I giggled when I read "Fantastic Four-Four". Geez. 43 sequels? JK. Next up is Mocha-Dick versus Megalodon's DNA, but only after Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi's AI film full of all the sharknados and Michael Bay explosions needed. Sorry--I laugh to keep from crying sometimes.
From the point of view of an investor, it doesn't matter.
The marginal utility of a dollar is ever always only a dollar. It doesn't matter if that dollar was made teaching inner city kids to read, or whether it was made selling those same kids bath salts. A dollar is still worth a dollar, no more, no less.
That’s true for the dollar in question, but does it take into account the next dollar? When each sequel makes less than its predecessor, is a dollar better spent coming up with part 1 of the next big franchise? Or the next big standalone hit?
Since money is fungible, if the returns aren't looking good in films, they can invest in soda pop or cat treats or whatever, from the investor's point of view, the next project doesn't matter.
I think you're still missing the bigger picture. There is money to be made in films, and investors will put their money into projects that are likely to earn the biggest return. Big studios and successful producers aren't suddenly going to pivot to selling potato chips if Rocky 12 doesn't meet its box office expectations.
This cultural collapse-versus-stagnation discussion reminded me of an old comic strip I read somewhere (Okay it was Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) about two kinds of dystopia.
In the "predicted" dyatopia, the Book People were hiding in the forests of Canada after books had been banned and people in their denseness and credulity voted for leaders that took them right into a nuclear war. In the "more likely" dystopia, a guy walks into a bookstore and asks for good literature.
"Sorry," said the clerk, "but since the start of the 21st Century all writing slowly morphed into self-help books."
I think your insights about the lack of a true avant-garde is the best indication of where we are. As Leonard put it, "Everybody knows the scene is dead." We live online where it's impossible to have a real scene where artists interact with one another and with critics who see their job as shepherding the scene or if not that, at least taking it seriously. In the past artists, fans, hangers-on got drunk together, fought, acted out their envy, and through all of it pushed art forms into something new and relevant. Ted is right that the platforms work against this.
I'm also struck at how little artistic rebellion there is -- in fact I haven't seen any true generation of rebel musicians since grunge. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but another negative effect of everyone being online is too much deference to the previous generation of artists. I love old music, I really do, but does the music of the 60's and 70's really speak to our moment?
The very act of creating something out of nothing is rebellious. Resistance holds us back from doing those crunches, starting that business, or writing the songs in our heads—it’s an act of rebellion to “do it anyway” regardless of what others think. That is what I find rebellious about creative people. They have an intrinsic need to make ideas into tangible things to share & connect with others. Fear is the enemy.
Most people throughout most of history would have seen things very differently. Creating was seen as a matter of following and embellishing established patterns, not individual expression.
And that changed - in the "fine arts," anyway - due to Romanticism. The thing is, most of the world was not really affected by the Romantic movement, so older techniques were perpetuated while new things were developed. People didn't feel a need to "overthrow" the "old order." Given that apprenticeships were and still are a thing in a large part of the world today, clearly people saw value - continue to see value - in it.
It would be interesting to check into, say, interviews with Indian classical musicians about their own time as students/apprentices. Same with Japanese classical music, albeit it's a very small scene nowadays, especially in comparison with Indian classical music.
It served well for several centuries. And we have neither faith in God to serve like Bach now, nor a canon and aesthetics for artists to aspire to, nor commons and patrons to feed them. Just individual solipsism and commercial hustling.
Well, I presume we're both westerners, so? That already covers close to a billion people and 40-ish countries. Do we have some duty to follow ideas about the role of the artist from Mongolians or Polynesians or some such?
We are living in cultural collapse because the gatekeepers are promoting ugliness and demoralization. That has destroyed movies, music, and art. Look at the box office reception for Snow White. The root is in the academy - as an example, the president of RISD is a DEI commissar with no previous art experience. The time has come to make America beautiful again: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/make-america-beautiful-again
Chrystal Williams has extensive experience as an administrator, one whose poetry is part of the Museum of Modern Arts Poetry Project. The trendy use of DEI as an epithet reflects an emotional and puerile racial bias devoid of any substantive critique of her tenure, during which RISD continues to rank in the top handful of art schools in the world. Such ugly attitudes will never yield a beautiful America.
