I should have been thrilled that a rambling essay on a would-be Elvis Costello memoir was allotted 3 columns of space in a major daily newspaper. It was the dearth of such speculative rock essays that led people us to launch blogs like Rock Town Hall, that led people like us to launch fanzines long before the advent of the Internet. Suddenly, as I awaited a dinner centered around fresh vegetables from my wife’s garden, I was finding myself bugged by old-school notions of newspapers publishing all the news fit to print.
I finally spotted the Slate reference in the author’s byline. That made sense. In a blog context this piece made perfect sense. I would have been appropriately pleased to have read this piece on a blog like Slate. It’s the kind of thing any number of Townspeople have published in these Hallowed Halls. Why did reading a blog essay in a newspaper aggravate me when I look forward to reading similar pieces here and elsewhere on the Web?
Mod, no doubt context matters. I saw this article yesterday as a link (to the actual Slate article and not the phony-baloney lame-ass Philly Inquirer repackaging) on the Dylan news site Expecting Rain. My initial disappointment over the fact that EC has not actually written a memoir led to seconds of pleasure when I remembered that I bought and still have all or most of the Rhino reissues.