Most tedious thing said by worthless VHS idiot JOHN MAUS in p4k interview

this guy behaved foolishly.

oh my god, so sad--someone get "sandman" to usher this clown offstage

Hahaha

at least I recognize I have no thought of my own, and at least the thoughts of my own that I have at my disposal offer up radical critiques of the un-thought that is constantly going on in the rock journalism conversation about subjective responses to music and this ridiculous word-painting poetry of music, and this "it sounds like this or it sounds like that." The thoughts that are not my own that I have at my disposal would completely reject that, and could completely and clearly demonstrate how that's a violence that completely stomps out anything that's interesting about the work. If there is anything worthwhile about the work, it's precisely what isn't reducible to any of these particulars or generalities... It's only something if it sounds like nothing we've ever heard before. So I've never had a thought of my own, but at least I'm not one of these clowns that talk about nothing.

- John Maus

dollars 2 donuts this guy has never held down a job in his life, having gone straight from mommy & daddy to college to grad school to being a TA to w/e.

you guys are still getting trolled ..

i wldnt be so sure.

Z: Do you have any advice for artists or producers these days?
JM: No, I have no advice at all. I don’t know a fucking thing at all. I’m an absolute imbecile in every way shape and form. I guess the only advice is to keep going, to keep trying to bring forth more than what there is.

(crickets)

JM: I suppose the earliest album that influenced me, being from the generation that I’m a part of, was of course [Nirvana's 1991 album] Nevermind which really changed everything for me and the musical landscape at large. But, in terms of significant influences there's not really a particular band that comes to mind--just this kind of singular truth that all bands circumscribe together. If you look at the Billboard in the last decade the only number-one hit that hasn’t been hip hop was Nickleback--

the unspoken thought of course being that hip hop is negligible, and not 'serious music.'

pomplamoose vs. john maus: discuss

they should collab

what is all bands circumscribe together, sounds vaguely dirty

rmde @ this thread

If you look at the Billboard in the last decade the only number-one hit that hasn’t been hip hop was Nickleback--

. . .

ffs the fact that he's a philosophy professor kind of makes sense--you'd have to have a special sort of disconnection from the everyday world to spout the kind of nonsense he's keen on.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, August 4, 2011 1:03 AM (1 hour ago)

I don't think any of the clueless/tedious shit that JM is supposed to have said is as clueless and tedious as this piece of cliched shit about philosophy professors.

okay fine, that was a rude thing to say. my experiences with academia were not good.

other unspoken thought is that everything that isn't rock must be hip hop

Trailer for this thread is like: "Two trolls enter..."

well tbf, it sounds like he's talking about "bands" there

who is this guy?

indie rock

JM: I suppose the earliest album that influenced me, being from the generation that I’m a part of, was of course [Nirvana's 1991 album] Nevermind which really changed everything for me and the musical landscape at large. But, in terms of significant influences there's not really a particular band that comes to mind--just this kind of singular truth that all bands circumscribe together. If you look at the Billboard in the last decade the only number-one hit that hasn’t been hip hop was Nickleback--

<3 <3 <3

I would totally hang out with this guy. As long as he didn't try to make me listen to his music. Shit, "Yakety Sax" was my ringtone up until like June.

By the way, the funniest thing about this thread? That the poll results won't be in for a month, when nobody's gonna be talking about this dude 18 hours from now.

lol

I'm pretty sure at this point that all the reaction is much more nauseating than the original interview was.

so either this guy is setting up an elaborate troll facade or he's an aspie who's in too deep... in either case i don't understand why people are having such a visceral reaction to him... many of the comments here are straight up bashing and don't lend any perspective

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emGri7i8Y2Y

i love when you say "aspie"

http://twitter.com/#!/pitchforkmedia/status/98914891456458752

I'm pretty sure at this point that all the reaction is much more nauseating than the original interview was.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Wednesday, August 3, 2011 10:27 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pls point me to this "nauseating" reaction!

No specific reaction, just all the attention! Its nauseating to think of much energy and effort people are putting into stupid things he said for a pretty fluffy interview.

"think of how much"

tbh, the funniest part is how it's basically a fluffy Sufjan Beat softball interview and dude just goes ham for no reason

and you don't appreciate it, at least in a game-recognize-game type of way?

damn miss u sufjan beat, free catbird imo

good point, sarahel! tbh. i think i would probably be down with a maus-goin-ham interview if his music wasn't total schlock. double standard, i guess \o_O/

WE GOT CHEESE FLYIN OUT

I don't rate his music but give everything I've read (interviews) and seen (live performance) he is fucking hilarious, and I'm pretty sure it's intentional (to a degree).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c2/WikipediaCounterVandalism20060611.png

is carrot top a lecturer or a student?

thought that was dj mom jeans

So, I called him an asshole on Twitter (though not directly) and he read it and struck up a surprisingly gentlemanly exchange where he apologised for coming across as a dick and I apologised for badmouthing someone I've never met off the back of a Q&A. (I don't like slagging people off on Twitter but it's easy to do it in a flash of irritation.) He seems genuinely depressed and regretful about the whole thing. He's since deleted our conversation so that the only thing on his Twitter feed is his apology.

Made me realise that I normally applaud provocative, pretentious interviewees but when one of them says something I violently disagree with (ie the record shops line) I can be as quick to shoot down their whole personality as anybody. Anyway, he seems like a decent enough guy who wanted to have some fun with a meat-and-potatoes Q&A and was naive enough not to anticipate a backlash. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for anyone who responds to criticism with "my bad" rather than "fuck you".

THIS is what happens when the accelerated blog culture forces us to play firsties firsties firsties all the time, and thus pull some dysfunctional social retard from obscurity and shove a microphone in his face and tweetblast his moron dribblings to 1,000,000 twitter followers.

This is bullshit. The music press has always run short, early interviews with acclaimed but cult-level new artists. You seem to forget that music journalism existed before the internet. And whatever else Maus may be he's clearly not a moron.

I am still waiting for this ridiculous man to endear himself to me and he's not doing a very good job of it.

but having read DL's post just there, I guess some people just aren't supposed to be interviewed.

I thought whiney was the dude who is super into chillwave!?

― lizard tails, a self-regenerating food source for survival (wk), Wednesday, August 3, 2011 8:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

If you look at the Billboard in the last decade the only number-one hit that hasn’t been hip hop was Nickleback--

Kind of lol to think of James Blunt, Carrie Underwood, Daniel Powter, Plain White Ts, Coldplay, etc., as rappers.

can we talk about jean-luc nancy in this thread too? I am reading his book the deconstruction of christianity right now and enjoying it; I read some of corpus before and dug that too

also I guess I'm late to this clusterfuck but how hilarious is it that the artist/audience/retailer/media relationship in the indie blogosphere has become so poisonous that everyone would assume [random indie flavor-of-the-month X] is looking to take some totally unprovoked shots at their barely-solvent mom&pop operations, when he is p.clearly taking part in the time-honored indie tradition of anti-corporate rhetoric

(answer: less hilarious than it is sad)

It's interesting that Whiney's perspective is so warped by the internet's hall of mirrors that Maus's comments can only be read as "trolling" (just as a certain kind of reader assumes that every contentious opinion piece is just a SEO ploy) rather than part of a decades-old tradition of smart musicians mouthing off in interviews. It's a faulty assumption to think that every single musician working today is as interested in the mechanics of online discourse as most ILXors are. In the 80s people used to say all kinds of interesting, sometimes asshole-ish, inflammatory shit - it's not some new development.