May 24ths

5/24/1949

(Kerouac Journal)

"...Someday perhaps I myself will look back on those days (before selling [On the Road]) with the same kind of wonder..."

5/24/2000

The proliferation of wireless internet is a great opportunity for marketing music: They can listen to it, but not necessarily download it.

Fascinating documentary on PBS,”Sahara”. Great soundtrack of Arabic music. It reminds me how much I love this music.

[5/24/2025: PBS has been hugely valuable to me, and probably to most everyone living. Of course, we are flooded with DIY content, but not how PBS has produced it historically].

On the Cluetrain Manifesto: 

I’m generally against the idea of manifestos because 99% of the time they’re too “culty”. This one has some interesting and useful things to say:

• Don’t wait for someone to show you how; [5/24/2025: This morning I riffed on how skills are being redefined by new technologies and we don’t necessarily need for people to show us how–we just teach ourselves. This started with the advent of the internet 1999-2000]
• The DIY rock ‘n’ roll subculture is now adopted by the net; [5/2025: And has influenced politics as a form of “punk movement”]
• Let the soul shine through, even in the corporate world; [5/2025: Has not worked as imagined]
• Never go to places that “silence” you. [Rock ‘n’ roll was about that, and now about everything] 

5/24/2004            
        
Watched [PBS] documentary about archaeologists at the Oriental Institute. Interesting how they record surface details in the wall etchings: First they take a close up photo, then they trace over the photo but it won’t show everything. Then it is re-photographed and developed, then a blueprint is made which is again verified with the actual surface, and each archaeologist adds comments, and the work is published in an archive. (I like this step-by-step iterative process).

[5/24/2025: This is exactly what happens with any creative process from start to finish. Jasper Johns:  "Take an object–do something to it–do something else to it–take a canvas–put a mark on it–put another mark on it.”]

*** 

(Neil Peart, Roadshow -- [On the Road]

“After a week of playing the 3 and 1/2 hour show every night, we have been obliged to take a day off, because the area adjacent to our rehearsal hall was hosting a concert with a pop country entertainment, Alan Jackson. This was an amusing coincidence to my editor, Paul, because, at his urging, a little brand of Jackson had recently been cut from traveling music. In a forum like that book, where I was writing about music I loved, it was hard to resist talking about music I didn’t love, but Paul had inspired me to rise above that, to celebrate excellence, rather than limiting its lack. I was more drawn to what English writer Kingsley Amis said, “if you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing,” but I could see Paul’s point, and acquiesced reluctantly. For their part, the arena management was concerned that Jackson’s audience might be disturbed by our racket next door, but perhaps we could have drowned out his cheesy cover of Summertime Blues with our cheesy cover of it.”

5/24/2005

Prediction: Media will be driven by background metadata and “choice” will be regulated by artificial intelligence and neural networks residing on the internet, and ultimately influencing the “choices” that we make. It will appear that we are making choices by sheer volition, when in fact it will be driven by metadata. 

[20 years later a pretty accurate prediction]

5/24/2011

Bob Dylan’s 70th Birthday.