Happy anniversary to Tim Rutherford-Johnson, aka The Rambler, whose keen-eared blog has been monitoring new music for a decade. Tim has some semi-melancholy thoughts on the occasion, noting a seeming decline in the significance of music blogging. The same topic has been taken up by such longtime bloggers as Elaine Fine, Lisa Hirsch, Robert Gable, ionarts, and Bob Shingleton, though not all see evidence of such a decline. I've had ups and downs with blogging, statistically and spiritually; the chart above is, I think, mostly a reflection of how much energy I've put into the endeavor. While magazine writing remains the center of my existence, I do believe that blogging has a future — perhaps precisely because it has ceased to be trendy. All the above-named sites and dozens of others show a precious independence of spirit, an aversion to groupthink. Mitsuko Uchida, in a delightful interview with the Guardian, spoke recently of the danger of "soundbite culture"; the meandering, inquisitive style of PostClassic or the Overgrown Path resists that pressure toward snippets and snark.
What, you may be wondering, is the Burj-Dubai-like spire that towers over my low-rise daily stats? It marks the publication of Björk's Favorite Records, in November 2011. I'm proud that the most popular post in the history of this blog is also one of the more thoughtful ones, even if it is not actually by me.
