…has fingered the real culprit in the music industry’s steady downturn—DVDs. The arrival of film as a home-library product, Norman Lebrecht claims, means “it has left the cinema and joined us for drinks, an emancipatory moment for the last of the great western art forms…. The DVD won’t replace the printed book which has withstood more serious threats in the past half-millennium. But it will accelerate the obsolescence of the audio-only disc, which cannot compete much longer in an image-centred culture.”
THE NOVEMBER BELLTOWN MESSENGER is out at last, and may be our best yet. Read it online or seek it at more than 100 dropoff spots.
RAIN HAS ARRIVED SERIOUSLY in greater Puget Sound this morning, meaning the fourth category of autumnal transition has also arrived. (The prior three stages of fall: Labor Day weekend, the equinox, and the “fall back” to Standard Time.)
The grey has settled in. The washed-out watercolor look will be with us, with occasional sunbreaks, for the next three and a half months or so. This is what breaks the spirits of Californians and proves the mettle of real Nor’Westers. Can you take it?
