Of Interest: ?uestlove’s Moving Tribute to Don Cornelius
LINK: “Brand New Bag: Questlove on Don Cornelius” on Okayplayer
I feel guilty that my immediate thought after seeing the news of Soul Train creator Don Cornelius’ death was for ?uestlove. I knew that Cornelius meant a lot to ?uestlove, but this post from this afternoon framed Cornelius’ death as something bigger than the passing of a television producer. Written this afternoon while still reacting to the news, ?uestlove’s piece pays tribute to Cornelius’ signature creation and the role it played in the basic musical education of one of the most gifted drummers, producers, and amateur historians in contemporary music. I expected this, but I was especially moved by the way ?uestlove spoke of how he (literally!) carries Soul Train with him everywhere he goes.
?uestlove also describes Cornelius’ impact beyond music, both in a larger cultural context and as a personal inspiration. He called him the second most “crucial non political figure to emerge from the civil rights era post ’68″ next to Motown Records’ Berry Gordy, and writes at length about the way Cornelius and Soul Train shaped his identity and philosophy to this day.
I’m restricting myself to just one quote from his post because the whole thing is worth your attention. Once you finish reading that, feel free to browse ?uestlove’s Celebrity Stories, one of the most fascinating and entertaining time sucks (and beware, you can easily lose an entire hour or more clicking through all of them) on the internet.
When I planned on writing this post earlier today (Sunday), the Kickstarted campaign was close to its $15,000 goal but not quite there with Tuesday’s deadline approaching. Late this afternoon, the project met its goal and secured funding. However, since funding is open until Tuesday morning and your dollars would still go toward a worthy cause (and secure you some cool stuff, more on that further down the page), I decided to write it anyway.
LINK: Launch the Best Music Writing series as an indie pub
1. The Best Music Writing series is worth the funding price alone.
Published annually, the series, like some of the other Best series you may have seen if you’ve spent time browsing a chain bookstore, culls some of the best music writing from both print and the internet. I have a few past years’ editions on my bookshelf, and I’ll keep them if only because they capture a sampling of the things some of the brightest minds and sharpest pens considered in a given period of time. (This is not to mention that many of these pieces are fantastic and, even for someone like me who reads a fair amount of music writing regularly, many of the pieces are new to me when the book comes out). If nothing else, your Kickstarter money gets you a gift for the music fan and/or budding scribe in your life.
2. The Kickstarter campaign funds more than just a single book.
Sure, the 2012 edition of the series is the face of the campaign, but the money raised goes toward the creation of Feedback Press, a publishing outfit dedicated toward printing music writing. The press’ first undertaking will be the 2012 edition of the series (with the first step, a ten member editorial board, already accomplished during the funding phase), but the success of this campaign (and the Best Music Writing series going forward) means more opportunities for music writers to meet publication. This may seem like a 20th century idea, but the prospect of a dedicated press for music writing (along with things like Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, and the established outlets in print / on the ‘net) bodes well for more writing of high quality. Even if it just means another outlet for music writers to earn money for their words, it means that more writers can be paid for their hard work, and that perhaps some of the most thoughtful and productive writers may spend more time writing about music rather than splitting time between music writing and other gigs that pay the bills. In an era where it seems like music is both more plentiful and easier to access (even and especially through legal means!), I find myself relying on the writers I trust to point me toward new music and finding new ideas through these thoughtful pieces. Even though anyone with a blog and some free time can write about music, I prefer more thoughtful voices over a higher number of voices, and the establishment of Feedback Press seems like another step in the right direction.
3. This is an excellent example of a Kickstarter rewards system.
The rewards at the highest level (the ones above $30 in particular) reveal two things to me. First, there are a lot of people willing to dedicate their time, talents, and creativity to this campaign to encourage people to contribute. This sense of community makes me believe even more in the cause and its goal to bolster the amount of high quality music writing. It also makes me wish that I had more money to contribute so that I, for instance, could get a phone call telling me that I can make better use of my free time than writing about the new Hospitality and Chairlift records.
