Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Was I better today than yesterday?

I enjoyed these words of wisdom from Daniel H. Pink's Drive. In general, asking questions of yourself and of the world is better than placing demands and expectations, or trying to will the things you want.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation?

I've been following this great 6(so far)-part column in the AVClub about the writer's personal experience of grunge and alternative music in the 1990s, and how the music we like from that era now is not always the music we actually listened to at the time. It's easy to identify with the author: a lot of the music that broke out in the '90s was inescapable, but we'd all like to forget about it and and recognize the '90s music that we now respect. Hell, I used to live in Seattle, an entire city that operates on that notion. But these columns are warning that when you do that, you do miss out on some great music: it's time we also look at this music for its own worth and not just as part of the larger scene and era that produced it. With the proper distance, you can see the merits of each artist, and how each of the prominent grunge artists of the time had their own sounds and influences.