OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

lol that's perfect

I'm impressed that he's into Shake It Up.

http://www.vulture.com/m/2013/05/why-pop-stars-rule-the-world.html

That was a whole lotta hot air.

and factual errors!

but I guess once you reach tv-exec status the "small things" are mere piffle

JONES BEACH IS NOT A STADIUM GAHHH

I'm not sure if this from Salon is exactly music writing or not -- is there a "tragically misconceived generational thinkpiece" thread? -- but I challenge any human here to read the whole thing

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/25/i_dont_hate_millennials_anymore/

Perhaps unfairly, I want my students to define themselves personally by defining themselves musically. I want them to care deeply for one band or musical genre over another. A lot of my cultural bonding with friends occurred because of music. One always knew who had been at the big rock show the night or weekend before, because everyone wore concert shirts to school the next day. The coolest kids at my school were the skate punks who listened to the Dead Milkmen and Anthrax and 7 Seconds. In high school, I found it difficult to be good friends with people who couldn’t appreciate the Cure. At my high school proms, it was my friends and me who took over the dance floor at the opening riff of the B-52s’ “Rock Lobster”—after sitting down through all of the Taylor Dayne, Bob Seger, Miami Sound Machine, and Tiffany preceding it. Underground music in the 1980s truly was an alternative to the likes of Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Debbie Gibson, and the proliferation of syrupy romantic duets (like “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life” from “Dirty Dancing”). Marked by “deep,” literary, or socially conscious lyrics, melodic buildups that defied the three-minute pop format, innovative vocals, and like as not a British pedigree, alternative music was a revelation to me and my left-of-center peers. Millennials, on the other hand, “do not have a generational music.”

Given this anecdotal evidence, it is tempting to believe that the sum of the generation gap between us can be encapsulated by a “content item” like “The Breakfast Club”—a sacred text for Generation X (and for a long time my half-serious litmus test for friendship), the alienation of which does not generally reflect Millennial experience. In reality, however, the difference is one of method and mode; not only have the “experience boxes” of Millennials been filled with different content, the manufacture of the boxes themselves has followed a process as deliberate and structured as the formation of Generation X was laissez-faire, relativistic, and nonintentional.

i could barely finish that excerpt.....

On the first day of class each semester, I ask my students to list on a three-by-five card their contact information, major, hometown, clubs/activities/athletic teams, favorite book, film, and music. Despite being an English professor, I am most interested in the third of that triad. I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists or Nick Drake or Sigur Rós or even U2. What I get instead is a lot of second-rate hip-hop, former American Idol contestants who’ve landed recording contracts, or—worst of all—“I listen to anything.” One semester a young woman who indicated English as a potential major also listed Britney Spears as one of her favorite musicians. I said to her, “Is that ironic?”

“What do you mean?” she replied.

Oh, that’s right, I thought. Millennials don’t do irony.

Tenure-track professor, ladies and gentlemen.

wow what a dumbass

I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists I hope against hope each semester to see listed the Decemberists

why??????????

From RateMyProfessor: "If you want to learn, study with this woman. You will be challenged to think and grow beyond adolescent self-centeredness into reflective creativity."

Now there's some irony!

what the fuck is a beloit college

lol "even u2"

For six seasons, I obsessed over “Lost” and wept prolifically through the last episode.

in the years since I "got my paper and I was free" I've come to realize that there are a lot of middling minds in academia

I knew I was a decent writer, and so I relied on that ability to cover a multitude of sins (such as thin content or a missing thesis).

part of this sentence rings true

feel like as media/teaching changes hands to x, "you have no self, nobody was ever mean to you because you liked the cure" will become the new "you have no social conscience, you never had to decide whether or not to go to vietnam", and i for one have some apologies to make

Also apparently missing from the Millennial generation are an appreciation for irony, an individualistic self-concept, and the kind of originality born of feeling alienated and out of place. Where is the Sylvia Plath-obsessed would-be writer who shopped quite happily at the Salvation Army? Or the rabid Monkees fan who idolized the 1960s and lit her basement dorm room with a lava lamp? Or the poet/actor/playwright/jack of all literary trades who could mimic anyone and came back to teach at his alma mater? My initial reaction to teaching the students at my first institution was to think, “I don’t look out there and see myself—or for that matter, anyone I went to college with.”

Millennials: no irony, never shop at thrift stores, hate the Monkees

i like to think of the millenials as a work in progress, a tale not yet fully told, a subject we should shut the fuck up about until we have some hindsight.

I think of us as a generation that isn't reducible to quirky, superficial, context blind categorisations, that you can make valid observations about so long as you're willing to make a modicum of sense.

millennials are too ironic

TNT Fall 2013 The Millennialist solves crimes by pointing out other generation's affinity for irony in Internet fluff pieces

the salon piece is soooo fucking long!!

it's like seeing ten shits in one bowl.

http://img2.imagesbn.com/p/9780810890701_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG

List Price: $80.00
Price: $71.60 & FREE Shipping. Details

*DIES DYINGLY*

Everything about this is one big earnest fucking fail. It's like this professor caught the same virus that turned the Flaming Lips and Dave Eggers into the walking dead circa 1999.

