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

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it absolutely is. if he'd listened to it blindfolded would he have said the same thing? come on. also, his pulling out of a chance to chat with her about this on the radio speaks volumes.

maura, Friday, 22 December 2017 14:42 (six years ago) link

wow that is like a vortex of awful ideas and awful writing

flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, 22 December 2017 14:55 (six years ago) link

not gonna get capt-save-a-weingarten here, but I mean I do think there IS a viable defense for music snobbery, especially when sites are out here running in-defense-of-normies articles like this

https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/people-in-their-thirties-cant-stop-hoarding-cds?utm_term=.fkNJmLD8d#.rdearp9wG

http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/06/i-love-my-five-dollar-headphones-and-i-bet-you-will-too.html

or this intro from the Vinyl Me, Please guide, which, lmao, fucking NO

https://www.instagram.com/p/BaUmBxCjVxo/

...

However, this article is ... not it.

mag gerwig! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 2 January 2018 16:30 (six years ago) link

not actually "laughing my fucking ass" off at that, but the NO stands

mag gerwig! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 2 January 2018 16:31 (six years ago) link

Also, I still love you, Max, even if I disagree with your article

mag gerwig! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 2 January 2018 16:32 (six years ago) link

Not sure Bob Dylan is a "thing no one else followed", even back then

self-clowning oven (Murgatroid), Tuesday, 2 January 2018 16:33 (six years ago) link

it's the snobbery bit that's ridiculous and boring and doesn't not need expressing in public

not being personally interested in swathes of popular culture is absolutely legit on a personal level, even believing that those swathes are in some definable or objective sense lesser is umremarkable as a personal feeling, sometimes you might make an interesting case in a conversation. getting into it as a public thinkpiece invariably puts you on the side of the idiots tho.

you shoulda killfiled me last year (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 2 January 2018 16:38 (six years ago) link

i guess there's a subtle distinction between "snobbery" and "one-upmanship" and that article is really about the latter and the latter is for jerks

you shoulda killfiled me last year (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 2 January 2018 16:40 (six years ago) link

I mean also where is he actually encountering this?

No, it's the neo-snobs that have me riled up, those ADHD completists who stream all of the cool stuff and have the gall to flaunt the secret knowledge that was so hard won for us.

Did he get triggered by a /mu/ post or something

mag gerwig! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 2 January 2018 16:43 (six years ago) link

signs your article is bad: the “bad guys” in your head have a dsm5 diagnosis

k3vin k., Tuesday, 2 January 2018 16:44 (six years ago) link

he really pushed the boat out with “snoboisie”
u_u

Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 2 January 2018 17:49 (six years ago) link

"Do you know how hard it was to track down a Big Star record in 1982?! All three of the band's albums were long out of print,"

the 1978 PVC pressing of the 3rd album wouldn't have been hard to find in 1982. and they put it out again in 1985 and that pressing was everywhere. 1982 not a bad year to be a fan of almost anything from the 60s and 70s. everything was everywhere.

scott seward, Tuesday, 2 January 2018 18:34 (six years ago) link

i was trying to describe the 90s CD boom to my kid the other day. he didn't know about the gold rush era. people going to Tower and spending a grand on jazz and soul and psych reissues like it was nothing. all of a sudden being able to buy 20 nurse with wound albums in one shot. people went nuts.

scott seward, Tuesday, 2 January 2018 18:42 (six years ago) link

lol, i do remember that time period; watching people go to the counter with ridiculous stacks of cds

Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Tuesday, 2 January 2018 18:48 (six years ago) link

in 1982, real snobs just did mail order.

scott seward, Tuesday, 2 January 2018 18:48 (six years ago) link

The vinyl me please guy rhapsodizes about wanting people to spend time with albums that matter meanwhile my buddy gifted me his (arrived in the mail like this) warped Vinyl Me Please copy of Dan deacon's Spiderman of the Rings.

omar little, Tuesday, 2 January 2018 19:10 (six years ago) link

I promised I'd be more charitable in 2018 but I am trying to wrap my mind around fighting The Evil Algorithms by going to major-label artist playlists. (the whole "Spotify can tell me that people who listen to Lorde also listen to other pop songs by young women, but it can’t pick out just the right one the way Lorde herself can" thing is showing up in more and more criticism.)

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/2/16840940/spotify-algorithm-music-discovery-mix-cds-resolution

sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, 4 January 2018 19:29 (six years ago) link

tech sites' music coverage is terrible

maura, Thursday, 4 January 2018 19:30 (six years ago) link

true but you'd expect them to be better than music sites at not talking about The Algorithms the way you'd talk about Bigfoot

sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, 4 January 2018 19:35 (six years ago) link

(this is probably one of my biggest pet peeves right now because

a) the word "algorithm" has an actual meaning. like, every time you've done a multiplication problem, you used an algorithm
b) algorithms don't appear from the autonomous mind of skynet or whatever, they are made by people, but it's much easier to blame it all on The Algorithms than to think about why people might make the coding decisions they make and what influences them
c) the existence of an algorithm does not make something automatically bad)

sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, 4 January 2018 19:41 (six years ago) link

Feel like that article could be a short little blurb suggesting people pay attention to how the music presented to them got to be presented to them and put time in to find ways of getting music presented to you in ways that work best for you.

