from a pitchfork "poptimist" column that i don't care to link to:
"Consumerism makes Miltons of us all."
this from a writer who actually BOASTS about having forgotten all but a single line of Paradise Lost.
listen, Tom Ewing (hopefully he's got a google alert on his own name), consumerism makes us many things: petty, forgetful, arrogant, judgmental, blind to the suffering of others, alienated, furious, etc. but not, i repeat NOT, divinely inspired poets.
by the by, work and this one pretty dame have prevented me from blogging recently. also weed. fortunately nobody cares.
anyway, how's your biblical epic coming along? mine's okay, i guess.
Showing posts with label erudite retards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label erudite retards. Show all posts
Friday, April 29, 2011
Friday, March 5, 2010
back to the future
here's a little peek at the freakish dystopia that exists in tom ewing's head (he's one of my favorite fork-compensated retards). what tom is imagining is the year 2021, when CD-Rs make a comeback. it's historical fiction that takes place in the future, which is terra firma for The Onion, but quite the adventure for the fork.
i've tried several times now to write something in depth about how stupid this is, but it kind of felt like writing an extensive essay on the blueness of the sky. i'll try to boil my reaction down to the essentials.
nevermind that CD's represent the motherfucking inception of digital culture. nevermind that every major music-seller has already vanished (in ewing's imagination, "Britain's high street stores stopped stocking CDs five years ago"). and nevermind that a guy who writes many thousands of words elaborating on a made-up future for hipsters has clearly run out of shit to say.
instead, ignore the glaring idiocy, and embrace this style as the logical next step for pitchfork writers: having exhausted the past, they can now go on to writing about tomorrow's nostalgia today.
one short post-script: if hipsters really wanted to rebel against digital culture, they'd stop being dilettante collectors, and they'd start actually supporting musicians by paying to watch them perform.
i've tried several times now to write something in depth about how stupid this is, but it kind of felt like writing an extensive essay on the blueness of the sky. i'll try to boil my reaction down to the essentials.
nevermind that CD's represent the motherfucking inception of digital culture. nevermind that every major music-seller has already vanished (in ewing's imagination, "Britain's high street stores stopped stocking CDs five years ago"). and nevermind that a guy who writes many thousands of words elaborating on a made-up future for hipsters has clearly run out of shit to say.
instead, ignore the glaring idiocy, and embrace this style as the logical next step for pitchfork writers: having exhausted the past, they can now go on to writing about tomorrow's nostalgia today.
one short post-script: if hipsters really wanted to rebel against digital culture, they'd stop being dilettante collectors, and they'd start actually supporting musicians by paying to watch them perform.
Friday, October 2, 2009
wampire veekend
frontman ezra koenig shows signs of wear and tear in this interview. i can't quite put my finger on why i find it interesting. i guess it would be this (and i am as guilty of this as perhaps anyone on the planet): writing songs against elitism, constantly reiterating that you are not one of those "elitists", that people who think you are are wrong, these are essentially elitist activities. is it such a coincidence that a band so explicitly concerned with elitism would end up being called elitists themselves? the only people who seem to be bothered by "elitism" as a topic, or an accusation, are themselves wealthy and educated; but in their hatred of elitism they actually find a way to think themselves better than all the wealthy, educated people who don't bother to worry about such things. the elite among the elite. love this independent music.
"With the first album, I noticed some people would never give us the benefit of the doubt about any lyrics that referenced class or education. They would be so offended that a song would be called 'Oxford Comma' that they didn't understand how it's a song about anti-elitism."
and who are these people who refused you the benefit of the doubt? totally missing your "anti-elitism" streak?
"Essentially it's just a bunch of college-educated people trying to compete for who has it tougher, when the truth is none of us had it tough."
oh i see. it's not you who's the phony elitist, it's the people who called you a phony elitist. neat!
