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Connect the Dots: Igor Stravinsky----Lou Reed

While Sasha Frere-Jones handed down a stern critique of indie rock this month after being left flat-footed at an Arcade Fire show, his colleague at The New Yorker, Alex Ross, quietly released a book called The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century that charts the "sublime, decadent, violent, and astounding" century in music.

During a book-tour stop last week at UC Berkeley, Ross opened with a hilarious passage describing the premier of Igor Stravinsky's revolutionary The Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913. The "snobbery and counter-snobbery" inside the theater made it difficult to hear the ballet over what amounted to "class warfare" between enthusiasts on both sides of the artistic gauntlet. Nonetheless, Ross describes it as the watershed event for musical innovation in the 20th century.

Radio Silence

For webcasters, web radio listeners, and just about everyone involved with creating or distributing music, July 15th is beginning to look like the occasion of a state-ordered execution. Standing on the gallows are the freedoms that have allowed internet radio to grow into a creative and diverse medium.