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

Kate Bush for sure

whatever we're all just contributing to the inevitable book proposal

i bet this woman hasn't even heard ott's night bus mixtape

You guys will all do this viral marketing shit for me when my book goes online, right? Nope, didn't think so. Baby my tone is bad.

When I pulled this album off the shelf I said, “oh, it’s an open-y!” And Alex was all, “alright, do you want to know the technical term for that?” And I was all like, “shut up I’m looking at this,” because he was sounding condescending, but now, I’m over it and want to know. It’s called a “gatefold.”

OK this doesn't seem gendered to me, but what do I know? It just sounds like a couple's playful banter. But that's just my take on it.

glad all you guys are around to explain sexism and the way the internet works to me, whew

― maura, Monday, March 17, 2014 11:17 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe you can start a blog where you look at "internet" sites and marvel at how many words they use and stuff and then a man can chime in and explain it to u? i think this could be something

My Exes' Stupid Browser Histories

I guess what trips me up about this is that A) my internal monologue when approaching new records or new genres looks a lot like this, I *know* my internal monologue has looked a LOT like this for years -- does that make me a dumb girl? what about seward's thing on pitchfork, which was the same idea -- is he a dumb girl? or is it about what people are bringing to it (which, to be fair, seems to be a lot of the point).

and B) not all of it is as terrible as it's made out to be -- the hook is obviously to respond to the style and none of the substance, but like, the bit about the fertility calculator? that could completely go in a review. the bit about "it sounds like sawing through pipes" could completely be part of a capsule blurb or something.

'some of this stuff is awful enough to be actual pop criticism' is not the best defense. good enough for a capsule blurb! i guess this project does have merit.

you guys laugh but w/ a little polish this thing could yield a nice listicle and then who's laughing?

you guys say this is a turd and i know it just came out of my dog's ass but i'm telling you if you put some ketchup cheese and a pickle slice on it and put it between two buns you could sell it at mcdonalds so don't try to tell me it's not edible

the pathology of a hack

cool, except that wasn't what I meant at all. basically the vibe I get from this is "a lot of rough pre-draft notes." do I necessarily want to read someone's pre-draft notes, no; would Alex's hypothetical pre-draft notes blow up and be A Thing, probably not; do everyone's pre-draft notes resemble this, probably more than they want to admit

it's a blog it's not perfect
it's still not that much worse than 99% of music shit you read online

^

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AZaK5xk4qZg/UyLSWyDehcI/AAAAAAAAgEY/TKVTuczcAmY/s1600/A+meeting+of+the+Mickey+Mouse+Club,+early+1930s.jpg

Man, I just wrote out a post which is not even going on the passive-aggressive second thoughts posts thread. But instead I am going to self censor and not say what I'm really thinking here because that's ~what girls do~.

it's still not that much worse than 99% of music shit you read online

agreed, when i found out the npr connection i was like 'oh, that's why anybody has noticed this'. it's not worse than 99% of the music shit npr actually pays for.

btw not that anyone asked, but the experiment i referred to above was not music-related

"But instead I am going to self censor and not say what I'm really thinking here because that's ~what girls do~."

or maybe you're just growing up. it's never too late.

Wow, you're still a condescending asshole, at least that hasn't changed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5TxpJVKKQ8

this really isn't a good look, unless maybe branwell bell literally murdered your literal kittens

coffee, though, really? It's a pretty popular beverage iirc

― post-nodern music player (wins), Saturday, March 15, 2014 4:49 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok WTF with this open goal going unexploited with the requisite Gang Starr joke?

This blog... I just kind of wonder how useful it is.
I think it's quite amusing in places. Only read the Albert Ayler one, and questions of gender aside, it does a good job of reiterating exactly the kind of thoughts that someone who is unfamiliar with this kind of music would say - 'it sounds like tuning up', 'it sounds like a dying animal' etc. These are common criticisms of jazz from the uninitiated (along with two favourites from my own partner: 'All the jazz you listen to is either crazy typing music or it sounds like Snoopy!') - they're not wrong, a lot of jazz does sound like this. Without maybe a bit of context and/or background, it can be hard to really tell much of it apart or understand what's going on.
As someone who only recently came to jazz myself, in an admittedly willful way, (because it sounds like a lot of dying cartoon animals trying to type letters on out-of-tune instruments), it was only curiosity which drove me to try and acquire an appreciation for it. I found I could only do this by comparing different artists and eras, reading a bit about the historical, personal and philosophical contexts of the recordings, and listening to shitloads of it. Even this method felt unnaturalistic, like I was giving myself some sort of education as opposed to coming to jazz through some organic chance process. I guess any genre which was pre-formed before one had an awareness of it requires this unnatural approach to some extent - the opposite of discovering new music as it happens etc... So approaching this music in this methodical way is an interesting exercise, but it's the equivalent of getting me to write a blog about a car exhibition or a season of American football... maybe a bit LOL for a couple of entries but unless it's saying anything new, I can imagine it'd get pretty tiring and just piss people off after a while.
So yeah, where was I? I have to question what this blog is for, other than being a fairly entertaining exercise in naif/not naif bloggery. Are music fans and/or non-music fans actually learning anything from it? Do we get any new incites here, or is it all going to be 'Wow, some songs are 11 minutes long!' kind of stuff?

