Short-Form ... Long-Form ... I'm the Content with the Shiny Object

Have you ever been listening to an interview with someone, and they are asked a question, and you think: hey! I have an answer for that.  No?  Maybe it’s just me.

In any event, I was watching an interview with some Twitch streamers, and the interviewer asked why they thought long-form content had become so popular lately.  Many Twitch streams last for hours, and have an audience for the whole time.  You can go to Twitch and watch people play videogames, board games, tabletop roleplaying games, and you can watch them do it for a long time.  Even interviews on Twitch are an hour or two long, compared to the 5 – 10 minutes that you might get on a primetime or late night talk show.  And Twitch is not alone: podcasts can focus on one game or interview for hours, or have limited series that go on for dozens of hours of content.  Turning novels into 2 hour movies is passé: nowadays they are turned into multi-season televsion shows.  Of course, movies themselves are getting longer and longer ... an NPR article puts it like so:

Seven of the year-end top grossers released during the 1980s ran under two hours. But from 1991 to 2000, only three of the top earners were that compact.

Only two year-end box office champs this century have had sub-two-hour run times, and both were animated: Shrek 2 (2004) and Toy Story 3 (2010).

That article decided that movies are getting longer (at least in part) because they’re competing with long streams and television shows, which seems to be begging the question.  More interesting was the answer of the streamers in the interview that prompted this whole meditation: they decided that, in today’s world of being increasingly disconnected from each other, sometimes you just want to experience personal interaction vicariously.  It’s an interesting theory, and probably not entirely wrong.  But I had a different thought.

I’m just old enough to remember movies with intermissions.  They weren’t common even then; a holdover from the intermissions in plays or operas, which could last for 3 – 4 hours.  (Sure, some were shorter, but then some were even longer.)  Long-form content isn’t new, by any means: it’s old.  Like so many things, it’s destined to come around again.  These types of trends tend to be reactionary, in my opinion.

Becuase I’m also old enough to remember, much more clearly, the advent of MTV in the 80s and the growing popularity of quick cuts.  This even has a formal name, apparently: post-classical editing.  It was a stylistic choice, but somehow it became a mandate.  According to Wikipedia, Lawrence Kasdan said in a documentary “that the generation of people who grew up on MTV and 30 second commercials can process information faster, and therefore demand it.” This assumption that the modern audience can’t handle anything long-form without getting bored was so prevalent by the 90s that the brand new “Comedy Channel” (which would eventually become Comedy Central) even anchored its programming with a “show” named “Short Attention Span Theater,” whose title was, so far as I could tell, completely non-ironic.  What it actually was was small snippets of stand-up routines, because obviously no one had the brainpower to sit through a whole stand-up show, right?

Except that I challenge all this conventional wisdom.  Short-form content wasn’t what the audiences demanded.  It was just a reactionary fad, a way for the modern consumer to differentiate themselves from their parents and grandparents, who had sat through Wagner’s Götterdämmerung and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and even It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and Lawrence of Arabia, both of which were 3½ hours or more long and written as recently as the 60s.  We were young and hip and cool, so we wanted more stuff packed into less time ... or at least that sounded cool, because it was different.  But you know what always happens: it’s only cool while it’s new, and once everyone is doing it, then it’s old hat and we want something different again.  The magic of “Short Attention Span Theater” (which I watched a lot of) was that you could experience a bunch of different comics in a short time.  The sheer quantity of people I was exposed to in that decade is completly unrivaled by any other time of my life.  But, the thing is, once I discovered someone I liked, I wanted to watch a whole show with them.  Five minutes of Bill Hicks is great, but two hours of Bill Hicks is fucking amazing.  So I thank SAST for all its contributions—not the least of which is introducing us to Jon Stewart—but it was never the endgame.  Just a vehicle to get us there.

And now the pendulum has swung back in the other direction.  Now people are just tired of little short snippets, and sound bites, and quick cuts.  We want substance, and nuance, and we’re perfectly willing to devote the time to get it.  So I think that is the truly the reason why long-form content is so popular now ... just as it was back in the “old” days.

Give it another couple of decades and there’ll be a hot new trend for watching everything at 1.5× speed, or watching two things at the same time, or somesuch.  Or maybe it’ll be simpler than that: maybe everything will go to Talk Soup style summary shows of the long-form content that no one wants to invest the time to actually watch themselves any more.  Who knows?  But time is a flat circle—although perhaps we don’t have to interpret that as pessimistically as True Detective’s Rust Cohle meant it—and everything will come ‘round again.  Eventually.

Paternal Indolence

Well, today is Father’s Day, and this past Friday was both a paid holidy (for Juneteenth) and one of the “free Fridays” that our company gave us off for surviving the pandemic, so I was instructed to relax twice as hard.  Sadly (for you), a double day off and Father’s Day in quick succession leaves little time for writing blog posts.  You’ll just have to try again next week.

