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

to be clear this is not about the writing -- some of the commas can be eliminated with line editing, but the reason this is here is because there isn't a thread (but should be) for "terrible studies that set out to confirm one's beliefs about music sucking these days, at the expense of facts or the scientific method."

(also, I should note that Greg, the author of the piece, points out in his book some of the study's flaws, such as how asinine the "multiply by the years on the market" thing is)

for those unclear what's being talked about (I was):
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/what-these-grammy-songs-tell-us-about-the-loudness-wars.html

the proper level of loudness for an Eagles record is silent)

― theorizing your yells (katherine), Thursday, February 7, 2019 11:21 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, always love a good eagles zing

While the Elton John piano catches your ear during “Absentee,” Sam Griffin Owens’ sax warbles down in the mix, a class clown whose mischief makes the day’s lesson more fun for everyone, teacher included.

good heavens

Grammys 2019 Hits a New Low Note

They call it Music’s Biggest Night.

Is there actually one single person out there who still believes that’s true?

The 2019 Grammy telecast was a neon-colored-chalk outline around a Xerox of the Google entry for American Idol, an over-staged infomercial for the instant gratification of the Spotify era and a shallow exercise in collective guilt.

...

What is music to you? To your heart? To your life?

Maybe it is this: Ecstasy and repetition. Identity and release. Music is the electric connection between your buzzing, happy, elated head and the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. Music is the way your heart thumps when the kick drum pushes the air of the old theatre. Music is your connection with the primeval memory of the rhythm of sweatshops and plantations, the high sigh of shtetl weddings, and the sand dances of Saharan ceremony.

Music is memory: Playground chants and first-love stares; tenth grade stargazing and skating on beer slick in sophomore dorm basement parties; evenings spent watching bleached-blonde-dyed Brits scratching the air and climbing imaginary ladders in smoky, blue-lit old vaudeville halls; nights passed sharing stale air with shimmering, sibilant, shrieking cowpunk Canadians in narrow booze cans in the gray hours before dawn; mornings spent mummified in sheets waiting for the record store to open. Music is that song in the car on the way home from Hebrew school, that song bursting into your ears on the 7 train on the way to your new job. Music is the mnemonics of melody, ecstasy and repetition, identity and release.

...

The Grammy show had nothing to do with the joy you felt when your son or daughter discovered the Small Faces or Stone Temple Pilots entirely on their own, or when you saw the smile on your elderly father’s face as he lay in his last hospital bed and thought about the Ink Spots. The Grammy telecast was as representative of your relationship with music as a crowd chanting “U-S-A” at a sporting event is representative of the American poetry of Martin Luther King, Huey Long, Carl Sandburg, or Abraham Lincoln.

He keeps digging.

god the thought of my daughter discovering stone temple pilots is too awful to contemplate tbh

huey long?

he was the singer in the fun lovin' criminals iirc

He must have meant Huey Lewis

i know who huey long is. i just am surprised that lefsetz (this is lefsetz, right?) is postulating huey long as an alternative to american populist jingoism.

(this is lefsetz, right?)

Close; it's this guy.

I wonder what Canadian cowpunk band he's talking about

why would you read cultural criticism from an offshoot of "a Chicago-based political news and polling data aggregator formed in 2000 by former options trader John McIntyre and former advertising agency account executive Tom Bevan"

Patrick Stack of Time magazine has described the site's commentary section as "right-leaning".[17] The site has been described as being run by conservatives, and containing "opinion pieces from multiple media sources".[18] In 2009 RealClearPolitics was described as a weblog "in the conservative pantheon" by Richard Davis.[19][20]

In an interview with the conservative magazine Human Events, McIntyre described the philosophy behind the Web site as based on "freedom" and "common-sense values". Said Bevan, "We think debate on the issues is a very important thing. We post a variety of opinions". He further stated, "we have a frustration all conservatives have", which is "the bias in media against conservatives, religious conservatives, (and) Christian conservatives."

so... yeah

it's garbage because it's supposed to be garbage.

That dude's background does not scream "right-wing crank" to me.

yes, how did a rich white guy who also wrote for the ken kurson-era observer fall in with those types

I was gonna say — the closing bit of that excerpt above (bad as it all is) deviates a little from what my expectations might have been, based on that site description.

He was also involved in the early careers of both the Beastie Boys and Kara's Flowers, producing three tracks for the latter in the summer of 2000, shortly before the group changed their name to Maroon 5.

