Sunday, May 21, 12:20 p.m.

New Riders of the Purple Sage: “Lonesome L.A. Cowboy”

I was sitting on the floor of an airport—there were no chairs available—and listening to this song on Spotify on my way to Atlanta. They were a band that included some members of the Grateful Dead, and they seemed to have made entire records just about doing drugs and writing songs. This is one of these songs where it’s by no means famous but it has the trappings of something that seems very familiar. It seems like a song that would be used on the TV show “Fargo,” and you’d be like, “Wow, what a great decision by the music director.”

I probably came across this song on Spotify’s Discovery Weekly playlist, which I find surprisingly good. Generally, it now feels like music finds me, and I don’t have to search for it at all. Trying to find what was good was always a big part of being into music in the ’90s, but now it’s just pushed at you all the time. There was a period where if music was pushed at you it meant that it was being marketed towards you, but that’s not really how it is now. Instead, it seems like the music that’s being pushed at you is somebody who is trying to teach you what their taste is. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.

In this niche world, the idea is not to find songs that connect different demographics, but to really drill down into specific demographics and impress upon them that you understand who they are. People just don’t like the idea that they’re part of a shared culture anymore. They really want to be perceived as existing in a special silo that is only for them and people exactly like them.

There are different kinds of personalities who write about music. A certain personality spends their whole life listening to records and saying whether they’re good or bad. That’s the only thing that they really want to do, and it’s the only part of the job they really like. For other people, though, that’s just a phase. I feel like I’m in the second category. It’s not that songs are less important to me now, I just don’t think about them in the same way. I used to think about everything in terms of bad and good—even if I was having an anecdotal conversation about an album with someone, it was almost like I was talking a record review. Now that’s just not how it is.

Being a critic was the center of the early part of my career, but I’m not interested in tastemaking at all now. I’m always baffled by people who see that as the principal part of their job. It’s the weirdest compulsion to me. I don’t like the sense now that, in order to get any attention from your opinion, you have to be incredibly bombastic in one direction or the other. That seems like a construction to me, like people are ginning up feelings. I just like to intellectually pursue the things that naturally fascinate me. I don’t have to look at something as necessary to have an opinion on it, I’m not that kind of person anymore. When I’m writing about art I’m writing about why it’s interesting to me. Sometimes I will have an element that involves conventional criticism, but even the negative things I’m pointing out are still part of what makes it interesting.





Monday, May 22, 9:02 a.m.

The Ramsey Lewis Trio: “The ‘In’ Crowd”

I was in a drugstore that had just opened, trying to buy a new charger for my iPhone. I didn’t really want to ask where it was, so I was just walking up and down the aisles as this song played in the store, idiotically smiling as I looked for a product. I’ve always loved the live version of this song, the band just seems to be like, “We know we are killing this song, we are awesome, and it’s so fun to be playing with musicians who are this good.” It makes you feel so good when you hear it.

Because of my age, I unconsciously miss the idea of music being experienced collectively and, as a consequence, I like hearing it more in public spaces. Listening to this song was not some choice I made, where I looked at my phone and picked it out. It was given to me. I know we’re supposed to be so happy that we have control over the culture we consume, but maybe I liked it better the other way. In a way, it must remind me of how music was when I was first introduced to it: You were listening to a song on the radio, but a part of you knew that thousands of other people were having the same exact experience. So when I’m in this Walgreens listening to this jazz trio, perhaps I understand that everyone in the store is having a different version of this same experience. That somehow suggests I’m longing for the past, though it doesn’t feel like I am. Maybe that’s just inside of me and I don’t even know it.





Tuesday, May 23, 9:15 p.m.

I was being driven to another airport, and the driver was playing it. It was the first time I’d heard the song—there’s no aspect of my life now that collides with the work of Selena Gomez, unless I’m in a car and somebody else is playing it. I’ve never felt any pressure to make sure I’m keeping up with everything in popular culture, and I’m not going to start now. Should I make sure I always know the new Selena Gomez song? I don’t know. It’s weird because, if it appeals to me, that either means this is a universally incredible artistic achievement that crosses all boundaries, or that it didn’t really work, because some guy who’s not supposed to like it at all finds something in it that’s pretty good, and the people who are really supposed to care are maybe like, “Well, this is not what I want.”