i don't get the term "faux-naif". sometimes it seems like people use this term to describe people who are just being upfront about the stuff they don't know, and in my view the best nonfiction writing does that.

Well I did enjoy the exchange between fictional insufferable ppl in waterface's parody quote up there, a+

Gonna go ahead an assume the actual blog yall are reading on purpose is nothin like that otherwise Jesus

xpost I actually appreciate this attitude. Rather someone is upfront about what they don't know than someone who pretends they know what they're talking about but clearly hasn't got a clue. But there are two extremes here - there's "I know everything about everything" and there's "Duh, what are these funny spinny disc things, LOL" - both quite frustrating. A good writer does their best to fact check and research the gaps in their knowledge. I get that that's not the point of this blog - it feels more 'live-blogged' than anything else, so there's no time for background research. It can be viewed a bunch of ways I guess, I just don't know if it's more about music or more about being a newcomer to a subject or about couple relationships or about gender issues. To me it doesn't seem to fall happily into any of these categories and that's why people are arguing about it.

imo both of these people are 100% completely complicit in their own boring life together

Well I did enjoy the exchange between fictional insufferable ppl in waterface's parody quote up there, a+

guess what

i don't get the term "faux-naif". sometimes it seems like people use this term to describe people who are just being upfront about the stuff they don't know, and in my view the best nonfiction writing does that.

― Treeship, Monday, March 17, 2014 4:46 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're being faux-naif when you claim you don't know what this means

who, me?

speaking of fictional &c

the quote i posted was real

from the blog

seriously though i think certain branches of the faux naif blog voice are intended as an antidote to the kind of writing you see so much of on the internet, where everyone is caustic and defensive and would rather lash out at people than admit weak spots in their arguments.

what a disaster for Albert Ayler

"Well, yeah"

The ayler piece at one point says "There is a lot of writing on the sleeve and back cover". I am all for affected styles, but lets not kid ourselves, that is an affectation.

seriously though i think certain branches of the faux naif blog voice are intended as an antidote to the kind of writing you see so much of on the internet, where everyone is caustic and defensive and would rather lash out at people than admit weak spots in their arguments.

― Treeship, Monday, March 17, 2014 1:01 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there is also the passive aggressive faux naive bloggy voice which is my favorite, and also the VERY SHOUTY one with extravagant catachresis and that's not bad either.

lol christ xp

Catachresis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Catachresis is the name of many different types of figure of speech in which a word or phrase vastly has departed from traditional usage. Contents.
‎Classification - ‎Examples - ‎Derrida, Spivak - ‎See also

xp cloves, the latter one isn't faux naif though. the shouty folks write like idiots but they never for a second approach their topics with humility or openness or even feign doing this.

See, the thing is...

If I started a vaguely humorous blog about music, I might get a bunch of youse to have a butchers at it every so often.

Beyond that, who cares?

But then again, if I actually managed to get a 'readership', I daresay a bunch of people might decide to criticise what I say, but as I have no actual qualifications to prove or disprove my standpoint, most would not care either way.

If I got described as 'faux-naif', I think I'd pack it in.

But that's unlikely to happen, is it? Being described as faux-naif, I mean.

Treeship, go post on the fucking Saddle Creek board or something

cool

i don't get the term "faux-naif". sometimes it seems like people use this term to describe people who are just being upfront about the stuff they don't know, and in my view the best nonfiction writing does that.

― Treeship, Monday, March 17, 2014 12:46 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

get on our level already, you've been here long enough, i'm not buying this

even the most cloying faux-naive voice is a million times more tolerable than certain message-board standbys like oh I don't know

get on our level

http://typophile.com/files/ryan%20get%20on%20my%20level.jpg

treeship do you even lift?