Nah.

I need something with a beat.

He writes:

It's not the actual list that's the problem. The list is the usual mix of shit, shinola, and gold you'd expect. The problem is the writing & subbing of the text for each track. I mean, these are meant to be the greatest songs of their generation — does the writing communicate that sense of importance? Does the writing make you feel as excited, as bound up, as "Caught Out There", "Around The World", "Glory Box", or "Unfinished Sympathy" do? In fact — good example, let's check out what's said about no. 31.

'#31. Trip-hop progenitor "Unfinished Sympathy" is really a slick piece of hip-hop soul blessed with Shara Nelson’s broken bawl and some muted beats and cowbells from 3-D, Mushroom, and Daddy G. It came out under the more politically sensitive band name of Massive during the first Gulf War and ensured the collective remained the urban sophisticate’s artist of choice for the next decade'.

So, this is what music writing should do now. Place, contextualise, describe, commercially delineate. All well and good (although wtf 'urban sophisticate' means I rilly don't know) and utterly pitifully inadequate to the record itself. And if music writing keeps doing this, keeps on — in terror of the poetic and fear of the 'pretentious' — simply comprehending music and never rhapsodizing, keeps on worrying about filing without ever losing its mind, it will continue to lag behind the form it seeks to circumscribe, will continue to be so much chip-wrapping for its readers and its writers to forget almost instantaneously. How could you ever remember such lumpen prose, such cliché-ridden mediocrity, let alone recall the names responsible? Where does this writing send you? Is there ANYTHING in each write up of each track that in any way has a reason to exist, a reason to be, a reason to take up those pixels? Would the piece have in any way suffered from just being the YouTube links? Faced with new technologies that enable everyone to be a critic, what do you do? Make criticism look like everything else, or emphasise its unique posture, its antique desire not just to reflect but to CHANGE the way pop is thought about?

Also see: The Loss Of The British Voice, the invasion of U.S.-styled, Rolling Stone/Pitchfork writes-on-eggshells encyclopedic writing. Safe as houses.

So, this is what music writing should do now. Be factually inaccurate and have the ungainly ugliness of expression more suited to a college assignment, an exam, than music writing. These are writers surely inspired by no-one, and consequently it's impossible to hear a human voice emerging, or see an effort involved in finding that voice. Just the mechanical regurgitation of acceptable clichés, the defeated tone of those pushed around and cowed by the biz, the absolute dead-end determination to 'appeal' as widely as possible. A downright FEAR of the new idea and the dwindling-readership it might alienate, a terrified scurrying cowardly retreat into the lukewarm arms of cliché and staleness and imprecision.

Writers gotta realise — YOU ARE AN ARTIST TOO. Language is your medium, infinity is your potential, MATCH or even SURPASS the music you're writing about, you're just as good as those fkn musicians and writing about pop is a vital artform that actually contributes to the health, and the potential for surprise and intrigue, of a musical culture. You are not a fkn hanger-on (and spods and geeks and fans are important in any culture — remember fans are not disciples, fans can be betrayed) you are part of an argument, a battle. Pick up yr arms and yr pens and yr paper and yr brains and fkn fight. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.

Pete Brown adds:

I remember reading the Stud Brothers doing singles reviews in Melody Maker, and one time they spent almost the entire allocated word count on a review of a new Mission single which was nothing more than a diatribe about the name 'Wayne'. It made me want to be a writer.

Found on 206 Proof, thanks to the homie AB from Sonicsgate:

It's one thing to steal our basketball team... but I draw the fucking line at them stealing our awkward white boy speed rap swag. - Billy The Fridge

Fridge nailed it, too. This is the terrible kind of double-timey commercial-rap mimicry I thought was native to the lands far to the North and East of my lofty perch here on Capitol Trill. Maybe OKC just caught that fever, and now the local lames can let that style go; Seattle-area rappers, if you ever make a song that sounds even remotely like this, you will hereby be deported to the dustbowl quicker than you can tie a baby-blue durag.