You got it backwards. It's the "head of an arts college" (or their supporters) that need to substantiate their fit for the role. And, aside from proving that they succesfully passed through the educational system and various vacuous institutions, and hastily been promoted based on DEI advocacy nothing in that bio does that:
Williams began her academic career at Reed College where she served as professor of English (2000-11) and dean (2011-13). There she gained a reputation as a strong advocate for faculty, working with colleagues to make Reed more equitable, diverse and inclusive, which led to her appointment as the college’s inaugural dean for institutional diversity. (...) Williams continued this work of creating programs and strategies in support of diversity and inclusivity at Bates College, where she served as associate vice president for strategic initiatives, professor of English and senior advisor to the president from 2013-17. (...) An authority on diversity in the arts and higher education, Williams regularly advises senior leaders, organizations and colleges across the nation on creating and sustaining more equitable and inclusive systems for leadership development, recruitment, retention, campus environments, organizational development and capacity building. In 2017, she became the inaugural vice president and associate provost for community & inclusion at Boston University as well as a professor of English. (...) To foster a deeper sense of unity among individuals from underrepresented communities and their allies, Williams also oversaw the creation of Boston University’s employee resource groups.
It's DEI all the way down (or, rather, all the way to the top)
The actual term is "non-discriminatory." Which dates back to the Civil Rights movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. "DEI" is being used by politicians to claim that the Civil Rights Act + follow-up legislation is disposable. And that individuals are, too. It's reprehensible, and I'm surprised that anyone commenting here would make these claims.
There's no point in continuing this particular convo, but it is really not right to make such claims about an individual without actually doing more than a quick read of their cv.
But, Ted, I don't want to live on Substack. Old art cultures thrived because people lived in the same place, in cities, on the Left Bank, in the Village, in the Haight, with Expressionists in Berlin in the '20s, in universities, in university towns, in city neighborhoods. We've been priced out of cities, and priced out of universities, and the media has been conglomeratized everything that used to go on in universities and cities. That is exactly as you say. I want counterculture just like you do, countercultures driven by art, music, poetry, and whatever else we invent. I very much like your taste in the arts. But dang, man, all we have to hope for is Substack? Or do you see a way for Substack to be a vehicle that somehow or another brings not only the avant culture but the people back together. Or are we just condemned to this arid deadliness?
I agree, but may be Substack can help us find people to work within the real world. Ted opneed up the chat recently and I wonder if that could facilitate that.
Collapse has been a dominant visual and therefore cultural theme of this century in the United States--it's not just our imagination.
In an era of highly fragmented interests and sources of information, what images of 21st-century America do we share collectively? The dominant one is still 9/11 and the unthinkable, unstoppable collapse of the symbol of U.S. economic superiority and the collapse of our sense of security from terrorism. Nothing else comes close.
What other images do we share after 2001? Probably just a few. Here are some candidates, in chronological order: probably something from the Iraq War, perhaps the toppling of Saddam's statue or the pyramid of abused prisoners or the electrocuted Christ-like figure at Abu Ghraib. California fires. Also Hurricane Katrina and the inundation of New Orleans, with GW Bush in voyeur pose from Air Force One. Minneapolis bridge collapse. And then perhaps Obama's election night, but at the same time some kind of image from the Great Recession. Deepwater Horizon. And then in quick succession Trump on an escalator, Houston underwater from Harvey, COVID, George Floyd video, more bridge collapses, January 6th and the storming of the Capitol, more fires, Biden staring into space, more bridge collapses, Trump fist-pump, endless school shootings throughout, and here we are, with now-daily images of intended collapse of federal services. However, in reality there are probably violent video game images, and screensavers, and memes that are much more universally recognized than images from almost any of the events listed above.
In the aggregate, these are mostly images of collapse: a time to tear down, not a time to build, to borrow from Ecclesiastes. To be truly countercultural in 2025, you plant seeds, grow topsoil, and plan for not just the next decade--that's already countercultural--but for the next half-century and century as well.
Many thoughtful people are not sure our democracy will make it to 2028, or that our civilization will make it to 2100 in the face of global changes. In this environment, how can cultural collapse *not* be on the table as a possibility? Collapse is pervasive in our cultural ecosystem, like endocrine disruptors and microplastics in our natural ecosystem. It is the challenge of our time to reclaim the ability to innovate, change, and build for the future on this slippery slope.
