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Cities in the early days of the United States were mostly quiet at night. People who did leave the comfort of their own homes at night could often be found walking into puddles, tripping over uneven terrain, or colliding into posts because virtually no street lighting existed.With the advent of gas lighting, culture transformed in fascinating ways. Here are 12 interesting facts about urban nightlife, which show how times have greatly changed and, remarkably, how some things have remained the same.
The following extract is excerpted from Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City. The chapter, titled ‘Learning to Leisure’ traces the leisure lives of a group of young men from Langview, a deindustrialised working-class community in Glasgow.
Wrapping up 2014, the EU year of Workplace Reinvention, once again brings worklife balance (WLB) policies into focus. These policies, including parental leave, rights to reduced hours, and flexible work hours, are now part of European law and national laws inside and outside of Europe. For example, Japan has similar WLB policies in place.
The existence of these rights does not always, however, reflect the capabilities of individuals to claim them without risk to their careers, and even job loss, particularly when so many companies are downsizing. There is a gap between policies and practices, and, more broadly, a widening gap between aspirations for worklife balance—for more time for family, friends, and leisure activities—and the pressures for greater productivity and increased work intensity, alongside the growing numbers of insecure and precarious jobs. For men, this gap has become more tangible due to changing norms and expectations for them to be more involved fathers and the persistence of gendered norms around caring and earning in the workplace. Research, including the European Social Survey 2010, reveals that when looking for a job the overwhelming majority of men (as well as women), place a high priority on reconciling employment with family. They also show that majority of working fathers would choose to work less hours even if it meant a corresponding loss in hourly pay. Still, between 40-60% of them in European countries are working more than 40 hours a week (European Social Survey in 2010).
Firm and work organizational culture has become the central focus in worklife balance research, with a particular focus on increasing flexibility (flexi-times and flex workplaces) and telecommuting. Flexible working times, once a perk for the valuable worker, have been embraced by many firms as the hallmark of new management and work organization. It is a cornerstone in EU policy and discourse on WLB. In June, the UK granted all employees the right to request flex time. Flexibility is presented as the win-win situation for achieving WLB, allowing for changes over the life course as well as individual preferences.
Family on Beach, Somerset by Into Somerset. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr
But does flexibility actually increase one’s scope of alternatives and choice in worklife balance? This depends on the job/sector, the skill and education of the worker; gender matters, as do national statutory provisions and the practices at firms. Consider the following example. Flexibility in working times and especially the possibility to reduce hours has enabled many mothers to combine employment with family, but there are career penalties since part-time jobs tend to be considered “dead end jobs”. Can one adjust working times over the life course? The European Survey on Working Times (firm level data) show that only 18% of firms offer full reversibility (the possibility to move from part-time to full-time and from full-time to part-time).
Within the current debates on worklife balance and flexibility we see two cross-currents. On the one side, there are switch-off policy initiatives in France, which seek to set limits on the number of hours that an employee can be “linked-in” (accessing work systems and emails). In Germany, the Westphalia region is considering banning office communications in the evenings and during vacations, a practice that has already been established by VW, BMW, and Deutsche Telekom, which banned after-hours calls and emails to workers. On the other side, the solution to WLB is cast in terms of total flexibility with employees setting the pace of work and schedules and telecommuting rather than traveling to work. Work becomes an activity, not a place; rewards are based on performance and results, not on the hours you put in at the workplace. In this vision of future work, the workplace would become superfluous and employment conditional on evaluated performance. Is this a workers’ utopia that would enhance the capabilities of individuals for a better WLB and quality of life? Or is this a scenario with high levels of uncertainty, longer working days, the removal of boundaries between working life and other spheres of life, and lastly, the loss of community among workers who interact at the workplace?
Headline image: Seconds Out by dogwelder. CC BY-NC 2.0 via flickr
If you become wealthier tomorrow, say through winning the lottery, would you spend more or less working than you do now? Standard economic models predict you would work less. In fact a substantial segment of American society has indeed become wealthier over the last 40 years — married men. The reason is that wives’ earnings now make a much larger contribution to household income than in the past. However married men do not work less now on average than they did in the 1970s. This is intriguing because it suggests there is something important missing in economic explanations of the rise in labor supply of married women over the same period.
