didn't make it to the end of that post where he talks about his site's rationale, but as far as I can tell he just thinks it's a venue for him to write about P4k, since P4k (rightfully, in my opinion) doesn't provide its readers with a space for commenting on their stuff on their own site
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:05 (thirteen years ago) link
I know people like this guy -- they know nothing about books, jokes, or making out, they just wanna go to indie shows and feel Part Of It. One of the problems with the theory of evolution is my disappointment that every generation has its hippies.
― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:05 (thirteen years ago) link
this is like taxi driver but instead of buying cybill sheperd a kristofferson album he buys her a wavves cd
― ('_') (omar little), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:06 (thirteen years ago) link
okay so like sometimes, when you’re seeing a girl and she gets mad at you because all you talk about is reissues with insane packaging
da fuck does he know about packages?
― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:06 (thirteen years ago) link
He should just hang out on ILX and post long posts about the p4k hegemony. Really speculating about reviews on ILM is the only context in 2010 that I can imagine where it's not totally weird to be discussing p4k with that much seriousness.
― Mordy, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:07 (thirteen years ago) link
it's not so much the seriousness that's the problem, though, but the comprehensive obsessiveness -- e reviews every review
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:08 (thirteen years ago) link
which means he reads every single review
The post about interviewing Wavves is kind of embarrassing in how much it reveals his youth and self-consciousness: first that he purposefully buys new clothes on the way to the interview so Wavves won't think he's uncool, then the degree of awestruck wonder when he sees the band ("in their natural habitat"!) and the venue up close, and then the crushing disappointment when the shroud of Cultural Importance he's bestowed upon them (via Pitchfork no doubt) drops to reveal that they're just stoned goofballs who play music.
― jaymc, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:10 (thirteen years ago) link
thought it was super O_O that he asked the band how much money they make
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:10 (thirteen years ago) link
yikes
I'm just glad there wasn't a coda about him scooping their eyes out of their severed heads with a soup spoon and dejectedly slurping them up
― people are for loving (HI DERE), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:11 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah I finally went to this site and it's just kinda sad and innocent
― iatee, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:11 (thirteen years ago) link
this is, like, one of the craziest things i've ever seen. it almost seems fake.
― pounding beats of worship (the table is the table), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:12 (thirteen years ago) link
re: the innocence and naivete, it kinda blows my mind that he lives in nyc and not in some small town.
― emotional radiohead whatever (Jordan), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:15 (thirteen years ago) link
i mean, dude, spending enough time in a bathroom stall to type a multiple paragraph review of pitchfork reviews at WORK? and then worrying about losing your job? if i were him, i'd worry more about me finding him and slapping the living shit out of him.
― pounding beats of worship (the table is the table), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:15 (thirteen years ago) link
hang on what, re: the wavves interview, a professional journalist actually let this kid sit in on the interview?!
― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:16 (thirteen years ago) link
the real problem is that his posts aren't speaking truth to power so much as mass-blowing the pitchfork staff on the daily
at least it's kinda sweet how much he cares about music writing, but otm
― emotional radiohead whatever (Jordan), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:16 (thirteen years ago) link
lex, I think the journalist was his friend
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:17 (thirteen years ago) link
Totally.
― jaymc, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:17 (thirteen years ago) link
Is this really that crazy? I think it's just a transparent grab at publicity and it has worked. The author is clearly one of the countless New York indie rock fans who thinks they have something unique/interesting to add to the already full to bursting world of music crit, he's just better at branding and conceptualizing. It's such an obvious idea I'm surprised it took this long to become a website. There is a potential "this guy" working a low-level corporate job in every office building in Manhattan.
― MFB, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:17 (thirteen years ago) link
oh come on, NYC is large but it's not like living there REQUIRES you to be worldly
― people are for loving (HI DERE), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:18 (thirteen years ago) link
maybe im reading into it something that isnt there but i dont nec take him as 100% naive, indie kid...the style seems too aware of itself like it's affecting that persona for the effect
im dont really get the "embarassed for him" or that he doesnt understand culture/hipness
― johnny crunch, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:18 (thirteen years ago) link
his posting frequency and style of writing is largely crazy, yes
― righteous lecoq (J0rdan S.), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:18 (thirteen years ago) link
i think johnny is also otm
― righteous lecoq (J0rdan S.), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:19 (thirteen years ago) link
you think he's playing into some sort of a persona? no way
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:19 (thirteen years ago) link
it's like when people thought I was a sock when I started posting here last year. I wasn't playing into a persona, I was just pretty naive
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:20 (thirteen years ago) link
So now we're suggesting that this is performance art where he's a worldly ironic dude who is affecting the voice and persona of a naive indie music fan?