Even the expected rewards – in this case, a copy of the 2012 edition of the series – went beyond my expectations. The lower levels included an electronic copy of the text (including a copy delivered on the publication day to those who bought the print edition). While e-books aren’t exactly revelatory in 2012, I was glad to see that Feedback Press will offer titles in multiple editions.
4. They are offering a 30% discount on Ellen Willis’ Out of the Vinyl Deeps
I’ve been meaning to buy this collection of Willis’ criticism for a while now, especially after reading so many sing Willis’ praises. While it would have lingered on my Amazon wishlist until (at least) the Summer “when I’d have more time to read,” I will likely order my copy tomorrow and pick through it bit by bit when I should be doing other more pressing things.
New Music: Craig Finn’s Solo Debut Sounds More Like The Hold Steady Than I Expected
Listen to Clear Heart Full Eyes at NPR
It had been a while since I spent a lot of time with a record from The Hold Steady, but all it took was hearing the beginning of “First Night” on an old playlist and making the active choice not to skip to the next song as I might usually do. It led to an afternoon listening to Separation Sunday and Boys and Girls in America. This began the sort of “perfect storm” that led to the abrupt change from a slight curiosity to an eager willingness to hear Craig Finn’s solo debut Clear Heart Full Eyes.
Much of the internet ink spilled on this record will emphasize this as a “departure” for Finn when compared to the anthemic mode The Hold Steady usually uses. The NPR post above calls it a “lyrics record,” and Finn mentioned in a recent interview that this new process let him shade in his characters in darker hues with less redemptive endings. It’s slightly misleading when considering the high percentage of reviews that called The Hold Steady’s five records “literary.” Even the album’s sonic changes aren’t completely out of left field. Finn plays with a collection of new musicians, but the sound isn’t completely unexpected. In fact, after reading some of the interviews and hearing the twangy “New Friend Jesus” from the record, I expected this to be Finn’s “singer-songwriter” album. Instead, I happily found Clear Heart Full Eyes more sonically diverse in the way that I wanted the last Hold Steady album to sound. I’ve only listened once and haven’t spent a ton of time thinking about all of the characters and their doings (or all of the allusions to THS songs, another stylistic touch I wasn’t expecting on a solo record), but it doesn’t seem like the grand departure I imagined while reading about it. Finn may stretch himself as a songwriter, but it’s in a natural way. Sometimes, songwriters feel like gigantic, sweeping changes are necessary for growth. For a songwriter who treats songs like stories, it’s fitting that the changes take time to unfold naturally.
It may sound like a copout or a backhanded compliment, but Clear Heart Full Eyes will likely find an audience with the same folks who liked Finn’s main band. I mean this as a compliment, however; having listened to my two favorite Hold Steady records recently, Clear Heart Full Eyes belongs in the same discography and may even be more essential than the band’s last couple of full-lengths.
Craig Finn and his backing band come to Great Scott in Allston on February 28th, and I’m excited to hear some of these songs in a place barely large enough for The Hold Steady to rehearse, let alone perform.
Of Interest: Pitchfork’s Why We Fight on Generation Gaps in Music
Link: “Why We Fight: Your Chemical Romance” (Pitchfork 1/13/2012)
A great read on Pitchfork last week from critic Nitsuh Abebe that draws a parallel between the mid 2000s MySpace bands (with My Chemical Romance as the prime example) and Skrillex. In both of these cases, MCR in 2006 and Skrillex in 2012, I feel like I was a couple years too old (in that if I encountered either of these things at a different time of my life, I could see myself being completely into them) for these bands/scenes, which only made the article more interesting to me. In particular, having discussed music with my students (who are now a decade and a half younger than me), I’ve seen many who exclusively listened to Myspace (or YouTube, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and probably now places that I’m not remotely in tune with) bands with small but devoted followings. This isn’t new, of course: hardcore had (still has) scenes long before the internet, and I had friends whose bands had MP3.com pages (and I’m pretty sure I played on one or two of those recordings), and the idea of music habits being ingrained is one I’ve thought about while examining my own taste. When Abebe suggests that the kids who grew up on MySpace bands “might be carrying that frame of reference with them, Boomer-style, forever, no matter what kinds of music they liked, made, resented, or grew into in the future,” a lot of the other parallels he outlined made a lot more sense to me. It’s certainly an interesting lens to examine some of these distinctly 2010s sounding acts (Skrillex and Ke$ha in particular) with unexpected roots, or at least ones less apparent in their sounds).