Smooth as Whispercats II

"Looking So Bereaved and So Bereft"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

You know, I’ve often said that volume II of most of my mixes typically consist of the tracks that wouldn’t fit on volume I.  It continues to be true here.  Two of the tracks were mentioned by name in our last installment, 3 are from artists that we mentioned last time but didn’t feature tracks from, and there are a whopping 6 further returning artists.  I have to say “further” in this case, because the seventh returning artist is also one of the tracks that we talked about last time by name: “Driving,” by Everything But the Girl.  While “Missing”¹ is generally considered EBTG’s biggest hit—#3 in the UK, #2 in the US, #1 in Canada, Germany, and a bunch of other countries—I still say “Driving” is their best.  Peaking at #54 in the UK, #30 in Ireland, and not even cracking the top 100 anywhere else, the public apparently doesn’t agree with my assessment, but I don’t care.  This sublime track is not only the best EBTG tune in my opinion, but quite possibly the best representative of this subgenre of smooth-jazz-inflected alternapop.  From the intro, which appears to be a breathy Tracey Thorn exhalation sampled and turned into a repeated synth note, to the plaintive, evocative vocals, to the sophistipop arrangement (including a great solo from 15-time Grammy winning saxophonist Michael Brecker), to the lyrics which tell her “loverboy, if you call me home, I’ll come driving, fast as wheels can turn” ... this track is nearly pitch-perfect.  If you don’t like the style, I don’t know if this song could convert you, but if you have any interest at all, this track will make you want to close your eyes and make your insides stretch out for something just out of reach.  It’s amazing.

And, of course, the second track mentioned by name last time was “Your Latest Trick” by Dire Straits, which is yet another amazing performance by Brecker, not to mention a trumpet intro from his brother Randy.  While a lot of Dire Straits’ output is fairly straight-ahead rock such as “Sultans of Swing” or “Money for Nothing,” they’re no stranger to a softer track, and “Your Latest Trick” is an ode to loneliness that starts out by painting a poignant picture of a big city after the bustle of the day has wound down:

All the late night bargains have been struck
Between the satin beaus and their belles.
Prehistoric garbage trucks
Have the city to themselves.
Echoes and roars of dinosaurs—
They’re all doing the monster mash—
And most of the taxis and most of the whores
Are only taking calls for cash ...

It also provides our volume title.  Definitely a classic.

Of the other returning artists, there’s nothing too surprising: Sting is back with the title track from The Dream of the Blue Turtles, a bouncy little instrumental bridge that takes us into our centerpiece, Boy Meets Girl’s “I Wish You Were Here,” which is slightly more upbeat than last installment’s “Oh Girl” but still very typical of their sound: West Exit brings us another bass heavy, late night tune in “Take a Ride”; Norah Jones swings back around with another breathy torch song, “The Nearness of You”; and Johnny Hates Jazz brings us a much smaller hit than “Shattered Dreams,” but one which is every bit as good: “Turn Back the Clock.”²  And finally we have the inimitable Aztec Camera.  While “Stray” is possibly the best song off of the album of the same name,³ I still maintain that the crowning achievement of Roddy Frame (Aztec Camera is almost entirely Frame, in the same way that Nine Inch Nails is almost entirely Trent Reznor) is his first album, High Land, Hard Rain.  Some of its songs are slightly more upbeat, such as its very minor hit “Oblivious,” but it’s definitely an introspective album, and “We Could Send Letters” epitomizes that, with lyrics such as “you’re free to push me and I’m free to fall” and “I’ve been smothered in the sympathy you bleed.” This album is one of my favorites, and this was the song I chose to represent it here.

I also mentioned 3 bands last time out without using any of their songs.  In the case of Swing Out Sister, it was primarily because “Breakout” is such an amazing tune that I knew it had to be a volume opener, and that spot was already filled for volume I.⁴  I love this song, partially because, unlike a lot of the other tunes on this mix, it is unabashedly upbeat, powered primarily by some great trumpet work from Johnny Thirkell, whose prolificness is summed up by this statement from Wikipedia: “Through the 1980s and early 1990s he was on at least one album in the UK Charts continuously, without a break, for over 13 years.”⁵  Wow.  He’s a big part of why “Breakout” is awesome, but a lot of props go to the Manchester band themselves: Andy Connell synths with the best of them, and Corinne Drewery’s vocals are just gorgeous.

Speaking of upbeat, I also mentioned Hipsway, whose track “The Honeythief” is almost slinky enough to make it to Slithy Toves.  It’s a bit goofy, and the rest of Hipsway’s œuvre is nothing to write home about, but I always secretly dug this one, and this mix is certainly the right place (the only place, really) to showcase it.  The other band mentioned previously was the Blow Monkeys, who are definitely back on the downbeat side of things.  But “Digging Your Scene” is pretty upbeat for them, so it still fits the theme.  Front man Dr. Robert has that smooth vocal quality that so many of the bands here have, and they even have their own sax player for a change: Neville Henry is not exactly a sax superstar, but his fills are quite lovely, and they work well in the context of the Monkeys’ jazz-adjacent sound.

