Links for 5.9.09: Live Nation loses, The National plays, Mississippi Drift…
*Concerts: Live Nation lost $102.7M in Q1 of this year. Attendance was down 22%. Kind of a lot of money. If we’re using that scale, I basically held even.
*Video: Check out The National playing “Somewhere Around the Bend” on Jimmy Fallon.
*Sponsorship: De La Soul has done one of those commissioned running songs for Nike. It’s called “Are You In?” I only wish eccentric rich people would commission weird-ass songs purely for their own perverted personal pleasures. But that’s just me.
*Economy: Readers tell Money what it’s like to try to live on unemployment checks. Spoiler: It makes you tense.
*Industry: Vevo – the “YouTube for music” hires a CEO. I thought YouTube was the YouTube for music. [silicon alley insider]
*The Internet: Ze Frank on celebrity, identity and proximity. And the internet. And Ashton Kutcher. Spoiler: Ze wishes that Ashton wouldn’t care about him.
*Movies: Read the New Yorker‘s Anthony Lane on “Star Trek.” On J.J. Abrams: “He is the perfect purveyor of fictions to a generation so easily and instinctively jaded that what it craves, above all, is a storyteller who—with or without artistic personality, and regardless of any urge to provoke our thoughts or trouble our easy dreams—will never jade.” With or without artistic personality. HAAAAAAaaaaaaaaa.
*Local: Mississippi Drift – Read this old Harper’s article about modern-day hobos setting off from Minneapolis on a self-made barge. I remember reading this when it first appeared in the magazine and promising myself never to become a river-traveling hobo.
*Today’s links: Zero. New scale, unexplained.
*Question: This blog is coming up on two years of operations. Should it be about music, internet culture or just whatever the fuck I’m interested in? Thank you for your time and attention. I am also happy to take your answers via twitter. Regards.
