Are you guys at Seattle Weekly really that bad?

On this point, Matos and I are in the EXACT same boat (i.e. we both basically followed the same regime). So I understand the changes. I'm just talking about the bedside manner in doing so, that's all. Meltzer is still Meltzer, ya know?

Are you nuts? Credibility is king, and the fact Matos corrected that immediately on the Web site shows he gets it. Do you?

But yeah, they're not exactly a weekly. (by definition, duh)

We ain't rock n roll, dude. We're just dorks who write about it, which means we do adhere to civility if we wanna be respected.

but outside of "by e-mail," the manner/circumstances of the firing aren't known. (The quoted excerpt reads like a response by Matos to a protestation by Meltzer, but that's purely guesswork.)

also, keep your self-deprecation offa me.

Just kidding.

And good point on the email: That's presented as an out-of-the-blue missive, not as part of a larger argument. Something to reconsider on my part, then.

what the fuck is "personal" about me defending the removal of a dinosaur farting hot air into the aether?

Let's think about that one for a sec ... gun, foot, shoot ...

- i'm not the editor of the weekly
- i'm not on staff at the weekly
- (the weekly hasn't paid me for three weeks haha)
- i don't know richard meltzer
- i don't know kurt reighley
- i write freelance for the weekly and for a number of voice media papers (that's the full disclosure law)

(For the record, I have no idea who Meltzer is or why he's important or not, and i've been reading a lot of music press for decades)

Okay, be pissed off at me, but I found it funny you would say, "This isn't personal, but this guy is a farting dinosaur." Kinda like that joke in Orgamzo, "I'm not queer or anything, but you have a nice ass."

I'm not pegging you as the face of SW at all, since I don't know you or other writers there and am aware you contribute ably to many other publications -- I'm just throwing out arguments and reacting to the piece and countering your points.

And Matos doesn't owe me shit -- why would he? He's a paid writer and editor, as am I; there's no competition here. None of this is personal on my end, but I'm fascinated that someone else would bust on him like that publicly, and it makes me wonder about the content. Don;t balme you for defending him , though.

Jess: Well, if the line was "How the fuck is it personal if I think the man's work doesn't say aything fresh or original and is just really fucking inane," then you'd have a point, because then that's in the realm of valid criticism. But stuff becomes personal when the hyperbole gets ridiculous. How'd you like someone to make a comment like that about you, that you're "farting" for a living?

yes, exactly.

Respectfully Yours,

dave marsh?
m. matos?
NO--Andrew 'Dice' Clay! Hey, Strongo, you a HOMO? Ayyyyyy

Illuminate Me, O Great One.

(2) Kathleen Wilson's tone of voice in this piece makes me distrust her. (This is the first thing I've read by her.)

(3) But nonetheless she raises what would be a legitimate question about Michaelangelo's behavior if - big IF - the email quotation does indeed represent how he informed Meltzer of the column kill (the question is raised not because Meltzer is an important rock critic but because he's a human being).

(4) Even though the way she asked the question (she assumes without thinking that Michaelangelo inserted the quotation into Bonazelli's piece, whereas it might have been Bonazelli's idea, or something the two of them discussed) would invite just the response she got from Michaelangelo, nonetheless it is legitimate to try and find out if an editor is inserting things into writers' pieces that the writers didn't themselves put there.

(5) I'm not impressed with arguments that go, "Doesn't she realize that readers aren't interested in this sort of thing?" Readers should be interested in editorial policy, given that the policy is usually intended to make papers appeal to those very readers and so may, in fact, be a mirror of the readers themselves. And I (naively?) believe that enough readers would be interested in this sort of thing - magazines criticizing other magazines, writers criticizing other writers - if only it were done better. (E.g., the NY Press would have deserved praise for running critiques of me if the critiques hadn't been so stupid.)

(6) I never saw Meltzer's weekly column; for all I know, killing it was the only choice (and again, we don't know that Michaelangelo simply killed it). But Meltzer's a genius, and another choice might have been to help Meltzer make the column better.

(7) If an editor told me to get rid of the personal anecdotes in my writing, I might walk too. (Depends on how much money I had in the bank.) Again, this doesn't make Michaelangelo wrong in this instance. But if it indicates a general policy, then it raises questions.

(8) The music editor often isn't the person who sets policy. The Meltzer decision might not have been his; nor the instruction about boyfriend anecdotes.