"With the first album, I noticed some people would never give us the benefit of the doubt about any lyrics that referenced class or education. They would be so offended that a song would be called 'Oxford Comma' that they didn't understand how it's a song about anti-elitism."
and who are these people who refused you the benefit of the doubt? totally missing your "anti-elitism" streak?
"Essentially it's just a bunch of college-educated people trying to compete for who has it tougher, when the truth is none of us had it tough."
oh i see. it's not you who's the phony elitist, it's the people who called you a phony elitist. neat!
Friday, April 17, 2009
just LOOK at this asshole
i stopped writing here precisely because i didn't want to sound like this asshole. now, i think people who use "twitter" are fucking retarted. my anti-technology streak is so strong now that i struggle to stop myself from knocking perfect strangers' phones out of their hands, while they check their screens to look at a map which can show them EXACTLY WHERE THEY ARE!!!
William Bowers, over at the pitched fork, feels the same way. but he can't just say as much. he has to use a lot of space to make clear how sincere his luddite pose really is.
"You want gauche? I got no game console. I got no cell phone. I've never been in an American Apparel store, despite their advertising's relentless, almost artless ass-baiting. You want archaica? I still read books. In a rocking chair. On a porch." to which my response is: (1) who gives a fuck you miserably self-involved piece of shit?! you have a rocking chair? and a porch? you read BOOKS? and here i was thinking hundreds of millions of americans read books in chairs every single fucking day. (2) so you refuse to buy american apparel, bully for you. but short of a full-on consumer boycott, you're essentially doing their market research for them (i.e. since you've given no particular reason to avoid the company aside from your general disposition, and since you've indicated no opposition to "buying stuff" per se, the only conclusion to be drawn is that the brand doesn't resonate with you).
he also, of course, needs to anticipate his reader's reaction and pre-empt it with a subtle blend of self-mockery and masturbatory reference-dropping (no quotes necessary; follow the link if you don't already know exactly what this sounds like.)
among many other objections (the fact that a pitchfork writer is bemoaning our culture's deteriorating attention span is one; the fact that, "It champions impulsive utterance at the same time that it highlights the disposability of that utterance. It reduces communication to the parameters of an advertisement. Make your pitch, bark your slogan, get out," is written about twitter and not about pitchfork would be another), i'd like to point out that the word "populist" has been sucked dry of any meaning whatsoever.
consider: "It is a lot more populist and I think that can be attributed to Twitter's significantly larger userbase. Everyone from teenage Hannah Montana fans to Rachmaninov-loving college professors are on Twitter. So you get a pretty interesting diversity between the songs typically tweeted about." in this quote, from an unnamed executive at a private company, people who are too poor to afford computers simply don't exist. "everyone... are [sic] on twitter."
but many of us make exactly this mistake: technology that costs a hell of a lot of money to access is "democratizing". the ability for people with cell phones and computers to communicate with other people who have cell phones and computers -- of course that means "everyone can talk to everyone." who else is there?
with all the references that William Bowers tosses into the mix (bon iver, kubrick, voltaire, emily dickensen... you get the point, motherfucker's been to school and back), almost none of them seem to have any relevance to his argument, whatever that might be. they are, at best, tangentially related to tangents. so, i'm gonna suggest one, that could have saved the author a lot of mental gymnastics. (something tells me, however, that the gymnastics are precisely what he enjoys, in which case, has he tried twitter?)
a simple line from thoreau, which could really substitute for the entire article and still have more resonance: "can it be, perhaps, that massachusets and texas have nothing to talk about?"
William Bowers, over at the pitched fork, feels the same way. but he can't just say as much. he has to use a lot of space to make clear how sincere his luddite pose really is.
