Believer 2011 Music Issue

...is out! Check out the cover (which looks even more amazing when you're holding it in your hands)! Check out Ross Simonini's great interview with Trey Anastasio of Phish! Ross also put together the excellent CD, of new classical music.

Brian Eno in conversation with David Mitchell! David Byrne talking to Tom Zé!

Frances Cha on K-pop fandom....Eileen Reynolds on the bassoon...Paul Collins on the short-lived craze for turntables in your car...Hua Hsu on telephone calls in pop songs...the Australian festival scene...Much more! Nick Hornby on North Korea (!)...Martha Wainwright! Daniel Handler on Kawabata! Jack Pendarvis...more...more...go...buy...listen...enjoy...it's great...Greil Marcus....more...

Rejection

Great Eno interview (oxymoron?) at the Guardian:

On Frank Zappa

"Zappa was important to me because I realised I didn't have to make music like he did. I might have made a lot of music like he did if he had not done it first and made me realise that I did not want to go there. I did not like his music but I am grateful that he did it. Sometimes you learn as much from the things you don't like as from the things you do like. The rejection side is as important as the endorsement part. You define who you are and where you are by the things that you know you are not. Sometimes that's all the information you have to go on. I'm not that kind of person. You don't quite know where you are but you find yourself in the space left behind by the things you've rejected."

The Eno–Humument connection

I had no idea that the cover image for Brian Eno's Another Green World was taken from a painting by A Humument creator Tom Phillips. Yet another reason to check Bill Poundstone's Ann Coulter: A Human Document!

AC:AHD also points out that Phillips's artwork is featured on The Who's Face Dances album—the WEB tells me that my memory is not quite correct in thinking that the band was touring behind this album when the infamous stampede in Cincinnati occurred (that was 1979, the album was 1981)...

Time to listen to Another Green World! And then "You Better You Bet"!