Sommer was the inspiration for the lyrics of the Sonic Youth song "Kill Yr Idols", in which Moore questioned his friend Sommer's respect for Christgau.

By the way, rock’n’roll is an attitude, a state of mind, a way of holding your heart and squeezing your feelings. I hear rock’n’roll in the glassine gasps of Pink Floyd and in the starlight and chimes of Japanese ambient music. I hear rock’nroll in the urgency and neurotic brilliance of Glenn Gould, in the post-Atomic buzz of Tony Conrad, and in the overhead wire hum of La Monte Young. I hear rock’n’roll in the gnashed, gnawed flaming beauty of Tribe Called Quest. I even hear rock’n’roll in the soul and stare of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Rock’n’roll, you see, is the beautiful bucket of paint and blood, sugar and empathy, seduction and tears that we throw at the walls of our high school, the walls of our workplace, the wall of Valentines’ Day cards at CVS, the walls of our the brutalist gyms and city halls where we vote.

i'd hate to be the cleaning staff where he works

They want the gnashed, gnawed flaming beauty of A Tribe Called Quest/
But they've got left is this guy called West.

and Rock 'n' Roll / in the soul / of Ocasio-Cortez

RE: Sommer Hugo Largo is a fucking fantastic band

I've never gotten the idea he's right wing? I dunno.....He cashed out as the A&R who discovered Hootie & The Blowfish

was always a welcome b-list MTV personality in my aspiring indie days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfa6n7IH4NU

yeah, Hugo Largo is awesome

I found that first hugo largo record in the dollar bin and never could get into it -- sounded to me like Edie Brickell doing a Cocteau Twins covers album.

yeah it is pretty cool

guys i hate to break it to you but indie rock dudes can grow up and have if not nazi mouth breather attitudes at least enough comfort with the status quo to slide to their right

maura

my illusions

why must you shatter them

sorry man i’m all about breaking hearts these days

kurt loder being a libertarian reason mag dude broke me heart :(

speaking of ex mtv folks

baffler’s two plus decades on kurson piece is still worth reading
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/three-scenes-from-a-bull-market

"Sommer was the bass player for the slowcore/dreampop band Hugo Largo.[4]"

ok wikipedia like two paragraphs down you point out that hugo largo had TWO bass players, where does this shit about him being "THE" bass player come from

i don't give two shits about his links to the intellectual dark web or whatever the fuck and i'm not going to burn my hugo largo record (at least not until after i burn my copy of "it's heavy in here"), mostly i'm just appalled that anybody finds lefsetz's writing style worth copying

Closest comparison i can make to the Sommer piece is Homer Simpson's Grand Funk Railroad monologue.

Sommer has fulminated in his column against President Diarrhea, and yet he continues to associate with Ken Kurson, who remains in the Trump fold…

wasn't sure whether to put this in the nat'l review thread or here, but it's a real gem

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/why-is-lin-manuel-miranda-throwing-away-his-shot/

oh lord that url

u_u

i was gonna excelsior that pure omar parody ('glassine gasps of Pink Floyd') until i noticed it was real

thanks to the how to dress well dude for endorsing this piece of shit https://medium.com/@matdryhurst/protocols-duty-despair-and-decentralisation-transcript-69acac62c8ea

please do say more about this "club music"

My assumption is also that whichever streaming platform wins (as all roads lead to monopoly in this current paradigm)

Why would this be the case?

Oh I think we have a winner here.

a few years ago, a boy sent this to me to demonstrate his galaxy brain and i think about it constantly pic.twitter.com/VsPbCBY6F8

— isobel mohyeddin (@isobelmohyeddin) March 7, 2019

keep in mind that this was the intro paragraph to a FULL LENGTH PAPER

— isobel mohyeddin (@isobelmohyeddin) March 7, 2019

A full ten page paper, she says elsewhere.

Often, I have found,

Are we sure this wasn't an ILXor

Damn, I wanna read that whole paper...!

i think he raises some salient points

not notably distinct from plenty of OPINIONS 4 U comments on this very site a scant decade ago

I had to put this somewhere

https://tmz.com/2019/03/10/nicki-minaj-concert-canceled-france-fans-angry-chant-cardi-b/

“France loves starting wars, and might have one with Nicki Minaj now after some angry fans turned on her in the most savage way possible.

...

“As for the Cardi chanters -- we're guessing Nicki ain't sweatin' them too much.

“It's not like the French do well in wars.”