One possibility is that what we are seeing here are the aggregate effects of bargaining between spouses. This is plausible because there was a substantial narrowing of the male-female wage gap over the period. The ratio of women’s to men’s average wages; starting from about 0.57 in the 1964-1974 period, rose rapidly to 0.78 in the early 1990s. Even if we smooth out the fluctuations, the graph shows an average ratio of 0.75 in the 1990s, compared to 0.57 in the early 1970s.
The closing of the male-female wage gap suggests a relative improvement in the economic status of non-married women compared to non-married men. According to bargaining models of the household, we should expect to see a better deal for wives—control over a larger share of household resources – because they don’t need marriage as much as they used to. We should see that the share of household wealth spent on the wife increases relative to that spent on the husband.
Bargaining models of household behavior are rare in macroeconomics. Instead, the standard assumption is that households behave as if they were maximizing a fixed utility function. Known as the “unitary” model of the household, a basic implication is that when a good A becomes more expensive relative to another good B, the ratio of A to B that the household consumes should decline. When women’s wages rose relative to men’s, that increased the cost of wives’ leisure relative to that of husbands. The ratio of husbands’ leisure time to that of wives should therefore have increased.
In the bargaining model there is an additional potential effect on leisure: as the share of wealth the household spends on the wife increases, it should spend more on the wife’s leisure. Therefore the ratio of husband’s to wife’s leisure could increase or decrease, depending on the responsiveness of the bargaining solution to changes in the relative status of the spouses as singles.
To measure the change in relative leisure requires data on unpaid work, such as time spent on grocery shopping and chores around the house. The American Time-Use Survey is an important source for 2003 and later, and there also exist precursor surveys that can be used for some earlier years. The main limitation of these surveys is that they sample individuals, not couples, so one cannot measure the leisure ratio of individual households. Instead measurement consists of the average leisure of wives compared to that of husbands. The paper also shows the results of controlling for age and education. Overall, the message is clear; the relative leisure of married couples was essentially the same in 2003 as in 1975, about 1.05.
One can explain the stability of the leisure ratio through bargaining; the wife gets a higher share of the marriage’s resources when her wage increases, and this offsets the rise in the price of her leisure. This raises a set of essentially quantitative questions: Suppose that marital bargaining really did determine labor supply how big are the mistakes one would make in predicting labor supply by using a model without bargaining? To provide answers, I design a mathematical model of marriage and bargaining to resemble as closely as possible the ‘representative agent’ of canonical macro models. I use the model to measure the impact on labor supply of the closing of the gender wage gap, as well as other shocks, such as improvements to home -production technology.
People in the model use their share of household’s resources to buy themselves leisure and private consumption. They also allocate time to unpaid labor at home to produce a public consumption good that both spouses can enjoy together. We can therefore calibrate the model to exactly match the average time-allocation patterns observed in American time-use data. The calibrated model can then be used to compare the effects of the economic shocks in the bargaining and unitary models.
The results show that the rising of women’s wages can generate simultaneously the observed increase in married women’s paid work and the relative stability of that of the husbands. Bargaining is critical however; the unitary model, if calibrated to match the 1970s generates far too much of an increase in the wife’s paid labor, and far too large a decline in that of the men; in both cases, the prediction error is on the order of 2-3 weekly hours, about 10% of per-capita labor supply. In terms of aggregate labor, the error is much smaller because these sex-specific errors largely offset each other.
The bottom line therefore is that if, as is often the case, the research question does not require us to distinguish between the labor of different household or spouse types, then it may be reasonable to ignore bargaining between spouses. However if we need to understand the allocation of time across men and women, then models with bargaining have a lot to contribute.
John Knowles is a professor of economics at the University of Southampton. He was born in the UK and schooled in Canada, Spain and the Bahamas. After completing his PhD at the University of Rochester (NY, USA) in 1998, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and returned to the UK in 2008. His current research focuses on using mathematical models to analyze trends in marriage and unmarried birth rates in the US and Europe. He is the author of the paper ‘Why are Married Men Working So Much? An Aggregate Analysis of Intra-Household Bargaining and Labour Supply’, published in The Review of Economics Studies.
The Review of Economic Studies aims to encourage research in theoretical and applied economics, especially by young economists. It is widely recognised as one of the core top-five economics journals, with a reputation for publishing path-breaking papers, and is essential reading for economists.
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Subscribe to only business and economics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS. Image credit: Illustration by Mike Irtl. Do not reproduce without permission.
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BREAKING: The first videos from today’s explosion in Oslo
The UN has officially declared a state of famine in Somalia, 10 million affected by drought
What is the heat index, exactly? It was developed in 1978 by George Winterling and was originally called “humiture.”
