Serving Up 25 Music Blogs


Next up a series of music blogs, all of which fig­ure into our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Cul­ture Blogs. As always, these lists are a work in progress, and if you feel that we’ve missed some­thing great, please feel free to email us and let us know.

  • Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: A blog by the music crit­ic of the one and only New York­er mag­a­zine.
  • All About Jazz Bloglist: What you get here is not so much a blog, but, even bet­ter, a meta-list of jazz blogs. This should keep jazz afi­ciona­dos busy for some time.
  • Arjan Writes: A well-reviewed blog that looks at pop-alter­na­tive music. Fea­tures album reviews, inter­views and free down­loads of demo tracks and new releas­es, plus videos from new bands.
  • Arts­Beat: A blog put out by reporters and crit­ics from The New York Times. Includes report­ing from arts events from around the world, includ­ing recent reports from the fes­ti­val at Coachel­la and the New Orleans Jazz and Her­itage Fes­ti­val.
  • Blog­crit­ics Music: A com­mu­ni­ty of writ­ers and read­ers from around the globe mus­ing about music.
  • Brook­lyn Veg­an: An “NYC-cen­tric most­ly-music blog that focus­es on report­ing inter­na­tion­al
    news, live show reviews, pic­tures, tour dates, gos­sip, tips, MP3’s,
    videos, and just about any­thing else a music fan could want.”
  • Chica­go Clas­si­cal Music: A Chica­go-focused blog for clas­si­cal music enthu­si­asts.
  • Coolfer: A blog that “focus­es more on the music
    indus­try than on spe­cif­ic bands.” Want to know about music sto­ries in the news? Then look here.
  • David Gilmour: You know him from Pink Floyd. Check out his per­son­al blog.
  • David’s Jour­nal: Along sim­i­lar lines, this blog is put out by David Byrne, heady head of the Talk­ing Heads.
  • Feast of Music: A jour­ney through the music of New York (and occa­sion­al­ly oth­er places). Empha­sis is on clas­si­cal music.
  • Glo­ri­ous Noise: An online music mag­a­zine fea­tur­ing essays and sto­ries about how rock and roll can change your life.
  • Goril­la vs. Bear: Rec­om­mend­ed by Noth­ing But Green Lights. See below.
  • Guardian Music Blog: An eclec­tic blog put togeth­er by The Guardian in the UK.
  • I Guess I’m Float­ing: Music and music news of the rock ‘n roll vari­ety.
  • Ionarts: A DC-based arts blog with a marked focus on clas­si­cal music.
  • Large­heart­ed Boy: A “music blog fea­tur­ing dai­ly free and legal music down­loads as well as news from the worlds of music, lit­er­a­ture, and pop cul­ture.”
  • Live Music Blog: Noth­ing like a title that pret­ty much sum­ma­rizes it all. Yes, this is a blog about live music.
  • Marathon Packs: Writes about and lets you lis­ten to inter­est­ing songs.
  • Moby’s Jour­nal: Here again anoth­er not-entire­ly-musi­cal blog by a music celeb — Moby.
  • Motel De Moka: A dai­ly blog post­ing eclec­tic playlists, includ­ing indie rock, acoustics and ambi­ent.
  • Music for Robots: An acclaimed mp3 blog that fea­tures diverse music. All music
    is post­ed with the per­mis­sion of the artist and/or label.
  • My Old Ken­tucky Blog: What’s new and hot in indie rock, pop, folk and hip-hop.
  • Noth­ing But Green Lights: A UK-based mp3 blog that keeps track of indie, elec­tro, folk & pop, all from the UK. The site only posts tracks that the inter­net is giv­ing away for free, or ones that have been grant­ed per­mis­sion.
  • NYC Opera Fanat­ic:  A blog for the opera lover (a term, how­ev­er unfor­tu­nate­ly, that does­n’t apply to me).
  • Ryan’s Smash­ing Life: A New Eng­land music blog com­ing out of Boston.
  • Sandow: “Is clas­si­cal music dying? That’s a big top­ic, and a blog seems like a per­fect way to attack it.” That’s how crit­ic, Greg Sandow, describes his blog.
  • Stere­ogum: A pop­u­lar gos­sipy blog about the indie music scene. The site often posts mp3s of new music, plus offers record reviews, announces tour dates, and cov­ers music fes­ti­vals.
  • The Mod­ern Age: A high­ly tout­ed blog about “about music, pop cul­ture, the Strokes, pup­pies, Jack White, and cute boys.” Brought to you by Miss Mod­er­nage.
  • Twangville: Cov­er­ing “twang-infused music with an alter­na­tive slant.” Alt-Coun­try, Amer­i­cana, Indie, Rock, Folk & Blues.
  • Your Home For Soul: As you can tell, it’s a blog for soul fans.