It’s also the latest instance where I’ve found My Chemical Romance more interesting / compelling than I did the first time around. One of these days I’ll probably find myself listening to one of their records and kicking myself for waiting this long.
See also: Pitchfork’s Mark Richardson on the relationship between Tumblr and personal identity through music, SNL’s “You Can Do Anything” skit this past weekend.
Getting Back into the Habit of Writing
In just about every form of writing I’ve tried in my life, I’ve found that getting started after prolonged absence ranks among the hardest tasks. Whether trying to make the time to blog, or begging for forgiveness with friends I haven’t emailed back (and if this is you, I’m sorry and you should probably just send me a quick email to yell at me catch me back up with your happenings), getting over the initial hump offers just enough resistance to keep me away from writing.
So to take some of my own advice I’ve offered others, I’ve decided to just start writing again. No over-elaborate apologies (just this pseudo-apology), no grand pronouncements of schedules or plans, just an acknowledgment that this is a thing I’d like to do more often than once every few months. To be honest, I don’t really have any big things I want to write about right now, so this will probably start with links to things I read and found interesting with a little comment or endorsement of why it’s worth your attention. Hopefully from there, I’ll end up with longer tangents or my own ideas or whatever.
The one thing I will say is that I’m going to try to spread things out a little bit. If I’m inspired and write three short bits, I’ll spread them over a few days. If I have an idea but don’t have time or find myself stalling, I’ll let it sit in the drafts folder until the right time returns.
So the first of these non-apology apology posts will go up tomorrow after I write it in a few minutes, and hopefully a few more will follow over the next week and a half or so. It goes without saying that you should probably just subscribe through RSS/Twitter/one of the other things in the right hand bar rather than check back in here.
Thank You, ShareBros: On the End of Google Reader’s Sharing Party
Image via DCist
One time at my old job, a coworker asked me how I knew so much about some bewilderingly random topic. “Some people go home and watch TV,” I told her. “I go home and read blogs.” It’s a little hyperbolic (sometimes I read blogs while watching TV!), but by and large I spend a lot of my free time reading music and sports websites. When I joined Google Reader several years ago, I achieved a strange paradox with this spare time. By using Reader, I found I could keep up with more websites in a smaller period of time. Using a RSS reader meant that I saved time rereading news items I already read but forgot skimming, and let updates come to me rather than having to click through a few dozen bookmarks every time. Naturally, this increased time meant I could keep up with more websites, and my subscriptions grew bigger and bigger.
However, the thing that made Google Reader the essential part of my internet routine was the sharing features. Reader made it simple to share things with one button, but more importantly, it made keeping up with my friends’ shares incredibly easy. As my subscriptions piled up and my free time dwindled, there was always one section I kept current – my friends’ shared items and comments. Here, I discovered some of my favorite websites, funny memes, incredible deals, and different ideas. My friends’ curated this strange mix of posts that I might not have read on my own, that challenged my own thoughts, or made me care about a topic I only had a loose grasp upon previously.
So roughly a week ago, when Google announced that Reader’s social features would be stripped and be “available soon in Google+,” many devoted users freaked out. Since then, my shared feed turned reflective, with many of my friends (or, in the parlance of the service, “ShareBros”) digging out their first and favorite shares (sometimes with amusing techniques to find this post) and waxing nostalgic about the impending changes (which, as of tonight, haven’t happened yet. Tomorrow will be one week since the announcement, so I would not be surprised to see them implemented any time now). A common theme arose in these posts, tweets, and shares: Google Reader is an important part of a lot of people’s days, and the social element is the most rewarding. Many went as far to call Reader’s shared feeds the best social network, or the most worthwhile, or whatever other superlative indicated its value.
