ABCDE Arts&Style sunday, november 14, 2010 RECORDINGS
Springsteen outtakes Songs that didn’t make “Darkness on the Edge of Town” see the light. E12
BLOGS AND CHATS
washingtonpost.com/style On Love For this couple, saving the sex for after marriage was the right choice. E10 Carolyn Hax This parent will pay for the wedding — if the daughter waits till age 25. E11
Ask Amy, E8 Celebrations, E11 Cul de Sac, E12 Movie Guide, E9 Horoscope, E9 Lively Arts Guide, E4 KK THEATER
Quick study Nine days before press opening, Eleasha Gamble was handed the lead role in Arena’s “Oklahoma!” E7
Face it: Facebook is ugly. Shouldn’t something seen so often be beautiful? We demand a makeover.
acelift. by Blake Gopnik
It’s a safe bet that no image in history has been viewed as many times, as intently, as the basic Facebook page. The company claims that its 500 million users spend more than 10 billion hours every month looking at that blue-and- gray Web site. In her five centuries of existence, Mona Lisa has not been ogled as much. She must be jealous. She shouldn’t be. Popularity is one thing;
beauty is another. No matter how many friends Facebook may have offered up to you, the truth is that your page is ugly. Look at it: Do its standard grays and blues
Elevating form and function: A redesigned Facebook page, E5.
make you think or feel anything at all? They have all the charisma of a checkbook. Stand a few feet back from your computer screen, and try to describe the gestalt of the design you see. You’ll find almost nothing there worth notic- ing. Just a bunch of postage-stamp photos skit- tering around a gridded-up page, like the fall- ing doodads in a Tetris game. At very best, the Facebook page is utterly nondescript. No one surfing to it by accident would say, “Wow, I’d better look at what this page has to offer.” But doesn’t creating the most-seen image, ever, come with a certain aes- thetic responsibility? Adam Mosseri, a design manager at Face- book, isn’t sure it does. “We actually spend a lot of time designing the lack of presence,” he says. “Would we want people to come to Facebook and say, ‘This is something beautiful,’ or ‘This is something well executed’? I do think there’s a lot of room for improvement in the visual ex- ecution, but I can’t imagine us aiming for that.” He draws an analogy to composing music for
facebook continued on E5 MUSIC What a 27-time Grammy winner has to teach
Quincy Jones tells future musicians to look to the past
by DeNeen Brown
“Youngblood,” the jazz greats would whisper in whiskey-smooth voices to a young Quincy Jones, “step into my office.” The office could have been a backstage hallway anywhere with musicians prac- ticing bebop. Or a juke joint in downtown Seattle, where Billie Holiday had to be helped onstage. The office might have been a jazz club corridor with broken lights and a 17-year-old Ray Charles, who “might as well have been 100 because he had his own girlfriend and apartment.” The office might have been a seat on a bus traveling with the Lionel Hampton Band. In the “office,” the older musicians would educate Jones about music and life.
“Youngblood, you gotta . . .” Jones re- calls them saying as he sits at a corner ta- ble in the bar lounge at the Ritz-Carlton in Northwest Washington. Jones has come to town to promote his new book, “Q on Producing.” In the book — the first of three in “The Quincy Jones Legacy Se- ries,” written with Bill Gibson — Jones dis- penses advice to a younger generation, which he says doesn’t seem to understand its music history or recognize its musical heroes. The book is Jones’s “step into my office” lesson for younger musicians. “I talk a lot now,” he says, “but I used to sit down, shut up and listen.” Jones was only 14 in 1947 when he joined a jazz band in Seattle. Throughout his career, there was always someone old- er on the scene to “school” Jones. Jones pauses. Ice cubes clink in glasses
BILL O’LEARY/WASHINGTON POST
LATEST PROJECTS: Jones has a new book, “Q on Producing,” and new album, “Q: Soul Bossa Nostra.”
at the bar. “Count Basie practically adopt- ed me when I was 13. I would play hooky
music continued on E3
Robin Givhan A tuxedo on a woman: Breaking society’s rules and fashion’s stereotypes. Page E2
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ILLUSTRATION BY MARK ALLEN MILLER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
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