The former Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, VA will no longer have the Nissan name attached to it. Evidently, Nissan’s contract with LiveNation for naming rights expired.
So what took it’s place?
Jiffy Lube Live
…
Frankly, I stopped letting the corporate-naming-rights-thing for sports and music arenas bother me a while ago, but in this case, I do wish that Nissan stuck it out a while longer.
via DCist
Filed under: music
Sasha Frere-Jones sums up the past decade in music more succinctly than anywhere else:
If you’re reading this, you know what happened in the aughts. Radiohead was really good. OutKast was really good. Beyoncé got it right. The Strokes changed the sound of indie bands (or at least some of them, and for a long time). People stopped saying “electronica.” The South was responsible for an enormous amount of great hip-hop. Indie bands started singing way up high. Lots of these bands slowed down and caught the wet noodles, until they found machines and sped up again. R. & B. remained open-minded long after the moment when teen pop got stuck in some tepid fondue of Auto-Tune and laptop guitars. (Gross!) Nashville pop remained reliable (it helps when you have hundreds of songwriters on the job), though the goods drooped slightly in quality after 2008, and most of this country activity went unnoticed in magazines and blogs anyway. Metal experienced a resurgence in ideas and numbers toward the end of the decade. MP3s either destroyed everything or made everything possible. (I haven’t finished reading all the trend pieces, so I’ll get back to you on that.)
Count me in the camp that says that MP3s not only made everything possible, but also saved what mattered in music. More on music and commerce in today’s world on another post.
Filed under: nyc
The New York Times has a profile of Steve Rodriguez, a skateboarding advocate that sells his own boards and other skateboarding equipment through his company, 5boro.
Here’s how he and his wife start their Sunday mornings:
SWEET We go surfing. We are in the water literally about two hours. If it’s nicer out, you lose track of time and stay in the water longer. If not, you come out. It’s awesome. It’s literally unbelievable. The West Village is this urban center and less than an hour later, I’m on almost a private beach.
IN THIS WEATHER? Not if it’s below 45. We have a checklist: A bag with the gloves and the hoods and the wetsuits, water, towels and a banana.
CARB BREAK On the way back after surfing — this sounds bad — we love getting McDonald’s. McDonald’s fries. You are cold after you surf and you want to eat something warm.
Jaloux c’est moi.
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6E8nLvvh1E&feature=youtube_gdata]
Won’t someone get this bear some honey?!
Apparently, the trustees to George Gershwin’s estate have selected Brian Wilson to complete the unfinished works of George Gershwin.
Todd Gershwin [George's great-nephew and a trustee of the George Gershwin family trusts] said a collection of several dozen song fragments, ranging from “a few bars to some almost finished songs and everything in between” had been sitting virtually untouched for more than seven decades. He and other trustees began reaching out in the last year or two to find contemporary artists who might be interested in completing those musical bits and pieces.
Wilson, who says “Rhapsody in Blue” is his earliest musical memory, said the pieces he’s working with are very likely to remain as instrumentals, and that they could easily wind up as three-minute pop songs. But he’s also holding open the possibility of expanding them to more substantive pieces.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was curious to see how this turns out. I’m not the biggest Brian Wilson fan in the world, but it could potentially be pretty interesting. I can’t help but think of other musicians that would be better suited, capable, or interesting in fulfilling this role. A few off the bat:
1. Paul McCartney: for whatever reason Brian Wilson was selected, McCartney would have been better in the same regard;
2. Wynton Marsalis: makes the most sense to continue in Gershwin’s style given his deep roots in jazz and classical music; and
3. Bobby McFarrin: a wild card pick that I think would have been the most interesting.
4. Perhaps a compilation with contributions from several artists? That would make for a great album that I would buy immediately.
Any other suggestions on who may be a good fit for continuing/completing Gershwin’s work? Is Brian Wilson a good choice?
I spotted this first on Marginal Revolution, whose commenters could not help themselves with title possibilities:
I, for one, look forward to Porgy and Ba Ba Ba Ba Barbara Ann.
Filed under: economics
New York Magazine has an article that attempts to answer the question: Are you a spendthrift/tightwad by nature, or is it learned?
“To the economist, your decision to buy the boots should be purely rational. You should think: Do I have the money to afford these boots? If so, is the pleasure they will give me equal to or greater than the cost? And if I save this money, will it afford me greater pleasure in the future—for example, by contributing to a vacation or simply to an increased sense of security?
To Benjamin Franklin, your decision is a moral one. Couldn’t you go another season with your old boots, maybe if you got them resoled? And by denying yourself this indulgence now, might you not become a better person in the long run?
As for the behavioral psychologist, well, until fairly recently, no one was really sure what he would think. While there have been plenty of studies on why we spend money, there have been relatively few studies on why we don’t.”
The article highlights the work of George Loewenstein, professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, who worked with economists and psychologists at MIT and Stanford taking MRI scans of participants as they weighed economic decisions:
When the team studied the scans, they discovered the subjects were making their spending decisions in an intuitive, even animalistic, manner. When a subject saw an item he wanted, it activated his nucleus accumbens, which is the area of the brain associated with anticipating or experiencing pleasure, such as eating a piece of cake. But when he saw a price he didn’t like, it activated the insula, the portion of the brain that reacts to unpleasant shocks, like a bad smell. So for tightwads, encountering an expensive item was literally unpleasant—like sniffing a carton of spoiled milk.
Does that mean that you’re stuck with your natural inclination? Are you totally helpless? Should you just toll over and accept your fate?
Stop being so anxious about it and read the full article.
I’m tempted to say that I’m a tightwad, but I have a feeling someone close to me would call BS on that one. I wonder if Loewenstein considered identification issues. Hmm…
Filed under: humor
Improv Everywhere strikes again, this time with over 2,000 people walking their invisible dogs in Brooklyn. a couple quotes from those who participated:
Whenever anyone asked I said “well, its been raining a lot the past couple of days so the dogs had to get out. I guess everyone decided to go out at the same time.”
One lady told me that she will pray for me in church today. Barely held in my laughter.
– Danny
Conversation with two burly men as I stood outside a store:
“What’s with this?”
“I’m just waiting for a friend”
“no what’s with the dog?”
“oh they don’t allow dogs in the store”
“I don’t understand”
– Augusto
Anyone who worked with me at my last job has had firsthand experience with this particular brand of debauchery… perhaps they will even remember the time we stopped to talk to our eccentric colleague, only to have him smile devilishly at me at one point during the conversation:
“What’s up?”
“Hehe, he just peed on you”
At which point, he gave the leash a sort-of shake off.
Funny, but ugh…
Courtesy of Jamie at Always More to Hear, check out this video of Pomplamoose, a multi-instrumentalist duo from California. Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn rip it making their own original music as well as some great covers.
This has to be my favorite of theirs: Beat the Horse
Also, be sure to check out their cover of Single Ladies. Here are some of their links:
Website
MySpace (with free song downloads)
iTunes
Enjoy!
