March 29ths

3/29/1999

Joni Mitchell: I'm a painter first, and unlike a musician, is driven to innovate. You want to discover.

Idea: Instead of sampling music from the past, sample it from the present and in 20 years time it will sound retro. But how would you know what will be culturally relevant?

[3/29/2025: I think it's true. This is the reason that musicians are always creating music as a visual art,  which is different from art being a kind of music. But even in 1999, there were decades of innovation in music. Perhaps at that time she was grappling with sampling and the advent of Napster and free downloads].

3/29/2002

More 1966 research: Life magazine in April 1966, $0.35.; More fascination with UFOs, Lisa Lotte, clothing designer, "Winston tastes good...", first docking in space.

5/20/66: "The Big Snoop"—Electronic snooping, fascination with espionage "Space Age" advertising copy/slogans, article on the "Free University", "teach-ins", "new madness at the discotheque", exams to see who gets drafted ("score high and die"), article: "electric guitars bring a rash of teenage combos", issue on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf shatters every rule of Hollywood propriety— a test of how far a film can go.", 8-track advent—American Motors will offer 8-track continuous loop tape. cartridge unit as optional equipment on 1967 models, Headphones gaining popularity, Revolver top LP, pop music is considered "hot", jazz is "cool", Jazz release: Tony Scott, clarinetist (Music for Zen Meditation) Jazz new releases: John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard, Ahmad Jamal Heat Wave, Marianne Faithfull. 

[3/29/2026: 24 and 60 years later]:

 

 

3/29/2000

 

Lee Murdock’s maritime music creates the map for his life, i.e., “I’m compelled to do only this in life.” 

 

3/29/2023 

 

One of the biggest cliches is that three-chord rock is somehow better than more complex music. It means they believe music should be simple and easy to digest, as a polemic against prog rock, which had “four or more chords”. This is way too simplistic: even if you’re using three chords, perhaps its focus is not harmonic, and the complexity comes from the rhythm or the melody–or there’s something that could be rigorous and difficult about its performance. If you try to play that music, it’s only three chords of course, but there are other things in it that are complex. Consequently, we find ourselves using the “three-chord” polemic too easily, and it starts to become incorrect information.