For me, the value of Google Reader sharing goes beyond just the ease of use. Sharing in Reader, and the comments section that made sharing exponentially more valuable, created conversation. Sometimes, through other people’s shares, I had conversations with writers I admired and complete strangers with interesting opinions. More importantly, I kept in touch with my friends. Some of these friends I rarely saw, and through Reader and the comment section, I got an idea of the things they were into or the ideas they were chasing down. I could ask a question or provoke an argument and the comment section would light up. Most importantly, even if it was in a relatively tiny way, I felt like these people were part of my daily life. Sure, it wasn’t the same as when we lived together in college, or saw each other a few times a week, but it was better than nothing. Reader was (and continues to be, even though we live together) one of the ways that my girlfriend and I kept in touch throughout the day while living in separate states. Sometimes, on the phone at night, our conversation looped back into reader, and we shared a laugh about some strange cat picture, or discussed a post about marketing, or whatever. If I couldn’t get all my friends together for a dinner party, at least our ideas could come together, mingle, and sometimes inspire each other, even if it’s just to come up with stupid puns.
As I told my friends on Google Reader this afternoon, this won’t be the end of sharing. I’ll still share links (perhaps on this blog, which I guess would be a good thing for this), and I’ll still get into conversations with my friends about the things they write on their blogs or share on Twitter. We just won’t be at the same party anymore. Who knows, maybe we’ll find ourselves at another party, and maybe Google+ is the location (although I’m skeptical, but more on that another time perhaps). As for now, the party is ending, the music is running out, and we’re enjoying our last few minutes together before Google kicks us out in the cold to go share our separate ways.
(Above: the new video for Wild Flag’s “Electric Band,” one of my favorite songs off their self-titled debut, premiered today and happened to be about baseball and/or The Bad News Bears. I’ll take it as an omen).
The baseball season isn’t quite over yet. There are at least two more games guaranteed, and if I had to wager, I’d bet on a third game later this week, but I had the time (and, perhaps more important, the itch) to write this afternoon, so I’ll say thank you for a great season of baseball today.
For a variety of reasons, baseball is my favorite sport. It’s the only sport where I have a “favorite team.” It happens during the seven best months of the year (eight if March gets lumped in, I suppose), and its arrival means the end of another cold New England winter. There’s far too much baseball to digest (especially compared with the NFL), and in a weird way that’s liberating to a fan. With so much baseball, I don’t feel obligated to watch every pitch, or see every team play in a given week. Despite this willingness to let go, baseball remains a constant in my daily life. From watching a game on a Sunday afternoon to listening to the replay of the overnight talk show on XM radio on my drive to work each morning, baseball stays by my side throughout the day.
With the exception of the 2006 baseball season*, I found myself more emotionally attached to this baseball season. I’d attribute it to 2011 being a year of changes (almost all positive ones, for what it’s worth), but my deepest attachment came in the last two months, when a lot of things that were in flux settled in. I thought about this in the car this afternoon, and I think the progression worked this way:
1. Getting MLB.tv for the final month of the season.
When I got MLB.tv for the last month of the season to watch the Mets after moving to Boston, I expected to watch a handful of games. I didn’t expect to find myself glued to my computer when Stephen Strasburg returned from Tommy John surgery**, or when whispers of Rays’ pitching prospect Matt Moore’s major league debut bubbled up on Twitter, or searching through a game archive to find a blown call in a Marlins-Phillies game. Looking back, though, it makes sense; now that I had the tools to see the kind of things I’d normally read or hear about the next day, I could follow along. The MLB.tv media center became a site I’d open without thinking just to check out the different matchups that night.
