Can we agree on a definition - "NPR Rock" ??

E.g.: "soccer-mom music" = bourgeois / "Stephin Merritt is the Cole Porter of the 21st century" = bourgie / "Wilco are the most intelligent, experimental rock band in the country" = both at once.

I think more the latter, since i grew up in a lower middle/working class enviro, but the former works just as well, esp. since that's where many of my friends would fit.....

No, i'm not talking about bumper music, and the world music thing almost works more for the Pacifica network, although it does show up on npr quite a lot.

Wilco works just fine as an example I suppose, and they were a band that i liked w/o embarrassment until the hype of YFH, by the time i finally heard the record, i had somehow lost interest, although i thought it was ok collection (a bit lacking in the hooks dept)

FOW completely OTM - I hate that nasal pseudo-pop, that shit is the Sarah Vowell of the music world, and that is an abomination before God and everyone else!

The cult of Nic Harcourt is mystifying to an east coaster, from what I've seen he's got dull pedestrian-hipster taste "alumni eclectic"

http://www.xpn.org/Top50_2005.php

"run run run" to segway to a story about a recently deceased former senator
"this is hardcore" for....something not hardcore
several radiohead bits as segways on "Marketplace"

and the definative NPR record: yo la tengo's summer sun

Almost precisely bass-ackwards, that. It's got three strains:
1. People Our Age Who Are Still Growing, Gracefully (Richard Thompson, Emmylou Harris, U2, Sting, Aimee Mann, David Byrne, Sheryl Crow)
2. Adorable Young People Who Recognize That The Music We Like Is Timeless (Norah Jones, Ryan Adams, Coldplay, John Mayer, Sufjan Stevens, Joss Stone)
3. We're Still Hip! (Wilco, Kanye West, Ozomatli)

i agree w/ matt, theres nothing wrong with polite, its the mediocre and visciously bland i take issue with.

Yes, I've only seen them once, but that was enough.

In Leadbelly's "Bourgeois blues" who was he talking about, exactly?

Re an NPR hiphop show, I do not think so, but they had a few talk shows with African-American themes that they have dropped in recent years.

I'd call Tavis Smiley's show a "talk show with African-American themes"; his musical guests (at least looking at the last couple of months' worth of shows) are pretty much all DORF (well, ORF):

Raphael Saadiq, Roy Hargrove, Smokie Norful, Hiroshima, George Benson, Chick Corea, Corneille, CeCe Winans, Hugh Masekela, India.Arie, Homemade Jamz Blues Band, K'Naan, George Clinton, Robert Glasper. (Also, fwiw, Cat Stevens and Tony Bennett.)

I heard he interviewed 2pac a couple months back.

'I'd call Tavis Smiley's show a "talk show with African-American themes"'

Does he have a different show than the one on TV? Because the few episodes I've seen does not fit that description well. (I think he had Michael Phelps and Quincy Jones on. I want to say at the same time, but I'm probably conflating different episodes.)

It's a different show. You could argue about what's meant by the phrase "African-American themes," but 9 of the 10 guests in this past week's show appear to be black men and women.

They flatter their listeners' desire to be cosmopolitan. I don't have a problem with that nor see what the problem is, really.

The problem to me is that it encourages a limited version of "cosmopolitan" that in some senses is not much different from the "I listen to everything but rap and country" pov that many folks who are not hardcore music listeners possess. I also think it encourages a very narrow definition of what is "art," and adds to the problems that some perceive with the Pitchfork look at this decade.

No offense, curmudgeon, but I'm tired of the "people's tastes need to be broadened" argument. If you think that a certain segment of the music-listening public is shirking its obligation to sponsor the creativity of certain segments of the music-producing public, then you need to make a good case for that argument. Otherwise, it should be okay for NPR and Pitfork to be as narrow as they wanna be, regardless of their pretense of generalist inclusivity.

That's OK for pitchfork, but NPR has a mandate to be awesome. I'm sure it's in their charter somewhere.

Then NPR should just call their website "All American Indie-rock Considered" if that is their main focus. I'd be fine with that. I would also be fine with them retitling their "Best Music of 2009" poll as "Best American Indie-rock of 2009."

As for Pitchfork, they are of course free to cover what they want and I am free to criticize their coverage as narrow. I acknowledge that lots of people are happy with what they offer, but since they have had a dancehall/reggae column in the past, have reviewed rap and pop and Afrobeat records, have/had a column on grime/dubstep etc., then I certainly am within my rights to wonder why they do not do more of that.

If you're gonna give off a "pretense of generalist inclusivity" then you should try to live up to that.

I don't listen to All Songs Considered regularly, but if this list of artists featured is any indication, this is a totally diverse show: http://www.npr.org/templates/artist/artist_index.php?filter=A New, old, indie, mainstream, male, female, world, jazz, whatevs. It doesn't cover everything, sure, but ... big deal?

Yeah, I regretted bitching as soon as I hit submit. Wasn't necessary. I mean, yr free to wonder about bogus claims, I'm free to get frustrated by this or that, and mainstream indies are free to cover/play what they want. Etc. We're all one big happy family.

maybe the actual playlists of the shows wouldn't look so wide-ranging, I don't know.