I don't agree (I wish I did) with the 'good change is just around the corner' mindset. Everything is different now, with social media, smartphones, and AI. Too many people can hardly read, let alone write. People in general don't have the attention span to really dig into songs or stories, even if great stuff is produced. I think it's only going to get worse. A new kind of Dark Ages is coming, one technologically enabled. Sure, a few people will do cool stuff and a few will be able to appreciate it, but as a cultural force? The arts are dead.
I agree about flourishing thru Millenia--but this time I think it's different. People are literally losing the ability to think and express themselves, all within a decade's time. That is the sign of an extremely strong force working on us. I'm of the 'rage at the coming of the dying light' ethos so I'll keep pushing, but I don't have a lot of hope it'll matter.
I'm an early career teacher working in India. Unfortunately, I share your fear. Younger people are foregoing the vital skills of reading and digesting 'tough' material - they just ask AI to simplify/summarise it for them. I fear for them, honestly.
I think part of the reason the reporter asked to talk to you about the death of civilization is because it's more attention grabbing than talking about your knowledge of music. Sensationalism gets clicks. I'm glad that you sticked to substance and put forth a well articulated response.
One can do no better on this subject than to quote Orson Welles as Harry Lime in the classic movie The Third Man. And yes, the line was actually written by Welles, rather than Graham Greene.
"You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
I appreciate your observations and don't see you as "doom and gloom." You're just not afraid to tell the truth. That's one of the many reasons I'm a paid subscriber.
I entered this post with a mixture of fear and trepidation - needing to hear your take on this, but hoping it wouldn’t be a descent into despair.
It wasn’t. Truthful and blunt, yes, but with an upward trajectory. I’m so glad you think that from the ashes of a tired culture, new forms can arise.
I’m not completely sure this is a foregone conclusion, but the odds are good. Thanks for this, I really needed to read it to thwart the ever-present malaise.
We're still under the thumb of gatekeepers, regardless of whether they are guarding legacy media, alternative platforms, or the gates of Hades. Because gatekeepers are often the default. Even Ted himself is a gatekeeper ("My 12 Favorite Existential Songs"; "The 30 Most Intriguing Musicians of 2025" etc.). Granted, I'd rather hear what Ted's picks are than the majority of other pundits...but ultimately what's needed is more involvement and research into indie artists, on the part of individual listeners, viewers, and readers. And that sort of research takes time–a commodity in somewhat short supply in many cases. Hint: try typing a random word into Bandcamp and see who comes up!
I DO like to hear that younger people are listening to jazz. There are still jazz bands aplenty in high schools and colleges. And I loved when Brian Wilson used to go wild talking about how Bach invented rock 'n roll (and the shuffle beat). Some dude even isolated a G713b9 in one of his pieces. Way cool!
I hope you have your own recording of the interview. Sounds like they used a few minutes from a few hours. Please consider posting a cleaned up transcript
Your point about the 189 years of stability in periods of Egyptian culture made me think about how in our era culture and technology have become intertwined, especially from the point of view of the purveyors of cultural stagnation. In other words, though there could be a period of “relative stability“ for 189 years, was there during the same time, a rapid technological advance? In our era, it seems as if the technological advances are dictating, or trying to dictate the terms of cultural growth, which , because technological advantages are usually profit driven, will lead to the stagnation you describe. Clear as mud?
Last night I took the kids to see the 36th MCU film. It was preceded by 7 trailers:
Karate Kid 6
Fantastic Four 4
Mission Impossible 8
Tron 3
Jurassic Park 7
Superman 9
How to Train Your Dragon 4
I think Hollywood may be relying too much on sequels and reboots.
Ha! This reminds me of the Jaws 19 scene from Back to the Future 2.
https://www.tiktok.com/@lifeofdevint/video/7357097578866986283
I'm surprised they aren't making more Jaws films.
Last year, the top 14 grossing films were all sequels or reboots, and only 2 of the top 20 were original concepts.
I giggled when I read "Fantastic Four-Four". Geez. 43 sequels? JK. Next up is Mocha-Dick versus Megalodon's DNA, but only after Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi's AI film full of all the sharknados and Michael Bay explosions needed. Sorry--I laugh to keep from crying sometimes.
From the point of view of an investor, it doesn't matter.
The marginal utility of a dollar is ever always only a dollar. It doesn't matter if that dollar was made teaching inner city kids to read, or whether it was made selling those same kids bath salts. A dollar is still worth a dollar, no more, no less.