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America’s Perception Problem in the Middle East


Cartoon_2 Amer­i­ca’s mis­ad­ven­ture in Iraq has had mul­ti­ple costs for the US, with just one being the decline of Amer­i­can moral lead­er­ship on the inter­na­tion­al stage, and par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the Mid­dle East. Intel­lec­tu­al­ly, we know that Amer­i­ca’s pres­tige is momen­tar­i­ly shot. But to get a feel for what this means in prac­tice, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to this inter­view (iTunesMP3) with Lawrence Pin­tak, who directs the Adham Cen­ter for Elec­tron­ic Jour­nal­ism at The Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo. A long­time observ­er of the Mid­dle East, Pin­tak sees the evo­lu­tion of Amer­i­ca’s image going some­thing like this: Before 9/11, the prover­bial Mid­dle East­ern cab dri­ver expressed deep admi­ra­tion for Amer­i­ca and Amer­i­cans, even while dis­agree­ing with Amer­i­can lead­ers and poli­cies. When the Twin Tow­ers fell, sym­pa­thy for Amer­i­ca was nev­er greater. Now, six years lat­er, it’s all gone awry. The men­tal line that sep­a­rat­ed Amer­i­cans and Amer­i­can pol­i­cy is gone, and the antipa­thy toward Amer­i­ca is fair­ly com­plete.

What part­ly explains this shift is how the war has been refract­ed through the Mid­dle East­ern media. Ever since Al Jazeera start­ed air­ing in 1996 (you can watch it here in Eng­lish), the Mid­dle East has had its own free media and seen events through its own lens. And, in the case of the Iraq war, it has meant see­ing what we don’t see — the unsan­i­tized war, the bod­ies, the lev­eled build­ings, etc. — but also much more mun­dane things that shape over­all impres­sions. It means see­ing, for exam­ple, how tone-deaf US spokes­men in Bagh­dad show up at jour­nal­ist con­fer­ences in Abu Dhabi (a com­plete­ly non-mil­i­tary event out­side of Iraq) in army fatigues, leav­ing essen­tial­ly the impres­sion that the US sees the larg­er Mid­dle East as a mil­i­tary stage.

Pin­tak knows the region well, and he artic­u­lates Amer­i­ca’s per­cep­tion prob­lem in a bal­anced and thought­ful way. Check it out here: (iTunesMP3) Also, on a relat­ed note, any­one who wants to digg more deeply into Mid­dle East­ern per­spec­tives may want to explore Mosa­ic: World News from the Mid­dle East (iTunes  Feed). This Peabody award-win­ning pod­cast pro­vides a dai­ly com­pi­la­tion of tele­vi­sion news reports from across the Mid­dle East. The news comes from inde­pen­dent and state-run news ser­vices, and it is all trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish.

The Portable University


Over the past six months, we have cre­at­ed a series of resources that let you access uni­ver­si­ty resources for free and on-the-fly. Below, we have cen­tral­ized these mate­ri­als in one place to give you quick access:

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Free Classical Music Podcasts

Smart music at no cost. Hard to beat.

