MIA

also kind of a nonsequitur unless i'm missing something

Matos's link and the repeated invocation of the phrase "brown-bread"

haha if you think people are writing songs the same way they were 150 years ago I dunno what to tell you. the formal/technical qualities of producing sound alone have changed so much, a pop song produced in 2010 is almost entirely unrecognizable from a popular ditty performed in 1860.

I am going to shoutily state the obvious here but THIS IS WHAT I MEAN ABOUT MUSIC VS. LIT PEOPLE

There are SO MANY TIMES on this board when someone will make fun of a book/lit person for not knowing every last obscure nuance of the music world, and then turn around and say something eighty billion times more clueless/embarrassing about the nuances or inside view of literature

And frequently, when this is pointed out, they will go on to categorically deny that there is anything to even know or understand about modern literature beyond what they've picked up from NOT EVEN READING ANY

The whole thing is completely ridiculous. Seriously, completely ridiculous. It's genuinely confusing to me how anyone can enforce elitism/snobbery about a topic they know ("this guy doesn't know the first thing about music, he failed to recognize a single quote!") and then happily turn around and not only not-know the first thing about another topic, but deny that there's even anything to know. There is no shame in just admitting that you might know less about the state and history of literature than Gary Shteyngart knows about the state and history of hip-hop. Not everyone knows everything, not everyone has to be interested in everything.

<3 nabisco send me the tab for your next gin & tonic

he not gonna like that other thread

whats funny about that 'mad at the ceiling' mia quote has nothing to do w/ the author of the piece happening to have written a book, its just the groanworthy continued push to make someone seem like a much more innovative artist than they actually are through thievery / general reliance on the ignorance of their fanbase

i mean its not like crate digging, current mainstream rap quotes are not obscure references

lol @ that quote coming from the same place as "gangsta rap yankee hotel foxtrot"

"current mainstream rap quotes are not obscure references"

you'll get old too one day

trust me on this one

i dunno how helpful it is to say "well obviously this fiction writer's music crit is ill-informed, he's a fiction writer, you don't know abt contemporary fiction either". a bit beside the point. a piece of music crit is bad, i don't care what the dude's day job is.

i demand retribution

lol @ that quote coming from the same place as "gangsta rap yankee hotel foxtrot"

― its like why GROCERY BAG and not saddam? (deej), Friday, June 25, 2010 4:09 PM (31 minutes ago)

four years later this is still kinda hilarious imo

nabisco, stop being such a bookist.

(hah! logocentrist : litcrit :: rockist : rockwrite ?)

i dunno how helpful it is to say "well obviously this fiction writer's music crit is ill-informed, he's a fiction writer, you don't know abt contemporary fiction either". a bit beside the point. a piece of music crit is bad, i don't care what the dude's day job is.

Absolutely! That's why I said it's not like people here are taking magazine assignments to write about novelists. I share some annoyance with the way music is the one topic where editors don't feel a need to use a writer who knows much about it.

I was just reacting to certain things upthread that seemed to be picking at his prose over things that are really quite normal elsewhere in the world.

yeah the "mad at the ceiling" line had very little to do with the author and more to do with mia/diplo -- there was just a bit of irony in him taking potshots at contemporary rap and then praising a line on the album that happened to be stolen from a contemporary rapper -- i wouldn't expect him (or even anyone on ilx outside of deej tbh) to even remember that line

part of the problem with the piece from my perspective is that since its in GQ it's not really aimed for me ie someone who has read tens of MIA profiles, and even more articles by white guys talking about rap music -- it was insufferable to me but i guess it would just code as inoffensive to most GQ readers or maybe even relateable/novel -- i'm sure his novels are fantastic

"insufferable" meaning the first few (online) pages -- the rest of it was fine, sometimes good

i wouldnt expect it but thats sorta my issue w/ the whole thing ... the level of invisibility for the actual creative artist vs. the overrated rip-off artist right??

i also dont really see what being old has to do w/ having taste

i mean pretty much my presence on this board in the past year has been reduced for most ilxors to being all 'you should pay attention to this rapper' & so when the #1 star child of music writers comes out w/ a song biting one of those rappers, which is then praised specifically for that line in a major publication by a noted writer, u gotta admit it makes sense i would find it lol

xpost one quibble, the difference between a fiction writer who slips on the music writing cloak, and a music writer who casually dismisses a lot of contemporary fiction is quite large. It's not like a music writer on ILM stretches into more foreign topics with this faux-conviction, the way a fiction writer might vice versa, although I do agree that people here can be flippant and reactionary to the world of modern-lit in a ways that belie their open mindedness to music.

