After reading Alex’s latest article in The New Yorker I emailed him this quote from Jacques Attali’s Noise, wondering why a preeminent culture vulture would neglect such a reference:

The phonograph, then, is part of a radically new social and cultural space demolishing the earlier economic constructions of representation. With the introduction of the record, the classical space of discourse collapses. Against the wishes of Edison himself, the drugstore jukebox wins out over the singers of the caf’ conç, the record industry over the publishing industry. Even radio, which could have forestalled this process by providing representation with a new market, gradually became, as we will see, an auxiliary of the record industry. After the discourse of representation was devalued, radio provided a showcase or the record industry, and the record industry gave the radio the material it needed to fill the airwaves.

His reply: “Sousa said it first, and in better English!” He’s right, you know. Although Attali, Adorno, and Benjamin are great thinkers, their verbiage tends to get in the way and “hijack the conversation,” as Alex says.

Less is more. A subordinate conglomeration is without exception exceedingly more profitable than an innumerable agglomeration. See? Rich Crawford, the venerable American musicologist, preached this all year long to a small group of us who took his two introductory PhD musicology courses a few years ago. It’s a good rule to follow.