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

Yeah we have a winner, every sentence of that can be quoted for maximum bullshit. We may as well shut down this thread and all of ILM for that matter

i never thought a turd could be that many words big before

I like to imagine Edward Sharpe reading this article and muttering "I was this close."

everybody's favorite fuddy-duddy outdoes himself

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/love-songs-rip/

fissiparous
adjective fis·sip·a·rous \fi-ˈsi-p(ə-)rəs\
Definition of FISSIPAROUS

: tending to break up into parts : divisive <fissiparous tendencies within a political party>

I'm all for improving my vocabulary, even at this late stage in the game, but hey "divisive" would read better in my untutored editorial view

Teachout is SO heavy-handed and predictable, you can smell his cliched argument and conclusions from a mile away

"For one thing, Gioia has given us a book about lyrics, not music. He has little to say about the specifically musical matters upon which one might have expected a trained musician to shed light."
oh how the worm turns

'why don't you focus on the muuuuuusic, mannnn' - every annoyed music aficionado of a certain age

good to see tesla finally getting their due

terry teachout is certainly of a certain age - late 50s or early 60s - though judging from his writing you'd think he's over 100. he's obsessed with the "music maaaan" issue too, regularly trots out his own experience as a "professional jazz musician" to set himself about the yapping critical pack. in his infuriating bio of duke ellington he actually had enough chutzpah to patronize the duke about his lack of schooling in classical european composition methods and theory. unlike terry, you see, who understands the proper way to compose a symphony

you do realize the irony of these charges being levied against mr. 'why is music writing becoming lifestyle reporting' right

oh yeah this guy, now i remember that dopey daily beast article. so teachout's review is turf-protecting; stay off my lawn, interloper

don't care how skilled a musician gioia may be, any critic who refers to himself as a "music scribe" is deficient as a prose stylist

in his infuriating bio of duke ellington he actually had enough chutzpah to patronize the duke about his lack of schooling in classical european composition methods and theory. unlike terry, you see, who understands the proper way to compose a symphony

Teachout is so fundamentally dopey, and I refuse to go near that Ellington bio for the reason you mentioned, which he boiled down to, "Ellington never wrote a great long work, because that's not what he was about, nor should he have been, and he should've studied proper European compositional methods in order to compose the great long work he should never have composed."

Also, this little nugget of dumbfuckery from the Nat'l Review around the time of the book's release:

LOPEZ: One of the “peculiarities” of Duke Ellington’s career, you write, is that “he was a major composer but not an influential one.” Why is that? How does that happen?

TEACHOUT: He wrote great music, but his techniques were so intensely personal and unique unto himself that they were for all intents and purposes inimitable. Hence he didn’t influence anybody — all that other artists could do was play his songs in their own ways.

now THAT right there is one of the dumbest things i've ever read. wow.

LOL

wow. how do you not say that out loud, catch yourself and go, er, wait, sorry, i didn't think this through did i

i mean i kinda get what he's getting at there but even if i agreed with it which i don't there are lots better ways to phrase the point

I picked up that biography in the library, looked up several late albums including Far East Suite, saw that Teachout dismissed them or didn't even mention them, and put it right back.

I actually read the Ellington book, and I thought it was pretty good. I found his analysis of the larger works interesting; he makes a reasonable argument that Ellington wasn't actually composing long-form works, just creating medleys of shorter pieces and adding framing devices. He also argues that Ellington's tendency to procrastinate and write to deadline (and frequently blow deadlines) ultimately harmed his work. Both of these seem like reasonable perspectives to me. But I'm not a huge Ellington fan; in general, I find a little of his music goes a long way for me. Four or five tunes at a stretch is plenty, especially because he insisted on using vocalists so often.

renowned procrastinator duke ellington...

Hence his famous catchphrase, "We will love you madly tomorrow."

the guy just didn't get enough done in the time allotted...

"Four or five tunes at a stretch is plenty"

sadly this is in line with a lot of hepcats i know who own a copy of money jungle and nothing else...

dook smellington

he makes a reasonable argument that Ellington wasn't actually composing long-form works, just creating medleys of shorter pieces and adding framing devices.

With varying degrees of contortion, one could say this about any long-form work by any composer. I think Teachout's view is a combination of the John Hammond (and borderline-racist) "Hey, you're supposed to just be a swing/dance band! Stop trying to aspire to more than that!"; and the generally Eurocentric "no, THIS is what constitutes a long-form work! Stop trying to reinvent/redefine it!"

And if Teachout believes Ellington's work suffered due to procrastination, this means that a) Ellington released half-realized work at some point in his lifetime (evidence of which is as yet nonexistent); or b) Teachout (and no one else) has access to Ellington work that, presumably supported by documentation, was not sullied by procrastination, and Teachout is therefore able to make an informed comparison/judgement.

I'll go out on a limb with a half-baked thesis - hopefully the cheesy crusty parts will be edible though:

Teachout dismisses late Duke Ellington because:
1) Some of it gives equal billing to Billy Strayhorn, hence working against the "exploited Billy Strayhorn" angle
2) Some of it was undeniably achieved after the death of Strayhorn, hence working against the "after 19xx, he was nothing without Strayhorn" angle.

