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

The comments are of course ridiculous for the most part, but going to see Shining and complaining about the pro-self-harm, bloody, hostile, suicidal vibe is like going to see Parliament and saying "I was aghast at how funky the show became"

Are you making a sly reference to this canonical piece of music writing, my friend?

lol classic

"I would have loved to see Lars Ulrich from Metallica, who can be just as entertaining with speeches as Kanye West, be on hand to announce the nominees. If he wasn't available, maybe Steven Tyler? The Aerosmith singer has a new country album out, after all, and can usually be counted on for a potentially viral moment.

...

Coldplay has a show in Colorado tonight, but had a day off yesterday. Alessia Cara, who is on that tour, was at the VMAs. Surely the band could have come in for a special performance. Both Beyonce AND Rihanna were there -- imagine both of them coming out for “Hymn for the Weekend” and “Princess of China.” Alas, it wasn’t to be.

So many rock acts have new music either out or on the way. Surely, one could have been booked to perform. In the golden days of MTV, bands would leave holes in their touring schedules around the VMAs, seeing it as a prime promotion opportunity for a forthcoming project. That said: Green Day’s first album in four years, Revolution Radio, is out on Oct. 7. Korn’s 12th studio release, The Serenity of the Suffering, is out Oct. 21. Disturbed’s cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” was used on Dancing with the Stars for goodness sake. Taylor Momsen’s The Pretty Reckless has a hit with “Take Me Down,” and would surely attract some viewers. What about 5 Seconds of Summer? That band is exactly the right demo for the VMA audience.

Bon Jovi has a new record -- This House is Not for Sale -- coming out October 21, and the single just dropped. Surely the VMAs could have found a way to work with a guy that has so much history with the channel (Jon Bon Jovi once gave away his childhood home in an early MTV contest)."

http://www.billboard.com/articles/events/vma/7488030/for-those-looking-to-rock-at-the-2016-vmas-a-disappointing-show

surely the VMAs should've booked Bon Jovi

why does mtv never want to rock

Their VMA nomination for “Missing You” -- where the band surprised fans with video chats thanking them for support

rock so popular that bands individually call up their fans and thank them for support?

who says a funk show can't play rock?

is this supposed to be a list of rock acts that are relevant to our times because wow

l (Jon Bon Jovi once gave away his childhood home in an early MTV contest)

Disturbed’s cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” was used on Dancing with the Stars for goodness sake

Panic! At the Disco’s anthem, “Victorious,” contains lyrics that would have been perfect for a VMA crowd -- "Tonight we are victorious / Champagne pouring over us” -- and a driving guitar line would have lit up Madison Square Garden, easy.

was he told to write that article and decided to sabotage it by making all rock sound really bad

Make the VMAs White Again

Terry Teachout on why rock 'n' roll is doomed to historical irrelevance, and why preservers of "golden-age popular music" like Diana Krall and John Pizzarelli are the future.

Teachout is actually a good writer and critic--books on Ellington and Armstrong are well done. He posits himself as a "musically trained" critic who tends to look down on laymen who don't have his background. Also dislikes Albert Murray and Stanley Crouch, who I think are two great critics. Strange guy with a lot of virtues and what I think are some pretty big blind spots.

Yeah, I liked his Ellington book a lot - got me to revisit the guy's music, which I'd mostly shrugged off as Fine, But Not For Me.

I like Murray, can't stand Crouch. And not because of his musical taste; because of his prose style.

This exchange made me think Teachout wasn't exactly well-equipped to write about Ellington, or anyone else, for that matter. So I skipped his book (though his Armstrong bio is not completely worthless).

LOPEZ: One of the “peculiarities” of Duke Ellington’s career, you write, is that “he was a major composer but not an influential one.” Why is that? How does that happen?

TEACHOUT: He wrote great music, but his techniques were so intensely personal and unique unto himself that they were for all intents and purposes inimitable. Hence he didn’t influence anybody — all that other artists could do was play his songs in their own ways.

