OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

thanks for the thoughtful response D. As I said, I never mind the occasional o_0 post on The Quietus, it's part of the fun, and you have so many great writers there's always something worth checking out IMO. Keep on keepin' on!

To be fair to Calvert, he's got a regular slot reviewing live shows for tQ. I wouldn't like to imagine trying to write an original, interesting medium/long-form live review once every couple of weeks - think I'd go a bit mad.

XP: We want him to write shorter pieces on the whole. And this is my favourite one of his. If we saw it as a "failure" we'd discontinue the series. And a lot of people read him.

Seriously, we totally expect to get the grief over Calvert! We'd be idiots if we didn't! I'm not bothered about it but the editing thing ruins the little sleep I have. Also, the way I see it is everything is pretty much in balance. So at the other end of the scale from Calvert we've got Matthew Lindsay who is such a forensically brilliant journalist.

I don't know if you saw his pieces on Nico: The Marble Index Trilogy Kate Bush: The Dreaming and David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust. I'd stand these pieces against anything published in MOJO, UNCUT etc. In fact I'd say they're a lot better.

Secular Divinity would be a great name for a terrible band/album.

(re reviewing live gigs so often)True, and it would be hard to deal w finding yourself finding patterns, however useful to yourself and readers; plua a lot of live bands present songs in very predictable arcs. Good to see that the New Yorker's Anthony Lane has found fresh ways to entertain/console himself and his audience, even/especially while slogging through blockbuster movies.

And, before heading out the door, I meant to just glance over Linday's Marble Index Trilogy piece, but got hooked. Wow! Would like him to indicate sources for some biographical stuff (the Nico Icon documentary, perhaps?); also, the pre-VU Jimmy Page-produced single, "I'm Not Saying/The Last Mile" and Chelsea Girls are already Nico as hell--she always needed a producer, but even pre-"trilogy", she came across pretty strongly (would also have liked to see him talk about her performances on VU albums, since it's long anyway). But she really, really comes across vividly in this, and he's got details that even old Nico junkie me never saw before. Thanks!

Thanks Dow. I'll ask Matt about his sources. He's working on a Kraftwerk related piece for us at the moment.

No prob; I guess some of his references might be from Cale's What's Weish For Zen, which I'm finally about to read, rather than skim; also of course he mentions Young's memoir. Looking fwd to the Kraftwerk-related!

I'm late to this but Zadie Smith's Joni piece is one of the most incoherent pieces I've ever read in the New Yorker and it tells you nothing at all about why she came around to Joni's music (or specifically Blue - she seems to have written the whole piece without venturing any further). When she began a long aside about Kierkegaard that took up most of the penultimate page I gave up on expecting anything useful from this piece. Is it about Joni Mitchell? Or her childhood? Or race? Or how to deal with overwhelming cultural choice? Or insecurity about artforms you don't fully grasp? Or why you change your mind about certain art? It's all of these things and yet none of them. I can't imagine a less famous writer getting something so garbled past an editor.

haven't read it but i'm pretty sure the piece is about Zadie Smith.

Yeah I think we talked about it extensively in either a Joni thread or the NYer thread or a Zadie thread, don't remember. It was very childishly narcissistc, like "I used to not like pizza, but then, one time, I went to my friend's birthday party, and there were like 8 different kinds of pizza..."

or like "it bums me out that my friends know more about pizza than i do. I guess it's because I spend all my time knowing everything about french cuisine"

So why do you think you like pizza so much now? Is it the cheese? The crust? The toppings. "Uh… oh… I… Kierkegaard?"

BAN NOVELISTS FROM MUSIC WRITING

I've been so bitter about this lately I think there's maybe only about ten people who shouldn't be banned from music writing.

I think a great side-effect of the internet is that it has devalued merely having an opinion about an artist or piece of music as being worthy of extended writing.

