MUSIC CRITCS ARE THE ART OF PRETEND FORGETFULLNESS

lol

i never understood the appeal of pinback, talk about the whole being less than the sum of its parts.
i saw three mile pilot's last tour in a small club, half attended. seriously, one of the most overlooked bands ever. saw thingy's last show in SF in cory brown's living room in cole valley (with the extra glenns and jim yoshi pileup). they did a medley of misfits covers.

so pinback comes to town for their first show and i notice that they're playing the bottom of the hill, so i say "okay, let's head down early around 8:30, grab tickets and check out the openers else we can head to the parkside." so we show up at 8:30, there's a line around the block (which i've never seen at the BOTH) and that's just for willcall. the show had been sold out for weeks.

noone has ever explained this to me.

i heard the first ep, it was okay. i think i remember it, well it was either that or the new zz top, or the jets' "make it real". buy my book!

-- gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, November 13, 2003 7:13 AM (4 years ago)

But (and I hate to admit this...) whatever that CD that came out just after he died...I didn't like that one nearly as much. It was a whole different thing. "Another Thought" wasn't it? Early 90's.

But I was completely amazed to learn later that he'd actually taken a couple stabs at dance music earlier on. That was just weird. Certainly he was a gifted individual in the creative sense. Also I could have sworn I bought some EP of his of earlier on that was very ambient. Holy hell, I just remembered this. Black sleeve. Red letters. Am I wrong? Wow, I had totally forgotten that.

-- Bimble, Friday, March 21, 2008 3:05 AM (8 minutes ago)

i think bimble is in a category of his own.

Bad form, SS.

what are these good moody blues songs?

I like:

"Go Now!"
"Tuesday Afternoon"
"Ride My See-Saw"
"Question"
"Nights on White Saddles" (or whatever it's called)
"Your Wildest Dreams"

That's more than a handful! (Might like "The Voice," too; need to relisten to that one someday.)

-- xhuxk, Tuesday, April 29, 2008 7:24 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

chuck married the art of pretend forgetfulness
y'all niggas still engaged

Today, I like the entire first half of Debbie Gibson's second album a truckload of pistachios better than "One More Cockfarming Motherfucking Ratbastard Son of a Whoring Time". Tomorrow I'll be driving to NYC with a disco-loving Israeli-Russian nihilist and I wouldn't be surprised if the new Daft Punk sounded great to me then. Well, I would be surprised, because the record's fucking gay, but fuck, "Aerodynamic" sounded pretty good last time I listened. Point's that about-faces in taste are fun, the astonishment at liking something you hated just ups the like. Point's also that a bevy of peeps buy Mariah albums and presumably some of them like them and presumably 6 or 8 or at least 2 have gotta have their heads on shoulders not thoroughly implanted up their assholes, so why not try and be one of those 2? She did have that one good song a few years ago with video with the swinging out over water on a happy tire, which I'd really like to know the name of if anyone's up for recollecting. Thanks.
-- Otis Wheeler, Thursday, March 22, 2001 1:00 AM

Listening to Linsay Lohan now. Kinda thinking that way too much of it sounds like the single! The Cheap Trick cover is okay. I like the new wave synthesizers in "A Little More Personal." Beyond that, I dunno. I
definitely I think I prefer Linsay more when she's LESS personal. (Oh wait, "If You Were Me" is on now. What a bouncy little bassline:) But she may have no more business doing ballads than Gretchen Wilson.
-- xhuxk, Monday, December 19, 2005 2:46 PM (2 years ago)

but which teenager doesnt over share, the adults around her should say something about it no?

we keep forgetting with the tits, and the voice, that lohan is still basically a child.
-- anthony easton (anthony), Monday, December 19, 2005 2:51 PM (2 years ago)

CHUCK.

ugh

I think the idea is that, unlike snakes and lizards etc., tuataras (a/k/a rhynocephalians) actually co-existed (or even maybe pre-dated) dinosaurs (though the Wiki entry sez "recent taxonomic and molecular work has shown that they have changed significantly since the Mesozoic era," so maybe not.)

-- xhuxk, Wednesday, August 6, 2008 10:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

i recognize that as an editor chuck had approved some interesting stuff, but as a writer he comes across as falling back on a species of anti-intellectualism way too often, and this "i don't really remember, whatever" schtick is just one manifestation of that.

the other, worse manifestation is the whole "it just ROCKS, and if I have to explain it to you dude..." stuff he pulled on nearly every thread in which we spent any time locking heads.

(an unrelated, even more annoying trait is the infantile contrarianism which i always found it difficult to prove. i mean, it seemed to suffuse his whole taste, at least as he elaborated it in print. but he could always just say "but i really do like this stuff" and there wasn't much i could say.)

i also get the feeling that his rhetoric is 80% cultivating and sustaining a persona and maybe 20% actual argumentation.