"You want gauche? I got no game console. I got no cell phone. I've never been in an American Apparel store, despite their advertising's relentless, almost artless ass-baiting. You want archaica? I still read books. In a rocking chair. On a porch." to which my response is: (1) who gives a fuck you miserably self-involved piece of shit?! you have a rocking chair? and a porch? you read BOOKS? and here i was thinking hundreds of millions of americans read books in chairs every single fucking day. (2) so you refuse to buy american apparel, bully for you. but short of a full-on consumer boycott, you're essentially doing their market research for them (i.e. since you've given no particular reason to avoid the company aside from your general disposition, and since you've indicated no opposition to "buying stuff" per se, the only conclusion to be drawn is that the brand doesn't resonate with you).
he also, of course, needs to anticipate his reader's reaction and pre-empt it with a subtle blend of self-mockery and masturbatory reference-dropping (no quotes necessary; follow the link if you don't already know exactly what this sounds like.)
among many other objections (the fact that a pitchfork writer is bemoaning our culture's deteriorating attention span is one; the fact that, "It champions impulsive utterance at the same time that it highlights the disposability of that utterance. It reduces communication to the parameters of an advertisement. Make your pitch, bark your slogan, get out," is written about twitter and not about pitchfork would be another), i'd like to point out that the word "populist" has been sucked dry of any meaning whatsoever.
consider: "It is a lot more populist and I think that can be attributed to Twitter's significantly larger userbase. Everyone from teenage Hannah Montana fans to Rachmaninov-loving college professors are on Twitter. So you get a pretty interesting diversity between the songs typically tweeted about." in this quote, from an unnamed executive at a private company, people who are too poor to afford computers simply don't exist. "everyone... are [sic] on twitter."
but many of us make exactly this mistake: technology that costs a hell of a lot of money to access is "democratizing". the ability for people with cell phones and computers to communicate with other people who have cell phones and computers -- of course that means "everyone can talk to everyone." who else is there?
with all the references that William Bowers tosses into the mix (bon iver, kubrick, voltaire, emily dickensen... you get the point, motherfucker's been to school and back), almost none of them seem to have any relevance to his argument, whatever that might be. they are, at best, tangentially related to tangents. so, i'm gonna suggest one, that could have saved the author a lot of mental gymnastics. (something tells me, however, that the gymnastics are precisely what he enjoys, in which case, has he tried twitter?)
a simple line from thoreau, which could really substitute for the entire article and still have more resonance: "can it be, perhaps, that massachusets and texas have nothing to talk about?"
Sunday, February 1, 2009
ladies and germs.... the grammys
i think the last time i noticed the grammys, i was happy to see soul asylum getting the respect they deserved (they were a much better new artist than SWV). obviously, a lot's changed since then. silverchair couldn't find the staying power that we were promised, the internet stopped being called "the information superhighway", and kurt cobain never rose from the dead. the grammys, though, are forever.
looking through this year's nominations , what catches my eye first is that snoop dogg's "sexual eruption" is nominated for best rap song, which is fantastic.
did you know that beck and radiohead, two of the biggest white names in music the world over, are still making "alternative" albums. that's right. beck, the scientologist, and radiohead, captains of the penthouse underground. other nominees in the best alternative album category are: death cab for cutie, gnarles barkley, and my morning jacket. so "alternative", a word they only invented because some asshole didn't want to call pearl jam "a rock band", is now completely devoid of meaning, or even recognizable traits. i mean, gnarles barkley and my morning jacket ARE IN THE SAME CATEGORY!!!
best electronic/dance album: moby, robyn, kylie minogue, cyndi lauper, brazilian girls, and daft punk (nominated for their live album with no new material). that, reader, is as stale a list as you will ever find. extraordinary that this group of mccain voters (most of these artist reached fame before lebron james hit a growth spurt) are representing the most overcrowded genre this side of rap.
some fun tidbits: judas priest gets a not for best metal song. hope somebody from the industry's buying the plane tickets. boyz II men aparently put out an album last year, and it was good enough to get a nomination. danger mouse, nigel goodrich, and will.i.am go head to head to head for "producer of the year".
what's important to understand is that the record industry was going broke BEFORE the economy contracted 40%. itunes has kept the labels afloat for the last couple years, and the explosion of "20th aniversary" releases and record label retrospectives has kept a older demographic in the fold (the one that has memories of buying records frequently). but the RIAA's gala-throwing days are numbered. this is reflected in the desperate attempt to draw attention to coldplay and lil wayne.