Of course, every track discussed above save three live in that golden period I talked about last time, from 1985 to 1990, and, if we’re willing to back it up to 1983 to account for a few outliers, we can throw in the Aztec Camera as well.⁶  There are a few more tracks from that period too.  The most obivous (if obscure) is “One Simple Thing” by the Stabilizers.  This is a song I discovered by going through my dad’s record collection rejects,⁷ and I fell in love with it and later picked up the album, Tyranny.⁸  The Stabilizers were, sadly, a one-hit wonder who didn’t even get their one hit ... “One Simple Thing” peaked at #93 in the US and #100 in Australia, and that was about it.  Unfairly, in my view: this track epitomizes the poppier side of this subgenre.  Like “Barely Breathing,” it’s both smooth and edgy, both mellow and impassioned, but the Stabilizers were doing it 9 years before Duncan Sheik came along.⁹

I also briefly mentioned ABC as “dabblers” in this style, so let’s hear them dabble.  The tremendous How to be a Zillionaire! is a cornerstone of 80s synthpop, with big hits “Be Near Me” and “How to be a Millionaire.” But it has its more reflective moments too, and “Between You and Me” is the best of them.  Plus you gotta give mad respect to Martin Fry for not only rhyming “brutal” with “mutual,” but also “hyposcrisy” with “democracy” ... in a love song.  I also also briefly mentioned the Blue Nile, but mainly to say that we’d see them on Moonside by Riverlight before we saw them here.¹⁰  Which is not to say that we can’t ever see them here: the title track from their stunning A Walk Across the Rooftops has a lot going on, giving credence to the (possibly apocryphal) story that this album was used to demonstrate how the fancy new “compact disc” technology could make clear the most subtle of background sounds.  From its nearly inaudible fade-in which swells to its opening notes, from the lonely trumpet to the insistent strings to the poweful staccato bass riff, to Paul Buchanan’s soulful vocals, it’s just a gorgeous tune, with less of the Scottish band’s normal lounge vibe and more of a jazzy feel.  Plus it makes the perfect closer.

Smooth as Whispercats II
[ Girl Can Get Lonely Out Here on the Road ]

“Breakout” by Swing out Sister, off It's Better to Travel
“Driving” by Everything but the Girl, off The Language of Life
“A-kasseblues” by Movits!, off Äppelknyckarjazz
“Take a ride” by the West Exit, off Nocturne
“Your Latest Trick” by Dire Straits, off Brothers in Arms
“Love and you and I” by Lizzi, off Love and you and I
“Here's Looking at You” by Blondie, off Autoamerican
“No Ordinary Love” by Sade, off Love Deluxe
“The Nearness of You” by Norah Jones, off Come Away with Me
“The Dream of the Blue Turtles” by Sting, off The Dream of the Blue Turtles
“I Wish You Were Here” by Boy Meets Girl, off Boy Meets Girl
“One Simple Thing” by Stabilizers, off Tyranny ¹¹
“The Honeythief” by Hipsway, off Hipsway
“We Could Send Letters” by Aztec Camera, off High Land, Hard Rain
“Between You & Me” by ABC, off How to Be a Zillionaire!
“Turn Back the Clock” by Johnny Hates Jazz, off Turn Back the Clock
“Digging Your Scene” by Blow Monkeys, off Animal Magic
“A Walk Across the Rooftops” by the Blue Nile, off A Walk Across the Rooftops

Total:  18 tracks,  77:04

In newer fare, the West Exit is joined by fellow Magnatune artist Lizzi, whose style slots pretty perfectly in here.  “Love and you and I” is fairly layered and electronic compared to the late 80s fare, but it’s no less smooth-jazz-inspired.  For a tune just past the golden period, there can be no better exemplar than Sade.  “No Ordinary Love,” while it didn’t reach the peak of her megahits “Smooth Operator” or “The Sweetest Taboo,” was a pretty solid hit, and I will always maintain that Love Deluxe is a better album than Diamond Life.¹²  It’s another slinky one, with a bit of a loungy overtone, but it’s a solid smooth-jazz-like performance that leads beautifully into Norah Jones.

