Good News for Pop Culture Buffs

Over the last hundred years, American movies, television shows, detective novels, fast-food chains, and musical styles have defined modern life. Yet as we approach the third millennium, thoughtful commentary about the impact of mass culture has hit a new low. Magazines that once published solid pop commentary now offer quick glosses on cultural events that provide little insight to the well-informed observer. Just as the pop catalogue is exploding across 500 cable channels and the mushrooming Internet, pop criticism has faded from the mainstream media.

Millennium Pop is here!

Writer-driven and idea-rich, millennium pop helps industry insiders, discerning readers, and emerging artists of the 21st century track the rapid changes overtaking our shared culturaldream life. It serves as a guide to the technological wonders that will reshape the future, provide sophisticated commentary about both old and new pop art, and help distinguish the revolutionary from the merely recycled.

If you agree that software has more impact on how we think and work and play than hardware, and believe movies, music, and television deserve more serious attention than they're getting, check out millennium pop.

millennium pop was launched in August, 1994, and has since developed into a Web-only publication. See for yourself why Wired, Pulse!, the Boston Phoenix and Globe, and Harper's magazine have all raved about millennium pop for its thoughtful approach to the popular issues of our day.

millennium pop
173 Morrison Avenue
Somerville, MA 02144

STAFF:
TIM RILEY
EDITOR
SARA LASCHEVER
EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Tim Riley is a music critic, author, pianist and campus lecturer who works as a senior editor at Lycos.com, the search engine on the Web at http://www.lycos.com. Since 1994, he has edited his own journal of popular culture, millennium pop.

Riley's criticism appears regularly in the Washington Post Book World and the Boston Review and other publications. Also on this page are excerpts from his books, and information about his speeches on Censorship in the Arts, Rock History, Rock Videos, and the British Invasion.

Sara Laschever, millennium pop's executive editor, has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Village Voice, and other publications.

To contact Tim Riley or Sara Laschever, click on their names above to send e-mail, or write to Riley at:

Tim Riley, Senior Editor,
Lycos, 500 Old
Connecticut Path,
Framingham, MA, 01701
Fax: 508-820-4646

Email: triley@lycos.com

AWARDS

Mission Statement

The 20th century is not just the "American Century," it is the century of American popular culture. In the last hundred years, American movies, television shows, detective novels, fast- food chains, and musical styles (from jazz, rhythm and blues, and country music to rock 'n' roll, disco, and rap) have come to define modern life in ways unimagined at the close of the 19th century. This is to say nothing of how Madison Avenue's billboards, print and broadcast slogans, t-shirts, plastic drink cups, cigarette lighters, and golden arches now litter the world.

Techno-Driven Transformation

This transformation of American society into one in which popular entertainment became a defining force in human relations began with a flurry of technological innovation: the invention of the Linotype machine in 1884, followed by the rapid development of audio recording, radio broadcasting, motion picture, telephone, airplane, and automobile technology in the 30 years that followed. Subsequent breakthroughs (the invention of televisions, communications satellites, personal computers, digital and laser systems) continued this trend, making the mass proliferation and enjoyment of all forms of art and entertainment easier, faster, and cheaper than ever before. As a result, at the close of the twentieth century, popular culture competes with religion, political ideology, and traditional values as a determinant of behavior--to the point where otherwise liberal-minded leaders propose censoring free speech because they believe television, movies, and videos have replaced parents, schools, and churches as the primary teachers of America's young.

This panic about the detrimental effects of popular culture comes as we approach a new millennium in which greater technological breakthroughs (the "information highway," CD-ROMs, virtual reality headsets) promise--or threaten--to relegate CDs and videos to the "used" bins where vinyl records now languish. Soon, record companies and television networks as we know them will also become obsolete, further changing the ways in which we encounter and perceive the world.

By the year 2000, digitized cable networks will carry tens of thousands of films, music videos, old and new television programs, and new forms of media yet to be created by the pioneers of these new electronic frontiers. Through our telephone lines, the entire first century of pop will be easily downloaded into home entertainment "cafeterias" in which a vast smorgasbord of choices will always be on the menu. In addition, an avalanche of new work will be created by the next generation--a generation shaped as much by this ongoing pop explosion as by their parents and schools.