the big labels used to produce dozens of "viva la vida"s every year. rap music still sells pretty well ("the carter III" was a good old fashioned success, selling one million copies in its first week). but the industry has already past its very own "hubbert's peak"; it's tough to imagine a future in which record sales would trend upward. when the distribution mechanism implodes, the industry fails. simple as that.
did james taylor give the best pop performance of the year, or was it the eagles? neil young, eddie vedder, bruce springsteen, paul mccartney, and john mayer should probably be thrown into some sort of battle royale, but instead they're all nominated for "best solo rock vocal performance". are the voters so astoundingly tasteless that they'd actually reward kid rock for his crap-epic "rock and roll jesus"? what size sunglasses will kanye west wear?
hard to think of anyone who cares. the world has bigger fish to fry at the moment. fish such as: edgerin james is the fucking key. if he can average more than 4 per carry, pitsburgh's secondary will open up just enough for kurt warner to CHRIST his way to the hall of fame.
looking through this year's nominations , what catches my eye first is that snoop dogg's "sexual eruption" is nominated for best rap song, which is fantastic.
did you know that beck and radiohead, two of the biggest white names in music the world over, are still making "alternative" albums. that's right. beck, the scientologist, and radiohead, captains of the penthouse underground. other nominees in the best alternative album category are: death cab for cutie, gnarles barkley, and my morning jacket. so "alternative", a word they only invented because some asshole didn't want to call pearl jam "a rock band", is now completely devoid of meaning, or even recognizable traits. i mean, gnarles barkley and my morning jacket ARE IN THE SAME CATEGORY!!!
best electronic/dance album: moby, robyn, kylie minogue, cyndi lauper, brazilian girls, and daft punk (nominated for their live album with no new material). that, reader, is as stale a list as you will ever find. extraordinary that this group of mccain voters (most of these artist reached fame before lebron james hit a growth spurt) are representing the most overcrowded genre this side of rap.
some fun tidbits: judas priest gets a not for best metal song. hope somebody from the industry's buying the plane tickets. boyz II men aparently put out an album last year, and it was good enough to get a nomination. danger mouse, nigel goodrich, and will.i.am go head to head to head for "producer of the year".
what's important to understand is that the record industry was going broke BEFORE the economy contracted 40%. itunes has kept the labels afloat for the last couple years, and the explosion of "20th aniversary" releases and record label retrospectives has kept a older demographic in the fold (the one that has memories of buying records frequently). but the RIAA's gala-throwing days are numbered. this is reflected in the desperate attempt to draw attention to coldplay and lil wayne.
the big labels used to produce dozens of "viva la vida"s every year. rap music still sells pretty well ("the carter III" was a good old fashioned success, selling one million copies in its first week). but the industry has already past its very own "hubbert's peak"; it's tough to imagine a future in which record sales would trend upward. when the distribution mechanism implodes, the industry fails. simple as that.
did james taylor give the best pop performance of the year, or was it the eagles? neil young, eddie vedder, bruce springsteen, paul mccartney, and john mayer should probably be thrown into some sort of battle royale, but instead they're all nominated for "best solo rock vocal performance". are the voters so astoundingly tasteless that they'd actually reward kid rock for his crap-epic "rock and roll jesus"? what size sunglasses will kanye west wear?
hard to think of anyone who cares. the world has bigger fish to fry at the moment. fish such as: edgerin james is the fucking key. if he can average more than 4 per carry, pitsburgh's secondary will open up just enough for kurt warner to CHRIST his way to the hall of fame.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
top ten ways to bury your head in your ass
it would be best if i began by saying outright that i find this to be one of the more irritating bits of writing i've ever come across (and i spend a fair amount of time trolling the right-wing internets). nick southall is a critic who states -- almost with pride -- that he is "not an engineer or a musician." still, he seems to think himself uniquely qualified to tell musicians how to make better records.