But perhaps she doesn't; you know, if that paper wants to appeal to childish 20-something urban hipster assholes who don't ever plan to grow up, carry on. I have a feeling that's more than half the battle at some of these alt-weeklies, namely, trying to do any kind of solid, serious journalism or criticism when a good chunk of your readership thinks anything that seems serious and professional is like, really uncool.

Jess, why you insist on being so relentlessly confrontational is beyond me.

And that's the only reason I ever checked in on "the Seattle Weekly". Because I wanted to read what Meltzer wrote. Because I'm a fan of good stylists and I love the way Meltzer's writing bounces off a page - even if he's disdaining some meaningless rock garbage.

I mean, let's be frank .. did the previous regime really give Melzter any actually good, relevant groups to comment on?

Not that I can recall. It was the "Trip Shakespeares" and the "Tripping Daisies" of the world, if I recall. The fucking wan horseshit that deserved to be heaped with ALL the disdain, and more, that a master stylist like Meltzer can deliver.

Yeah, as a fan of Strongo, I am bummed by his lame "kill the father" pose on this thread. It's just so banal.

Frank makes too much fucking sense.

Hopeless rhetorical question: why are human politics (is there any other kind?) so consistently ugly?

Anywhere else you can ostensibly talk about something (music! we love music!) and yet not even actually touch on it? Yeah, that might sound naive, but, you know... fuck, never mind.

I guess that makes me "nu-ILM".

I'm just pissed at myself that I felt like I couldn't express my own feelings on this issue. That I had to sheepishly follow Frank. I mean, I did make a flailing attempt upthread... I didn't follow up. I guess I was scared of big, bad Michael Daddino "going trife" on me .. haha NO, not really.

Um, I do really respect Matos and Strongo ... like, a lot .. both as people and in their music writing, which is superb, the best. But yeah, I'm sorry ... this Meltzer thing has really bummed me out..

I'm glad for this thread because it has introduced me to the work of Meltzer, who I'd never read before. (I know, I know, I'm a very bad student of rockcrit. I find the more of it I read, the worse my own writing becomes.) Anyway, the first piece I clicked on by RM had him in the first or second paragraph reaching up a British journo's skirt and finding a bloody tampon string in lieu of panties. (This in a piece ostensibly about the Fall. I take it Meltzer is not a formalist, first and foremost.) If that's Meltzer being Meltzer, good riddance.

so...anyone going to bumbershoot?

so it could be that it is intended to say that ilx and seattle weekly are the same. to an extent of course there is truth in this, in that matos is a contributor to both and that many people here know matos personally. which makes me think that, although i dont think this post was intended to attack matos (and even if it was), people here are too closely connected to matos to comment objectively (hence strongos confrontationalism on the thread)

as for the article itself, it betrays personal antipathy, and, as such, is a critique of itself.

i approve of matos (near) silence on this thread. there is no reason for him to become embroiled in a public slanging match, and i'm not entirely sure that he is required to justify his editorial policy in public (or even to correct any inaccuricies stated about him) even though i am sure most of us are quite curious now

I'm not quite arguing this, Frank, because I'm not treating Wilson's column as a disquisition on editorial policy. The two most potentially lethal charges Wilson makes about Matos' decisions -- writer dropped in an extremely ungracious manner; another writer told to stop being so fucking gay -- don't get anywhere near the same amount of consideration as how Mehr was canned and Matos brought in, or how the SW was muscling in on the coverage turf claimed by The Stranger. And the latter two don't "say" anywhere as much about SW or TS' readership as the first two do. So I regard Wilson's article as something a whole lot less, gossip about the personal oddnesses of people most of the readership probably don't know much about.

(An article sort of like this, say, which could've been written to critique James Rogers Inc. for its failure of nerve or Condé Nast for the hold it has on James Rogers Inc., but given the context, seems more like an excuse for the New York Post to publish a deeply unflattering photo of a major player in the NY publishing world. A crucial difference here, of course, is that Anna Wintour is something of a...um...star. I guess.)

As for K B Reighley's column, perhaps there's an interesting story there - is the new policy at the Weekly that writers should not be overly personal in their music writing? Was it clearly stated and evenly applied to all writers? If so, nobody is at fault; writer can't accept new policies, writer walks. Or perhaps it happened differently, and if K Wilson is so good at getting inside gossip, she should have gotten the real story. But implying Matos is not nice to a writer because the writer's gay.. wtf?

What am I, chopped liver?

I cannot stop laughing