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

hahaha

dying

http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-08-06/music/lift-every-voice/

http://thedailycrazy.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/orville1.jpg

these people should be quarantined from society

In 1992, Springsteen seemed irrelevant because he was outflanked by both rhythm and noise, by PE on the left and Nirvana on the white.

taken as a whole that Bruce piece is over the top but there are a couple paragraph that on their own are pretty killer.

not Keith's best piece, but also FAR from the worst ever. (whatever happened to Keith anyhow?)

OK, what the hell's wrong with this review? I agree with almost all of it.

bit overcooked i guess, but i like it! the 'every sentence must have some pow pow pow trickery' style of writing has kind of waned hasn't it.

I just thought it was petty and smug. Plus, sprinkling song titles and lyrics into a review is a pet peeve of mine. This review always comes to mind when I think of a particular kind of criticism that leaves me more annoyed than informed. Maybe this is personal and not Harris's fault, but it reminds me of the whole era of sarcasm and naivite that led folks to say that Bush and Gore were the same, and a Simpsons and Seinfeld world where if you're not making a joke you are a joke.

And if gospel music and 9/11 and Springsteen aren't sacred cows, than I assume Keith Harris doesn't see himself as one either. I've liked other reviews of his, as well as his show recommendations in City PAges.

The first graf is right-on and far from smug.

September 11 affected us all in different ways, and the way it affected Bruce Springsteen was this—as the second tower toppled from the sky, he was plunged into a world of eternal vagueness.

That's not smug?

no

No.

it's funny! probably the funniest thing you could say about 9/11 and bruce springsteen

If anything, he implies that Springsteen's the smug one for responding to 9-11 with an album's worth of platitudes.

i don't disagree w/ Eazy's general drift, but there are much much worse examples and practitioners of that style imo

I mean, gospel music is almost always more symbolic and allegorical than concrete and specific. "We Shall Overcome" works on specific occasions, but it doesn't document the surface of those occasions.

Definitely there are worse examples out there. This one pissed me off more than any other, though no more than he seemed to feel about The Rising.

And I'm no big fan of unmelodic Tom Joad and Rising Springsteen songs, though I think "The Rising" itself is about as good a Springsteen song as there is. Telling a song from the point of view from a fireman in the first tower, but telling it in a way that someone could sing it and make it their own, and telling it in a way that doesn't permanently ground it in 2002, is quite a fear.

I'm afraid of it too.

A feat, a feat!

in that review keith seems to just KNOW things that he can't possibly know, i.e. the post-9/11 Springsteen is vague because, like the Democratic party, he doesn't want to alienate anyone. really?

The Rising argues, implicitly but unmistakably, that in a time of crisis we should shrug off our individual concerns in the interest of "healing." Sound familiar?

That's not to equate the heartfelt pieties of one of rock's most decent millionaires with the demands for unanimity launched by those gutting the Fourth Amendment.

except actually it is. cake = had and eaten! and nice job getting the "millionaire" reference in there dude

FEAR THE BOSS! FEAR HIM, I SAY!

xp

also his first instinct that "if 9/11 hadn't existed bruce would have had to invent it" is a snide aphorism was the right one; it's a risible thing to say

it's also funny as hell.

Sometimes critics use albums as an excuse to write zingers – wow!

And sometimes non-critics use critics to encapsulate the shortcoming of a particular era -- no harm done to anyone.

(Not critics in general -- specific reviews.)

suggesting that Bruce Springsteen actually welcomes national tragedy because it will boost his own "relevance" is funny as hell??

http://culturekitchen.com/files/images/web_Lee_Greenwood.jpg

i just deleted like four bruce live albums off my ipod last night, i think i'm getting defensive because of my guilt - sorry bruce

suggesting that Bruce Springsteen actually welcomes national tragedy because it will boost his own "relevance" is funny as hell??

no, it isn't. but suggesting that "If there hadn't been a September 11, Bruce Springsteen would have had to invent one." is, imho.

c'mon RI-I-I-I-I-I-I-SE UP. RI-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-SE UP.

just you wait til i fetch my Cain, you.

what would we do without music critics--how would anyone ever understand music

by abusing copious amounts of illegal substances, natch.

haha @ the rapreviews.com writer eventually outing himself as an animal collective stan and comparing merriweather post pavilion to veckatimest

uhhhh i first read that as "rape reviews" and then as "ra previews" pls let's pretend this says nothing about me except that i'm about four deep.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/newsfocus/article.html?Straight_Edge_is_no_sex,_no_drugs,_just_rock_and_roll&in_article_id=741802&in_page_id=65

This is from today's Metro and actually worse than the URL would lead you to expect

I like that they transcribe the guy's t-shirt as "Party F******g Sober!" and then run a photo of the whole fucking thing right below that.

SleeveNotes: Tim Jonze:

It's not every day you get to compare Sugababes to the band who wrote Nazi Punks Fuck Off. But this week the pop trio followed in the footsteps of extreme metal terrorists Napalm Death by soldiering on, despite the fact that, since Keisha Buchanan's departure on Monday, their lineup now has zero original members.

OK, what's wrong with the above?

Article on Creed in Slate today. Reads utterly incoherent to me and I'm not sure that it's not a joke, but it seems sincere enough I guess.

I'd hardly say its incoherent save for

"Higher" might turn out to be the nu-grunge "Don't Stop Believing": dismissed by cognoscenti on arrival as bludgeoning and gauche but destined for rehabilitation down the road as a triumphant slab of ersatz inspirationalism.

ersatz?

inigo_montoya.jpg

Oh just go for the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk

That article was fine. It was of a piece with Slate's baffling obsession with contrarianism and revisionism. It was a decent read.

It was a great read, except it would have read EXACTLY the same if it was on The Onion.

derivative blowhards with a self-righteous Christian agenda

i like how he describes in 8 words why no one likes creed and then spends 5 paragraphs defending creed.

I'm a sucker for a thoughtfully contrarian essay, so this worked.