indeed, the title of this odious turd of a piece is: "top ten ways to make better records".
i am a musician. and i'm a lucky guy, because nick is graciously writing this piece for my own benefit -- and for the benefit of all musicians who try to express themselves. after not liking a lot of records, he's "come to the inevitable, ineffable conclusion that musicians are often fumbling in the dark during the recording and production process." he continues: "many musicians don't know what their best material is, and even if they do, they don't know how to make the most of it half the time anyway, and so the ostensibly simple process of making good records gets repeatedly cocked-up by people who ought to know better, if they could only remember the things they loved about records when they were just fans themselves."
let's try to absorb all of the bullshit in that last bit of paragraph. musicians don't know how to record music, how to differentiate their good works from their bad ones, how to "make the most" of their best songs, how to avoid cocking up the "ostensibly simple [!] process of making good records," and to top it all off, they don't even remember what they love about music (because they're so distracted by making it). jeez, these musician guys sound really really stupid.
aside from working in the service industry, is there anything they CAN do?
hang on one second. hold down the meatballs! the obvious question is: what makes a critic, who admits to having nothing but second-hand knowledge about the whole process of recording, think he can the supply advice that will shelter musicians from their own bad taste? granted that musicians are totally dumb, what makes this guy so fucking clever? amazingly enough, it's precisely because he's not a musician that he feels his thoughts will be of value. "as a music journalist, and more importantly as a music fan, i've spent a lot of time paying a lot of attention to a lot of records, researching how they're made and talking to the people who make them." if only we could all just talk to musicians, we wouldn't even need his advice. sadly, you go to war with the army you have, so onward and upward.
as far as the specific advice he offers is concerned, there are few surprises. record live if your band sounds better live, a 40 minute cd is better than a 75 minute one (hat tip to j-temp for his previous work on the absurd concept of "exhausting" music), don't overcompress stuff ("it sounds crap"), don't get too stoned, be creative with sequencing, and so forth. it's not that he gives any advice that's particularly BAD; it's just all so OBVIOUS. he writes as if "be economical with time" were some sort of epiphany worthy of publication. that southall thinks any of this advice is uncharted territory for musicians only goes to further establish how out of touch he is with the actual experience of being creative.
but beyond nuts and bolts idiocy, there's something so essentially arrogant and stupid about the whole project. the entire piece is written from the premise that nick is better at listening to music than the people who make it -- which is to say, it's a load of self-serving, narcissistic nonsense. one more time: critics are not special. being a critic does not make you smarter, and it doesn't help you understand music in any noteworthy way. all they do is listen to songs, and then talk about whether or not they like them. everyone does this. as a profession, it impresses mostly fellow english majors, and practically nobody else.
creativity is about embracing risk. criticism is about SHIELDING yourself from risk. nick doesn't understand the difference (because he's not very smart). he thinks his experience evaluating music makes him better equipped to understand the process of making music (imagine a homeless man advising a room full of chefs on the culinary arts -- and justifying this by saying, "i've eaten a lot of bad shit in my day."). and so nick offers advice only on how to avoid fucking up, which is easily the least effective and most self-centered approach an artist can possibly take. creative people take risks; critics fear them.
his tenth and final piece of advice is: "don't be afraid to follow, or ignore, any and all advice you may be privy to, including this. it's your record after all." again, hold down the meatballs. has he just revoked his original statement that musicians are "fumbling in the dark" when it comes to being musicians? is he trying to insulate himself from the possibility that someone would find his advice condescending? is this a recognition that the very idea of such an article necessitates it being an utter waste of time? his world-weary knowledge of records is slamming right into his disingenuous populism. this is fingernails-on-a-blackboard cognitive dissonance. really impressive stuff.
in a discussion about the traffic in los angeles, larry david once said, "sometimes it gets so bad you can hardly breathe." when it occurs to me that dime store fools like nick southall actually hold sway over the success of "independent" musicians, i think i know what he means.