2. The Moneyball movie.
I loved Moneyball (and, for the record, the “anti-Moneyball” Three Nights in August) when I read it a few summers ago, and I was skeptical about the film adaptation for a long time. However, the final product was terrific – a beautifully shot movie that painted baseball as both complex and evolving yet simple and visceral. It also painted baseball as a game capable of maddening frustration and extreme exhilaration – one that Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Billy Beane made into a borderline classical tragic flaw. It’s this capacity for heartbreak and hope for nirvana that spoke to me as a fan. It’s the same feeling I see bubbling up from the Cardinal fans in my Facebook feed and the same one that turned Boston sports talk radio (and, by proxy, national baseball talk radio) into a series of tell-alls and witch hunts. And it’s the constant reminder that every time a team celebrates, another wonders if the misery is a series of mistakes or a random chain of unlucky events. Not to mention the reminder of a familiar fall phrase – “there’s always next year” – and how a simple phrase could be a challenge to one, a reason to hope for another, and a reminder of futility for the rest (and, for some fans, a combination of all three)
It also helped that one of the film’s final scenes took place in an empty, gloomy Fenway Park. I saw the movie the Sunday after it came out on an overcast afternoon, and when I walked out of the theater, an empty Fenway (empty because the Sox were out of town, at least at this point) cut through the light fog. It felt right.
3. The last month and a half of games
In a season where the Mets were more frustrating than inspiring (yet exceeded my expectations – but let’s leave them out of it for now), the September playoff races (or, in the parlance of the people in my new city, “the collapse”) was a godsend to a baseball fan with no clear rooting interest in the playoffs. I wore out my iPhone’s battery updating MLB.com that final night of the season, listened to Bob Uecker call playoff games, and nearly did a double-take when Gary Cohen’s voice described a baseball game between Tampa Bay and Texas. The last month of baseball feels like a bonus – games that I’ve cared about immensely even if my team isn’t playing. They’ve just been a delight to watch and hear.
And then the World Series began, neither with the teams expected to be there nor the teams whose bandwagons I joined (sorry, Tampa and Milwaukee fans), yet I can’t imagine a better World Series unless I had a specific rooting interest***. The games have been exciting, both in the tense pitching duels and the explosive offenses in Game 3. There are plenty of storylines to latch onto (“Is this Josh Hamilton’s baseball redemption?” “Will Pujols Bash His Way to a $300 Million Contract?” “Which Manager Will Make the Strangest Substitution?”) or ignore completely. Most importantly, when I haven’t been able to watch, I felt like I was missing something, and I would hurry home to catch at least part of the game, even if it meant jogging back from the T just to see the final fly out last Thursday night. For a game between two teams I rarely watch throughout the season, this is a high compliment.
So I will enjoy these final two or three games before baseball hibernates for the winter. There may not be games to listen to or highlights to watch, but I doubt that it will stray too far from my daily routine. After all, there are free agents to find homes (Jose Reyes being foremost in my mind, but again, for another time), and questions to ask and answer until spring training. And even on the coldest day this winter, I’ll know that I’m one day closer to finding out if next year is Next Year. And even if it isn’t (and as a Mets fan, I’m not holding my breath), I’d be very happy with next year being a lot like this one.
(Oh, and if I may address MLB directly here: learn from the NFL and, most importantly and heart-breakingly, the NBA and get your new CBA done as soon as possible. And while you do that, modernize your blackout restrictions****, particularly for MLB.tv. It will go a long way toward convincing me to drop the $120 on it next season).
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*If I get around to writing about the 2011 Mets, I will probably have to revisit the emotional punch of Carlos Beltran’s 9th inning Game 7 strikeout in 2006. This almost certainly affects my “rooting interest” in a following footnote.
**One thing I will say about the Mets’ this year – In the time since Johan Santana last threw a major league pitch, Stephen Strasburg hurt his elbow, had Tommy John surgery, rehabilitated, and pitched half a dozen major league games. I know Santana is older and Strasburg is a freak of nature, but it still feels like an appropriate summary of this year’s team.
