Apple released a new version of iTunes. The most interesting new feature is its ability to share playlists: users can now upload copies of their playlists, and other people can view them. Rendevous permitted Mac users to view each other’s playlists; in the wrong (or overly critical) hands, it led to people crafting playlists to make themselves look cool.

Since my musical tastes are either A) a self-parody, B) frozen in the amber of my high school days (why have I managed to escape every other aspect of my adolescence, but still feel a frisson at the opening bars of “More Than a Feeling”?), or C) totally obscure, I have little hope of scoring social points from using the feature. Still, I uploaded a few playlists to see what it was like.

The first I noticed is that it’s very easy to do, but unlike the lists on Amazon, you can’t tell who put together a playlist: they remain anonymous. The second is that if you have songs that aren’t available through iTunes, they get deleted from the public version of your list (but not the one on your own machine). I’m not sure how the playlists will connect to the rest of iTunes- e.g., whether lists containing songs I’m searching for will appear with my search results. I’m sure it’ll become clear over time.

Oh well. John Stevens, the Wesley Crusher of this year’s American Idol, got voted off. Not that I’ve been following it, of course. I just happen to sometimes be in the room when it’s on (like in Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About— scroll down to item #15).

[via Blogcritics.org]

One of the best things I did when I was at Britannica was encourage one of our associate editors who was a passionate music fan to revise our coverage of rock and roll, and to get the most interesting people he could to write for it: Elvis Costello on Buddy Holly, for example. (I wrote a short, sad piece about Emerson Lake and Palmer, and how they had been brilliant at one time but later came to epitomize the creative bankruptcy of rock music in its maturity. Maybe it was too cruel: at least they never lent their songs to, say, Oldsmobile ads- or maybe they couldn’t find any takers. That would have been as weird at H. R. Giger (who did the Brain Salad Surgery cover) doing art for a Budweiser or Playtex ad [shudder].)

One thing we struggled with was the fact that any rabid reader would take the articles, see who was written about and not, and criticize us from leaving out- just about anyone. How could we devote more words to Eric Clapton than James Brown? How could we have an article on the Pet Shop Boys, but not on the Pixies? Eventually, we decided that for this subject, the controversy was unavoidable, and indeed was part of what would make it valuable. (I can’t tell you how radical the notion of generating conversation rather than awed silence was at EB. Our whole purpose was to be the last word, to end discussion rather than stimulate it. In some ways, I think that captures in a nutshell the whole problem that encyclopedias have had in the digital age- that, and pricing.)

I’m reminded of all this because the recent issue of Rolling Stone top 50 list written by musicians: Bono on Elvis, Eddie Vedder on The Who, David Grohl on Led Zeppelin— and Elvis Costello on The Beatles. (Costello, by the way, is a skilled and insightful writer, and takes editorial suggestions well. He’s all pro.) Some of them are better than others- did Britney Spears really write the Madonna article?- but the best ones are terrific. And of course, it’s a list that you can argue with endlessly. Patti Smith, but no Radiohead? Come on. And can anyone really argue that Prince (#28) is more important than Johnny Cash (#31), David Bowie (#29), or Peter Gabriel (not even in the list)? Go read it and find your own self-evident gaping holes, lapses in judgements, and unforgiveable omissions.

[To the tune of The Who, “Long Live Rock,” from the album The Ultimate Collection (Disc 2).]