  • An Inti­mate Tour Through the Music of Yo-Yo Ma iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Each episode of this pod­cast delves into the his­to­ry of his career, and what led him to record each of the tracks of his cur­rent release Appas­sion­a­to.
  • Bach Pod­cast from Magnatune.com iTunes Feed Web Site
    • 60 free min­utes of Bach.
  • Bach Fes­ti­val of Philadel­phia Feed Web Site
    • Live per­for­mances of J.S. Bach works per­formed by var­i­ous artists for The Bach Fes­ti­val of Philadel­phia.
  • Boston Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra Con­ser­va­to­ry iTunes Feed Web Site
    • This edu­ca­tion­al pod­cast gives you an inside look at the sym­pho­ny. Cur­rent­ly you will find a two sea­son overview and record­ings of Beethoven and Arnold Schoen­berg.
  • Clas­si­cal Per­for­mance iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Clas­si­cal music per­for­mances from WGB­H’s Stu­dio One in Boston.
  • Dan­marks Radio — Mozart Sym­phonies Feed Web Site
    • For the cel­e­bra­tion of Mozart’s 250th anniver­sary, Den­mark radio offered pod­casts of nine Mozart sym­phonies by the Dan­ish Radio Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. Since the web site is in Dan­ish, your best bet is to access these high qual­i­ty MP3’s through the feed.
  • Deutsche Welle
    • Beethoven­fest iTunes Feed Web Site
      • Beethoven’s most famous sym­phonies per­formed by excel­lent young orches­tras and new com­po­si­tions by award-win­ning com­posers.
    • Clas­si­cal Mas­ter­pieces iTunes Feed Web Site
      • Six mas­ter com­posers, six sym­phonies, a star con­duc­tor and a lead­ing orches­tra are the main ingre­di­ents of this remark­able musi­cal feast.
  • Gramo­phone Pod­cast Feed Web Site
    • A month­ly win­dow into the world’s most author­i­ta­tive clas­si­cal music mag­a­zine, fea­tur­ing an overview of the best releas­es, news, exclu­sive inter­views with lead­ing fig­ures from the music world, and lots of great­mu­sic.
  • NPR Music iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Reviews, musi­cian inter­views, live record­ings from Morn­ing Edi­tion, All Things Con­sid­ered, and oth­er NPR pro­grams.
  • Radio Swe­den: Mozart iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Swedish Radio has launched a Mozart Pod­cast to cel­e­brate Mozart’s 250th birth­day. They’ve been pod­cast­ing their own record­ings from the 1940–1950s of Mozart’s operas.
  • The Con­cert iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and more from the Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner muse­um in Boston.
  • Wag­n­er Operas Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Fea­tures, among oth­er things, per­for­mances from the Bayreuth Fes­ti­val.

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The Death of the Book Review?



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Posts are fly­ing around the lit­er­ary blo­gos­phere lament­ing the Death of Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism. Now, by my count this par­tic­u­lar demise has been pre­dict­ed at least three times in the past few decades, so why wor­ry now? The short answer is that more books are pub­lished annu­al­ly than ever, and now there are few­er book review­ers. The LA Times recent­ly fold­ed its free­stand­ing book review into the rest of the week­end paper and news­pa­per staffs around the coun­try are trim­ming review posi­tions in favor of syn­di­cat­ed wire ser­vice reviews.

Michael Con­nel­ly, a crime fic­tion writer, pub­lished an op-ed in the LA Times protest­ing the move and he paints a dire pic­ture of our cul­tur­al future:

The truth is that the book and news­pa­per busi­ness­es share the same
dread­ful fear: that peo­ple will stop read­ing. And the fear may be
well-found­ed. Across the coun­try, news­pa­per cir­cu­la­tions are down — and
this is clear­ly part of the rea­son for the cuts to book sec­tions. At
the same time, the book busi­ness increas­ing­ly relies on an aging
cus­tomer base that may not be refu­el­ing itself with enough new read­ers.

Should we blame cash-strapped news­pa­per com­pa­nies or a cul­ture that’s shift­ing away from tra­di­tion­al media alto­geth­er? Ladies and gen­tle­men, start your iPods–to lend rea­soned analy­sis, we now turn to Steven Col­bert, who inter­viewed Salman Rushdie on this sub­ject ear­li­er this week (click below or watch the full show on iTunes):

25 Blogs for Movie Buffs


Below, you’ll find a list of 25 fine cinema/film blogs, all for the cin­e­ma buff.

This list fig­ures into a larg­er col­lec­tion of Cul­ture Blogs that we’re putting togeth­er over time. It’s a work in progress, so watch it grow. If you feel that we’re miss­ing some extra­or­di­nary blogs, please feel free to email us and let us know.

