J. ORLIN GRABBE BAG

A couple of good links from the Homepage of J. Orlin Grabbe.

Net music piracy 'does not harm record sales'

From New Scientist:

Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf monitored 680 albums, chosen from a range of musical genres, downloaded over 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. They used computer programs to automatically monitor downloads and compared this data to changes in album sales over the same period to see if a link could be established.

The most heavily downloaded songs showed no decrease in CD sales as a result of increasing downloads. In fact, albums that sold more than 600,000 copies during this period appeared to sell better when downloaded more heavily.

For these albums each increase of 150 downloads corresponded to another legitimate album sale. The study showed only a slight decline in sales as a result of online trading for the least popular music.

"From a statistical point of view, what this means is that there is no effect between downloading and sales," say Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf.

This is quite interesting. I've been reading that the music industry has been suffering from some other sale-depressing woes such as competition from low priced DVDs and consumers becoming bored with corporate crafted crap-pop and high gloss shit-hop; to discover that illegal downloads may very well increase a record's hype and therefore its sales could be one of the great ironies of our era.

Click here for more.

(Quick diversion--a quote from Frank Zappa's "Tinsel Town Rebellion" from 1981:

The Tinsel Town aficionados
Come to see and not to hear
But then again this system works
As perfect as a dream
It works for all of those
Record company pricks
Who come to skim the
Cream

Finally, it sounds like "this system" is not "as perfect as a dream." Ha, ha!)

50 MOST LOATHSOME NEW YORKERS

From the New York Press:

39
Eric Alterman
Pundit

WHAT LIBERAL DICKWAD? Milhouse is all grown up: He has a goatee, a PhD from Stanford and an online diary where he proclaims his love for Jackson Browne. Liberal bloggers are holding it up like the fucking Alamo, but his run-in with Dennis Miller last month left Alterman looking like he was about to get his head dunked in the toilet for the third time. Even if you agree with him about Ann Coulter and Alexander Cockburn, it's hard not to root against this smirking, center-left prick who likes his dinner dates rich and famous and his fois gras seared. "He constantly wants to remind you that he's Eric Alterman," one of his interns revealed in a rumor-confirming Village Voice hatchet-job, "[and] that he knows a lot of important people, and that you're a lowly intern." Dear future self-respecting Alterman interns: If this creepy Bruce Springsteen groupie ever cops an attitude, just take a breath, start laughing and print out some of his "Alter-Reviews" at random. If you're lucky, you'll hit a Jackson Browne box set.

And

17
James Lipton
Dean of the Actors Studio

IT'S NOT JUST that his sycophantic interviewing technique has transcended butt-kissing to become all-out analingus, or that he's sullied the stage where Pacino performed Mamet with paeans to Ben Affleck. It's not the fey cadence and maddening British affect. It's that Lipton has become so obsessed with full-penetration starfucking that he's allowed the Actors Studio to deteriorate into a fifth-rate factory whose graduates aren't prepared for a two-liner on Law & Order. In the days of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, the Actors Studio was considered more important than the Yale School of Drama; today it competes with continuing education classes at the Learning Annex. Memo to Lipton: Taking it from Jay Leno and Ethan Hawke isn't doing much for your students. And you look ridiculous.

And

7
Howard Stern
Disc Jockey

WE NEVER CARED for Howard's mooky blatherings, but we support him in his 11th-hour conversion to free-speech champion. Too bad the jackass waited so long to take a stand?a more chickenshit millionaire you'd be hard-pressed to find. He choked when he ran for governor, helping instead to elect the biggest tax-and-spend Republican in New York history (who gave us two of the biggest subway fare hikes in history). With his money and fan base, Stern could've taken on the criminals at the FCC a long time ago, but as always, the smut jock went ostrich, burying his face in a pair of fake tits while the Constitution got crumpled. Come to think of it, scratch the opening line. We hope Ashcroft locks him away for 10 to 20.

Given New York's traditional dominance of both popular and high-brow culture, this is a must-read, even for non New Yorkers. I must admit that reading this list gave me the same kind of catty glee that a room full of savage, evil queens must get when watching Joan Rivers (who made the list at #30) host the Oscars pre-show on ETV. It's nice to see how the other half lives...

Click here for the rest of the list.

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