He had me until the word "not"

If you were under the age of 35 ( . . . which most of you are), and were reading the paper with your breakfast, would you continue with an article that started like this:

I do not unconditionally celebrate the Internet, particularly its intrusion into classical music. As replacements for the record store, Amazon and iTunes have become necessary evils. Typical commercial downloads are sonic shadows of the superior sound of CDs. Blogs ghettoize critics. YouTube is pretty much a toy.

I am not an expert on the business model for classical music, but in general, the problem is not the internet's "intrusion into classical music" -- the problem is the classical music community not embracing the internet. If you're not happy with the classical music offerings online, do something about it yourself. But if you don't embrace the internet, you'll never reach that next generation of fans.

I believe the poles are shifting . . .

We saw R.E.M. on Thursday night, and it was awesome -- they put on a great show, as always. But we can't believe that on this tour, in 2008, they're not playing "I Believe".



I mean, Obama's campaign slogan, "Change we can believe in", is practically a lyric from the song! Michael Stipe is (to the surprise of no one) supporting Obama! This would be the most obvious song to play to get people riled up and excited about voting, but instead they're playing "Ignoreland" (which admittedly is pretty good live).

Maybe no one can play the banjo intro anymore.