on Loni Anderson's life with Burt Reynolds.

Last weekend, the Philadelphia Orchestra's board voted to restructure under Chapter 11 ; now, the New Mexico Symphony in Albuquerque is closing up shop . According to one report , the musicians were surprised at the decision by the board to file Chapter 7:  One musician called out Board of Directors Vice-Chair George Boerigter, saying that less than two weeks ago the musicians were told the symphony was headed toward Chapter 11 reorganization.  Talk of financial trouble dates back to 2008, and board member George Boerigter claims that the orchestra didn't even have the funds available to restructure under Chapter 7. Earlier this month, the Syracuse Symphony also folded , citing an inability to raise money for even the rest of the season, and the Detroit Symphony, while avoiding bankruptcy, ended a strike that saw musicians' salaries cut to offset crushingly large debt. 

A week after Amazon sent a (leaked or open) letter to record labels re-stating the legitimacy of its Cloud Drive and Player, Grooveshark yesterday released its own  open missive, defending their right to exist under the Safe Harbor provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The company specifically calls out Google for withdrawing Grooveshark's App from its Android Market. In a brilliant rhetorical move, it compares its service with Google's own YouTube, both in its relationship to the DMCA and in its business practices to avoid piracy. The letter, available on Digital Music News , was probably cover as Grooveshark released its own third-party Android app on Monday.

Clearly, David Pogue's a disappointed fan of the now-defunct Flip video camera, as am I . In his column this week, he revealed some inside information that makes the shutdown of Flip even more disappointing: apparently, the company was preparing to launch FlipLive, a new camera that would allow you to share video over the internet in real time: Think how amazing that would be. The world could tune in, live, to join you in watching concerts. Shuttle launches. The plane in the Hudson. College lectures. Apple keynote speeches.  Or your relatives could join you for smaller, more personal events: weddings, birthday parties,  graduations, first steps. Imagine how cool that would have been. Certainly, it would have kept me in Flip for a while . This is something an iPhone 4 just can't do .  The other interesting thing about Pogue's article is his speculation on why Cisco, which bought Flip from Pure Digital in 2009, had no intention of keeping the product on the market:...

Recently, I used a Flip video camera to shoot this: And this: Flip cameras are  popular with journalists , and I can see why: I use ours to share the familial goings-on with friends and relatives all over the world. I've recorded ballet and violin recitals, trips the to the Met Museum and Prince Edward Island, and uploaded them all to Facebook or YouTube. We got our first Flip video shortly after they arrived on the market, a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law. The video quality was underwhelming, but it became our go-to camera (period) because it was just so easy to use, and so relatively easy to share clips online. Vanessa even uses it to document her performances and rehearsals. David Pogue reported this week that Flip was readying a camera that would stream live to the internet . That's amazing, and it's not going to happen. (More on that here ). Last Christmas, we gave my son his own Flip video. He should hold on to that; it's a collector's item now...

In a letter to record labels , Amazon.com made it pretty clear where they stand on getting music licenses:  Cloud Player is a media management and play-back application not unlike Windows Media Player and any number of other media management applications that let customers manage and play their music. It requires a license from content owners no more than those applications do. It really is that simple. Nothing to see here. Move along, RIAA. The full text of the letter is here . Meanwhile, I haven't used the Cloud Player since its first day, mostly because I can't seamlessly buy and load to it from work, which is when I do most of my listening.

The Star Wars parodies just keep on coming (and coming and coming ). Sneaky Zebra has been helping out Death Star PR with a series of commercials that put a human face on the doomsday weapon-planet. Here's my favorite: It's important that the Empire does stuff like this. They don't want to come off looking like Microsoft . Those guys are evil.

Eat it, George Lucas. You can't stop the power of S tar Wars: The Musical . As Open Culture points out, Salon.com has posted the entire parodic show that a group of Californian high-schoolers put together  in 1996. Of course, Lucas didn't find it funny, and had his lawyers shut the production down. But it lives on, thanks to the internet. Thank you, internet.  It's really quite something; here's the ending:

As John O'Brien points out, Syracuse isn't just losing a professional orchestra --its youth orchestra is also folding . The student musicians in the group held their final rehearsal on Sunday "for a concert the Syracuse Symphony Youth Orchestra will never perform." They were to have performed their season-ending concert on May 15. On Monday, the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra board announced that they will file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy , citing its $5 million debt and inability to raise the $7 million it needed to finish the season. The youth orchestra operated as part of the Syracuse Symphony's organization. 

Tim Smith gets a t what has been so dispiriting about the Detroit Symphony strike :  I've heard it said here, and I can well imagine it being said elsewhere, that finely trained musicians want to concentrate on the music-making they trained for; that they find too much community service detrimental to the fundamental goal of sustaining artistic growth. But the movement toward embracing the world beyond the safe routine of the concert hall is surely going to gather momentum. It makes sense, short-term and long-term. Both sides had their chances to present new visions for the orchestra, and both blew it. The musicians fell back on the tired old tropes about needing to maintain the orchestra's status as a top orchestra (for the sake of civic pride), about their value as fine artists who are enriching the city by exhibiting jewels of high culture on the concert stage. Management stuck to its line of needing to acknowledge hard economic realities; there was no talk of how the sho...

On Facebook, Menon Dwarka  posted this only-in-Toronto public service announcement from Wendel Clark, a perfect complement to the Rheostatics' ode to the one-time Maple Leafs captai n: I'm just wondering why Hogtown needs prominent citizens giving advice about living with snow. Shouldn't people there just know this stuff by now?

As a Mets fan, Opening Day is as good a day as any to talk about hockey . 1. Atom and His Package, "Goalie"  There's a conversation going on about the value of obese goalies  over at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish. One reader points out that the topic's already been covered in song.  2. Stompin' Tom Connors, "The Hockey Song" I've always found him a little hokey. But add one letter, and you've got "hockey." 3. Tragically Hip, "Fifty-Mission Cap"  Until I heard this song, I had no idea who Bill Barilko was. Until I heard this song, I also had no idea that the Leafs had ever won the Stanley Cup. It had always sounded like crazy talk to me. 4. Rheostatics, "The Ballad of Wendel Clark" I wanted to include "Queer" but couldn't find a clip. Poor Leafs fans: so many songs, so few Stanley Cups. 5. Claman/Toth, "The Hockey Theme" (The old Hockey Night in Canada theme song)  An...