***I’m on record pulling for Texas with the caveat of “I want at least six games, preferably seven,” so even if the Cardinals win, I’ve already won.
****The fact that this link is from 2006 yet still applies speaks a lot about the arcane nature of these rules. Here’s two more recent takes on it.
New (To Me) Music – August 2011
A quick run through of a few things I’ve been playing a lot recently.
Mirror Traffic, the new album from Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, comes out on Tuesday, but it’s streaming on NPR’s site right now. You may have heard “Senator” or “Tigers” already (or his live version of “Tigers” and “No One Is (As I Are Be)), and you might have heard that Beck produced the LP (and I don’t have much to add to that yet aside from the overall crispness of the sound reminding me of the sound of the last couple of Beck LPs). I’ve told people who asked (and some who haven’t) that this is an album covered in highly melodic, expertly played electric guitar, but the album also shows off Malkmus’ range as songwriter in addition to his (and the Jicks’) virtuosity. I’m looking forward to catching them at Royale in Boston on September 24.
Spin has “Off-Screen,” a song from Kevin Devine‘s forthcoming Between the Concrete and the Clouds, out September 13 on Favorite Gentlemen. The jangly guitar and Devine’s promise that Between the Concrete and the Clouds heavily features his collaborators The Goddamn Band, has me especially excited to hear the entire album. The album is available to pre-order and offers another song from the record for immediate download, and Devine is on tour this fall (coming to Boston October 20th to Royale as well)
I’m a little late to the party here, but I finally listened to all of Beyonce’s newest album 4 the other night and immediately succumbed to the one-two punch of Beyonce’s killer voice and her overwhelming personality. This is the sound of a pop star sounding confident, creative, and uninhibited, and it certainly seems like we’re watching an artist approaching her creative prime. She’s finishing a run of “intimate” shows in New York City this week playing 4 in its entirety, and I can only wish she was doing the same in Boston.
Finally, the solo debut from the Fiery Furnaces’ Eleanor Freidberger Last Summer is on sale today only at Amazon MP3 for $3.99, a bargain for an album full of summery tunes. Go get it while it’s a deal! (Friedberger opens up for Wild Flag at the Paradise in Boston on October 14).
(I also listened to Watch the Throne a bunch the last couple weeks, but plenty have already spilled enough words about that record).
Links: On “Up in the Dark” and “Biomusicology”
Tuesday and Wednesday night, I wrote a couple of posts for Some Songs Considered, my mostly dormant music blog. The first was on the New Pornographers’ “Up in the Dark” being one of Carl Newman’s best songs (particularly lyrically). The second was on Ted Leo’s demo recording of “Biomusicology,” one of my favorite Ted Leo / Pharmacists songs.
I also realized that during my long gap of not posting in this blog, I didn’t link to my stint writing about Ted Leo and the Pharmacists for One Week / One Band. The concept of the site is that a different writer spends a week writing about a band, and it was a lot of fun to over-immerse myself in the last few Ted Leo albums. You can read all of my posts here, and the list of contributors and bands covered is here. It’s an excellent site with a ton of excellent contributors, and I recommend just subscribing to the whole thing.
(Another music post is coming later today or tomorrow)
Three Thoughts about The Classical
Monday morning, Google Reader greeted me with the news that a bunch of really talented writers want to start a sports-themed website dubbed The Classical. The more I thought about it, the more I found myself considering the site from these three angles.
First, I’m extremely excited for the site. Its mission, via The Classical’s Kickstarter page (more on that in thought two), is to “be a running, wide-ranging conversation between us and our readers about baseball, basketball, soccer, football and fighting, and about things that aren’t sports, too. Our model in this regard is The Awl, a site for which many of us have written and which all of us love.” I’m on board with this vision, but mainly its the contributors involved that excites me. The list of sites in these writers’ bios could be a best-of-the-web right now (seriously, think of the sites with the most consistently brilliant writers, and its sure to feature one of these gentlemen), but the most important ones are the outlets that, on some level, already carry out this vision of continued dialogue and outside-the-box sportswriting. Sites like the hoops masterclass Free Darko, the quirky baseball blog Pitchers and Poets, and even Tom Scharpling’s The Best Show on WFMU radio show / podcast (just to name a few) show what happens when brilliant individuals take a little bit of freedom as an opportunity to create something unique and insightful. The thought of bringing these like-minded individuals together under a broader umbrella sounds like a must-read site to me (and, if I was more serious about writing and far more devoted and talented, a pipedream of a place to get a byline).