"hit submit" is a cool phrase

Look at the all songs considered "concerts" list and the all songs considered "tiny desk" concerts list. The non-indie stuff has a token presence at best.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120326033&sc=fb&cc=fp#list

The Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings

Favorite records don't necessarily qualify. A lot of people, including nearly everyone at NPR Music, love Fleet Foxes' debut album, but was it one of the decade's most important? (You can tell us what you think in the comments section below.) The 50 recordings that appear here are listed alphabetically.

John Adams: On The Transmigration Of Souls
Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
The Arcade Fire: Funeral
The Bad Plus: These Are The Vistas
Beyonce: Dangerously In Love
Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago
Bright Eyes: I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
Burial: Untrue
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: S/T
Kelly Clarkson: Breakaway
Coldplay: A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Danger Mouse: The Grey Album
Death Cab For Cutie: Transatlanticism
The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP
The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Osvaldo Golijov: La Pasión Segun San Marcos (Saint Mark's Passion)
Green Day: American Idiot
Iron And Wine: Our Endless Numbered Days
Jay-Z: The Blueprint
Norah Jones: Come Away With Me
Juanes: Fijate Bien
LCD Soundsystem: Sound Of Silver
Lil’ Wayne: Tha Carter III
Little Brother: The Listening
M.I.A.: Kala
Yo-Yo Ma: Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet
Mastodon: Black Stars
Jason Moran: Black Stars
OutKast: Stankonia
Brad Paisley: 5th Gear
Panda Bear: Person Pitch
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: The Rising
The Postal Service: Give Up
Radiohead: In Rainbows
Radiohead: Kid A
Shakira: Fijación Oral, Vol. 1
Sigur Ros: ( )
Britney Spears: In The Zone
Sufjan Stevens: Illinois
The Strokes: Is This It
The Swell Season: Once Soundtrack
Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate: In The Heart of the Moon
TV On The Radio: Return To Cookie Mountain
Various: Garden State Soundtrack
Various: O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack
Kanye West: The College Dropout
The White Stripes: White Blood Cells
Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Amy Winehouse: Back To Black

Well, they almost got me with "White Blood Cells" but since I preferred "Redd Blood Cells" I'm in the clear.

holy fucking shit

Its going to be fun watching ILM freak out over this list. Especially considering there are at least nine (by my count) albums the ILM massive has been gaga over at one point or another.

lolz, the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack. I haven't thought about that in years.

Me neither. It's pretty damn good though.

Favorite records don't necessarily qualify. A lot of people, including nearly everyone at NPR Music, love Fleet Foxes' debut album, but was it one of the decade's most important?

nothing says "we're discriminating for importance" like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

or, you know, "discriminating"

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: The Rising

Plant and Krauss covered Springsteen already?

hahaha and Mastodon covering Jason Moran

That's a much more respectably catholic list than I would have imagined.

u can make a pretty good argument for clap yr hands say yeahs importance imo

fucking what the fuck, this list has records on it I don't like

what am I gonna do

didn't feel like it at the time, but The Strokes faced long odds when the band's debut came out in the fall of 2001. One of many anointed "saviors of rock," the band had an air of manufactured pop before hipsters learned to appreciate Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. It sold audiences impeccably curated retro cool at the last moment before technology turned everyone with a Napster account into librarians with unlimited access.

Gotta say though, Napster was dead by the time this came out, right? I remember downloading this off Audiogalaxy.

they have been jizzing over Bon Iver for what seems like the entire decade.

Heard some dweeby nebbish reviewing Black Noise on All Things Considered tonight, so I guess we can add Pantha du Prince to the canon.

haha

Has M. Matos done reviews for them before this one?

what a disaster for eclecticism

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125676131

NPR commenters confused that PDP would be considered "techno."

Would lap Matos any fee he demands to hear a podcast between him and Carrie Brownstein arguing for three hours.

*pay

You'd lap that shit up, too.

Oh yes.

Nice job on this, voice sounds good on the radio.

^^^ Good segment. I spent a lot of it wondering "How did he convince them to do a techno segment?" so nice job on that too. (Was it the indie goes techno angle?)

The piece came a few minutes after a nice one by Carlo Rotella, which made hearing Matos even funnier, because obviously now NPR rock = '09 EMP Pop Conf podcast.

Just wanted to say that I actually thought the piece was great too, lest anyone look at my post and think "Oh my god, he's talking shit about a long time ilxor!"

I bet the indie-rock connection definately helped.

It's been a great year for discovery, and hopefully you can use the list below to find some music you haven't heard this year — or revisit ones that maybe deserve a little more time.

1. The Decemberists: The King Is Dead
2. Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues
3. Adele: 21
4. Bon Iver: Bon Iver
5. Radiohead: The King of Limbs
6. Iron & Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean
7. Death Cab For Cutie: Codes and Keys
8. My Morning Jacket: Circuital
9. Amos Lee: Mission Bell
10. Bright Eyes: The People's Key

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2011/06/21/137305879/poll-results-listeners-pick-the-best-of-the-year-so-far

for me to poop on

*barf*

I'm surprised that Tyler the Creator's Goblin only came in at 74. This album hasn't been covered too much by NPR, but around the web it gets massive praise. I'm also surprised to see so many may/june albums towards the top.

Wed Jun 22 19:54:43 2011

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how many white guitarists does it take to screw the head of an NPR intern?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/bestmusic2012/2012/12/12/166972039/listener-picks-your-favorite-albums-of-2012