Facelift 2010

We thought after 5 years, it was about time to update the look of the blog to something slightly more modern. (Thanks, Ally Jane!) I believe that means that Ed Park's blog is quite possibly the last blog in the entire world wide web using the "dots" template. Truly the end of an era...
We will be adding some features to the column to the right. Most notably, the answers to our two most frequently asked questions: "How/when can I submit a proposal to write a 33 1/3?" and "Where can I find a list of all the 33 1/3s in print?" We don't have it up just yet, but soon we will be able to point you somewhere other than wikipedia. Let us know if there's any other information (within reason) that you would like to see on here.

It's still a work in progress, and we're looking forward to doing a little more with the blog over the coming weeks and months, including broadening the scope a little bit to include more of our other music and sound art books, which are equally fantastic, even if they don't come in a uniform small trim size with cute multicolored spines.

In the meantime, here are some random music-related links (In other words, please allow me to clean out my bookmarks):

• Van Dyke Parks live at Primavera Sound via WFMU.
• NY Magazine asks which songs have benefited from their censored radio edits. (A sidenote: to me, the definitive versions of all John Hughes movies and all of the Police Academy franchise are the TBS censored-for-TV versions.)
• HTML Giant asks: what are the best or most inspirational music books? There are lots of 33 1/3s in the comments field, and quite a few of our sound art titles as well (In the Blink of an Ear, Noise/Music, "anything by Brandon Labelle," and so on). Continuum books aside, it's a great list of recommended reading.
• The Vice Magazine "Anti-Music Issue" contains some very solid writing within. The Sam McPheeters piece on the closed frontier of rock music is arguably the best of that sort of article I've read in recent days.
• Did I ever put a link up to this WFMU thing about Sonny and the Sunsets? I really love that album.
• Dave Tompkins' How To Wreck a Nice Beach has a downright entertaining blog. One of these days I look forward to reading the book.
• Early intimations of Wyclef Jean's presidential aspirations.
• Ten Musicians Who Would Probably Write Good Books, via Bookslut.
  

And now for something completely different. Here are two very cool pieces to read about book jacket designers and authors--or actually, one author, two designers:

1. John Gall discusses the design process for the cover of Tom McCarthy's debut novel Remainder.
2. Peter Mendelsund and Tom McCarthy discuss the design process for his new novel, C (which, incidentally, is my horse in the office Booker Prize sweepstakes.)