I never had much use for chuck as a critic but I really like him as an ilm poster. when he cares enough to bother he gets people to question their assumptions about music and defend their positions in an engaging way. which is probably why he was such a good editor at the voice.

I disagree with him at almost every step of the way on the swings w/ a vengeance thread but the discussion was interesting (or maybe it should just get filed under "two a-holes arguing over xgau and who cares what he sez anyways"):

Not swinging with a vengeance: Robert Christgau on new wave disco and hard bop, 1978

JIMINY CRIKITZ OVA HEAH:

I forget who Drive Like Jehu are. I think I heard them once, and they left no impression at all. Ditto the Hot Snakes, but maybe not. (The New Jersey Mass Choir, on the other hand, were almost as excellent in re: Foreginer cameos as Junior Walker.) (And I AM high maintenance!! In my life there's been heartache and pain! I don't know if I can face it again! Can't stop now. I've traveled too far.) And my favorite recent album of cynical adult-alt world class sex rhymes is by the Notwist. But maybe I just misunderstood their German accents.
-- chuck, Thursday, March 13, 2003 5:00 PM (5 years ago)

LOL at this impersonator:

As far as IDM goes, I'm really into the new Books CD and definitely Four Tet still, and I'm going to mention Brooks and Dunn (as well) who maybe don't count (though they probably should (am I (of course) right?) since they erase all genre boundaries). I played them at this IDM party I DJed. I DJ, you know, don't know if I mentioned that before, I'm still hep w/ the kids, new Dirtbombs is boring, etc.
― charley, Wednesday, November 12, 2003 12:19 PM (5 years ago)

probably a gareth sock

(though they probably should (am I (of course) right?) since they erase all genre boundaries)

"Nights on White Saddles" still makes me lol

Wait, so were Front 242 actually considered fascist once? And if so, by who? (Laibach I was aware of, but not them.) Anyway, these Christgau reviews (which I admittedly don't completely understand, even though I used to edit him) suggest they were:

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=front+242

― xhuxk, Thursday, February 12, 2009 11:14 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think i wrote a review or maybe two for that paper once? but i can't remember who asked me to. it wasn't matos.

― scott seward, Monday, November 9, 2009 4:33 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

melissa maerz?

― goole, Monday, November 9, 2009 4:36 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dylan hicks? i think that's who it was.

i wrote something for someone named melissa in seattle once.

― scott seward, Monday, November 9, 2009 4:39 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha i don't think forgetting the ppl u traded pitch emails with fits the thread

MAAAAAAAAA!!!! THEY IS PICKIN' ON ME AGIN!!!!!!

http://www.consumerist.com/images/2006/04/MulliWalmartGreeter.jpg

chuck married the art of pretend forgetfulness
y'all niggas still engaged

― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, April 29, 2008 4:34 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^______________^

omg scott that pic

I'm assuming that is either
1) Halloween costume
2) Budget-cut biohazardous waste removal suit

roll 'em back, move 'em out

chromeo comparison seems on-point but I'm surprised this bothers anybody that was into herculues & love machine or whatever they were called

― moonship journey to baja, Friday, August 12, 2011 4:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

are you under 30?

are you under 30?

― moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, August 16, 2011 9:53 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://wilsonknut.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/rock-and-roll-always-forgets.jpg

Ha. Saw that but didn't think about this thread. Where did the spacesuit picture from Nov 2009 go, Scott?

Also never noticed the misspellings in thread title before

i don't remember the spacesuit thing.

chuck's book is so great.

someone mentioned 'Josie Packard' to me recently and I couldn't even guess who she was

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Friday, March 16, 2012 1:19 PM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, wasn't the AC guy off the map for a while? He had nothing to do with "Dingleberry Jam" or whatever and "MPP," didn't tour behind them, didn't really do interviews, and the other AC guys iirc weren't terribly forthcoming about his activities or whereabouts.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 14, 2012 10:56 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.stereogum.com/1689158/vic-mensa-major-payne/mp3s/

sum total of time I've spent on computer games in my life = 5 mins of mario the hedgehog when i was 7, 5 mins spent repeatedly running it into a ravine

― lex pretend, Thursday, August 21, 2014 9:33 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lindsay Logan – Speak (Casablanca 2004 CD) $1

― xhuxk, Saturday, May 23, 2015 9:40 PM (1 month ago)

What's "RIO"? You mean like Duran Duran??
― xhuxk, Wednesday, 15 February 2006 22:32 (sixteen years ago) link

I remember the pcikles