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

I'm sure there are more interesting parts of Kim Gordon's book than the section that deals with her husband and this.

lol i haven't thought about starostin in yeeeeaaaarssss

ahh ... mark prindle.

been a long time since i visited his site.

Starostin & Scaruffi are both auto-didact, super-systematizers with differing yet equally narrow aesthetics. (Scaruffi I can at least raid for album suggestions in the avant garde area, so he's more useful). Next to these two, Christgau seems like the most open-minded, acknowledging-his-own-subjectivity-guy in the world.

I'm really glad ILX has finally caught up to /mu/ with the Christgau vs. Scraruffi vs. Fantano debates

That's awesome happy for you Whiney :)

it's so great to see him in his element

http://only-solitaire.blogspot.com

George Starostin's taste (and writing style) has loosened up somewhat in recent years, but it's amazing that he's been keeping up his "review bands alphabetically" blog for 4.5 years and he's still only on the letter B (for Bon Jovi).

*5.5 years

starostin dude is unreadable. one paragraph oughta be enough to warn people away forever:

"That said, all of these factors are still not enough to account for the band's passing into utmost oblivion (together with other great British blooze bands, such as Ten Years After or Taste). Because, in a certain sense, these guys symbolize everything about yer basic early Seventies rock, that loud, raunchy, sloppy hippie music as opposed to, say, acid hippie music. And at least they never tried to 'fashionize' their music by carefully avoiding heavy metal and glam rock trends. Throughout all of their six studio albums, they remained what they were: a naive, drug-addled, heart-on-the-sleeve, hair-down-the-waist bunch of idealistic young men trying to find consolation in blues riffing and folkish whining amidst a sea of problems. They just weren't particularly talented, but who was particularly talented? Gary Glitter? And, for my two cents, I'd at least take Paul Rodgers' voice over Robert Plant's any day of my horrid life."

I still really like reading all those Prindle/Starostin/one-guy-with-a-website music reviews and am sad that that whole scene totally died off.

ilx's own glenn m. is the only one of them worth reading.

You are talking about this? http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log

the war against silence entries:

http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=twas&id=issues

http://diffuser.fm/box-sets-arent-meant-for-you/

Let’s jump ahead about 50 years. The current holder of the Jimmie Rodgers baton is one Bruce Springsteen, a globally popular musical storyteller coming off of the biggest album of his career. Born in the USA would eventually sell 30 million copies worldwide. (To put that in perspective, hit your thumb with a hammer. Now do that 29,999,999 more times. Thirty million is a lot; also, put some ice on that thumb.)

really puts it in perspective

And so while we in the media continue to report on the inevitable death of physical media, any artist who attracts enthusiastic fans remains a candidate for a lavish box set. As I write this, I’m staring lovingly at my Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection. I’m also shaking my head at the online auction prices for Insane Clown Posse‘s recently released The First Six which is, of course, a seven-disc set that’s fetching prices not too far below the great Miles’ 53-disc box.

I can shake my head all I want, but the simple truth is that ICP didn’t make The First Six for me any more than Victor made that very first Jimmie Rodgers album for fans of Enrico Caruso. It’s a priceless treasure to the Juggalos, and that’s why the idea of the box set remains a viable one even after 80 years.

But seriously, Led Zeppelin, enough already.

a priceless treasure to the Juggalos

This has a real nice poetic ring to it.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/fugazi-politics

Fast-forward thirteen years, and it’s all too easy to draw straight lines, not just to the increasingly unstable geopolitics of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, but to the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City—both of whom were killed by police officers while unarmed. When protests erupted over the deaths, police responded with heavy-handed action that sounds awfully similar to what MacKaye described in 2002. War and police brutality seem fairly straight-forward to gentrification and the link between neighborhoods and the housing market. Last November, Dave Grohl fretted that Austin, Texas, was losing its artsy character during an interview promoting the Sonic Highways series.

Who is Jen Trification, and why do war and police brutality seem straight-forward to her?

Last November, Dave Grohl fretted that Austin, Texas, was losing its artsy character during an interview promoting the Sonic Highways series.

Surprised the writer didn't mention Nirvana's Ferguson anthem "I Swear That I Don't Have a Gun."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/09/pop-political-british-musicians-paloma-faith

taking shots at a member of ILM's favourite band, whatever next

I had a suspicion I'd see that linked.

Raccoon Tanuki writing for the Guardian now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiator_(album)#mediaviewer/File:Radiator-SFA.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/67/Radiator-SFA.jpg

why does this piece get commissioned and written over and over again

old people

they forget they commissioned things. it's tragic

Hate to be cynical about it since I'm a huge fan, but he's got a "protest" album coming out in a month or two (which he mentions near the end). Pretty good number of comments, too.

anything > 0 = a pretty bad number of comments

I'm surprised that anyone cared enough to comment. The essay didn't say much, but I guess he hit enough soft targets (UKIP) to warrant a reaction.

i grew up on british protest music...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JctNVfE06l4

http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/luke-haines-the-auteurs-black-box-recorder-talks-noel-gallagher-and-the-scourge-of-dad-rock/

Not sure if this qualifies as worst or best:

But even after all the above, Noel comes across as a decent enough guy. He’d be OK in the pub. (Well, he probably wouldn’t be OK with me in the pub after this.) You’d trust him to look after your cat as well. (Although I wouldn’t trust him with my cat, not after this.) But it’s his reactionary fear of the extraordinary, and the clapped-out Cloughie act, that need questioning. These are ultra-conformist times we live in; the imagination is unwelcome, the maverick is unwelcome and the weirdos need not bother turning up. The music industry and the publishing industry are grasping at straws to survive. The middlebrow media have a stranglehold on culture, and art is, amazingly, still seen as “not for ordinary people.” Poverty abounds. No one wants to hear a rich man boasting, but when Noel speaks, people listen. As for the records, they sound like they’re getting harder and harder to make. Noel never seems like he’s had any fun making them. The slow turning of the cogs in his brain grinding to a halt is almost audible. So, as Noel has all the money in the world — as he is often so keen to tell us — maybe it’s time to give up.

Oh I love the Haines piece. The Ciaran one is full of the usual ignorant generalisations though.

Haines piece calls Noel Gallagher's slow songs bollards, I'm going to go for 'best'

not really sure this is "writing" exactly
http://www.buzzfeed.com/carlanka/reasons-why-you-should-be-following-jme-on-twitter

"The most logical expansion for UMG, WMG and Sony is to embrace online video stars from YouTube, Vine and Snapchat"

uh, sure big-picture cuepoint guy, maybe you should talk to karmin

whatever i know i have an Officially Chapped Ass after getting totally lowballed by that company to start a music collection, but jesus christ the intersection of edm idiocy and mba idiocy fueled by tech dollars is just... the worst thing

also i mean all of these 'online video stars' make their bones by covering popular songs... that are initially disseminated by umg, wmg, and sony. maybe this guy is just advocating for the snake-eating-its-tail process to be sped up?

or maybe he doesn't actually consume music and is instead lost in a thicket of spreadsheets and impressive-sounding numbers

what a great time to be alive

just in case you needed reminding how bad drowned in sound is

http://drownedinsound.com/releases/18698/reviews/4148809?ticker

Whoa! I didn't know Chilly had a new album out. Must investigate.

i don't know enough to say whether that review is right, did pique my interest

"What was once accepted and ignored is now the target of pieces of writing like this one."

http://www.popmatters.com/feature/191920-get-hard-and-get-angry/

I agree that that piece is a total failure when it comes to music writing

Attributing it to Ethan Cohen rather than Etan Cohen is never not funny though.