Feel like it's not really doing that but gesturing towards it, but missing looking at how the songs got presented to Lorde in the first place (possibly algorhythmically) and to (take things a cynical step further) assuming that she just chose those cuz she liked them and not for label promotional reasons, etc...

husked, tonal wails (irrational), Thursday, 4 January 2018 19:50 (six years ago) link

it's almost certainly not Lorde (or anyone else), though, it's a 23-year-old in the office coordinating with other 23-year-olds when Justin Bieber can spontaneously tweet about this great new song he discovered

sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, 4 January 2018 19:55 (six years ago) link

it's those damn 23 year olds!

Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 4 January 2018 20:31 (six years ago) link

to be fair sometimes they're as old as 29

sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, 4 January 2018 20:31 (six years ago) link

don't trust anyone under 30

Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 4 January 2018 20:33 (six years ago) link

there's another "ooh spooky algorithms" piece by Rhett Miller in the outline (admittedly it touches on other subjects)

Simon H., Thursday, 4 January 2018 20:37 (six years ago) link

Didn't see it up there, does it have a bafflingly incongruous title or something?

husked, tonal wails (irrational), Friday, 5 January 2018 15:18 (six years ago) link

can't link rn but it's actually in The Baffler, sorry

Simon H., Friday, 5 January 2018 15:21 (six years ago) link

i think it’s in the baffler

maura, Friday, 5 January 2018 15:21 (six years ago) link

can't link rn but it's actually in The Baffler, sorry

― Simon H., Friday, January 5, 2018 8:21 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

goddamn you for making me try to find a story on the outline

flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, 5 January 2018 15:23 (six years ago) link

lmao sorry

Simon H., Friday, 5 January 2018 15:24 (six years ago) link

anyway it's not really bad enough for this thread I don't think but man if I were a white rock musician in my 40s I'd think long and hard before writing dismissively about "SoundCloud rappers"

Simon H., Friday, 5 January 2018 15:26 (six years ago) link

I like a lot about The Outline, but they do make it hard to find what you want.

husked, tonal wails (irrational), Friday, 5 January 2018 15:27 (six years ago) link

the outline had a decent piece on this a few months back, albeit not about music: https://theoutline.com/post/2362/the-algorithm-is-innocent

algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Friday, 5 January 2018 15:30 (six years ago) link

anyway it's not really bad enough for this thread I don't think but man if I were a white rock musician in my 40s I'd think long and hard before writing dismissively about "SoundCloud rappers"

No one in their 40s should be thinking about SoundCloud rappers at all. Accept that not everything is for you, and that that's a good thing, and move on.

grawlix (unperson), Friday, 5 January 2018 16:58 (six years ago) link

wait up there hoss - some of that soundcloud stuff you're dismissing is just fine for the over 40 crowd, maybe not for you tho'

Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Friday, 5 January 2018 17:55 (six years ago) link

As a 40 year old, I'm cool with soundcloud rappers. I also recognize that what I might have to say about them isn't notable or relevant to them (or anyone much, really)

husked, tonal wails (irrational), Friday, 5 January 2018 17:58 (six years ago) link

A thread where white people old enough to remember the Challenger Explosion debate whether "I took a white bitch to starbucks/That lil' bitch got her throat fucked" is for them

mag gerwig! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 5 January 2018 18:02 (six years ago) link

That's not really what's happening but whatever gramps

queens of the stonage (ultros ultros-ghali), Friday, 5 January 2018 18:15 (six years ago) link

Ageism goes both ways.

pomenitul, Friday, 5 January 2018 18:15 (six years ago) link

whiney if u aint' down with the kids how can u be down with the clown?

Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Friday, 5 January 2018 18:22 (six years ago) link

also NB: your immediate access to xxx bars is very suspect, i daresay you may be a greyhair turncoat

Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Friday, 5 January 2018 18:23 (six years ago) link

does anyone under the age of 40 use that Buscemi meme anymore, is my question

mh, Friday, 5 January 2018 22:11 (six years ago) link

three weeks pass...

this piece is seriously called “cut the c-rap”

https://www.city-journal.org/html/cut-c-rap-15692.html

when does the pmrc reform

maura, Thursday, 1 February 2018 05:19 (six years ago) link

City Journal is the nation’s premier urban-policy magazine, “the Bible of the new urbanism,” as London’s Daily Telegraph puts it. During the Giuliani Administration, the magazine served as an idea factory as the then-mayor revivified New York City, quickly becoming, in the words of the New York Post, “the place where Rudy gets his ideas.”

self-clowning oven (Murgatroid), Thursday, 1 February 2018 05:39 (six years ago) link

lord help us

maura, Thursday, 1 February 2018 05:40 (six years ago) link

The guy looks like an Isaac Asimov cosplayer

http://myronmagnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/MyronMagnetAlexanderHamilton-x400.jpg

Ned Raggett, Thursday, 1 February 2018 05:42 (six years ago) link

Peggy Noonan is on their publication committee.

self-clowning oven (Murgatroid), Thursday, 1 February 2018 05:44 (six years ago) link


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