That’s true for the dollar in question, but does it take into account the next dollar? When each sequel makes less than its predecessor, is a dollar better spent coming up with part 1 of the next big franchise? Or the next big standalone hit?
Since money is fungible, if the returns aren't looking good in films, they can invest in soda pop or cat treats or whatever, from the investor's point of view, the next project doesn't matter.
I think you're still missing the bigger picture. There is money to be made in films, and investors will put their money into projects that are likely to earn the biggest return. Big studios and successful producers aren't suddenly going to pivot to selling potato chips if Rocky 12 doesn't meet its box office expectations.
And retrocons, the worst of all 😆
This cultural collapse-versus-stagnation discussion reminded me of an old comic strip I read somewhere (Okay it was Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) about two kinds of dystopia.
In the "predicted" dyatopia, the Book People were hiding in the forests of Canada after books had been banned and people in their denseness and credulity voted for leaders that took them right into a nuclear war. In the "more likely" dystopia, a guy walks into a bookstore and asks for good literature.
"Sorry," said the clerk, "but since the start of the 21st Century all writing slowly morphed into self-help books."
"No Shakespeare?"
"We only have 'Unleash Your Inner Shakespeare' ."
Oh I lowkey love this bc of the sheer amount of “I can help you grow your writing on Substack” accounts I keep seeing!
I think your insights about the lack of a true avant-garde is the best indication of where we are. As Leonard put it, "Everybody knows the scene is dead." We live online where it's impossible to have a real scene where artists interact with one another and with critics who see their job as shepherding the scene or if not that, at least taking it seriously. In the past artists, fans, hangers-on got drunk together, fought, acted out their envy, and through all of it pushed art forms into something new and relevant. Ted is right that the platforms work against this.
I'm also struck at how little artistic rebellion there is -- in fact I haven't seen any true generation of rebel musicians since grunge. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but another negative effect of everyone being online is too much deference to the previous generation of artists. I love old music, I really do, but does the music of the 60's and 70's really speak to our moment?
The idea that the artist has to be some kind of rebel is just warmed-over Romanticism.
The very act of creating something out of nothing is rebellious. Resistance holds us back from doing those crunches, starting that business, or writing the songs in our heads—it’s an act of rebellion to “do it anyway” regardless of what others think. That is what I find rebellious about creative people. They have an intrinsic need to make ideas into tangible things to share & connect with others. Fear is the enemy.
Most people throughout most of history would have seen things very differently. Creating was seen as a matter of following and embellishing established patterns, not individual expression.
And that changed - in the "fine arts," anyway - due to Romanticism. The thing is, most of the world was not really affected by the Romantic movement, so older techniques were perpetuated while new things were developed. People didn't feel a need to "overthrow" the "old order." Given that apprenticeships were and still are a thing in a large part of the world today, clearly people saw value - continue to see value - in it.
It would be interesting to check into, say, interviews with Indian classical musicians about their own time as students/apprentices. Same with Japanese classical music, albeit it's a very small scene nowadays, especially in comparison with Indian classical music.
It served well for several centuries. And we have neither faith in God to serve like Bach now, nor a canon and aesthetics for artists to aspire to, nor commons and patrons to feed them. Just individual solipsism and commercial hustling.
That idea is actually pretty recent, and largely a western notion
Well, I presume we're both westerners, so? That already covers close to a billion people and 40-ish countries. Do we have some duty to follow ideas about the role of the artist from Mongolians or Polynesians or some such?
No, but I don't assume that our ideas about art or artists are universal truths.
Don’t you find the various archetypes expressed throughout art?
They don't need to be universal truths for the purposes of what I argued in my top comment. Just our basic (and exhausted) options.
We are living in cultural collapse because the gatekeepers are promoting ugliness and demoralization. That has destroyed movies, music, and art. Look at the box office reception for Snow White. The root is in the academy - as an example, the president of RISD is a DEI commissar with no previous art experience. The time has come to make America beautiful again: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/make-america-beautiful-again
Chrystal Williams has extensive experience as an administrator, one whose poetry is part of the Museum of Modern Arts Poetry Project. The trendy use of DEI as an epithet reflects an emotional and puerile racial bias devoid of any substantive critique of her tenure, during which RISD continues to rank in the top handful of art schools in the world. Such ugly attitudes will never yield a beautiful America.
Her bio reads end to end as the kind of executive existing because of and for serving DEI and "causes" as opposed to the actual art...