  • Alter­na­tive Film Guide: A nice resource for any­one who wants to go beyond main­stream movies.
  • Cahiers du ciné­ma: This is not exact­ly a blog. Rather it’s the site for the very influ­en­tial French film mag­a­zine found­ed in 1951. If you read French, def­i­nite­ly give it a look.
  • Cinecultist: This cin­e­ma blog comes straight to you from the East Vil­lage in NYC, and it’s put togeth­er main­ly by Karen Wil­son, a free­lance writer and edi­tor with a film back­ground.
  • Cin­e­ma Min­i­ma: A news blog for movie mak­ers that digests infor­ma­tion about movie mak­ing, act­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and film fes­ti­vals.
  • Cin­e­ma Strikes Back: The site cov­ers movies world­wide with news, reviews, inter­views and film fes­ti­val reports. It also offers advanced looks at upcom­ing movies and DVDs. Has a par­tic­u­lar focus on genre, cult and for­eign films.
  • Cin­e­marati: Cre­at­ed by the The Web Alliance for Film Com­men­tary, this blog brings togeth­er online film crit­ics for seri­ous, and seri­ous­ly fun, dis­cus­sion about film, and also coun­ters the notion that “any­one with a modem can be a crit­ic.”
  • Cin­e­mat­i­cal: Part of the Weblogs, Inc. net­work, Cin­e­mat­i­cal keeps tabs on what’s new in film.
  • Clip Joint: Put out by the Guardian, this blog presents a roundup of top cin­e­ma-relat­ed clips on the inter­net.
  • Cyn­thia Rock­well’s Wait­ing Room: A site that you’ll find list­ed on many A‑list film blogs.
  • Dave Kehr.com: When not blog­ging, Dave writes “Critic’s Choice: New DVDs,” a
    col­umn that appears in The New York Times and is archived here.
  • Dead­line Hol­ly­wood Dai­ly: Pub­lished by LA Week­ly, this blog is writ­ten by jour­nal­ist Nik­ki Finke, who writes about the busi­ness, pol­i­tics and cul­ture of the info­tain­ment indus­try.
  • Drift­ing: David Low­ery dis­cours­es here on film, at least most of the time.
  • Film Expe­ri­ence Blog: What you get here are cin­e­mat­ic mus­ings from Nathaniel R with fre­quent dips into pop cul­ture mis­cel­la­nia.
  • Flick­head: Keep­ing it reel!
  • Green Cine Dai­ly: GreenCine Dai­ly is pri­mar­i­ly writ­ten by GC Edi­tor David Hud­son. A nice com­pre­hen­sive blog.
  • Hell on Frisco Bay: The jour­nal of a cinephile haunt­ing the remain­ing movie hous­es of the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.
  • If Char­lie Park­er Was a Gun­slinger: Cul­tur­al obser­va­tions by Tom Sut­pen, Stephen Cooke and Richard Gib­son.
  • Like Anna Kari­na’s Sweater: A film and cul­ture blog with a focus on non-main­stream top­ics, writ­ten by a pro­fes­sion­al screen­writer and a part-time mis­an­thrope.
  • Lost in Neg­a­tive Space:  For provoca­tive film crit­i­cism with an under­dog bite. Writ­ten by Peter Gelderblom.
  • Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma: Five blog­gers from three dif­fer­ent
    coun­tries bring per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion togeth­er in one place
    for afi­ciona­dos of World Cin­e­ma.
  • Movie City Indie: Inde­pen­dent movies, inde­pen­dent think­ing by Ray Pride.
  • Not Com­ing to a The­ater Near You: A site with a bias towards old­er, often unpop­u­lar, and some­times unknown films that mer­it a sec­ond look.
  • Notes from the Under­dog: On writ­ing, screen­writ­ing, films, music, and the polit­i­cal land­scape.
  • Scan­ners: A film blog writ­ten by Jim Emer­son, a Seat­tle-based writer and film crit­ic, who is also the found­ing edi­tor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com.
  • Ser­gio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule: Hard to sum­ma­rize this one (as the title kind of demon­strates). Bet­ter just to see it instead.

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The Great God Debate

On Mon­day night faith and athe­ism got a ver­bal work­out. Famous­ly vit­ri­olic colum­nist Christo­pher Hitchens (a for­mer lib­er­al best-known in recent years for his staunch sup­port of the war in Iraq) faced off against Rev­erend Al Sharp­ton in a dis­cus­sion mod­er­at­ed by Slate edi­tor Jacob Weis­berg. Hitchens is a vehe­ment non-believ­er and the new author of God is not Great (also avail­able on iTunes). Suf­fice to say that the debate between him and Sharp­ton was col­or­ful. That should come as no surprise–what makes it worth lis­ten­ing to is that it was also rea­soned and intel­li­gent.

You can read a tran­script or lis­ten to the debate (RealAu­dio only), which was held at the New York Pub­lic Library.

The two celebri­ty pun­dits saved their best moment for last:

“I’d encour­age peo­ple to buy the book,” Mr. Sharp­ton said. “I don’t
believe what it says, but it’s well writ­ten. He’s a very elo­quent and
well-versed per­son.”

“That’s extreme­ly hand­some of you,” Mr. Hitchens replied.

As an aside, Hitchens recent­ly appeared on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight. In the inter­view above, you can get a lit­tle more insight into Hitchens’ think­ing.

20+ Great Book & Literature Blogs

Below, you’ll find a list of 20 fine lit­er­ary blogs. Like our pod­cast col­lec­tions, this list will grow over time. In fact, it will become part of a larg­er list of great cul­ture blogs. Over the com­ing weeks, we’ll roll out new install­ments and then mash them togeth­er into one larg­er list. Stay tuned for more.

