Author: Marc Weidenbaum

I’m of the “barbershop or grocery store” mindset when it comes to online hangouts. A barbershop is the sort of service of which you really need only one, and once you’ve found the right one, you stick with it for a long time. In contrast, to a degree, grocery stores are more interchangeable: you still ultimately have your primary one or two, and you visit others that are useful for special purposes. I don’t know that I have an online barbershop, per se, but these are my main grocery stores:

Lines: This message board, llllllll.co, is my favorite hangout online. It’s largely focused on electronic music, and I don’t really participate in the threads there that aren’t related to music. It’s where much of the Disquiet Junto discussion takes place.

YouTube: A lot of my listening (and viewing) is on YouTube (youtube.com/disquiet). I used to post videos on occasion, and hope to get back to it. The recent relabelling of accounts has improved communication there, and maybe even moderated discussion in a positive manner. (I also spend a lot of time with my YouTube Music account — essentially the same as Spotify and Apple Music, etc., except it comes with ad-free YouTube, which is awesome.)

Bandcamp: The main other source of my listening besides YouTube is Bandcamp. I’m at bandcamp.com/disquiet, and if we follow each other then the service’s low-key social component serves up recommendations in the “feed.” (If you’re interested in sending me music for review consideration, a /yum code is arguably the best way. Warning: I’m a horrible correspondent. Online music distribution has been a boon to availability and access, but it has hammered my email inbox beyond utility.)

Mastodon: And while Mastodon (I’m at the inherently awkward post.lurk.org/@disquiet) is no Twitter replacement, it scratches the itch. It does have its unique qualities, some of which are even benefits (“How I Got from Mastodon’t to Mastodon”).

Instagram: My instagram.com/dsqt gets updated pretty regularly. I go through jags focused on one subject, one visual mode, or another.

SoundCloud: My soundcloud.com/disquiet is a bit of a conundrum. The service has a 2,000-follow max, so I can’t really add anyone, because I don’t know whom to delete, because I don’t know of any tools to tell me which accounts I follow have gone dormant. Also, I’ve got almost 11,000 followers, but those numbers don’t translate to much traction or communication. It is, though, where most Disquiet Junto music community posting takes place, because no other service has surfaced that makes sense. Sad to think how great SoundCloud once once, especially when it had Groups and Discussion features.

And the General Diaspora: I do spend time on Facebook, but rarely expand my follows; it’s mostly old friends and work colleagues, and family. I barely even talk about music there, because the responses haven’t proved useful. My Twitter account (twitter.com/disquiet) remains on hold for the foreseeable future. I’m on a ton of Discords and Discourses, and a sizable number of Slacks, but aside from the modest Junto Slack I don’t do a ton on any of them. And I’ve tried out numerous post-Twitter services, such as post.news (post.news/@disquiet), but one only needs so many grocery stores.

Or at least his heroes did. This is from City Primeval, one of two novels Elmore Leonard published in 1980. I’ve never read an Elmore Leonard novel before. Well, I started this one years ago, but didn’t finished it. I started all over recently and am close to done. A remarkable book. To say the author knows exactly what he’s doing is an understatement. The world of the book is a bit too intense for me, so I’m not sure I’ll be reading another one any time soon, but it’s an incredibly well-constructed novel.

In one earlier scene, the antagonist, who has a fierce dislike for disco, damages a Donna Summer album, having “swept the arm” of the record player across it in a fit. “That disco shit just ricochets off my mind!” he complains. Later, someone who was present the first time takes pains to save a Bee Gees record from being “scratched to death” by the same person. She succeeds. And later still, close to the end of the book, the disco hater, in a state of extended isolation, gets so lonely that he puts the Donna Summer record back “on the record player to hear the sound of a human voice.” It says something about Leonard’s conscientiousness regarding narrative coherence and authorial logic that the colorful early moment is echoed not once but twice.

Tellingly in the scene excerpted here, this Raymond is the story’s protagonist: a detective tasked with bringing down a killer (of people as well as, secondarily, records). I love how Raymond becomes aware of how sound works in the bar, and his observation of people “working at having fun.” As I mentioned recently, one of the things about thrillers is there’s usually a character who is primed to listen closely. In order for the characters to listen closely, the author must, as well.

Note: I updated this post after finishing reading the novel.