> one whose poetry is part of the Museum of Modern Arts Poetry Project
As if modern museum curators don't eat such shit up, and have such bios and causes as their foremost criteria?
So you lack any substantive basis for attacking her performance as head of an arts college, preferring stereotypes and tired MAGA tropes.
You got it backwards. It's the "head of an arts college" (or their supporters) that need to substantiate their fit for the role. And, aside from proving that they succesfully passed through the educational system and various vacuous institutions, and hastily been promoted based on DEI advocacy nothing in that bio does that:
Williams began her academic career at Reed College where she served as professor of English (2000-11) and dean (2011-13). There she gained a reputation as a strong advocate for faculty, working with colleagues to make Reed more equitable, diverse and inclusive, which led to her appointment as the college’s inaugural dean for institutional diversity. (...) Williams continued this work of creating programs and strategies in support of diversity and inclusivity at Bates College, where she served as associate vice president for strategic initiatives, professor of English and senior advisor to the president from 2013-17. (...) An authority on diversity in the arts and higher education, Williams regularly advises senior leaders, organizations and colleges across the nation on creating and sustaining more equitable and inclusive systems for leadership development, recruitment, retention, campus environments, organizational development and capacity building. In 2017, she became the inaugural vice president and associate provost for community & inclusion at Boston University as well as a professor of English. (...) To foster a deeper sense of unity among individuals from underrepresented communities and their allies, Williams also oversaw the creation of Boston University’s employee resource groups.
It's DEI all the way down (or, rather, all the way to the top)
The actual term is "non-discriminatory." Which dates back to the Civil Rights movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. "DEI" is being used by politicians to claim that the Civil Rights Act + follow-up legislation is disposable. And that individuals are, too. It's reprehensible, and I'm surprised that anyone commenting here would make these claims.
There's no point in continuing this particular convo, but it is really not right to make such claims about an individual without actually doing more than a quick read of their cv.
"Not discriminating" cannot materially be separated from indiscriminate.
Indiscriminate art is inseparable from inartistic slop.
But, Ted, I don't want to live on Substack. Old art cultures thrived because people lived in the same place, in cities, on the Left Bank, in the Village, in the Haight, with Expressionists in Berlin in the '20s, in universities, in university towns, in city neighborhoods. We've been priced out of cities, and priced out of universities, and the media has been conglomeratized everything that used to go on in universities and cities. That is exactly as you say. I want counterculture just like you do, countercultures driven by art, music, poetry, and whatever else we invent. I very much like your taste in the arts. But dang, man, all we have to hope for is Substack? Or do you see a way for Substack to be a vehicle that somehow or another brings not only the avant culture but the people back together. Or are we just condemned to this arid deadliness?
Yes. Not just living in the same places but rubbing elbows, eating and drinking and conversing, becoming collaborators, critics, audiences.
Capitalism and car culture have salted the creative earth.
I agree, but may be Substack can help us find people to work within the real world. Ted opneed up the chat recently and I wonder if that could facilitate that.
Collapse has been a dominant visual and therefore cultural theme of this century in the United States--it's not just our imagination.
In an era of highly fragmented interests and sources of information, what images of 21st-century America do we share collectively? The dominant one is still 9/11 and the unthinkable, unstoppable collapse of the symbol of U.S. economic superiority and the collapse of our sense of security from terrorism. Nothing else comes close.
What other images do we share after 2001? Probably just a few. Here are some candidates, in chronological order: probably something from the Iraq War, perhaps the toppling of Saddam's statue or the pyramid of abused prisoners or the electrocuted Christ-like figure at Abu Ghraib. California fires. Also Hurricane Katrina and the inundation of New Orleans, with GW Bush in voyeur pose from Air Force One. Minneapolis bridge collapse. And then perhaps Obama's election night, but at the same time some kind of image from the Great Recession. Deepwater Horizon. And then in quick succession Trump on an escalator, Houston underwater from Harvey, COVID, George Floyd video, more bridge collapses, January 6th and the storming of the Capitol, more fires, Biden staring into space, more bridge collapses, Trump fist-pump, endless school shootings throughout, and here we are, with now-daily images of intended collapse of federal services. However, in reality there are probably violent video game images, and screensavers, and memes that are much more universally recognized than images from almost any of the events listed above.
