Warren Ellis was recently interviewed for Slashdot and here’s a choice quote. It’s from a response regarding popular culture but it’s an important read for the music fan in all of us:
Grab a file-sharing program and use it to test stuff. (The technology’s out there and complaining about it is like bitching about the shit on the floor of the barn the horse bolted from.) Enter things at random and see what you get. Or just google for free mp3s offered by artists, which works more often than you’d think. If you like it, buy some, and see what buying it leads you to. (This is why I spend more on new music than anyone else I know.) Don’t just wait to see what the TV feeds you. You know as well as I do that in most places the TV exists to feed you shit. They spent a full year programming Avril Lavigne in LA and dressing her up to appeal to as many “subculture” strands as possible. She’s the Monkees, and that kind of Frankensteinian creature only works if you sit there and passively let that kind of shit-radiation into your brain. (full interview)
While you’re at it, you can also go to Warren’s braindump blog here or his graphic novel review site here.