I know this is prolly more Slog-ish than Line Out-tee, but I'm kinda angry. I'm from North Carolina, all my family is still there, so I get real annoyed when my home state embarasses me with some ass backward bullshit. Fucking godamn rednecks. It's assholery like this that makes me glad I left, yet I certainly regret I wasn't there to help with the fight.

Um, I'm no lawyer, but NC's Amendment One sure seems to violate the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Amirite?!

While previewing Rammstein’s May 14 show at Tacoma Dome by listening to their best-of collection, Made in Germany: 1995-2011, I wondered, “Who likes this shit?” I have never met a Rammstein fan, and I’m old. But clearly they are popular enough to play huge venues in North America and release lavishly packaged CDs full of their bombastic, ham-fisted electronic-dance anthems, marked by Till Lindemann’s over-the-top guttural vocals. It's ugly, bulbous, way-too-full-of-itself music.

Rammstein remind me a bit of Laibach, but one sensed that Laibach were at least semi-conscious of their ludicrous echt seriousness. Rammstein appear to be too dense to possess such self-awareness.

Do people like Rammstein in an ironic, “it’s so awful it’s great” way, as if they were some sort of Teutonic Shaggs or Wesley Willis? Do you like Rammstein? WHY?!

Continue reading »

Soooooo, if I'm not careful, occasionally, I'll get sucked into watching Christian TV...ugh...it happened last night. Usually I can only watch for like, ten minutes, and it's always the "meant for teens" late night music video show on JCTV. C'mon, it's my bedtime and I'm hopeful for ANYTHING. Well, watching that shit IS A MISTAKE. It's awful. Most of the videos/songs are typically a tragic mix of '90s pop punk cliche,' Filth, and AmRep style noise/proggy math rock, recorded real nice in a slickly produced pile of time suck. Oh, there is prolly some Ministry in that mix too, a group now dubbed "Industrial Metal"...'cause you know, in 1989 goth kids and metal kids totes got along. That said, I THINK this JCTV action is supposed to be contemporary hardcore?!? YEAH? Amirtie?! Uh...hardcore...shit, it's enough to make me wish Drive Like Jehu never existed!! Okay, for instance, here is Children 18:3, their name is taken from Matthew 18:3 - "And he said: 'I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'" They're straight pop punk, I'd reckon.

I know this has been ongoing thing, these bands, but where are they coming from? And as they seem to KEEP coming...THERE MUST BE A MARKET! Did it spring from the, once fantastic, notion that ANYONE CAN DO IT, so everyone DID?! Godamn DIY, now it has become parody. The point of the underground, once, was to press forward, but I guess, if you're in a Christian band the point is only to glorify God so the music is ultimately irrelevant. Also, as we're 20 years post-Nirvana, the marketable music scene, created/tapped in the '90s, has allowed for strict cliche's to formalize and the kids are buying into the shit 'cause they DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER. Which might explain also, when it comes to Christian's making hardcore, Christians who are blaspheming God in doing so, no one dredged up groups like the F.U.'s and their Kill For Christ EP as an example of how the streams don't cross. Whatever...as an old hardcore kid from the '80s it seems strange there is a Christian themed hardcore scene, that's some straight oil and water shit. Sheesh, I swear tonight Ima go to bed EARLY.

Also: I guess there is a Styper wannabe group out there too. Gosh, this makes me miss Dokken.

Okay, no it doesn't, nothing makes me miss Dokken.

U2 frontman Bono recently jumped onstage with Tinariwen and Bassekou Kouyate at Festival au Désert in Timbuktu, Mali for a 15-minute jam. In the clip below, he grandstands, bellows, claps off beat, and generally looks like a world-class fool. How embarrassing. But maybe I'm being too harsh. Perhaps Bono’s (surely well-meaning) shenanigans will get some more people into these great groups. Let’s do a poll to decide what the fuck we should think about this.

