Are you guys at Seattle Weekly really that bad?

INCOMING EDITOR IS BRUSQUE, MAKES CHANGES

That article seems pretty unnecessary to me. It reads like something out of a blog.

Dan Savage is the only good thing The Stranger has going for it at this point. They've relegated the weekly Jim Woodring drawing as a black & white in the middle of all the classified section, and have pretty much outsmarmed even the smarmiest readers.

I think there are other ways the Seattle Weekly, overall, could improve too.

All in all, my feelings on the debate are: someone please let me win the fucking lottery so I can collaborate and start another weekly paper ourselves, so we can hire all our friends and live in heaven.

"Overnight I received an e-mail from Fudesco who said he recognized the quote from an interview he had done with Matos a while back for Gallery of Sound."

(italics theirs)

yeah, but she was hanging out at the cha cha with some guy from PGMG -- seems pretty important to me!

I mean, the more The Stranger is more hung up about what the Seattle Weekly is doing, and not vice versa, the better it is for the Seattle Weekly.

Nor the Stranger's Chris DeLaurenti, who recently turned in an effing phonebook - about as exciting as one, too - of all the experimental-type music folks in Seattle. He not only had the gall not to have ever seen the Sun City Girls, he also had the chutzpah to admit it in print. But those laptoppers - hasn't missed one. Jesus Christ.

In any case, the article's just another salvo in the intraurban rivalry, and should probably be ignored.

I mean, first of all, do bands ever really turn down interviews? I write for a paper owned by a much-reviled company that has been accused by some of trying to dismantly democracy. Yet when I call up even the most archly political of arch political punk bands, they're fine with talking to me. They know the difference between the owner and the worker, and they know that it's just a fucking interview.

Oh, and a caveat: The Stranger sucks major ass, and I'll still take Matos' section over that piece of shit any day.

Meltzer's column was boring lazy name-dropping crud that should've been ditched long ago; a guy coasting on the anti-charisma he already burned through several times over.

Also, the "Matos edited out personal anecdotes about a gay relationship" ---> "Matos must be a homophobe" bit at the end is a joke. Your arms' too short to make that kind of reach, Ms. Writer Person.

The Stranger, it seems to me, has always made a point of picking on the Weekly. And no wonder, because they've done some damage to that operation in terms of competition.

It's a fucking miracle, actually, that both alt-weeklies can survive in a city that small. One of them will be gone in the next five years unless SubPop blows up again.

Considering Meltzer's rep for the nasty (mailing people kitten fetuses or whatever), I don't know.

if i answered the phone brusquely with just my last name, people would just think they reached a surly ice cream store.

also i find this thread really inappropriate for reasons i can't put my finger on.

It holds with my belief that he's the gruffest friendly man ever. :-)

I'm glad you're here, Jess. I need you to prevent me from turning into trife on this thread.

haha mike, why? so I can turn into trife instead?

And no more inappropriate than the constant Lester Bangs ass-kissing or these new personal attacks on Chuck Klosterman (who's a pretty cool guy, actually).

Chicagoans who read our dominant alt-weekly The Reader may remember an article in their hot type section (which serves no other purpose than to cover and critique the 2 major dailies) about a month ago about the in-fighting at the Sun-Times between Jay Mariotti (The more DeRogatis of the two) and Rick Telander (The Greg Kot, if you will) and how they nearly got in a fist fight at a sporting event once. Apparently, the resentment between them is extremely personal.

Incidentally, the "going trife" comment of mine had nothing to do with you whatsoever -- it was more about how the whole subject was riling me. Perhaps that doesn't need to be pointed out, but...

I have mixed feelings about this whole thing. Many of the people on this thread are a) friends with Matos (and/or write for him now); b) not big fans of Meltzer (at least Meltzer NOW). This doesn't disqualify anything anyone said of course, but I do think there's been a bit of a natural tendency to jump to the defense of Matos--which is fine, and I'm honestly not questioning motives here, but no one has really made a good defense for an editor's curt dismissal of a writer (assuming this is what happened, and I know that maybe it isn't). (And I disagree wholeheartedly with Jess's la-di-da attitude about being fired from ANY job. It more than sucks to be one day told "you're outta here." Meltzer CRIED for chrissakes when he got the boot from college. No one's said anything about "pressing charges.") Editor-writer relationships are complicated, to say the least, and the historical precedent is that writers are generally treated badly. Meltzer--not just because he's a legend or a genius or a human being--but also because he's the writer of a popular (I assume) column--would have every right to feel insulted by this...if indeed it happened as it was reported. (And Matos had every right to not want the column...but this isn't about "rights.") Try turning this story around and changing the names: Matos becomes X person who no one here knows; Meltzer becomes Mark Sinker or Frank Kogan or Robert Christgau. I honestly think the tone of the discussion here would be a lot different.

Kinda funny how Sherburne wound up getting lumps in here. I mean, wtf? Where's that implicit in the thread? He ain't even one of the "you guys." And what crack and heroin combo prompted that insight? ;-)

And long live the lizard ... he ain't never shitcanned nobody ...