I don't have the background knowledge to defend these so do shoot away...I suspect I'm not entirely wrong either

"With varying degrees of contortion," you can claim Teachout is saying almost anything you want. Read the book. I'm not suggesting I agree with him 100% across the board, but I'd be more interested in discussing it with people who'd read it.

What I'm characterizing as procrastination, btw, is multiple projects - stage shows, movie musicals, etc. - that fell through because Ellington promised people a full score, then never got around to writing one and attempted to fob off producers with existing leftovers.

As someone who loves ie Far East suite, in a sentimental mood, Afro-Eurasian eclipse, 70th birthday concert, money jungle et al--I think there's a pretty legit argument that ellington's most significant work, the perfection of the aesthetic he divised, was not in his long form symphonic works but in his three minute sides for like, okeh records. I think this is a pretty standard line on Ellington at this point ! 3 minute records was the canvas he was built for, at least in terms of recorded output

Yesss ^^ it's possible to feel this way w/o being a condescending dick about it like TT. I'm not one to cry racism at the drop of a stereotype but TT also clucks his tongue at Duke's prolific infidelity during a long marriage in a superior tone that suggests well, you know how these black guys are...

"With varying degrees of contortion," you can claim Teachout is saying almost anything you want. Read the book. I'm not suggesting I agree with him 100% across the board, but I'd be more interested in discussing it with people who'd read it.

I'm mostly basing my characterization of Teachout's contortions on his "(Over)praising Ellington" essay. When Teachout writes, "The idea, I guess, is to push him up into the classical-music arena: he played in Carnegie Hall, therefore he's serious. And that's completely wrong. Duke Ellington is serious because he is Duke Ellington" I think he's otm. But elsewhere in the essay, he's critical of Ellington for aspiring to lengthier works because Ellington didn't have the tools necessary to realize works Teachout thinks Ellington should never have attempted. If Teachout simply thinks Ellington's longer works aren't fully realized, that's fine (if a bit predictable -- and Teachout, in his essay, gives no indication of trying to meet the works on their own terms). But as I noted upthread, he's critical of Ellington for not studying that which Teachout thinks he never should have studied anyway.

What I'm characterizing as procrastination, btw, is multiple projects - stage shows, movie musicals, etc. - that fell through because Ellington promised people a full score, then never got around to writing one and attempted to fob off producers with existing leftovers.

I would hope that Teachout fleshed these scenarios out within the context of, say, Ellington having to constantly keep his band on the road in order to meet payroll. But I found his Armstrong bio underwhelming, and since Teachout apparently doesn't know what the word "influential" means, I'll skip the Ellington book.

XP-that's interesting, I thought the Armstrong bio was...well, delightful. I thought it was warm, enlightening, thorough and sympathetic. I guess he used all his compassion on Armstrong though.
I somewhat regularly read his sightings column, which is to say when I can stand it, so I'm not surprised he blows it on Ellington.
which isn't too often.

second place is still open tho

lol contenderizer

This one is so bad I'm providing it via donotlink. http://www.donotlink.com/framed?704999

not saying there's any edit of that which could make it worthwhile but it's a textbook 'pick out the most obnoxious sentence and make it the headline' dealie

have a go heroes

Famous Briton Dolores O'Riordan

xpost to the meme that will not die
have a go and a smile

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121794/other-peoples-playlists-spotifys-secret-social-network
i have a real sore spot for "i typed in a phrase and look at all these big numbers" writing and the faux naif patina is grating

Keep going, listening to snippets of songs or speech. See what tugs at your ears. It’s one of the more satisfying ways I know to spend an hour. At the end you know something.

People lament the ascendance of pop culture. Just because Katy Perry is in charge doesn’t mean that Charles Ives is out in the cold. He has 57,643 listens for his 1906 composition “The Unanswered Question.” Honestly, I don’t care what people like, only who they were and what they thought. I want a way for people to mark their paths through all this sound, so that I might follow.

I start with someone popular but a bit weird, like Peter Gabriel, and then I click on the “Related Artists” tab and up pops a set of similar musicians: Sting, Dire Straits, Roxy Music.

It makes me wonder, what the hell is wrong with my friends? One listens to too much classical; another is far too into electronica. There’s the music critic who loves her 1970s metal, the Depeche Mode-obsessive, and a host of other breeds of snob or miscreant.

There's also the clueless asshole his friends might think is a friend.

"[Selena Gomez]'s music is produced via a complex industrial process involving engineers, songwriters, and coaches" -- gee, you don't say

I actually thought the piece was OK but "this pop music is so artificial, unlike every other form of music, but it's an earworm anyway :(" is the laziest trope of music writing by non-music writers

"At the end you know something."

This is so brilliant. Some kind of pure idiot savant green tea zen sloaneering.

Also that is possibly the weakest playlist ever. This whole article is like a robot trying to read tea leaves.

this is kind of great though-"Watching other people listen to music is too much like knowing their sexual proclivities: You start out curious and end up horrified."

just a note, archive.today is a better way to not give websites traffic than donotlink, which only really affects a site's google pagerank, which isn't a thing as much as it was a few years back

About that New Republic article:

-Since when is Blancmange "weird"? I can think of quicker ways to find obscure synth pop. Like typing it in.

-One can never listen to too much electronic music

I have not read the piece yet but I'm going to put it here based on this subhead:

"Is it time for a disruptor to change what songs look and sound like?"