I have taken to creating my own set of benchmarks to note the important-to-me facts and experiences that will never be true for my students. For instance:

• On “Sesame Street,” Elmo has always been a major presence; Roosevelt Franklin, never.
• Millennials never held a tape recorder next to an LP player to record a song.
• AIDS has always been a global, predominantly third-world epidemic, rather than a mysterious disease decimating the gay community and cutting a deadly swath through America’s fashion, art, and creative worlds.
• During the Millennials’ college years, a large percentage of their communication will occur via text messaging, e-mail, Facebook, and cell phones. As an undergraduate, I had access to none of those technologies.
• They have no idea who the Solid Gold Dancers were.
• They never had to await their once-yearly chance to watch “The Wizard of Oz” or “The Sound of Music” on network television, preceded by the familiar, spinning “Special Presentation” logo.

"they don't worship the same consumerist idols as I do, oh and also AIDS"

or—worst of all—“I listen to anything.”
or—worst of all—“I listen to anything.”
or—worst of all—“I listen to anything.”
or—worst of all—“I listen to anything.”
or—worst of all—“I listen to anything.”

I Like All Types Of Music
COMMENTARY • Entertainment • Opinion • ISSUE 33•05 • Feb 11, 1998
By Michelle Carney, Music Lover

Michelle Carney
Music Lover

When I go to the mall for music, you won't catch me stuck in just one section of Record Town. That's because I like all kinds of music!

Just yesterday, I was in the car with a girlfriend, and she asked me what kind of music she should play, so I told her that anything at all was just fine with me. After all, I like everything from Billy Joel to Elton John to Jewel.

But that's not all by a long shot: One day I'll be in the mood for rock and roll, so I'll put on the new Fleetwood Mac album, and the next I'll feel like classical, so I'll reach for the Titanic soundtrack. I even listen to jazz, like that hunk Kenny G.

I've also really been getting into that new "alternative" music after hearing it on Melrose Place and in that Volkswagen commercial. There's this one alternative song I heard last time I was eating at Denny's, and I just fell in love with it. I don't know who it's by, but it goes, "What if God was one of us?" It was so deep.

On a typical day at home, I might listen to a Celine Dion CD, then watch a few videos on VH1, and then turn the channel to line-dancing on the Nashville Network while I do the dishes. You see, I have what is called an eclectic personality.

My husband isn't half the music lover I am, so when I bought a new oak cabinet for our stereo last year, he complained that I was throwing our money away. It was kind of expensive, but I just had to have a cabinet that matched the furniture in our day room. One of my matching oak CD towers is almost half full, and I'll be getting six more CDs in the mail because I just joined the BMG Music Club.

When I was filling out the enrollment form, I had a pretty hard time deciding which box to check to indicate my favorite type of music. I went ahead and checked the section that had Sheryl Crow in it, because I really like that one song she does.

I like music so much that when I'm at work at the insurance agency, I keep the radio on all day. Unfortunately, last week, my love of music resulted in a very unpleasant run-in with a typist from the temp agency. Personally, I can't imagine how my music could have possibly bothered her, as we have an office rule that the volume dial goes no higher than three.

It was Thursday afternoon, and I was listening to the Christian Contemporary station when the temp started making wisecracks about the music. I changed the station to Lite 107-FM, but then she began to groan loudly at the start of every song.

The last straw came when she shouted "Oh, God!" when The Carpenters' "Close To You" came on. I finally just turned the darn radio off altogether. One thing I can't understand is someone who hates music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzIFA1f-LZk

They neither seek nor anticipate the version of higher learning depicted in the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine,” a song often heard drifting across the quad during my college years

Finally gave in and clicked on the link, just to verify that those were real quotes

this is so good

what the fuck is wrong with this person

everyone goes through this challops phase in college, but some of them become professors and never leave campus

seems like run of the mill shut-in academic to me, rly only extreme ito shamelessness/lack of self-awareness

i had a pretty awful gen x prof who would play, like, pop punk circa 2003 on his laptop before class... everyone thought he was cool tho, p horrifying

that piece is pretty much irredeemable.

also

btw ugh @ onion just the headline + photo punchline? i mean not that u usually read more than the headline & lede but still depressing?

eh, cut out the middleman imo

middleman = your profession??!

writers?

oh ya sry forgot u are a promoter

AIDS has always been a global, predominantly third-world epidemic, rather than a mysterious disease decimating the gay community and cutting a deadly swath through America’s fashion, art, and creative worlds.

I don't remember most of my Gen X classmates really giving a damn about the toll AIDS was taking on the gay community or the creative world. Maybe they were being ironic about it though.

remember Steve Zahn in Reality Bites?