If you feel that we’re miss­ing some extra­or­di­nary blogs, please feel free to email us.

  • Blog of a Book Slut: Book­slut’s edi­tor-in-chief, Jes­sa Crispin, pro­vides links and com­men­tary for those who love to read. The pop­u­lar relat­ed web­site includes fea­ture sto­ries, author inter­views, reviews, columns about book-relat­ed con­tent, etc.
  • Book­Dad­dy: It’s your source for intel­li­gent book blath­er. The stat­ed mis­sion of the site is to “pon­der print media, lit­er­a­cy & pub­lish­ing. Any­thing on wood pulp, pix­els or stone is up for dis­cus­sion.”
  • Books, Inq: This blog offers a behind-the-scenes look at a book-review edi­tor’s world. In this case, the book review edi­tor is Frank Wil­son, of the Philadel­phia Inquir­er.
  • Book World: What you get here is one wom­an’s attempt to read what’s worth read­ing and say some­thing about it along the way.
  • Chekhov’s Mis­tress: An oft-cit­ed lit­er­a­ture blog writ­ten by Bud Parr, a book lover who also runs a net­work of lit­er­ary blogs called Metax­u­Cafe.
  • Con­fes­sions of an Idio­syn­crat­ic Mind: Sarah Wein­man puts togeth­er here “a respect­ed resource for com­men­tary on crime and mys­tery fic­tion.”
  • Crit­i­cal Mass: Offer­ing com­men­tary on lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, pub­lish­ing, and writ­ing, this blog is writ­ten by the Board of Direc­tors of the non-prof­it that issues the year­ly Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle Awards.
  • Eve’s Alexan­dria: A nice­ly bal­anced mul­ti-per­son lit­er­ary blog com­ing out of the UK.
  • Lau­rable’s Poet­ry Weblog: A poet­ry weblog that spe­cial­izes in con­nect­ing read­ers with audio of poets read­ing their work.
  • Maud New­ton: A wide­ly-read blog that spe­cial­izes in pub­lish­ing & writ­ing indus­try news, plus occa­sion­al lit­er­ary links, amuse­ments, pol­i­tics, and rants.
  • Moor­ish Girl: A well regard­ed book and lit­er­a­ture blog writ­ten by Laila Lala­mi, author of Hope and Oth­er Dan­ger­ous Pur­suits.
  • Rake’s Progress: Named by The Guardian as one of the 10 best book blogs.
  • ReadyS­teady­Blog: Run by Mark Thwaite, this is an “inde­pen­dent book review web­site … devot­ed to review­ing the very best books in lit­er­ary fic­tion, poet­ry, his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy.”
  • Slate Books: Even though tech­ni­cal­ly not a blog, it should be on your read­ing list.
  • So Many Books: Giv­en the tagline ‘the agony and the ecsta­sy of a read­ing life”, here’s a laud­ed blog that takes you into the read­ing world of Stephanie Hollmichel.
  • The Ele­gant Vari­a­tion: A well-reviewed and respect­ed book blog that tends to give spe­cial atten­tion to the LA lit­er­ary scene. Fea­tures a real­ly exten­sive blogroll that’s worth pick­ing through.
  • The Guardian Book Blog: It’s not exact­ly your aver­age inde­pen­dent book blog, but it’s got valu­able con­tent and it’s worth your time.
  • The Keny­on Review Blog: If you’re a writer, you sure­ly know The Keny­on Review, and you should also get to know their blog.
  • The Lit­blog Co-Op: A use­ful blog that unites the “lead­ing lit­er­ary
    weblogs for the pur­pose of draw­ing atten­tion to the best of
    con­tem­po­rary fic­tion, authors and press­es, strug­gling to be noticed in
    a flood­ed mar­ket­place.”
  • This Space: A lit­er­ary blog writ­ten by Stephen Mitchel­more, a blog­ger who Ready Steady Book deems “the finest writer we have in the lit­er­ary blo­gos­phere.”
  • Vulpes Lib­ris: “Vulpes Lib­ris: A mul­ti-nation­al pack of book­fox­es blog­ging, review­ing and chat­ting about books and book mat­ters. Par­tic­i­pa­tion wel­come.”
  • Words With­out Bor­ders Blog — This weblog is the online com­ple­ment to Words With­out Bor­ders: The Online Mag­a­zine for Inter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­ture. And, yes, as you’d expect, it’s a lit­er­a­ture blog with an inter­na­tion­al focus.

Stay tuned for more to come!

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.