What is Mark Sinker up to?

http://tashlan.pitas.com/

i. Yes I am writing a book. In fact, I have completed first and "final" drafts, the first received by my editor w.enthusiasm and rigorous overall commentary (apparently i "overcomplicate" some of my ideas and start from the assumption that all my readers have read every book ever!!!¡¡¡!!!), the second under scrutiny as we speak — it went in at 3pm this tue. Then final proofing and pix and captions and tweaXorZ. All being well it will be out in the UK in Nov, the US in Jan.

ii. Also as some of you know my mum has been very unwell this year, and in and out of hospital. She is out at the moment, and not too bad: certainly off the danger list. But if the book has occupied my intellectual energy, my mum has occupied my ekotional energy, and between them this left little over to ilx :(

iii. JD is a third right. Including this one, I think I am currently writing SIX books —:O —:O —:O [though one admittedly is just a grebt title as yet]. The Electric Storm is what I plan to restart work on next, later this summer ———> and this is where YOU come in maybe possibly!! bcz just as the "if" book began life as an ilx thread, I realise that many of the ideas I want to develop for the second half of ES — which is a critical history of music and technology, from the 1870s to the present — currently lie buried all over the place in the million-plus threads of ILM, the residue of spur-of-the-moment battles w.academics and clowns, friends and foes. So, fans AND hataz one and all, here is yr chance to unearth and link here mark s stuff that amused or annoyed or baffled you, or just piqued yr interest, or seemed incomplete or stupid or (even) OTM. I am very bad at remembering this kind of stuff, or making notes as I go along: let alone knowing which are my good ideas and which are my bad ideas.

http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/

if this means i don't have to wade through a first half of a book which assumes i have read nothing ever then i am all for it

Why is a ten minute Neil Young song better than a 10 minute Yessong

Definitely pointed toward some of the issues you were hoping to address in the book. A book I'm absolutely salivating over, I must say.

like I wz saying on nylpm:

Bad

and:

The Influence of Minimalism on Vernacular Music: questions

The Cult of the New?

Pop Tourism (I think this one I need to read later so er I'll put it on here finding some other gd threads here)

(in my head i think of this project as 'my stupid book abt the history of everything")

mark s, you didn't say anything here, but it might send you off on some additional tangents (which, oddly, seems to be what you are looking for).

When looking at the web and Ilx, i wonder how anthopological the scrutiny will be on new hip subjects categories like web-based ideas sharing ? This book could be a real hit, with music-group nerds but much more with the people who read the latest studies on internet use and study it for maximum workforce $$ gain (productivity experts). (or more broably, Alvin Toffler/ lifestyle type books)

The anthropology of one-genre-music-loyal clans, uh, that'll have to come from non-ilx if everybody around here continues to behave or at least uses the tone of "authoritative experts" in their field, ie record reviewers. However the anthropology of record-reveiwers, uh, ivory-tower side-viewers vs. real music consumers (just guessing) could threaten the current reveiwer paradigms (good).

i'll take a hundred copies.

Dave Matthews Band : Name Your Reasons Why They Are So Bad & Hated.

thx everyone else and plz keep em coming — i know this seems lazy'n'cheeky and certainly i am pimping off yr better recall a bitbut memoryloss is what happens when you get old!!

Tim - saying you liked hip-hop for the 'lyrics and grooves' - see, that's a valid reason, which is all too rare, as, again, contemporary R&B (hey wait a second! How did hip-hop get dragged into this! That's cheating...oh never mind) fans give good rhetoric and polemic but NEVER an aesthetic defense. In my experience, anyway. Go on, somebody tell me why somebody shouting "I hate you so much right now" 16 times in a row over muffled pots and pans is more compelling than putting a glass up against my wall to listen to the neighbours fighting. (Pop fans also seem to fetishize process - "The reason this is so cool is they sampled that beat from somewhere really unusual" - even though the same product could've been reached quicker by switching on the Dr. Rhythm and picking no. 33 demo, which is probably what they do anyway, and make up these sample-quest stories to impress the same crits who give their review copies to their daughters after giving them five stars.)

-- dave q (scrape10...), October 9th, 2001.

...which prompted a fantastic response from Tim in turn. Then there was this terse winner:

nu-pop represents a deliberate attempt to become ahistorical (manifested by the musical signifiers which cause old-pop fans to react negatively) - and, to some, it does this more overtly than at any time in the recent past. If true, that would mean 'pop' is being hijacked by some other agenda, which definitely would justify aesthetic misgivings. (The phantom 'other agenda' also touches on a theme I've seen repeated here often, sometimes by myself - dislike of nu-pop is inextricable with RESENTING BEING TOLD ONE HAS TO LIKE IT TO STAY CREDIBLE).

And those just skim the surface.

*bows*

I have said in the past that Mark S is someone from whom I feel I have learned, though what I have learned I know not.

It is queer to be writing something on ilx again.

Mark, were you on the soufflé thread where we talked about pie? or was that History of Pop?

Rockism is about the fall of rock from its own projected state of grace. Rock as state of grace emerged into the world ? says me ? as the Beatles released a series of LPs 63-65 (subtly difft track-listings UK and US), containing among their own songs a selection of cover versions which DEFINED THE RADICAL CANON w/i pop, streamlining the Gods of 50s RnR and of early 60s girlpop, the twin poles of their new universe. Rock as something that could fail and be corrupted was itself canonised during the bitter self- hating post-split Lennon-Wenner interviews in [date not to hand: 1970?].

First statement of anti-rockism from WITHIN = "I don't believe in *beatles*" from 'God' on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (note also "anti-rockist" sardonic appropriation of the word "plastic", a very dismissive term in the beat-hippie lexicon ? Norman Mailer *still* froths when you get him to talk about plastic ? which Warhol had ambivalently rescued viz Exploding Plastic Inevitable, except of course that in orthodox rock thinking in 1971, Warhol and Pop Art were the cynical enemy) (cf eg Dave Marsh on why the Who are good and Warhol not, in his biog of the former)

Handy reductionist motto: Lennon invented hippy, Yoko invented punk.

I wish to express my sincerest condolences to Mark on the recent loss of his mother.

Oh my goodness. I had seen some of the earlier posts, I just hadn't realized... Mark, my very deepest sympathies. :-(

*hastens to e-mail*

:( :(

shit, i had no idea either. best wishes mark.

mark, loads of positive energy, beamed in your direction.

Anyway, drinks when you're back in town are urgent and key as well you know... xx

my best wishes, mark.

i'm very sorry mark; best wishes for you and your family.