Yeah, that's a pretty ridiculous definition of "influence."

Terry Teachout on why rock 'n' roll is doomed to historical irrelevance, and why preservers of "golden-age popular music" like Diana Krall and John Pizzarelli are the future.

That is one strange article. It's fair enough to say "I prefer jazz and pre-rock pop to rock" but it's pretty bizarre to extend that to making broader claims that the most celebrated and ubiquitous classic rock music actually has no real audience.

In what universe do these statements make sense?:

The rock of the baby boomers and their Gen-X siblings is, up to a point, a different story. Nevertheless, most of it, from the Who’s “My Generation” in 1965 to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in 1991, was also created by young people for consumption by younger people, which helps to explain why so little of it is capable of holding our attention today.

Who now listens to (say) America, Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 4 Way Street, Yes’s Fragile, the Doors’ L.A. Woman, Elton John’s Madman Across the Water, Pink Floyd’s Meddle or Janis Joplin’s Pearl for any possible reason other than nostalgia?)

Does seem to discount Ellington's influence on Mingus and George Russell, for example. The above is kinda what makes Teachout so frustrating--on the one hand, he has a point there, because Ellington's manner and his ability to integrate his players into his vehicles for their idiosyncratic abilities is really important. But Teachout is being so reductive. Neo-con jazz writer who's convinced that no one who doesn't actually play music, as he did before he began writing full-time, has anything worthwhile to say.

Most surprising of all is the long list of rock and contemporary pop singers, including Natalie Cole, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Linda Ronstadt, and Rod Stewart, who have recorded golden-age pop songs to profitable effect and (in some cases) with passable artistic success.

Cole's Unforgettable was 25 years ago, and Ronstadt's What's New was over 30 years ago (and Ronstadt retired five years ago). You're really stretching the definition of "contemporary" there, Terry.

(also, I love how the photo of the Beatles they chose was one from the week or so when Jimmy Nicol replaced Ringo on tour.)

The Jimmy Nicol version of The Beatles will be the one to be celebrated by future generations of aging contrarians and blowhards.

"by such younger artists as Diana Krall and John Pizzarelli"

...

if you're going to go this route just go full-on snob and say that popular music lacks the depth and sophistication of the 19th century classical masters. at least beethoven's music is worth being snobby over.

Pfft, no one has ever equalled the majesty and brilliance of Og, Son of Magog
That man could hit a stone against a stone in a way that no one has equalled yet.

I know Nate P is an ILM bro (and is imo generally a strong writer) but that De La review on Pitchfork today was some condescending ageist garbage

nobody knows how to _really_ play a flute made out of a human femur anymore

was this already on here? it's kinda old but it brightened my day.

"How pertinent is music from this album? “Starman” is used in the 2016 Academy Award Best Picture Nominee, The Martian."

"If there is one album that serves as a definitive example of the era, this is it. Alice In Chains, Soundgarden and Nirvana almost fit the bill, but something about Pearl Jam, and specifically this album, crossed from alternative to mainstream and boldly proclaimed that the best music being made during the 1990s was outside the box."

"Do you know this album from 1994? Portishead is an English band, named after an English town, consisting of three fellas and a sullen female. Okay, she’s not actually sullen. Beth Gibbons is pretty damn cool, but everything about this album is soaked in sullen song. And it’s perfect for…well…doing the things adults do. It’s also a good one for single gents to have, as any liberated, independent chick will flip through your collection and pause for this cause."

"Do you like to get crunk? Before that word became a thing, it was a thing, and Outkast did it. They did it well."

"Every year, someone discovers Grace for the first time, looks at the album cover, listens to it, thinks it was probably recorded in 2012, and look to see if Jeff is playing anywhere nearby. Jeff has been dead for almost 20 years. It’s quite remarkable."

http://www.goliath.com/music/12-albums-every-dude-should-own/6/

just dude albums

I was going to not click since the concept of 12 dude albums is a great "worst music writing" concept

it seems they went the "ok, we need at least one album from each of these different segments, but be 'offbeat' and pick something less obvious"

(they're all still pretty obvious)

Ted Gioia: Bob Lefsetz with more jazz albums in his collection.