Which just leaves us with the two very unlikely candidates.  The earliest track on this volume is 1980’s “Here’s Looking at You” by the normally punky Blondie.  Of course, Blondie was famous for a style that ranged solidly across the musical map, from the disco-inflected “Call Me” to the reggae-infused “The Tide Is High” to the rap-adjacent “Rapture.” Here they do a callback to the torchy jazz standards of the big band era which instantly make you imagine Deborah Harry lounging across a grand piano in front a full horn section, perhaps wrapped in a feather boa.  It’s not a remake, though: Harry and bandmate Chris Stein wrote it, and Jimmy Haskell, noted for the horn arrangement on Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now,” arranged the orchestral components, including the background strings and the foreground trumpets and clarinets.  It’s a gorgeous song that really sounds like it belongs in the 30s or 40s, but also has a surprisingly modern feel.  Plus I’ve always liked the lyric “if I ever had a million dollars (and if I didn’t give it all to you) ...”

Bookending us chronology-wise, the latest track on the volume is the surprisingly low-key “A-kasseblues” by Swedish swing-rappers Movits!.  I’m not entirely sure what the song means, although a Swedish-to-English translation site suggests the following chorus:

A-kasseblues
Who would have thought it would be something for me
Say where to live
Or put my shoe
Can I sleep with you?

Sure.  Why not.  But the point is that it’s a very pretty song, even if you have no clue what Johan (Jivin’) Rensfeldt is babbling about.  And it flows very smoothly into this mix, unlike the majority of their output (which you will find on various volumes of Salsatic Vibrato¹³).

Next time, I think we’ll cast our minds back to a more primitive radiophonic era.

⇐ Smooth as Whispercats

Smooth as Whispercats III ⇒

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1 Which we already heard back on volume I.

2 “Shattered Dreams” was #2 in the US and #5 in the UK, while “Turn Back the Clock” hit #12 the UK and failed to chart in the US at all.

3 Although “The Crying Scene” is damned fine as well.

4 By “Captain of Her Heart,” you may recall.

5 Amongst my mixes, you can also hear Thirkell on “Walking on Sunshine” from my Mother’s Day mix, “From Under the Covers” by the Beautiful South on Bleeding Salvador II, and the Swing soundtrack, which is featured heavily in Salsatic Vibrato (volumes II, V, VI, and VII) and occasionally in Smokelit Flashback (volumes III and IV).  He also played for Level 42, but not on the track of theirs we heard on volume I of this mix.

6 The other two tracks outside the golden period are the Norah Jones tune (2002) and the West Exit track (2004).

7 A story which really deserves its own blog post someday.

8 The title track is even better, and we’ll see it eventually on 80s My Way and possibly another mix, although that latter one is still in a very neotonous state.

9 In fact, Sheik would have been a junior or senior in high school at the time of the Stabilizers’ flash in the pan ... I wonder if young Duncan heard them and was inspired?

10 Which we did, on Moonside by Riverlight II.

11 This album is damnably hard to find, but apparently the whole thing is available on YouTube.  Hard to pull individual tracks from that, but I have faith in you.

12 In fact, I’ve already used 2 tracks from it: “Mermaid” on Numeric Driftwood II and “Pearls” on Tenderhearted Nightshade I.

13 Specifically, volumes I, II, and III.

Isolation Report, Week #65

This week we had a new roof put on.  You know, when they tell you that contractors will be arriving at your house at the crack of dawn and making a lot of noise over your head, you say yourself “duh.” Of course there’s going to be a lot of noise.  But knowing it and experiencing it are entirely different things.  For 3 days, everyone in the house was woken up far before they were used to being conscious—even our middle child, who is the only true morning person in our family.  Lack of sleep was just the beginning though: the loud noise and massive amounts of dust coming in his window made our middle child (who was recently confirmed to be on the spectrum) fairly discombobulated,^* the indoor cats hid under the bed for 3 days, and the outdoor was scared to go out but not scared enough to be coerced into using the litterbox like a normal feline being.  We couldn’t let the dogs out in the yard because they think they’re vicious and want to “attack” the workmen.  We couldn’t run the air conditioner, because the roofers covered it in plastic to keep the dust from getting sucked into the vents, but we also couldn’t get in the pool, because stray pieces of shingle and once even a tool were raining down on it.  And the constant doorbell ringing: there are rotten beams, you should probably replace the gutters, we had to add new “fascia boards,”^** can you move your truck out of the driveway so we can park a porta potty there instead?  (It’s still there, by the way.)  It was a lot.

Next week they’re coming to turn the power off for up to 6 hours so they can replace our electrical panels (so that should be a load of fun), then the actual solar panels get installed.  As I say, it’s a lot, but at the end of the day we’ll have enough solar power to never have to pay the power company again, and a battery backup which should last indefinitely the next time said power company turns off our electricity for specious reasons.  Assuming the solar company isn’t full of shit.  We shall see, I suppose.

On the pandemic front, our humans are now 60% vaccinated, which is to say 2 of us have had 2 shots, 2 of us have had 1, and one of us hasn’t had any (but only because she’s too young).  Moving forward to a better future, hopefully.  Again, we shall see.

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* The technical term is “emotional dysregulation.”

** No, we didn’t know what that meant either.