indeed, the title of this odious turd of a piece is: "top ten ways to make better records".
i am a musician. and i'm a lucky guy, because nick is graciously writing this piece for my own benefit -- and for the benefit of all musicians who try to express themselves. after not liking a lot of records, he's "come to the inevitable, ineffable conclusion that musicians are often fumbling in the dark during the recording and production process." he continues: "many musicians don't know what their best material is, and even if they do, they don't know how to make the most of it half the time anyway, and so the ostensibly simple process of making good records gets repeatedly cocked-up by people who ought to know better, if they could only remember the things they loved about records when they were just fans themselves."
let's try to absorb all of the bullshit in that last bit of paragraph. musicians don't know how to record music, how to differentiate their good works from their bad ones, how to "make the most" of their best songs, how to avoid cocking up the "ostensibly simple [!] process of making good records," and to top it all off, they don't even remember what they love about music (because they're so distracted by making it). jeez, these musician guys sound really really stupid.
aside from working in the service industry, is there anything they CAN do?hang on one second. hold down the meatballs! the obvious question is: what makes a critic, who admits to having nothing but second-hand knowledge about the whole process of recording, think he can the supply advice that will shelter musicians from their own bad taste? granted that musicians are totally dumb, what makes this guy so fucking clever? amazingly enough, it's precisely because he's not a musician that he feels his thoughts will be of value. "as a music journalist, and more importantly as a music fan, i've spent a lot of time paying a lot of attention to a lot of records, researching how they're made and talking to the people who make them." if only we could all just talk to musicians, we wouldn't even need his advice. sadly, you go to war with the army you have, so onward and upward.
as far as the specific advice he offers is concerned, there are few surprises. record live if your band sounds better live, a 40 minute cd is better than a 75 minute one (hat tip to j-temp for his previous work on the absurd concept of "exhausting" music), don't overcompress stuff ("it sounds crap"), don't get too stoned, be creative with sequencing, and so forth. it's not that he gives any advice that's particularly BAD; it's just all so OBVIOUS. he writes as if "be economical with time" were some sort of epiphany worthy of publication. that southall thinks any of this advice is uncharted territory for musicians only goes to further establish how out of touch he is with the actual experience of being creative.
but beyond nuts and bolts idiocy, there's something so essentially arrogant and stupid about the whole project. the entire piece is written from the premise that nick is better at listening to music than the people who make it -- which is to say, it's a load of self-serving, narcissistic nonsense. one more time: critics are not special. being a critic does not make you smarter, and it doesn't help you understand music in any noteworthy way. all they do is listen to songs, and then talk about whether or not they like them. everyone does this. as a profession, it impresses mostly fellow english majors, and practically nobody else.
creativity is about embracing risk. criticism is about SHIELDING yourself from risk. nick doesn't understand the difference (because he's not very smart). he thinks his experience evaluating music makes him better equipped to understand the process of making music (imagine a homeless man advising a room full of chefs on the culinary arts -- and justifying this by saying, "i've eaten a lot of bad shit in my day."). and so nick offers advice only on how to avoid fucking up, which is easily the least effective and most self-centered approach an artist can possibly take. creative people take risks; critics fear them.
his tenth and final piece of advice is: "don't be afraid to follow, or ignore, any and all advice you may be privy to, including this. it's your record after all." again, hold down the meatballs. has he just revoked his original statement that musicians are "fumbling in the dark" when it comes to being musicians? is he trying to insulate himself from the possibility that someone would find his advice condescending? is this a recognition that the very idea of such an article necessitates it being an utter waste of time? his world-weary knowledge of records is slamming right into his disingenuous populism. this is fingernails-on-a-blackboard cognitive dissonance. really impressive stuff.
in a discussion about the traffic in los angeles, larry david once said, "sometimes it gets so bad you can hardly breathe." when it occurs to me that dime store fools like nick southall actually hold sway over the success of "independent" musicians, i think i know what he means.
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