Saw some stupid BBC podcast header about how Steve Reich's "experiments in rhythm" paved the way for Daft Punk. No article text to post, but, what?

American minimalism paved the way for practically all electronic dance music

Reich though?

they probably mean that in reich, riley, cage etc etc paved the way for silver apples, kraftwerk etc thereby spawning all electronic and dance music

i mean it's kinda the same way you could say that chuck berry "paved the way" for uh...metallica or something like there's not much direct correlation but in the macro he kind of invented the rock band format and the basis of rock music

Nate P is an ILM bro (and is imo generally a strong writer) but that De La review on Pitchfork today was some condescending ageist garbage

― Wimmels, Sunday, September 4, 2016 12:31 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not someone who always agrees w Nate but I thought that was a pretty fair review

I guess I've seen the claim before but I'm a little suspicious of it, like I have a feeling it might be like that record that set ragas to a disco beat and people pretend like it's proto-acid-house or some shit when it's totally just superficially coincidental use of the same technology. But hype gonna hype.

from an old interview I found online with Carl Craig

TN: You yourself have explored the classical-electronic mix pretty
extensively, mixing those two genres live with Francesco Tristano
and on record with Moritz von Oswald. What’s so fascinating about
the combination of human and machine?

CC: The experimental works of John Cage and Steve Reich are a big
influence, using tape loops and things like that, it’s within the same
realm of using a CR-78 or an echo drum machine, something that
sounds very percussive and synthetic at the same time. It wasn’t ever
like, ‘Okay this is what you’ve got to listen to’, we’ve been very good
at spreading our horizons in listening to things that are different and
diverse

from 75 Rolling Stone feature on Kraftwerk:

"Autobahn" describes a journey on the German expressway leading in and out of Berlin, and underscores the group's concern with pulse and wave over note and rhythm. A Beach Boys record it is not, even though a line from the piece – "Wir fahr'n, fahr'n, fahr'n auf der Autobahn" ("We're driving, driving, driving on the autobahn") – sounds uncannily reminiscent of the line from America's premier car group: "And she'll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes her T-Bird away." Hütter and Schneider, in fact, claim no U.S. groups as influences. Their favorites include such space-rock outfits as Pink Floyd, Yes and Tangerine Dream, as well as avant-garde classicists John Cage, Terry Riley and, particularly, countryman Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose pioneering electronic work provides a "spiritual" tie to their own.

Electronic music came from continental Europe because Jean Michael Jarre said so.

*Michel

That’s one of the things that I enjoyed the most with the Electronica project: remembering that electronic music has nothing to do with the United States. It’s not related to jazz, blues, rock, it comes from continental Europe.

It has nothing to do with English-speaking countries, it was born in Germany with Stockhausen and in France with Pierre Schaefer, then with the Germans on one side, or me. We each come with our own particularities and we have held this legacy: these long instrumentals are the legacy of music tied with technology.

http://www.konbini.com/en/entertainment-2/jean-michel-jarre-interview

people pretend like it's proto-acid-house or some shit when it's totally just superficially coincidental use of the same technology

feel like the element of coincidence is what appeals to ppl the most about this if anything

yeah, "pave the way", "influenced", "inspired", they're narrative choices. i don't have a lot of time for that kind of Whig cultural history but i'm not sure when writers use them they are always claiming literal lineal descent, just structuring their observations.

every new thing rewrites every old thing that came before it anyway.

some people obviously are literally claiming lines of descent but like who cares what idiots think?

is this a narrative people are using or just one we're annoyed about but isn't what is actually being said?

feel like it's second-generation thinkpieces and critical thought that tend to make bad generalizations like that and assume lineage and not the original reviews

always enjoy white Germano-premicists being deaf to e.g. the latin rhythms in House music or the call and response running thru Disco etc