This man is the world’s foremost gnome collector
COLOR pictures of WWII London
How the [...]
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I was writing a short introduction about how summer has finally come to New York, and how lovely it’s been, but I went to a meeting and by the time I came back to this post, it was raining. At least I have my links.
Have you heard the Word…for Word? Oxford University Press is proud to partner with the Bryant Park Reading Room in support of the Word for Word Book Club. The series kicks off today, with six more Clubs scheduled throughout the summer. Be sure to stop by the Reading Room early for a FREE* copy of the book club selections.
The Bryant Park Blog posed to following questions to resident OUP Law Editor and acclaimed novelist Matthew Gallaway, author of The Metropolis Case, who will lead today’s Word for Word Book Club, along with Seth Colter Walls. This first discussion of the season will focus on The Pale King, the posthumously published novel by David Foster Wallace.
You can meet Matthew Gallaway today, May 24th, at 12:30pm in beautiful Bryant Park. The outdoor Reading Room is just off 42nd St, between 5th and 6th Avenues in New York City. In the event of rain, discussions will relocate to the The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, 20 West 44th Street (between 5th & 6th Avenues).
Where do you do your best writing? In airports.
Did you have an “a-ha!” moment that made you want to be a writer? When I read Against The Grain, by JK Huysmans.
Which author do you wish had been your 7th grade English teacher? Oscar Wilde.
What is your secret talent? I’m very good at growing ferns.
What is your favorite book?In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust.
Who reads your first draft? My partner Stephen.
Do you read your books after they’ve been published? No.
What book are you currently reading?All Aunt Hagar’s Children, by Edward P. Jones
What word or punctuation mark are you most guilty of overusing? The em-dash.
If you weren’t a writer, what would you be? A gardener.
For more information on Matthew and his new book, check out this episode of The Oxford Comment podcast.
*Yes, by “free” we mean free. Actually, truly, really free. Register to reserve your complimentary copy, or take your chances and get there early; books are available on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Word for Word Book Club
Tuesdays , 12:30pm – 1:45pm
May 24, June 14, June 28, July 12, July 26, August 9, August 23
Reading Room
Perhaps you haven’t heard, but the world will end tomorrow. That is, according to Harold Camping and the “Family Radio” network, who have been warning us that the rapture will take place at 6 p.m. on May 21st. (I am still unsure…is this for Eastern Daylight Time? Or will it just begin in New Zealand and sweep west?)
I wouldn’t want you all to just be sitting around, bored and waiting, so I’ve come up with a few things you can do in the meantime.
Google ‘rapture’ and watch the realtime results counter. (Is there a rapture countdown widget? I haven’t been able to find one.)
Play World of Warcraft. Go ahead. Here’s why your gaming skills will help you survive.
Try to figure out what the heck Blondie’s singing about in “Rapture.”
Read New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg shares 5 reasons the world can’t end. Yet.
Summer heralds many important things: 3D movies, involuntary camping trips, and sidewalk distribution of ice cream samples in tiny disposable cups. But the greatest tradition of all is, of course, book club (or your local library’s summer reading program). If, like me, you’re the weakest link in your coterie, you’re probably looking to contribute more than, “The ending was awesome,” or “Favorite character. Ok…go!”
This summer will be different. We’re going to trick our bookclubs into thinking we’re a literary geniuses. Let’s begin with a few key concepts from John Sutherland’s How Literature Works, applied to the book that seems to be on everyone’s reading list.
How to Read Tina Fey’s Bossypants (like a literary critic)
1.) Irony Saying one thing and meaning another. Typically accompanied by the four ‘s’s: sarcasm, satire, subversion and skepticism.
Fey makes excellent use of irony in the chapter “Dear Internet,” in which she responds to message board bullies:
From tmz.com
Posted by Kevin 214 on 11/9/08, 11:38 a.m.
“Tina Fey CHEATED!!!!!! Anyone who has ever seen an old picture of her can see she has had 100% plastic surgery. Her whole face is different. She was ugly then and she is ugly now. She only wished she could ever be as beaufiul as Sarah Palin.”
Dear Kevin 214,
What can I say? You have an amazing eye. I guess I got caught up in the whole Hollywood thing. I thought I could change a hundred percent of my facial features and as long as I stayed ugly, no one would notice. How foolish I was.