Second, The Classical came about not after being discovered in blogpot/wordpress obscurity or through a massively hyped press release. Instead, it came through a Kickstarter page (presumably through Twitter) explaining the need to raise $50,000 of capitol to get the site off the ground. It struck me as interesting at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. While the individuals involved are incredible at what they do, this doesn’t seem like the kind of site that would attract angel investors. If anything, getting sponsors before launch might undermine the artistic freedom (for lack of a better word) that this site needs. This site should have advertising once it’s up and running, and perhaps this will pay the bills for a couple of the contributors, but I imagine this will be a side-gig for most of the writers. In a way, funding the site’s launch through Kickstarter also builds its audience; by asking friends and fans to contribute, there’s a (literal) investment in the product. I know that after donating (a relatively small amount), I’m already following the site on Twitter and Facebook and keeping tabs on the mentions in my timeline. I’m even rooting for the site to hit its goal (which, as of writing this post, has already hit 20% of its goal within the first 36 hours, with almost a month and a half left). I’m actively rooting for this site, of which I haven’t read a single word, to succeed and continue to succeed. Granted, most of it comes from a rooting interest in a number of the contributors, but the Kickstarted drive only adds to that team feel.
Finally, someone on Twitter (apologies for forgetting who, but I imagine many have said this before/after) compared the site to Grantland, the ESPN-offshoot led by Bill Simmons. It’s mostly foolish to compare these two sites, as The Classical has a huge advantage in that it’s purely hypothetical at this point and doesn’t have any dud posts to use as evidence of its failure (not to mention the opportunity to learn from Grantland’s growing pains). Still, it’s a natural comparison, as at least on some level the sites share a similarly wide-angled approach to sports. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Grantland as a whole, especially since I’ve found myself less interested in Simmons’ in recent years. Four or five years ago, I would have anxiously refreshed my browser for a site curated by Simmons, particularly with the high-profile contributors he’s courted, but in recent years I’ve found myself less interested in Simmons’ columns. (As an aside – feel free to skip to the closed parenthesis – Simmons has become an easy target the last few years, primarily because his teams are more Evil Empire than Underdog, and his passion-and-pop-culture style of writing is the standard for many bloggers. I can attest to Simmons’ continued ability to put words together well, but I can’t comment on the frequency as I don’t check in with him as much as I did half a decade ago. I’m not a huge fan of ’90s nostalgia for reference sake, and I really don’t need to ever sit through another mailbag, but I know this suits him well.) For all the things that bug me about Grantland (including, but not limited to: the design-particularly the way that it’s very difficulty to read everything without subscribing to three separate feeds, and the site’s name), there is some excellent content: smart takes on professional wrestling from The Masked Man, Jonah Keri’s baseball analysis, and even some solid writing from Carles that doesn’t rely on Hipster Runoff’s usual tricks. The stuff I’ve liked most on Grantland is the kind of content I hope to see on The Classical – smart takes from smart people who chase down insight rather than page views. If nothing else, I hope the two sites push each other the way two top rivals demand the best out of their opponents. Even using those terms, “rivals,” “opponents,” doesn’t feel right, as good writing is good writing no matter where it’s published. There’s a place for both sites as long as they give reason to keep reading.
All of this is a lot to say about a site that doesn’t even exist yet. I hope that it becomes something worthy of many more blog posts (not by me, thankfully) for a long time to come. If nothing else, I’ll be rooting for it.