Like it already used to be boring enough when the NYTimes or NPR would ask a bunch of random people of note what their ten dessert island discs were and why, and they'd fumble through their thin musical vocabularies for an explanation, as though just being who they were and liking something mattered. That might have been tolerable when I didn't have a million better pieces of music writing at my fingertips, not to mention spotify.

*desert island

JUST TELL ME WHERE TO FIND THIS DESSERT ISLAND DAMMIT

easier ways to get music recommendations

i know right if I were on dessert island I wouldn't need music cuz I'd be too busy eating DESSERTS

"#10: Chocolate Lava Cake. This just has this really great, like, chocolatey flowy-ness."

whipped cream and other delights mirit

I like how Zadie keeps saying "open tuning" because she heard that's what Joni did and it sounds technical.

Piece doesn't know whether it wants to be Hornby or Morley. Doesn't tell me anything about the music because there's obviously no technical knowhow.

I can't imagine a less famous writer getting a better piece past the editor of the New Yorker, unfortunately. I wonder whether I should tell them about Then Play Long, or whether they'd just go ho-ho-ho like Santa on the cover if I bothered.

Well it's bloody hard for anyone to get anything into the New Yorker, but they do publish good music articles by people less famous than Zadie Smith. James Wood's Keith Moon piece was fantastic - knowledgable, passionate, funny and illuminating.

Harder now that Anna Wintour's going to be running the New Yorker, as I understand it.

started reading the zadie smith piece and ended up bailing after this line:

In the passenger seat of a car, on the way to a wedding, I no longer had the excuse of youth: I was now the same age as Christ when he died.

pretty sure she's confused as to what a bat mitzvah is there

A good unit of time. "It's been two christlives since they've won the Super Bowl"

for years (and still kinda) i would measure long events in "Seven Samurais". As in, "that line was half a seven samurai wait".

I am one and quarter Jesuses old :(

(Jesii?)

Noun
Jesuses pl
Plural form of Jesus.  
Usage notes
Care should be taken to establish context when using this term as some Christians find the notion of more than one Jesus to be blasphemous.

Jesuses just alright with me

Plus, if you go to only Catholic Christian Churches then they believe in the doctrine of Transubstantiation, whereby the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus. So far, taking Jesus to be the size of an average Nazarene man, I have eaten nine whole Jesuses plus one of Jesus legs. This is more whole Jesuses than anyone has ever eaten. Neil Petark says he has eaten 12 Jesuses, but he includes bread and wine consumed at Protestant Churches, and Protestants do not believe in Transubstantiation so he is wrong and I am still the Jesus eating King. Neil Petark has really only eaten 4 Jesuses which is rubbish.

started reading the zadie smith piece and ended up bailing after this line:

In the passenger seat of a car, on the way to a wedding, I no longer had the excuse of youth: I was now the same age as Christ when he died.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, March 14, 2013 7:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Christ was already "done with early Joni" by the time he was 25 and would only listen to Hejira and maybe Hissing of Summer Lawns if he "was in a poppy mood"

xp

lol i have that book

what book is that?

Fist of fun I'd guess

just googled it up and the whole pdf is online! great stuff. the section on challops seems particularly prescient.

link?

http://www.fistoffun.net/book.htm

this is the challops page: http://www.fistoffun.net/book/16.jpg

<3 interesting music column

wd be less challopy if he wasn't championing Blur

it was the done thing in 1995 tbf

yeah i don't hate Blur but the real challopry in that bit is Stewart Lee - cos it's obviously Lee - doing his "everybody knows that objectively shitty indie bands are the best and anyone who says otherwise is fronting"

Interesting music column = exactly my impression of ILM when I first got here.

I love St3wart lee but he has the worst taste in music

Well he likes some cool improv & jazz stuff but probably for dumb rockist reasons

Hands up if you have mostly given up music writing but you still check this thread to make sure you're not busted on something stupid you wrote recently or long ago

O/

hehe, this thread is the music writers' equivalent of Posts Very Much In Character.