Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

wild swimming has been declared passé, since Laura Barton discovered bouldering whilst staying at a friend's spare house in Hebden Bridge

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/16/britain-has-been-avoiding-its-biggest-problems-for-decades-now-were-paying-the-price

Tim_Robinson_Hotdog.jpg

the mealy-mouthed requests for more "consensus" are absolutely infuriating

You need to registererase every John Harris opinion 2015-2019 from memory to keep reading

something quite sad about this one

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/aug/16/bring-that-beat-back-why-are-people-in-their-30s-giving-up-on-music

among the many things daniel dylan ray gets wrong here is that indie sleaze did not originally exist. it most certainly did! i have the metaphorical scars to prove it. made by studded white belts of course

I am unsure what that is, though interested that Tracer Hand was into it.

I think this article is fundamentally confused about 'enjoying music' vs 'getting into new music'. It is true that many older people, though not all, no longer get into new music, or music new to them. This is partially true for a great many of us, though it seems rarely to be wholly true; just a matter of degree. But it still wouldn't follow that the same people don't care about music at all. They might, in principle, be as passionate as ever about the music they loved aged 21.

If you don't resolve that ambiguity, as he doesn't, then the whole argument can't go anywhere.

There remains, I think, something interesting about the contrast between music and other arts here. He says 'what are you listening to?' has been replaced by 'what are you watching?', but doesn't think that if the former's loss is bad, the latter's gain might be good, and a sign that people still do like experiencing (new) stories.

"I’ve not been able to give away free tickets to see Nick Cave, staggeringly expensive arena pop shows, or even entire festival weekend passes."

Well, you couldn't pay me $100 a minute to do any of these things, but that doesn't mean my enthusiasm for music has waned. That entire piece is framed through a "keeping up with pop" mindset, which frankly, fuck that.

I mean, "incredible cost of participation" seems like an obvious axis that hasn't been considered by this article.

Outside of streaming, recorded music and live music are hideously expensive. Going to shows = babysitting = more expense. Houses and flats get smaller and smaller - where do you fit that stereo system in an 1 bedroom that's been converted into a 2.5 bedder with a tiny kitchen that's now also an "open plan living room"? Etc

Also ageing hearing = guitars sound worse and heavy bass is intolerable

And this also seems part of the "no one goes to the cinema anymore" story, which was happening well before the pandemic

Etc

Also ageing hearing = guitars sound worse and heavy bass is intolerable

i would say heavy bass gets more tolerable / desirable with ageing hearing.

i go to a lot of gigs and it is very noticeable that if it is anything quite new i will usually be the oldest person by some margin. if it is some long standing / classic act i will be in the median age group and there will generally be almost nobody under 30.

Jobs, babies, houses, more babies.

ffs it's been happening for as long as people have been getting a good job, getting married, having kids, settling down etc etc. I hope he didn't get paid for that.

100% agree but the the ratio of wages-to-cultural expenses is definitely much more prohbitive than it was 15, 20, 30 years ago

That should be wages/cost of living and rent/music

As someone in her thirties, an unsaid portion of this is (if you’re talking strictly about London) is how many people are moving out/away in greater numbers even more so than the usual cycle. Ten years ago the majority of people I know lived in/around zones 2-4 and it was much easier to make plans. Lots of us have bought and moved out or just moved away. For me to go to anything in London strongly depends how much I’m inclined to get a late train home (especially if I am by myself). Meeting up with my friend groups even just for dinner or something is hard. So when you make time, you make time. Spontaneity is difficult.

Was also thinking this on similar lines recently when I read this NYmag old piece about their Gossip Girl coverage.

She also piped up to say the show’s travel time to Brooklyn was unrealistic, which she knew about because, get this, in 2007, she was the only blogger in the office who didn’t live in Manhattan.

Is the Guardian music worse than it used to be?

Imagine the differences if this had been published by the UK rather than the Australian wing of the paper:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/aug/17/ellia-green-former-australian-rugby-sevens-star-olympic-gold-medallist-comes-out-as-trans-man

UK headline would at least start with the word "controversy"

I don't have the heart to find out whether the usual are complaining about erasing women, pretending he's actually a trans woman, or doing both at once somehow. but I'll probably have to hear about it soon anyway

Nice to be able to walk away from it all.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/aug/29/rory-stewart-politics-privilege-podcast-stardom

Ugh don't know why I even started reading that... not that I got very far.

