The Blue View by Boxjam

I like wit, perhaps to a fault.

Everyone knows that ninety percent of everything is garbage. So I should have known, when I offered It's not Country. It's Johnny Cash, as a way of saving this great man's canon, that my friend would call me on it. I did it, of course, because Country has come to be sluggish bland pop with a twang, nothing at all like what Cash does. Continue Reading

The Blue View: Dial-A-Webcomic

Before there were modems, and back when the function of the pound key was still a mystery to us, we started a simple but enticing service on a home phone line with a home phone machine that would inform and often eclipse the rest of our band’s output…Almost every track on this compilation started its life on Dial-A-Song. The biggest challenge to They Might Be Giants as a musical project was clear to us before we even started: This thing needed a lot of songs. …It helped us become less precious and a lot more prolific…"

-Liner Notes, Dial-A-Song (Twenty Years of They Might Be Giants), They Might Be Giants

I love that last line.

(I also love the way they use the word ‘inform’ because they sort of let slip that they know how to talk like rock critics, and perhaps rock critics inform TMBG’s own writing.) But the line that really grabs me — as a creator of ephemeral entertainment — is that part about the Dial-A-Song making their songs less precious. That’s it, exactly. If you’re going to have a thousand babies, you can’t treat each one like a crown jewel. Raise it right, give it what it needs, but don’t dwell on it, and don’t try to control the parts you can’t control.

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