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

...I pullquoted way too soon didn't I

"if you actually want to keep the album, you’ll probably want to burn it to a CDR, print out some artwork or at least tracklisting, and insert both into a jewel case. That’s at least another buck for the disc, the printer paper, and the ink used printing it."

in what oblique biosphere are people still doing this in 2016? and why are they paying those prices?

I do, sometimes.

I, also, wondered what that Frasier reference was about.

Twenty years on, the No 1 album is by Radiohead (from the 90s), our funniest TV show is Frasier (from the 90s), my favorite jeans are starting to get real worn these days (from the 90s), i subsist entirely on a diet from my storehouse of hungry man tv dinners (from the 90s), and my busted hip from a golfing mishap (from the 90s) is forever back back back

I'm excited for the ABFAB movie!!

Me too tho Im waiting for the dvd...

God that Frasier reference.

God that YG review

Also stating that the Spice Girls were the first example of a 'band as brand', even after comparing them directly to Take That.

Pretty much every 'it were better in them days' thinkpiece reads like this:

1. I know what you're thinking, but this isn't your typical 'it were better in them days' thinkpiece.
2. Here are a bunch of highly-subjective and carefully-selected things that I think were better in them days
3. Here are precisely zero examples of things that were worse in them days
4. Here is just one tenuous example of a thing that sucks about today.
5. Conclusion: 'it were better in them days'.

Today we'll be serving a stark antiporous sonic aesthetic, braised in hyperlocalized zones, unfurled with viscous eraism. That's $34.

So that's what happened to Fred Mills, whom I remember from his '80s zine days. I want to challenge him to write an article without either a) using the first person or b) referring back to interviews he's done or rockstars he's met.

OK, he can do b) once an article, since I don't believe he's capable of not doing it.

Perhaps Frasier reruns are popular in England right now? Similar things have happened.

Frasier is probably the most popular TV show on weird Twitter

spongebob

Seinfeld is back! Ads for Seinfeld on Hulu with Seinfeld fans make me hate that show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1frO8JjX3do

reading or thinking or god forbid watching seinfeld makes me hate that show

a little tangential- as terrible as that la weekly piece was, i'm heartened by the response. it's helped me to realize why i find the christine chubbuck fetishists so disturbing. it's not because she died on tv. we've seen lots of people die on tv since then. it's because after she died the wapo published that sally quinn piece that jizzed on her corpse. that's where today's chubbuck-fetishist underground really comes from.

i had to google who that was. never heard of her! there was an LA Weekly story about her?

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/10/robert-lang-photography-camden-town-london

i had to google who that was. never heard of her! there was an LA Weekly story about her?

― scott seward

nah, la weekly wasn't even founded until 1978. it's just that some of the backlash against art tavana's piece has focused on contextualizing his the piece in the larger history of journalism, and quinn's 1974 story on chubbuck's suicide is the most horrifying example of that style of writing i've read.

i just read the Quinn thing. never heard of any of it.

they're actually making i think two films about her. or a film and a play. not too sure. people magazine ran a story about her this february! back when i was young the only people who knew about chubbuck were people who read about her in "answer me!", you know, the standard "faces of death" enthusiasts, but the cult following keeps chugging along.

see now i used to read answer me cover to cover and i don't remember the story. sadly, i'm guessing she's not more famous because there is no video.

and yeah two movies. that definitely ups the ante. the Quinn thing is definitely weirdly dated. mentioning that she was a virgin ten times for instance.

so weird that there is a total of like two pictures of her on the internet and they are both stills from an interview she gave on t.v.

(they got a much softer-looking person to play her in the movie, of course.)

i would argue that a lot of the reason she's famous is _because_ there's no video. i apologize here because this is getting super massively off thread topic, but when i was a kid people used to wax rhapsodic about this lost doctor who episode called "tomb of the cybermen", which was supposedly the greatest thing ever. and then they found a copy in hong kong, and it was badly made, racist crap.

if the actual video existed (which it assuredly does not), i don't think people would be as fascinated with her as they are, because no videotape could possibly match the rhapsodically pornographic prose quinn uses to describe chubbuck.

as for the lack of documentation of her life, it's less surprising than people think it is. people hear "news anchor" and they envision, like, katie couric blowing her head off on the nightly news. but she was nowhere near that important. the world's collective memory of her is based on mythology, a mythology created in a washington post article which needs to be understood as grossly inappropriate and offensive.

I first found out about chubbock when I was browsing wikipedia and noticed a potentially interesting avenue among several

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32863603/15236_10152626849962290_3524264623697388226_n.jpg

i don't find the sally quinn article "grossly inappropriate and offensive"

From five years ago: Man gets furious at Foster The People because he didn't listen to lyrics before playing song to his wife

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-10-03/entertainment/ct-ent-1004-foster-lyrics-20111004_1_school-shooting-pop-music-song

Making your venue inclusive now includes letting people in for free, apparently.

that was your takeaway from that article

kudos

especially since it doesn't actually say that

I wonder if Noisey's multi-billion dollar parent company followed a PWYC policy when they bought up the space that was functioning DIY venue Death by Audio

Also interesting how the idea of paying venue staff union wages never comes up.

this isn't actually any worse than usual, but man, the adjective abuse in this one.

http://www.avclub.com/review/new-lineup-cleans-heliotropes-act-forgettable-resu-239276

Waow, for a short review, it really gives the reader a lot of opportunities to nod off/check out.

i kind of want to give it some slack because obviously nobody involved cared at all. mostly i'm just amazed that there's still space in music reviewing for such obviously dgaf writing.

um there are new examples posted in this thread like every day

idk i think most of the stuff in this thread is bad precisely because the people writing it _care deeply_ about the nauseating bullshit they're inflicting on the world. there's a place for that kind of writing, and it's crossover fanfiction.

In response to an article about Speedy Ortiz's Forecastle performance: "please, writers & editors, can we do better out of the gate when we write about humans?"
https://www.facebook.com/speedyortiz/posts/1225565654123066

Just read that linked to from elsewhere - I'm assuming that you're saying "girls can rock too" articles are the worst journalism, rather than Sadie's piece? Because I think it's spot on.

i assume the shot is at the dopey cos piece, sadie otm

> Just read that linked to from elsewhere - I'm assuming that you're saying "girls can rock too" articles are the worst journalism, rather than Sadie's piece? Because I think it's spot on.

Yes -- the "girls can rock too" piece was edited so wanted to point to the original version Sadie screengrabbed.

Pitchfork's obit for producer Sandy Pearlman belongs here.

Heard a radio bit this morning about the band the Struts, and here's sort of the online version: http://www.npr.org/2016/07/27/487480437/dressed-to-dazzle-the-struts-want-to-make-rock-fun-again

I thought it was terrible, partly for lines like "The Struts have become a staple on rock radio, and they're selling out concerts," but mostly for constantly invoking Queen and then describing a band that I imagined was not unlike the Darkness and then constantly following up by playing clips of the group's music, which was unlistenable shit that sounded nothing like Bowie and Queen, let alone the Darkness

Here's essentially a similar variation on the same piece: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-struts-meet-englands-newest-glam-rock-heroes-20160311

Whatever hack is handling these losers deserves a raise.

yeah that band is fucking garbage yuck

You know they're glam 'cause their single has handclaps on it.

fwiw I am British and have never heard of this band

this line from the NPR piece jumped out as being especially clumsy

While American hip-hop swept England in the 1990s, Spiller, the son of a gospel musician, was getting hooked on glamorous '70s rock.

if this dude is 27 then depending on what year of the 1990s (any of which a case could be made for "American hip-hop sweeping England") they're referring to he was aged somewhere between one and 11