Still nice to see former Celtic midfield stalwart, Murdo MacLeod, takes a good photo.

'the snake-pit of coalface politics' is a line that could do with some expanding on

I also wonder whether Campbell and Stewart aren’t more ideologically aligned than they suggest. They are white, centrist Scottish men who have been booted out of their parties.

lol lmao wow

Fair play to the Graun for managing not to put a picture of Rib Rensenbrink on the cover today

Rob Rensenbrink lol

‘Much more than a figurehead’: how the Queen was the beating heart of the Commonwealth

so it's fucking dead too then?

Is ham bourgeois, or not:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/sep/09/good-food-west-virginia-supper-club

"(Amy Dawson) had grown up being told everything about West Virginia was backwards, and a sweating ham sitting on the kitchen counter seemed emblematic of that.

(However) in the UK, where I am from, having a Spanish or Italian ham shoulder or leg on your kitchen counter is now a status symbol: it communicates being cultured and well-travelled enough to know about delicacies from the European continent, having the money to buy it (they can cost upwards of $350) and, oftentimes, owning the expensive, fancy equipment to slice it."

It's a potentially interesting story - it would be nice to know when prawn sandwiches went from luxury food to naff to imitation luxury food to staple of football matches to nothingness - but it's really boring. It feels like an advert for a little clique of people who eat food at a long table (apparently for hours, because one of the photos is at night).

I realise you can't tell what people are like from looking at them, but the photographs put me in mind of the old "things white people like" blog from many years ago.

I really can't believe how much they're fawning over Brenda; this might be the worst of all: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2022/sep/10/farewell-your-majesty-cartoon-the-queen

All else aside it’s discomfitingly childish. Goo goo ga ga shit

riddell is hands down my least favourite political cartoonist, his colour sense just fkn reeks

All else aside it’s discomfitingly childish. Goo goo ga ga shit

The UK gets like that on these occasions. I think the thing that gets me most is the sheer scale of the play acting that goes on, I can't bear it.

The amount of fawning coverage the Guardian has devoted to the Queen is appalling. It's getting pretty North Korean in the UK right now, I mean I know republicans are in a minority, but not by so much, it's maybe 40/60? Let's hear their voices too for Christ's sake.

I saw t'other day that one of the Graun's other crap cartoonists (Edith Pritchett) is Matt's daughter. I bet that was a short job interview.

wait, is there no cartoon yet from matt himself?

his slicey bois have been silenced

out of respect, no cock and balls this week

Difficult to draw when your tears are making the ink run.

counterpoint: he knows his savage republican views are not wanted

Matt: the frenemy within

Republicanism is 25/75 - higher the older you get, of course, but even the 18-24 year olds (barely) support the monarchy https://www.statista.com/statistics/863893/support-for-the-monarchy-in-britain-by-age/

Sorry: lower the older you get.

It's mostly superficial and wishy washy and people saying what they think they should say, a few years of KC3 might upset the apple cart.

a few 😬 gifs even

this week Zoe Williams didn't listen to the radio, but she might listen to it again in the future. How much money is she paid for this shit? She is no Chiles, that's for sure.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/20/the-radio-was-the-soundtrack-to-my-life-but-i-turned-it-off-a-week-ago-and-may-never-turn-it-back-on

They dedicated the Today programme to her before the 9 o’clock pips this morning.

i listen to the radio all the time and tbh there were bits of the World Service, Radio 3 and some sport on 5 Live that were completely listenable, don't know what kind of shit ZW listens to cos i'm not reading anything of hers on purpose

maybe Times Radio. I alternated between R3 and Jazz fm for some modicum of sanity. The latter were playing Miles Davis and Kenny Burrell tracks and the presenter was saying this is music inspired by locations QEIII was also inspired by!

after the first couple of days a lot of BBC radio was normal enough if you picked your spots

I don't why I made Lilibet the third, it's her son who's the thurd - but nm

oh yeah there was still some programming left. I was even much more grateful than usual for the NPR shite that was broadcast on WS. Just anything would have done in these circumstances. Some might counter why not just go on bbc sounds and pick some program that suits you, which is fair but sometimes you just don't want to make any decisions.

I don't why I made Lilibet the third, it's her son who's the thurd - but nm

oh yeah there was still some programming left. I was even much more grateful than usual for the NPR shite that was broadcast on WS. Just anything would have done in these circumstances. Some might counter why not just go on bbc sounds and pick some program that suits you, which is fair but sometimes you just don't want to make any decisions.