Keep on helpin’ me “keep it real,”
TA
And on page 161:
I have thus far refused to get any Botox or plastic surgery. (Although I do wear a clear elastic chin strap that I hook around my ears and pin under my day wig.)
2.) Imagery What one sees while reading or what Wordsworth called “the mind’s eye.” Or simply put: the pictures in your head.
From the chapter “Secrets of Mommy’s Beauty”:
By nineteen, I had found my look. Oversize T-shirts, bike shorts, and wrestling shoes. To prevent the silhouette from being too baggy, I would cinch it at the waist with my fanny pack. I was pretty sure I would wear this look forever.
In literature imagery is not always visual; one can “taste” or “smell” with the mind. See page 247:
If there’s on thing my husband’s hometown has that St. Barts does not, it’s the water. “Legally potable” doesn’t quite capture it. Straight from the tap it smells like…How can I describe it? – if you boiled ten thousand eggs in a prostitute’s bathwater.
3.) Allusion When literature connects with other works, enlarging (and complicating) the perspective. Very common in titles (for example, James Joyce’s Portr
This expression and its variations are everywhere, nowhere more so than on Twitter, the richest source of jokes and un-self-conscious language use we have at the moment. For the month of April, I collected the many mutations of this idiom to look for patterns among the proverbs. Thousands of lemon-y tweets prove this isn’t just a cliché or a snowclone: lemon-ology consists of clichés within clichés, snowclones within snowclones—and every once in awhile, a burst of originality. Here’s a look at the lemon landscape.
First, some lemon history. In Fred Shapiro’s wonderful Yale Book of Quotations, he spots the first example of “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade” on Oct. 4, 1972 in the Dallas Morning News. But he finds this line in 1917: “If life hands you a lemon adjust your rose colored glasses and start to selling pink lemonade.” Sure enough, the Oxford English Dictionary shows handing someone a lemon has meant “to pass off a sub-standard article as good; to swindle (a person), to do (someone) down” since at least 1906.
Violent variations go far beyond the painful properties of lemon juice. Various tweeters say you should take the lemons and “throw them at hobos,” “hurl them at a random CEO,” “freeze them so they can knock people unconscious,” “open a lemon aide stand and use the proceeds to buy an assault rifle,” “put them in a tube sock and beat a hipster over the head with it,” “whip them at those dumb jerk kids who set up lemonade stands to show them how you feel about their price gouging,” or “shove them down the bastard’s throat and laugh maniacally as he chokes to death.” I kinda like the bluntness h
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This is a video of little boys with incredible dance skills [YouTube]
Last Friday, I challenged all of our readers to write a sestina. I expect many of you discovered just how difficult this form can be. I’d like to highlight the poem I received from Paul Gallear of Wolverhampton, UK. Paul is one of the voices behind the Artsy Does It blog and you can follow him @paulgallear.
I’m a dirty-shirted mess.
My eyes are heavy and thick
With fatigue; I’ve not slept for days
And I’ve never been so tired.
All I need to do is sleep,
Long and deep and numb.
My thoughts are thoughtless, numb;
My skin, greasy; my hair, a mess.
Things change without sleep:
I’ve become listless, thick
And stupid – I’m idiot tired,
Living in a stunned daze.
Time moves from hours to days
And perspective becomes numb.
Beyond tired.
My mind begins to mess
Around. There’s a kind of thick
Which only comes from lack of sleep.
I daydream of sleep.
Waiting – the hours the days
Crawl as though caught in thick
Honey, drowsy, lethargic and numb.
While they are mired in that mess,
I grow more weary, more tired.
One day, I won’t be tired.
The time will come for sleep.
When I am enough of a mess,
And my dignity went days
Ago, I won’t care. I’ll be numb
And sleep will be long and thick.
I hope the night is black and thick
And that even the moon and the stars are tired.
They can make their lights numb
And pale to help me sleep.
The sun will shorten the days
To help me out of this mess
If the night is thick, I’ll sleep.
I’m so tired, it’ll be for days.
Until then, I’m one numb mess.
What made Louis Armstrong embarrassed? Why was Cab Calloway on Sesame Street? To learn a little more about these two legends check out the podcast below with BBC Producer Alyn Shipton and the talented interviewer Annie Shipton (yes, that would be Alyn’s daughter).
To read up on Cab Calloway check out Alyn Shipton’s biography Hi-De-Ho: The Life of Cab Calloway. And for cool footage from Gail Levin’s new documentary Cab Calloway: Sketches go here!