― Mordy, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:20 (thirteen years ago) link
ksh otm. no way this is just a persona. (except in the sense that everything is a persona - lol Goffman, but I think he thinks he's presenting a different persona than he actually is -- that's the mismatch)
actually on second thought this blog could probably only be written by a kid in nyc
― emotional radiohead whatever (Jordan), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:20 (thirteen years ago) link
this is a calculated publicity grab like wesley willis' career was a calculated attempted at working his way onto kylie minogue's songwriting team
― ('_') (omar little), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:21 (thirteen years ago) link
yea not performance art but just, you know, being hyper-aware of like hipster runoff, etc and the shit that comes w/ being wrapped up in p4k "culture"...like hes embraced all the stereotypes that go along w/ it & amplified them in his writing
― johnny crunch, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:28 (thirteen years ago) link
I agree, but it would just make a lot more sense if he was this kid in Dubuque for whom Pitchfork represented a bright, shining beacon of culture.
― jaymc, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:29 (thirteen years ago) link
wait can we all agree that this person should be destroyed.
― pounding beats of worship (the table is the table), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:29 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah johnny, idk, i think you're misreading it completely
― Mordy, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:30 (thirteen years ago) link
there is nothing ironic about this venture from what i can tell, tho Poe's Law is in affect
This kid writes as if he lived in the house where Winter's Bone is set.
― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:33 (thirteen years ago) link
so anyway the reason i’m reading Master of Reality is that i stopped reading Our Band Could Be Your Life for the moment because i carry a tote bag and the book is really heavy so it makes me hunch over in one direction and i don’t wanna get adult-onset scoliosis, and i guess i’ll pick it back up when i get a backpack, but for now i’m reading 33 1/3 books because they’re light.
― ilxor has truly been got at and become an ILXor (ilxor), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:33 (thirteen years ago) link
you know, I don't necessarily think it's a problem that he's doing this blog. he's, what, 22? if he's still doing this in a year or two, sure, he'll definitely need an intervention, but as of right now he's basically just some kid "critically" & enthusiastically engaging with music writing, albeit in a really obsessive way
someone should tell him, though, that he doesn't want to become permanently known as "dude who spends all his time thinking and writing about one indie music website." if writing about music is already seen (perhaps unfairly) as somewhat lesser than actually playing music, writing about other people's writing about music way more than you write about music yourself is really down on the scale of things worth spending your time doing
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:35 (thirteen years ago) link
i agree that it's a total and complete embracing of taboos and stereotypes, not naivete -- i never read the latter into it at all
― righteous lecoq (J0rdan S.), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:36 (thirteen years ago) link
also i think he's crazy
how heavy could that book possibly be...?
― people are for loving (HI DERE), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:38 (thirteen years ago) link
if I were as crazy as he was, I'd start reading through his posts looking for quotes to make an argument that he's tonally not ironically distanced from his own naivete. but my interest in him only extends to talking shit about him on ILX and mocking his dreams of being a famous indie review site reviewer. so maybe it's ironic! i don't have the interest to really do any investigative textual work about it, lol.
― Mordy, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:39 (thirteen years ago) link
xp Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
― jaymc, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:40 (thirteen years ago) link
― pounding beats of worship (the table is the table), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:12 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
Is it just me that thinks the tone and cadence of his writing is incredibly Holden Caulfield-ish?
― someone who has fainted mid-squeeze at a Real Big Fish gig recently (DJ Mencap), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:45 (thirteen years ago) link
there was an entry where he was writing about how he was talking to a stripper and he explicitly referenced Catcher in the Rye
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:46 (thirteen years ago) link
that being said, no idea -- haven't read that novel in years
i never went through a hard rock/metal phase in high school that i think a lot of kids go through where they read guitar magazines and wear hard rock t-shirts, and i’m sort of sad i missed it because it seems really formative, you know? yesterday i was at a museum opening and i told Elizabeth that i spent all afternoon listening to Black Sabbath and it was changing me because i was getting in touch with the beast and she giggled but this record gets me so pumped up, you know what i mean? then i pulled her aside and showed her my air guitar and my hard rock face which isn’t as menacing and tough as a lot of peoples’ hard rock faces but i’m still working on it
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:49 (thirteen years ago) link
painfully, painfully earnest
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:50 (thirteen years ago) link
Reads more like a Tao Lin IRL sockpuppet to me. Painfully, painfully self-aware.
― FRESH MEAT (MFB), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:52 (thirteen years ago) link
I am making my "why did I read that" face right now
― people are for loving (HI DERE), Friday, 6 August 2010 19:52 (thirteen years ago) link
http://www.pitchforkreviewsreviews.com/post/913814425/black-sabbath-and-rick-ross-interviewed-ed-droste-the#disqus_thread
― markers, Friday, 6 August 2010 19:53 (thirteen years ago) link