Perhaps the arts problem is an economics problem in a different way. As AT22 suggested, the incentives to stop your morning commute for a piece of music are all wrong. What happens? For me, I miss my workout or start it later. I get to desk later, which means I leave desk later. Then I have to figure my evening commute out of the zone. It has PITA written all over it. If I’m someone who commutes later (I get to work/gym at 6:40-ish), I might be up against a meeting or a supervisory dress down. Lots of upside to being early, not much to being later.

If I’m coming home, commute variability doesn’t bother me as much. Can get home later, only one bothered is wife, who gets home later than I do, so she probably wouldn’t notice.

That said, pop music is consumable. It’s like chips. Some chips are very good, some are just time killing bits of carb & transfat. Classical music (or Jazz, 1920 to 1970) is a little less easy to digest. Better value, in general, but generally longer (unless you listen to prog rock’s 20 minute compositions). Perhaps a real rain (in the form of cheaper, easier access and paradigm shift in media consumption) will come and wash all the Pussycat Dolts from the face of the earth and ressurect the fine art of symphony authorship. One never knows, but since smart futurists tend towards commoditization, I’d say it’s a poor bet.

PS- Perhaps in another 60 years, we will still wax poetic over the Beatles groundbreaking period (Help! through the end, minus Yellow Sub). I suspect, if I live another 70, I will still go ape over the layered guitar sounds of Boston. Not to create false equivalence, but it’s an art. It’s hard to judge impact without an appreciator.

I agree about the Beatles.  I came to the Beatles late in life.  I lived through them when they were actively performing, watched them live on the Ed Sullivan show, but didn’t particularly like them at that time.  I was always a little different.  While my friends were all eaten up with the Beatles, the Stones, Herman’s Hermits (strangely, Peter Noone (Herman) lives right down the street from us now), etc, I was into Elvis, just to be perverse, I suppose.  And the Kinks, which was more appropriate.  When I was in college and James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, and Bob Dylan were all the rage, I was deep into Hank Williams, Sr. (it’s true) and all kinds of classical music, a bizarre combo, to say the least.  I totally missed the age of classic rock and discovered it only when I met MD and was exposed to her vast trove of recordings.  Now I like it all.

I had to laugh at your deletion of Yellow Submarine from the Beatles ouvre that you find groundbreaking: that song is the favorite of both my grandsons, who listen to it a fifty times a day. 

Cheers–

MRE 

I wonder what the results would have been if he’s played during afternoon/evening rush hour.

More of the same, I would suspect.

Cheers–

MRE 

Maybe Bell will come back sometime!

Hi AT22–

Maybe it should read Better work = better life.

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Bell to come back.  It would be a good sociological experiment to have him back again, though, after all the hoopla about this, just to see if it all would happen the same way yet again.

Cheers–

MRE 

I usually come to your site because I am a low carb girl in a high carb world. I take refuge from the naysayers and gather ammunition. But I do enjoy your “off topic” deviations and this one nearly made me cry. What a depressing commentary on American culture (or lack there of) that our clocks and bosses are running our lives rather than our hearts/spirits.

On top of that, our global reputation does not need further tarnish. I sure hope our international neighbors didn’t bother reading that article.

Would I have stopped? Man, I hope so.

Obviously, you are not a regular commuter in a major city. Time pressure plus stress makes this a non-start. Never mind that he’s world famous in a genre where everyone really important is 100+ years dead. It’s great music, but contemporary celebrities of classical music are, well, not occupying a ton of mind-space among your average American, government drudge or otherwise.

By the way: As your government drudge, I earn your taxes. And then I pay taxes from your taxes. What’s the point of that? Just pay me the post tax share as my salary and let me go tax free. Everybody comes out cheaper.

Last thing: I commute too early and don’t use L’enfant Plaza. DOL is on the north side of the mall, better served by Archives or Judiciary. Gotta get to work early to “earn” those tax dollars.

Hi Max–

Somehow when I wrote those words I knew I would hear from you. You wrote:

…a genre where everyone really important is 100+ years dead. It’s great music, but contemporary celebrities of classical music are, well, not occupying a ton of mind-space among your average American, government drudge or otherwise.

More is the pity. Great music is not great just because it’s a 100+ years old; it’s great because, well, it’s great. That’s why we’re still listening to it 100+ years later. There was a lot of stuff written 100+ years ago that is no longer heard because it wasn’t great.

As to being a drudge, well, you’re in pretty good company. As one of my heroes Samuel Johnson wrote of himself (also well over 100+ years ago) in his famous dictionary:

Lexicographer: A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the significance of words.

BTW, I’m all for your tax scheme. Let’s make it work. You can start a movement from the inside.

Cheers–

MRE

Hi Susan–

And you probably paid for the experience.  Could’ve had it free in Washington and you would probably have appreciated it more than most.

Cheers–

MRE 

It prompted me to start writing an essay on my wiki about social context experiments.

Hi Bradley–

I’d like to read your essay when it’s finished.

Cheers–

MRE 

Though I will confess I used to stop on more than one occasion and listen to the homeless guitarist that used to hang out in front of the Borders on State Street and make up songs about people that would walk by. I’m sure you guys probably remember him

Yep, his name was Mason B. Mason, and he was a fixture on State Street and at the farmer’s market.  He died a couple of years ago and is sorely missed.

Cheers–

MRE 

So I don’t stop for any street musician.

Quite a piece that Bach Chaconne. Do you have any favorite recordings of it?

I don’t have a favorite recording of it–in fact, I’m not a big fan of it.  I tend more towards Niccolo Paganini, Pablo de Sarasate, and Fritz Kreisler in my violin tastes. 

Cheers–

MRE