Coverage without Substance

At this crucial juncture, thoughtful commentary about the quality, nature, and impact of popular culture has hit a new low. Journals that once devoted ample space to erudite, opinionated pop commentary and revealing coverage of important trends now offer short, clever glosses on cultural events that provide little insight to the well-informed observer. As the pop catalogue explodes, solid pop criticism is all but disappearing from mainstream media outlets

Instead, the emphasis in most arts coverage has shifted from exploring new ideas to charting superficial trends, from developing writers to hyping celebrities, and from asking hard questions about our shared cultural life to probing into the private lives of the famous. USA Today and Entertainment Tonight set the standard: celebrity gossip and "glimpses" backstage suffice as coverage of any new work, and the flimsy substance of these stories gets repeated in the arts sections of Sunday newspapers across the nation. Rarely does a music article enrich a reader's enjoyment of the music reviewed, convey what an album actually sounds like, or identify what is unique and original about that sound (if anything). Instead, readers are inundated with the news that Garth Brooks is wildly popular without any attempt to explain what has made this moderately talented figure the subject of so much adoration--or what his popularity says about our collective fantasy life.

Similarly, the media covers the personal and professional antics of young performers on shows such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place without asking why these shows are so successful in the first place, and what their success tells us about ourselves, our children, and modern life. After making little impact in 20 previous movies, Sharon Stone bares her crotch on screen in Basic Instinct and suddenly everyone recognizes her face; Howard Stern reveals the most intimate details of his marriage to millions of listeners while telling his wife that the best thing for their relationship would be for her to turn off the radio; novels about the venality of the people entrusted with preserving the Constitution and upholding our legal system routinely sell millions of copies; and the most powerful woman in Hollywood is the creator, producer, and star of a show ("Roseanne") about a working class woman who exercises her own considerable power entirely in the domestic realm, among her immediate family and friends. All of these stories cry out for elucidation and incisive commentary, and they are just the noisiest stories of the moment.

A Publication for the Next Millennium

millennium pop will address these and other provocative questions raised by the tide of cultural products flooding our daily lives. Writer-driven and idea-rich, exploring popular subjects in unusual depth and from unexpected angles, millennium pop will help discerning readers, industry entrepreneurs, and emerging artists of the 21st century track the rapid changes overtaking our shared cultural dream life. Including everything from diatribes against aesthetically corrupt blockbusters to thoughtful reconsiderations of undervalued works, millennium pop will offer readers a level of critical commentary no longer available anywhere else. millennium pop will also integrate coverage of all of pop culture at a time when the technical integration of media forms is about to burst into new realms, and eschew personality profiles and trendy briefs for a more in-depth, comprehensive approach to the movies, music videos, books, and TV shows that reflect and define our era.

In addition, millennium pop will help readers sort through the impending new media onslaught. Even today, with oldies radio formats digging up "lost classics" on a nightly basis, specialty mail-order houses hawking everything from live concert bootlegs to directors' cuts of cult films to collections of classic radio shows, and cable TV stations showcasing hundreds of movie titles that never made it into the standard histories, popular culture has reached a saturation point where even the most avid buff can't possibly keep up with it all. And as the money men running the entertainment industries invest exclusively in blockbusters, seeing that important independent work reaches its public depends on strong voices championing the work that merits wider attention.

millennium pop will fill all these roles. It will serve as a guide to the technological wonders that will be reshaping pop culture in the approaching decades, herald the arrival of important new artists, provide sophisticated commentary about both old and new pop art, and help distinguish the revolutionary from the merely recycled. millennium pop will cover new connections between Madison Avenue and Hollywood, pop songwriting and screenwriting, and pioneer crossover acts that use the new technology to express a larger vision of American society. For consumers it will be an invaluable guide to the transformation that is already underway; for business leaders, it will identify leading new voices, forecast markets, and chart the new ways we begin to consume and experience mass culture.

Thoughtful Journalism

In an era of sound bytes, news briefs, capsule reviews, and information blizzards, hard-nosed criticism and essay-length ruminations by leading thinkers about cultural trends have become a scarce luxury. If you agree that software has more impact on how we think and work and play than hardware, believe movies, music, and television deserve more serious attention than they're getting, and wish that arts articles wouldn't stop short just when they start to get interesting, millennium pop will make for essential reading.

: -- Tim Riley, Editor

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