you guys are also reading way too much into a shakey mo post as if it represents some secret thoughts of j0rdans

don't worry, this is being talked over with Shaky on ILE, so my reaction to it is not super-relevant to this thread anymore

i didn't dismiss this guy's fiction at all! in fact, i said he must be pretty good to get an assignment like this -- i don't spend a lot of time (outside of assigned readings) with fiction writing, this is true, but i don't endorse the opinions of shakey mo collier either

and then turn around and say something eighty billion times more clueless/embarrassing about the nuances or inside view of literature

Or sometimes even about the nuances or inside view of music.

Like I say and think stupid, superficial shit about music every day, even though I also think I know something about some parts of it.

Meanwhile I would also like to buy nabisco a drink. Between the "'artistic' use" thread and this, maybe several.

Shteyngart vs. this: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/kill-me-now/Content?oid=4319529

― Mexico, camp, horns, Zappa, Mr. Bungle (Matos W.K.), Friday, June 25, 2010 9:24 AM Suggest Ban Permalink
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God damn. Hating Dan Savage all over again. I mean, obviously this isn't as serious a deal as his whole "blame black people for Prop 8" thing, but dude has some race issues.

"I have never listened to this music before. Watch me to condescend to it, and despair."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunt_casting

I didn't get the feeling that Shteyngart was criticizing commercial rap as a music critic would, ie., by trying to judge it on its own merits - rather that, as a novelist (or memoirist), he was giving an unvarnished appraisal of the way he had personally related to the music in college (on admittedly a somewhat puerile and self-centered level) and how he had personally stopped caring about it as he grew older (for reasons probably having to do with his shallow engagement with it in the first place). But he doesn't seem to imply that his personal journey should be taken as universal, or that it reflects on the intrinsic artistic worth of the form. At least that's how I read it.

Any idiot could find rhymes for anything using the pronounce-it-however-you-want approach.

he reeeeeeally should listen to gucci mane

kinda wish i hadn't read this, since i dig dan savage

this didnt bother me that much, it just seemed like some dude going 'lalala' with fingers in ears for an entire article which, weird

that's racist!

Seriously though, Dan Savage has revealed himself to be an ass over the past 2 years. His column has suffered because of it and his take on modern pop solidifies his increasing irrelevance. Girlfriend is very much an old school gay.

garey g. shteyngarten

I agree w Dan Savage on the Katy Perry & Ke$ha hate. That those are hit songs is reason enough to be happy that the music industry is dying.

you know you're all posting under a thread for the wrong mia.

Please respect the work of michaela grobelny by not further polluting her name by associations with m.i.a.

actually both spell their names with periods, you get the point though.

what a horribly formed "j.o.k.e."

was it really a joke or just earnest pedantry?

It's just geir's I LIKE THE ORIGINAL NIRVANA ;) joke plus a whole bunch of shit I don't care about

lol @ the one song from that list he ended up liking being travie mccoy + bruno mars

^^^ there are some other bad songs on that lis, but "Billionaire" is just another level of shite. but still, his taste doesn't bother me nearly as much as his racial angst

The comments in that savage column are this OMG BRAGGIN 2010 faux-naïveté bullshit like "Ive never heard ANY of these songs" and "WHO IS THIS 'Katie Perry'" which is like cool Internet post-millenial white-boy version of "I don't even OWN a tv" v. 2.0

^^^ there are some other bad songs on that lis, but "Billionaire" is just another level of shite. but still, his taste doesn't bother me nearly as much as his racial angst

― suge ♞ (The Reverend), Saturday, June 26, 2010 6:26 PM (2 hours ago)

???

I guess that's a briticism? I picked it up from my (distinctly non-british) dad.

The savage column was a pretty entertaining troll, I thought. And its not like he was without smart things to say about eminem and gaga in particular.

there are some other bad songs on that lis

All of those songs are bad.

I f/w a good 50% of them to various extents. I'm very surprised you don't like at least "Alejandro".