Month: September 2010

So Pavement Sucked

Once upon a time, Pave­ment were a spe­cial band to me. That rabid fan­dom petered out since they called it quits in ’99, and ever since I’ve felt like Malk­mus’ solo career was just him navel gazing.

The reunion dis­ap­points main­ly because they haven’t learned any­thing about show­man­ship since their start­ed. Maybe that’s good for folks who were accus­tomed to them being one of the most bor­ing live acts on the indie cir­cuit, but I real­ly expect­ed it to feel momen­tous, like I’d final­ly wit­nessed a piece of his­to­ry I missed the first time around.

Does­n’t help that my friend got assault­ed, or that the words “I could kill you” were direct­ed at me, entire­ly unpro­voked. What they said about Pave­ment fans chang­ing over their course def­i­nite­ly holds. I’ll stick to those records and cher­ish the mem­o­ries I made lis­ten­ing to them.

Also worth not­ing: the Mann Music Cen­ter was­n’t near­ly as great a venue as I thought, at least not for rock music. I know that I’m nos­tal­gic for my high school days when I saw clas­sic rock fogies like Emer­son, Lake and Palmer and the Moody Blues sit­ting on the lawn, but the pavil­ion sounds real­ly noisy, espe­cial­ly toward the back. I hate to say it, but I’ve had bet­ter con­cert expe­ri­ences at the back of the Susque­han­na Bank Cen­ter pavilion.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 2

My Problem with RSS

I found myself shak­ing my head in agree­ment quite often with this Techcrunch post about the “death of RSS.”

If RSS does­n’t make it, I’ll lay the blame at Google’s dig­i­tal feet. They came so close to so many good, plat­form-wor­thy ideas with Google Read­er. Shared items with com­ments? Tum­blr, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. I’ve felt all along that Google just has no idea how to make their prod­ucts social. You can’t even plug Google Read­er into Tum­blr and get it to ren­der prop­er­ly. I went from shar­ing and com­ment­ing on things in my read­er to bare­ly both­er­ing to favorite any­thing in the last year or so.

RSS may have its short­com­ings, but it’s far more effi­cient for some­one like me who’s con­stant­ly read­ing the web. It offers bet­ter orga­ni­za­tion than either Twit­ter or Face­book. It makes it eas­i­er to eval­u­ate the val­ue of the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed. I don’t need to click through to read any­thing on most blogs, which is a tremen­dous help. Sure, that does­n’t help the pub­lish­ers and con­tent cre­ators hit their goals, but if you’re cre­at­ing good con­tent, peo­ple will engage it. RSS, for my mon­ey, is still the best way to deliv­er it to an audi­ence that’s con­sum­ing the most content.

I’d be sad to see it go. It’s dif­fi­cult enough to dis­cov­er reli­able sources as it stands now. If you watch Rick Sanchez I think you’ll agree that Face­book and Twit­ter aren’t improv­ing the way we con­sume news by any stretch.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 1

I’m Going to See Pavement

I guess the only way for me to stom­ach the Mann Music Cen­ter’s out­ra­geous ser­vice charges is to buy a tick­et from a friend.

I don’t get out to shows much these days, but this should feel like jump­ing into a hot tub time machine back to my Philly music scene hey­day, cir­ca 2003. Expect to see famil­iar faces!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

My Beef with the PLCB

While I don’t share Lew’s froth­ing hatred of tax­a­tion, I must say that I’ve reached my lim­it with the PLCB. What was the last straw, you ask? I have nev­er had a good local dis­trib­u­tor in my life. I had a flir­ta­tion with Soci­ety Hill Bev­er­age, but even their supe­ri­or selec­tion (by PA stan­dards) and rea­son­able prices aren’t enough to keep me from envy­ing my friends in Jer­sey, or from rel­ish­ing trips to Helen’s home state too much. (Lit­tle secret: Vir­ginia is for beer lovers! Bet you did­n’t know Dog­fish Head has a string of brew­pubs down there!)

No one retail­er is per­fect. I’ll accept that for all intents and pur­pos­es beer snob­bery is the new record snob­bery. You can read all about it, sali­vate over every bou­tique brew, but the the real chal­lenge is to find it in the wild. Might not be so hard at the local tap­rooms, but try find­ing a bomber of Dog­fish Head­’s lat­est, Bitch­es Brew, any­where around town. It’s point­less to try.

I’m not sure what the answer is. I’m not typ­i­cal­ly a fan of pri­va­ti­za­tion. Sure, there’s malfea­sance in the pub­lic sphere, but we can influ­ence that. Look around at what’s hap­pened in the free mar­ket in the past ten years and ask your­self if they’re doing much bet­ter. What I will grant is that folks in oth­er states with more lib­er­al alco­hol sales laws tend to have a bet­ter over­all expe­ri­ence. Would it kill some­one to let me buy a mixed six pack, instead of hav­ing to buy a whole case of pump­kin ale?

As it stands now, plen­ty of Penn­syl­va­ni­ans become boot­leg­gers rather than con­form to local laws. It’s too tempt­ing to sneak over the Jer­sey or Delaware bor­der to pick up your favorite beer and wine in stores that are frankly much bet­ter than any state store or dis­trib­u­tor. Why not just reform the laws and find a way to make that sys­tem work as it does in neigh­bor­ing states?

I will say this: boot­leg­ging is much eas­i­er now since the advent of E‑Z Pass. You don’t even have to wait in pesky toll lanes!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 4