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In the name of giving credit where it’s due, I’d like to do something a little different today and highlight some quality content on other university press blogs. Long live academic publishing!
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Are we living in the “anti-60s”? The Oxford Comment compares the counterculture movement to the blogosphere and pop music today….Bieber vs. Beatles! Hipsters vs. Hippies! Let the showdown begin…
Want more of The Oxford Comment? Subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes!
You can also look back at past episodes on the archive page.
DISCLAIMER: None of these links are in the spirit of April Fools, so worry not. You’re not going to click anything that will cause a startling pop-up or download something you don’t want on your computer. We wouldn’t do that to you. (Or would we?) (No, we would not.) -Lauren & Kirsty
Kirsty Doole has been part of the OUPblog team since…possibly forever, and yet I don’t know that we’ve ever properly introduced her to all of you. Formerly known as the ‘UK Early Bird,’ she is our UK Contributing Editor and keeps me on my toes at every turn. To my great delight, she’s also joined me on the @OUPblog twitter account! Without further adieu, I present this (fantastic) Q&A. -Lauren
If you had to reread one book every year for the rest of your life, what would it be? Jane Eyre. It’s my joint favourite book, alongside Mrs Dalloway. But the thing about Mrs Dalloway is that you (or rather, I) have to be in the mood for it. Jane Eyre works anytime. Also: Matilda by Roald Dahl.
What’s the longest book you’ve ever read?
A love of Victorian literature means I’ve read a few doorstops. I’ve just finished The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, which is 1,024 pages. It’s brilliant, by the way, you should definitely read it.
What’s your most obscure talent/hobby?
I’m desperately boring and can’t think of anything particularly obscure. How about my favourite obscure historical figure? Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham.
If you lost your voice for a week, and could only communicate by playing portions of a song, what song would you choose?
‘I Am The Walrus’ by The Beatles. Might as well have some fun confusing people.
What’s the funniest thing that ever happened to you?
It wasn’t funny at the time, but it’s funny now. Ten days before my undergraduate English Literature final exams I broke my writing arm. Due to the short notice I had to get friends and family to scribe for my exams because most of the postgrads who would have done had already left for the summer, or were in the middle of their own exams. A friend scribed the first exam, and out of the first three words of the first essay in the first exam, he misspelled two of them. Funny now. Thought I was going to cry then. How did I break my arm? Long story.
Where did you grow up?
A small town called Barrhead , about 8 miles outside of Glasgow, Scotland. The most famous alumnus of my high school is Gregor Fisher, of Rab C. Nesbitt fame. I have no idea if Rab C. Nesbitt made it outside of the UK, so it could be that as far as you’re concerned I’m my high school’s most famous alumnus.
If you had to live outside of the UK, where would you move?
I’m better at dealing with cold weather than I am with hot, so I might go and join my Dad in Oslo. That said, apparently Norwegian is tough to learn. So, how about New York during the Snowpocalypse? (You can tell I’m British by how important weather is to me.)
Cat’s Cradle vs. Rubik’s Cube. Go. (Unless you don’t know about cat’s cradle?)
Neither. When I was a kid I had a Rubik’s *Clock* .
How do you feel about hats?
Given a beanie hat and my husband’s glasses, I look like Meg from ‘Family Guy.’ Seriously.
How do you feel about American versions of British TV shows?
*Obviously* they are inferior. I’ve seen your version of &
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I think this might be the best collection of links I’ve ever gathered. So, you’re welcome. Have a wonderful weekend!
Next Stop Atlantic: a photo series documenting the hurling of MTA subway cars into the Atlantic Ocean to create artificial reefs for sea creatures. [My Modern Met]
“He doesn’t like George Michael! Boo!” This saxaphone player is committed. (I dare you not to laugh.) [Viddler]
There’s a reason you didn’t get an A+ on your creative writing homework. (Dare you not to laugh at this one, either.) [losteyeball]
For the 100th International Women’s Day this week, The Guardian chose their Top 100 inspirational women living today from a range of backgrounds and subjects. This is possibly the only time you’ll see Lady Gaga and Margaret Thatcher in the same list. [The Guardian]
A football (soccer) player was sent off the pitch this week after tackling a pitch intruder wearing a mankini. There’s video. [BBC News]
Bootlegged toys: yes, you too can own ‘Spaderman’. [Cracked.com]
One man’s experience of being a giver on World Book Night. [The Bookseller]
Two-thirds of lawyers said Facebook was the ‘primary source’ of evidence in divorce proceedings. [Shiny Shiny]
British book blogger extraordinaire Dovegreyreader celebrated the fifth birthday of her blog. [Dovegreyreader Scribbles]
If you can’t get to SXSW, perhaps you might be interested in NSEW. [Londonist]
Today’s fast-paced lifestyle seems to compress time and necessary activities.
