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Star Wars The Product
The Acolyte poster via StarWars.com Buddy cop movie, The Mandolorian and Grogu, hit theaters this weekend. The film is expected to gross about $102 million dollars by the end of the Memorial Day holiday. Nothing to sneeze at. It’s probably fair to say those box office receipts, more than any other factor, drive the direction of the Star Wars series of films and television shows.
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Quick Hit
Clive Thompson has the story of how Phil Collins accidentally invented gated reverb, the drum sound of the 80s, by leaving a talkback microphone on.
Normally, the reverb on a drum hit is intense at first, then slowly fades away. But in the Phil Collins drum session, the accidental reverb behaved differently. It had a nice, loud, booming reverb for a moment — then the reverb abruptly stopped. This created a very cool new type of drum sound. It was boomy and huge, but wasn’t messy, because the reverb for each drum hit ended before the next drum hit.
Gated reverb was used to startling effect on “In The Air Tonight” (watch a first-time reaction video to the song if you haven’t already). Prince jumped all over the drum sound, and it was also used by Kate Bush, John Cougar Mellencamp, Hall and Oates, and Duran Duran.
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Don’t Panic
Despite seemingly being designed by a corporation to be mostly inoffensive, sometimes to the point of banality or worse, Coldplay launched into the world consciousness hot, with “Don’t Panic,” the song in the pole position on their debut album Parachutes. Though I personally feel more generosity towards Chris Martin and crew, some believe “Don’t Panic” is the band’s only good song.1 Whatever the case, the track was certainly a winning way for Coldplay to announce their arrival on the scene.
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Pocket Computers
John Burn-Murdoch writes for Financial Times about the single unifying theory around the decline in fertility.
The number of births fell first and fastest in the areas that received high-speed mobile connectivity earliest. The authors argue that smartphones have transformed how young people spend time with one another, sharply reducing in-person socialising and leading to the collapse in their fertility.
The reason for population decline is hiding in your pocket.
This isn’t at all suprising to me. Marital experience has taught me that it’s hard for a spouse to be as interesting an endless supply of short-form videos.
Fediverse reactions
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Heart Still Beats
I’ve been on a post-punk x new wave kind of kick the last several days, after I learned Black Marble (who I blogged about last year) are going to be playing nearby in September. The algorithm overlords recommended Castlebeat to me after the end of a listening sesh of Black Marble’s Bigger Than Life. I hadn’t listened to Castlebeat in a few years, but remembered them from this fan video using footage from the best movie ever to take place in a Target big box store: Career Opportunities.
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New Cans
I recently hit my 20th anniversary (!!!) at the company where I work. Instead of a gold watch, I got what amounts to about $400 in a foreign currency they call “Spotlight points.” Thought I didn’t pull the trigger right away, my immediate thought was to blow the lot on a pair of Sennheiser HD 650 headphones. I’ve been researching these cans for some time now, but even at a consistent 38% off, a price point of nearly 400 bones meant I wouldn’t just impulse buy these things.
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Tapes Of Yesteryear
Niko Stratis writes about the comfort of physical media and older technology.
read more…Let us suffer no worries or troubles, we have salvation in our walkmen and their analogue batteries. Never mind the truth of these eras, the 90s and the days before and after are years often cast in imperfect light as moments in time when we were a proper society. That’s not true for all, and you only need to engage with the culture of the time with eyes open enough to see the hardships and downfalls for many. But still, I understand the desire to glamorize it, and hold the past as indelible proof of a better time.
Pockets have gotten smaller, I’ve noticed, and I imagine that’s because of the shrinking of technology. We don’t have to carry Walkmans and CD Walkmans anymore, and so the pocket industrial complex has responded in kind. Who needs all this space when we no longer own anything we’re able to hold.
