[NewMusic] Book Review - Alex Ross = Gannicide

[George Cremaschi]

> I think some of the NPR demographics are salvageable

Well...maybe, maybe not.
The *real* NPR demographic might be represented by
the woman who called in to yesterday's Forum show about
the imminent Hollywood writer's strike: she worried that she
and her husband wouldn't know what to do with themselves
if their TV schedule were disrupted. And elsewhere in the program,
there were statistics cited that Americans now watch 8 hours of TV per
day. Does anyone know if this is true?


> But this mechanism is part of the mindset of the programmers, not the listeners. 

Or maybe the programmers just give the listeners what they want, all
of them, programmers and listeners, being folks cut from a similar cloth.
And what they want is to *feel* like they're culturally informed - not that
they're going to do anything different with their 'leisure' time. They might
hear a review by Kevin Whitehead about a Steve Lacy or Ben Goldberg
recording, which is about as far out as you're going to get on NPR, but most 
likely what they have in their iPod is White Stripes and Norah Jones. 
Take "A Prairie Home Companion" - they feature lots and lots of music,
nearly all of it Americana of some sort, and 100% of it completely safe, 
sentimental and as derivative and inoffensive as possible. These people don't 
want Roscoe Holcomb, or even Billie Holiday - they prefer Bela Fleck and Madeleine 
Peyroux. That's your NPR demographic.



> I think you're right on the money about "academic refugees" who make the 
> association between academia and serialist hegemony. 

I still remember John Adams' whiny, pathetic, and ultimately insecure and defensive
rant (on NPR, of course) about how he rebelled against the 'serialist hegemony' of
his time - and while he was at it, he took a few potshots at the European avant garde
of the 60's. Would that he could ever be even mentioned seriously in the same breath 
as Nono and Ligeti...

-George
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