This interview/encounter from the Wall Street Journal is superb.

Has Rupert Murdoch lost his magic touch? As absurd as it may to suggest that one of the world’s most successful media moguls may be in any kind of danger I argue in my London Evening Standard column today that his News Corporation business is facing a genuine crisis.

And I am not alone. Murdoch’s latest biographer, Michael Wolff, makes a similar point in a Vanity Fair article, Rupert to internet: it’s war! His piece is studded with gems.

Michael Wolff’s piece is here.

I have a thing about this song, and the distinctive country minor-lilt of the harmonies. That interval, that particular pairing of vocal parts, IS country music. How does something like that evolve? Is is just based on a regional singing accent? What’s the thing? I can’t get that question out of my head. Listen to the chorus and ponder for me would you?

On his blog Man Without Qualities, @murdobard was good enough to give it some very interesting thought:

Well, there are a number of questions in that, obviously, and I – with my small knowledge of country music – can’t answer all of them, but I can attempt to grasp some. Here is a very rough transcription of the vocal parts, with the bass note underneath (likely to be wrong: this was a very quick transcription, and the middle melody in particular I think I flubbed).

What’s going on here? Most simply, this is a case of melodies moving in parallel thirds. This means that the diatonic interval of the third (meaning either a minor or major third, in order to keep within the key) is the primary interval between parts, and they move in the same direction – making them move in a parallel fashion. This is a form of voice-leading, but they are careful not to have too many instances in which the voices move in contrary motion (where once voice moves in the opposite direction to the other). This tends to make one melody stand out as dominant over other, supporting melodies, as opposed to having three independent and equally important parts. In this, the upper melody is always the primary focus. This arrangement of vocal parts creates a preponderance of four types of intervals: thirds, sixths (the inverse of thirds: if you take an interval of a third and lower the top note by an octave you get the interval of a sixth), fifths and fourths (the inverse of a fifth). This is a very smooth set of intervals, containing none of the dissonances you hear in seconds or sevenths (seconds inverted).

I was talking about counterpoint earlier, when talking about Spoon’s song “Don’t Make Me a Target”. This is similar, in that it uses the techniques of voice-leading, yet is also not really counterpoint, as the melodies are not independent. This form of part writing is all over country and pop music, which partly answers Green’s question of “what’s the thing?” However, it doesn’t go the whole way, as nothing about what I have written distinguishes this part from a pop song with harmonies, or even a 19th century classical piece.

What really makes this so country is, obviously, a combination of factors: the instrumentation; the chord progression; the melody; the lyrics and, possibly most important of all, the phrasing. Listen to the syrupy way in which each vocalist slides from one note to the next, evoking the sound of the steel guitar you hear in the background. The method of harmonising the melody is an important part, but, when broken down like this, still only one factor.

And I thought that was pretty darn cool …. and neatly explained some of the musical stuff happening in there. Still left me wondering though, at how it is that a particular set of musical idiosyncrasies is embraced and repeated, to the point where it becomes a recognisable style. Why is country music country music?

Music has always worked that way I guess, well-defined forms shared by a range of players and composers over years, slowly morphing. Nothing jumps too far. Dowland still sounds recognisably forlorn.

Sorry these are just empty musings, going nowhere special.

Is this the Through the Morning etc original?

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Nice. Roll down the window. Roll up.

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or quite possibly this:

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then again:

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… would have come close.

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I should stop soon.

But this is rather fun for an old person.

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Soon.

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No really

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and finally:

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Shuffle threw up Neil Young’s very lovely Red Sun. This song always puts me in a place. Do you think I could find a video on the YouTube? I could not.

There are covers:

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… but it’s not quite the same thing.

THIS is a dust storm:

Just saying.

It says something about the sort of person Melbourne University is hoping to attract to its business school … a school that apparently sees a football allegiance (the guy in the ad has decided, oh smart fellow, to wear the Geelong tie, not the St Kilda one) as an option that can be selected on the day according to perceived advantage. Lets take that sort of loyalty and commitment into corporate life shall we? (Oh! We already have!)

Memo Melbourne University business school and all you sharp arsed merchant banker types: a footy allegiance is for life. A footy team is about a hot passion followed through thick and thin. A footy team is not just a tie you wear to a corporate lunch. On a whim. Wankers.

PS: It’s been pointed out, see comment below, this this ad is in fact for the Graduate School of Management. Who don’t run the MBA program. But are still wankers IMHO.

Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.

Similarly, only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased. And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows.

Read the full report here. Or wait for it to appear in the Daily Telegraph. Your call.

All possibilities appear to be in play.

The National Times home page just offers The (unadorned) Goanna as the column title with no other authorial attribution, thus:

It’s the same way on Goanna article pages … reptile as author, no obvious sign of human intervention.

Seems though that the backend folk at National Times have been tagging (as we say) the Goanna columns with the author’s name … which is to say the quite wonderful Mr Tony Wright. Thus when one types “Tony Wright” into the Fairfax search window Goanna columns are revealed:

That said, in other parts of the National Times site, Tony Wright is the man who never was:

Go figure.