In the aggregate, these are mostly images of collapse: a time to tear down, not a time to build, to borrow from Ecclesiastes. To be truly countercultural in 2025, you plant seeds, grow topsoil, and plan for not just the next decade--that's already countercultural--but for the next half-century and century as well.
Many thoughtful people are not sure our democracy will make it to 2028, or that our civilization will make it to 2100 in the face of global changes. In this environment, how can cultural collapse *not* be on the table as a possibility? Collapse is pervasive in our cultural ecosystem, like endocrine disruptors and microplastics in our natural ecosystem. It is the challenge of our time to reclaim the ability to innovate, change, and build for the future on this slippery slope.
I don't agree (I wish I did) with the 'good change is just around the corner' mindset. Everything is different now, with social media, smartphones, and AI. Too many people can hardly read, let alone write. People in general don't have the attention span to really dig into songs or stories, even if great stuff is produced. I think it's only going to get worse. A new kind of Dark Ages is coming, one technologically enabled. Sure, a few people will do cool stuff and a few will be able to appreciate it, but as a cultural force? The arts are dead.
I'm an inveterate pessimistic, but art has flourished through millenia...irrespective of political repression or societal collapse.
I agree about flourishing thru Millenia--but this time I think it's different. People are literally losing the ability to think and express themselves, all within a decade's time. That is the sign of an extremely strong force working on us. I'm of the 'rage at the coming of the dying light' ethos so I'll keep pushing, but I don't have a lot of hope it'll matter.
> but art has flourished through millenia...irrespective of political repression or societal collapse.
It has also languished through millenia. And when it did flourish, the dynamics we don't now have were there - despite repression or social collapse.
I'm an early career teacher working in India. Unfortunately, I share your fear. Younger people are foregoing the vital skills of reading and digesting 'tough' material - they just ask AI to simplify/summarise it for them. I fear for them, honestly.
I think part of the reason the reporter asked to talk to you about the death of civilization is because it's more attention grabbing than talking about your knowledge of music. Sensationalism gets clicks. I'm glad that you sticked to substance and put forth a well articulated response.
One can do no better on this subject than to quote Orson Welles as Harry Lime in the classic movie The Third Man. And yes, the line was actually written by Welles, rather than Graham Greene.
"You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
I appreciate your observations and don't see you as "doom and gloom." You're just not afraid to tell the truth. That's one of the many reasons I'm a paid subscriber.
Same!
I entered this post with a mixture of fear and trepidation - needing to hear your take on this, but hoping it wouldn’t be a descent into despair.
It wasn’t. Truthful and blunt, yes, but with an upward trajectory. I’m so glad you think that from the ashes of a tired culture, new forms can arise.
I’m not completely sure this is a foregone conclusion, but the odds are good. Thanks for this, I really needed to read it to thwart the ever-present malaise.
We're still under the thumb of gatekeepers, regardless of whether they are guarding legacy media, alternative platforms, or the gates of Hades. Because gatekeepers are often the default. Even Ted himself is a gatekeeper ("My 12 Favorite Existential Songs"; "The 30 Most Intriguing Musicians of 2025" etc.). Granted, I'd rather hear what Ted's picks are than the majority of other pundits...but ultimately what's needed is more involvement and research into indie artists, on the part of individual listeners, viewers, and readers. And that sort of research takes time–a commodity in somewhat short supply in many cases. Hint: try typing a random word into Bandcamp and see who comes up!
Agreed. Especially on poking around Bandcamp and similar sites.
I DO like to hear that younger people are listening to jazz. There are still jazz bands aplenty in high schools and colleges. And I loved when Brian Wilson used to go wild talking about how Bach invented rock 'n roll (and the shuffle beat). Some dude even isolated a G713b9 in one of his pieces. Way cool!
Yes there is a buzz around Jazz in London among many young people its wonderful to see.
Very cool.
Of course the past always looks better than the present, all the crap has been discarded and you only see the good stuff.
I hope you have your own recording of the interview. Sounds like they used a few minutes from a few hours. Please consider posting a cleaned up transcript
Your point about the 189 years of stability in periods of Egyptian culture made me think about how in our era culture and technology have become intertwined, especially from the point of view of the purveyors of cultural stagnation. In other words, though there could be a period of “relative stability“ for 189 years, was there during the same time, a rapid technological advance? In our era, it seems as if the technological advances are dictating, or trying to dictate the terms of cultural growth, which , because technological advantages are usually profit driven, will lead to the stagnation you describe. Clear as mud?