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

agreed

thought of a sidebar stemming off this but will post in goon thread

using extreme slant rhymes ("I just hit a stain, finagle/ I just hit a stain, finito")

technically "two three-syllable words that begin with f" rather than a "slant rhyme," but hey, who gives a shit about terminology

I'm gonna assume he pronounces it fin-ay-go

Deej's opinions and theories about Keef are generally batshit insane, but certainly well-argued and well-written.

Ideally they would be published in a place like the Chuck Eddy-era Village Voice instead of a place so rooted in "editorial voice" but w/e

im not going to defend my review on ilx bc i think thats prob bad form / bad precedent but i dont think keef is either nihlistic or a sociopath, at least any more so than boosie or spice 1 or any other gangster rapper throughout history, w/ age & experience artists evolve & early boosie is all "the one who rap bout killin, shootin, marijuana distribution"—def feel like those ideas have been foisted on keef due to the discussion around chicago violence that blew up around him, people blame him in a way they wouldnt do to idk c-bo or someone...its very strange

actually, i will defend the ice cube thing bc wtf that totally makes sense, when you drop ice cubes in a glass a tiny piece of them pokes above the water and the rest *looms* below

http://www.ginnytonkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Do-not-think-it-means.jpeg

Not music, but if there's ever been anything worse, it would drive the insane maaad:

http://www.examiner.com/article/robert-de-niro-book-darkest-secrets-shawn-levy-book-alleges-drugs-bad-temper

xp ffs its exaggerated for scale obv

it was an obv reference to iceberg theory but i wanted to shift to a less cliche'd image

xxpost

"While some may only recognize him in more recent movies like “American Hustler,” [De Niro]’s talents go way back to earlier films in the 1970s and then into the 1980s."

That De Niro piece reads like it was written by a computer.

people who like keef are v dedicated to defending him on what are occasionally shaky grounds, but that particular review is overall solidly written minus the overcooked sentence here and there (and who, among people who professionally or as amateurs write about music, hasn't written one of those?)

― hanley ramirez ordering a pizza (slothroprhymes), Tuesday, November 25, 2014 10:10 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I often read back my own reviews and realise I'm as guilty of this as anything. Do any more experienced writers have a particular way of avoiding these kinds of sentences, or is it just down to practice and knowing when to reel oneself in?

low-hanging fruit I know but

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmessitte/2014/12/03/on-hozier-why-is-take-me-to-church-so-popular/

page 1 is relatively unremarkable throat-clearing, page 2 is the same old horseshit (cherry-picked lyrics? griping about Swedes? misspelled pop artists' names? yup yup yup), but page 3 is a horseshit tour de force

That De Niro piece reads like it was written by a computer.

― rising stones cross (anagram), Monday, December 1, 2014 3:40 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's examiner, it probably was (or by an article-spinning app)

are there good three-page (web) reviews?

In terms of lyrical subject—and deftness of imagery—“Take Me To Church” has much more in common with James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (or Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes) than with the preposterously sexualized transformation of Nic Jonas or Ariana Grande

!!!

http://www.artistempathy.com/blog/the-pomplamoose-problem-artists-cant-survive-as-saints-and-martyrs

haven't actually read it but it's a think piece on pomplamoose so ... shruggy emoticon

It's actually good. It's not about Pomplamoose really, it's about the way American society treats its artists.

yeah p good piece

the forbes piece is like.......ever time i think we've reached a cellar for wites writing sanctimoniously about the triumphs (or lack of attention paid to) "real" music, we fall even lower

also i had never heard of pomplamoose (i know rite total ILX party foul, i have been led to believe) and...um wut

not like "this prob sucks" necessarily, i haven't tried it, but the overall explanation of what they are....i think "um wut" will remain a fair reaction regardless of how they sound

wait, were people really criticizing Pomplamoose for over-paying their band? Given all of their annoying traits, this seems like one of the least objectionable things they could do. Or am I missing some crucial detail?

but for real though, why is that Hozier song so popular

It's actually good. It's not about Pomplamoose really, it's about the way American society treats its artists.

― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱), Friday, December 5, 2014 4:19 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not a good example though. The situation with Pomplamoose just shows that nobody wants to sympathize with fucking Pomplamoose (especially when they're asking for it).

i feel like i pay attention to & enjoy a lot of pop music and i have no fucking clue who hozier was, and after reading this goddamned forbes piece idk if i have any desire to even try it for music-anthropology reasons

Consumers and supporters of the “music wants to be free” ethos picked apart the numbers and decided that Pomplamoose spent too much money on lights and on pay for their back-up band.

No, it was touring musicians who questioned the lighting costs (and the relatively expensive motels every single night). And I don't recall a single word in any of the anti-Ploose pieces that implied they were paying their band too much; even the most vitriolic responses said something along the lines of, "(but at least they paid their band)."

no mention yet of the homophobic piece about the Peter Pan musical that Gawker ran?

i try to avoid gawker if possible w/ the exception of deadspin but it does not surprise me that they ran such a thing

that said they also like to pay lip service to moral stances so they can assuage their consciences (the ones who have functioning consciences, so, not hammy noles) over their denton-enforced dive-bombs into content aggregation for the sake of DEM CLICKZ, so, its double annoying when they do shit like that

there was definitely some question of "why did they HAVE 6 salaried people on their month long tour if it meant they toured at a loss?" before the Patreon info bubbled up, but that's not the same as asking why the salary was so high

the big irony of that "artists can't be saints or martyrs" piece is that this all started because pompladude wrote a faux-confessional about how his band ain't rich because they chose to tour at a loss

he sold HIMSELF as a martyr

https://scontent-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10462836_10153511319012137_7867710557987849448_n.jpg?oh=4ed5ed594ca71b54567d50be5b2dad5d&oe=54FAE6B5

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/14428_10153511322072137_6083905235496799694_n.jpg?oh=9ba57a71aa5b30af1fa08cdd56d36e50&oe=551C2845&__gda__=1425900420_77aac503d5c0da5216d13cfb663efc88

That gawker piece is a abomination on like a million levels

http://morningafter.gawker.com/peter-pan-live-was-the-worst-three-hour-drag-show-weve-1667018164

Love the idea of some music nerd sharpening his critical knives to skewer those darn musical theater types that beat him up in high school. Make sure you cram as many references to embarrassing gayness in there as you can, you shitheel.

they also like to pay lip service to moral stances so they can assuage their consciences

I almost wish they wouldn't. When the two modes collide and you get sanctimonious gossip it's the worst.

oh god i so did not miss this style of music writing. we have to go back

http://ratter.com/your-2015-coachella-friday-headliner-is-fucking-drake-1671889461

that's well suited to this thread; made me kinda ill to read

unless you are a medieval Venetia or Cher Horowitz don't say ducats imo

yeah it's just gross on multiple levels

it's like a parody of what everyone thought gawker was when it launched

Bros have felt like music journalism doesn't "get" them, so this helps.

Ms. Rac-Tan

Are you bigger than Drake? Get at me, zel✧✧✧@rat✧✧✧.c✧✧.

no mention yet of the homophobic piece about the Peter Pan musical that Gawker ran?

― EZ Snappin, Friday, December 5, 2014 4:48 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

buncha straight men in this thread calling a gay man a homophobe.... welcome to 2014

I know nothing about the writer, but the piece read as classic bullshit musical theater = gay.

just scanned through it and there is literally nothing homophobic about it. i can see how one might think so if one's basic understanding of gayness-as-identity is lowest common denominator musical-theater-ness, but that would be actually homophobic.