Okay, so maybe you've seen Megan's post about the Seattle funk scene's reaction to her funk joke. A lot of the backlash seemed to originate from this Facebook post a week ago. Many people (whose identities have been redacted with our super high-tech photo software), including me, were tagged in the post. Since then, Megan has received many hate comments and emails, and even cries of racism. (How one becomes a racist for ridiculing a genre is quite beyond all logic.)

You'll notice the last comment from me posted three hours ago:

Hey all,
We'd like you to send in your music, and we're going to make Megan listen to it as penance for her potshot. Will you send your stuff (links, etc.) to music@thestranger.com with the subject line "FUNK MEGAN"? We want her to actually sit down and listen to the stuff and then write an article on it.

So far, no one has sent us an e-mail with the subject line "FUNK MEGAN," and no one has responded to my FB comment other than the estimable Chris Estey, who clicked the "like" button. This even though many of the complaints suggested that if she just listened to the stuff she would realize its greatness. And, to be fair, we've never covered much funk at the Stranger. So I put it to you, great funk bands of Seattle. Send us your funk, and we will force Megan to consume it all weekend. Then she is required to report on it for next week's music lead. Your move...

It started with a joke in this piece about getting your music played on the radio:

Before you send anything, know who you're sending it to.
If you're a metal band, don't send your music to the hiphop show. If you're a funk band, don't send your music to a heavy metal radio station (also, don't be a funk band). It sounds like obvious advice, right? Nope. I've been hosting Locals Only, the Pacific Northwest music show, for years, and I often receive press packages from bands out of New York and California with clueless letters promising "the Locals Only audience will love us!" Not only is it a waste of time and money, but you look stupid.

First, I WAS KIDDING. It was a joke. Second, I do not like funk but that doesn't mean everyone who does should stop playing it. BECAUSE I WAS JOKING. But my anti-funk comment clearly hit members of the funk community right in the heart as the comments prove.

The letters came via Facebook and e-mail, too. Some excerpts:

...first of all, as a veteran funkster on this scene, fuck you...what kind of snarky racist shit is that?..have you even fucking LISTENED to funk??..why NOT be a funk band?? What's your deal with suggesting to the seattle music scene not be in a band that is black music based?..i'm not mad at ya, sis, but i'm funky..i play the funk, the whole funk, nothin' but..there's quite a funky scene here in seattle...for all my fellow funksters out there,that's some insulting shit you dropped.. you need to apologize to the readers of this paper that do appreciate funk music...

And:

I'm fighting back some anger from that comment but will just say this: I won't pass up job opportunities, relationships and burn the candle at both ends for being dismissed. I moved to this city in 2000 to pursue music. The main band I'm in had to stop identifying as "funk" label because nobody in this music industry would even give us a chance. Funny how it's just accepted to dismiss and not given any thought of true artistic merit. It'd be great to be told that our music sucks, because then at least we know someone actually took the time to listen to it.

I didn't know that funk was such serious business.

UPDATE: Please see the post entitled "The Funk Megan Seling Challenge: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is" here. —Ed.

If I don't hear clips from this mom's rant being sampled on at least a dozen songs by the end of the week, I will lose faith in the world:

I'm gonna go find my mom and hug her now.

• Billy Corgan via Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com

He has a point, of course, but it's hard not to roll your eyes when you consider that this is also the dude who has also dated Jessica Simpson and Tila Tequila, two women who are hardly the face of artistic integrity. I mean, isn't dating attention addict Tila Tequila basically the equivalent to setting yourself on fire on YouTube?

A sample of Corgan's quotes (from the Billboard.com story and RollingStone.com):

"I was part of a generation that changed the world—and it was taken over by poseurs."

"[Artists that break through now] have grown up thinking that being famous is the goal. Not to be respected, not to be dangerous." He compared breakthrough artists to prostitutes, saying, "[once you make that deal] you're just the fresh stripper."

"There's nothing wrong with technology. It's when technology is the story and not the artist, that's the problem."