I mean, I love dance music! but I'd rather shoot myself in the head than be so completely immersed in that world. I honestly can't imagine reaching the station of a Sherburne without having an innate curiousity about (much less ever having read) one of the guys who sort of helped to invent popular music criticism. How does that happen? Is that a necessary correlative to being a dance guy? That rock stuff just seems colossally unimportant? Is PS proud of that ignorance? Because see the thing is, what Matos accuses me of (not knowing what the fuck I'm talking about) is exactly what PS did on this thread - with his gratuitous post that accomplished nothing other than publically logging his disdain for a well-known writer whom he finally bothered googling, read a random piece, and dismissed.

I heart writers who can take a panoptical view, who are comfortable commenting on a wide range of music, who can tease out the connections and disconnections across genre lines. That's what I like and respect about my favorite writers. That includes you Matos, you big lug (your Voice microhouse piece was outstanding; your humility is endearing but totally unnecessary). It's why my two favorite music books of the last decade were Toop's Ocean of Sound and John Corbett's Extended Play. I think because I take a fundamentally materialist view of the world, I can't fathom not approaching music that way ... *sigh* god I can not wait for Sinker to finish his book.

Oh heck, I don't know. I think I'm gonna go reread those "fanaticism vs. dilettantism" threads. I don't have anything better to do tonight.

Regarding the "tampon" story, I don't think Meltzer writes that kind of stuff to impress anyone. He knows how loutish it looks. He knows it's a depressing, lonely way to move through the world, but he seemingly can't stop himself. That's always been the sad undercurrent anytime he's written about the various sordid situations he gets involved in. He's most assuredly unlike Tosches in that respect, in that the latter never allows that he's aware his behavior is in any way objectionable. I've never gotten the sense that Meltzer's particularly "proud" of his behavior. But he does write about it, and if you find it banal and uninteresting .. fair enough! I'm certainly not going to argue in favor of it, but it is just one part of the man.

I mean, we (most of the folks who post to ILM) love music, and we love writing about music (either we do it ourselves, or we read others doing it, or both), and we want others to appreciate the music we love (the community aspect), so why the fuck are people in that situation so mean to each other? Is it competition? I mean just competition?

Okay, "dignity", I'm a hypocrite -- being as capable of petty meanness as the next person, but I don't think I could ever stretch out vendettas and grudges like this and personalize it so much (not just on this thread, but that whole Pitchfork versus Village Voice thing that's gone on here lately).

As a non-regular, non-core-group ILMer, this opinion is probably not particularly welcomed, but I like the idea of this place, and it's helped bring into focus for me some key thoughts about music. I'd hate to see it shredded by cliquiness or elitism or by the demonization of the "other".

I ramble. I'm hopelessly earnest. Trapped by my own nature. Ha.

How does it happen that I've "reached the station of a Sherburne" (great phrase... I'm not sure whether that refers to my alcoholic brother, my deaf, retired father, or a train depot in Sherburne Plains, Alberta) without having ever read Meltzer? It happens! I went to Vassar, for what it's worth, and we didn't have core curricula.

For the record, I'm not a dance fanaticist, nor a staunch presentist, nor a critical know-nothing. And what bugged me the most in Meltzer's few Weekly columns that I hastily read is that they seemed to be all about Meltzer and his diminished place in a diminished world. When he says (in the bit Jess quotes above), "I don't think there's anything that's gonna make me pay attention to uh, what's the word, uh, the whole FOREground of what's going on today," that sounds -- given the skimpy context, anyway -- like a pretty advanced case of gleeful know-nothingness.

But I'll eagerly check out more of his work, and I'm sure I'll learn from it. S Woods, I had no idea he'd written on classical music, so I'm eager to see that. But in any case, none of this has anything to do with what I write about or how good it is (or isn't).

Then again, I didn't read all of Meltzer's most recent stuff, so maybe it does get depressing when taken as a whole.

:( When I read this I thought 'WHAT?!' then realised I don't look hard enough. I only wish I could afford to find lots of music to write about. I've not written in a whole month and it's not because I don't want to or am unable to (ho ho take yr potshots elsewhere) but because I haven't any new music (ie I don't know of any) to write about. I sometimes wish I was Chuck Eddy's mailbox.

Hey! ;-) But I tease.

But Stence, when Meltzer says in the interview quoted above that even if something *did* happen in the '80's or '90's, it wouldn't matter, because "there was enough otherwise" and the idea "that there'd be new rock records" excites him as much as the idea "that there'd be new brands of meatless lasagna"...well, that's something quite beyond skepticism. When you've wiped the battlefield clean, war ends; when you completely discount the possibility of excitement, criticism becomes impossible. (OK, terrible metaphor, I know.)

Also, I think I'd be the first to admit that my own curmudgeonly tendencies color a lot of this bias, too.

I'm definitely more likely to read a Meltzer review (unless it's one of those Dada bullshits) than a CMJ review because cynicism leads to better jokes. But a CMJ review never makes me assume talent is being wasted, becuz there's no implication of talent in the first place.