When I was at university back in the early eighties, life allowed a pause button. That button appears to have disappeared, as one of my characters would say.
I wonder if we as a society will ever allow its reinstatement. The question arises by the simple expedient of our collective expectations concerning time. That has changed, at least for me and most of those I know.
The Pause Button
Back in the day, people could unwind at the end of a day’s work. They could go out to observe happy hour, laugh with friends, play with the kids, enjoy a leisurely meal, etc. That was the norm. There was a friendly competition with friends or family at the bowling alley or popcorn and sodas at the movies where deafness wasn’t an end product.
Sunday drives with the family after church afforded leisure, togetherness, and a mild sense of adventure. For those few hours the rest of the world was allowed to fade away. The mini-vacation was in play.
People’s lives are more complicated than ever before. Each child has one or more after school activities that take up family time, except during the commute to and from said activities. Parents may also have additional evening and weekend activities that don’t include the rest of the family. Everyone scatters and re-assemble at a more convenient time.
I’d hazard a guess that the Sunday drive has been replaced with less restful activity for most people today. There are fewer places anyone can go to get away from the modern world today. The ever-present cell phone has insured a quick response-even for those who aren’t carrying theirs, one belonging to someone else disrupts one’s thoughts just as easily. Laptops, iPads, etc. intrude even deeper into non-work time. If you’ve managed to forget your own, there’s always one close-by to remind you that you’re not on yours.
NJS
News Junkie Syndrome, as I like to call it, has hit a large segment of the population. I believe the condition began decades ago with CNN availability followed closely by the internet. Most people, I think, know what it’s like to crave a news fix, even if it’s only about one event. Even children get caught up in the passion to know what’s happening elsewhere.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m not condemning the media out of hand. In fact, a writer who doesn’t follow some form of media soon runs out of viable writing avenues.
Now Vs. Then
What concerns me is the fact that so many seem to believe they must/should be “plugged in” 24/7. That phrase is a household word anymore.
My question is this: is anyone any happier because they’re plugged in? Would they be less happy now if they’d never had technologies little communications inventions? Would our families be any less scattered?
I suppose we can speculate about the answers to these questions all day. The bottom line is that we create our lives by the importance we place on the things, attitudes, and people we gather into them.
If we use our time wisely and well, we get to enjoy all of the facets of our lives. If we’re not enjoying something make a pause button for yourself. Take the time to study what is missing or what needs more attention. You don’t have to commit to a permanent change. Temporary maneuvering can give you the answer you need without committing to something for the long-term.
Having recently been through a major change in direction for my life, I can offer this experience. Be careful of the approach taken to make a major change. Sometimes the cost can be too high and the effects too permanent. The result may not be what you’re looking for.
And on that note, I’ll leave you to your own thoughts on the subject. I’ve pushed the pause button and get to explore contingencies and repercussions for a while. Good luck with your own explorations and adventures. I intend to appreciate those
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All week, Beliebers have raged on about Arcade Fire, a band they’ve apparently never heard of. I’d like to introduce them to you. If you don’t have time to take a listen now, don’t worry, they’re going to make a record in the month of May. (That’s a little joke.) [Myspace]
And speaking of Justin Bieber, the young pop star’s remarks in an interview are the subject of widespread anger and controversy. [Rolling Stone]
Mr. Graham discovers the extreme fear of conducting a professional orchestra. [Morning News]
Looking for a totally normal cabinet? Then look elsewhere. [Like Cool]
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Romance your date with a Monk-inspired duet, or have a private boogie-woogie party in honor of your singledom. This Valentine’s Day The Oxford Comment presents a crash course on the music that speaks all kinds of love, from one of the men that knows it best.
Want more of The Oxford Comment? Subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes!
You can also look back at past episodes on the archive page.
Featured in this episode:
Kevin Whitehead is long-time jazz critic for National Public Radio’s Fresh Air and has written about jazz for many publications, including the Chicago Sun-Times, Down Beat, and the Village Voice. His latest book is Why Jazz?: A Concise Guide.
Where do you do your best writing? In airports.
