The All-New STYLUS.

Dave Q's Muse review is the finest troll in the history of Internet music reviewing.

And the comments on that!

also I missed Dom P's "review" of The View the first time around. 'tis beautiful.

^^^also this. I was being force-fed The View by my radio station committee at the time, and Dom pretty much articulated what I felt.

Todd Hutlock, today, and very very very OTM about the value of Stylus:

The Stylus model was always better for the writers than it was for the readers, and that’s REALLY saying something given how great some of the writing was. But I’ll be damned if there will ever be another place that is just gonna let me write however much I want on whatever the hell I want to write about, as long as its about some music of interest to someone out there. We broke the mold, my friend, and no one else is crazy and/or stupid enough to try to glue it back together.

hey, they let me write about Olsen & Johnson.

The warmth here is encouraging and, honestly, surprising. I'm convinced our commenters were the most grotesque group of gnomes in God's great earth.

That's only because Pitchfork never had a comments box.

OTM ^

Well, it pains me to admit it, but we’ve had plenty of favorite commenters on the site. Zarklephaser, Grand Banks, Florenz6, meatbreak, raskolnikov, et al.: we salute you!

WTF I WAS CALLED OUT AS A FAVORITE STYLUS COMMENTER??!?!!!

(totally unexpected, thanks to whomever suggested that!)

Hahaha, that was all Todd's doing, singling you and the others out. I don't think anything has had as much sustained, impassioned, profane and repeated discussion in our virtual office over the years as the comments boxes. God bless our readers. And hello, Zarklephaser.

Hello, Zarks!

I've known about this for a couple months now, but I'm still bummed about it, especially after reading this thread.

This is going to sound like another "kid with a dream" cliche, but so be it: Todd e-mailed me in early 2005 after reading something on my blog and asked if I wanted to join the staff. As someone who'd been casually writing about music for a couple years but had aspirations toward something more, I was thrilled and honored at the opportunity. I was a staff writer for about a year and a half, at which point I was let go because I wasn't writing enough. Which was totally fair, since I've never been a prolific writer. But another part of the reason I had trouble pitching articles was that I was intimidated by the level of talent and passion among the other writers on the site. I always felt a little out of my league. I continued writing singles reviews, right up until two weeks ago, because I didn't feel similarly burdened by the task of making snap judgments about T-Pain singles.

But I have a lot of happy memories of being a Stylus staffer. I think I wrote some pretty good articles, things I undoubtedly wouldn't have had the motivation to write on my own were it not for the site. The karaoke night in New York that Miccio alluded to earlier was a blast. In fact, everyone I've met through the site has been top-notch, and the staff message board was a wonderful, intelligent community (esp. when ILM started to go down the drain). And while the last article I wrote for Stylus was published over six months ago, it sucks to think that if I was suddenly inspired again to write 800 words on some long-forgotten pop song, I would no longer have a venue for it.

So long, Stylus. You'll be missed.

todd burns is a good guy and the site provided a lot of opportunities for a lot of people

it will be missed

Thanks for the thread summary, deej.

are u zinging me on stylus memorial thread?
poor form

oh u mad cuz i'm stylus on you

it will be missed
My college roommate pointed out that whenever somebody famous passed this life, the NY Post would inevitably publish at least one letter to the editor that ended with that phrase, whatever their previous take on said personage. So when Leonid Brezhnev died, under the heading "Bye Bye Brez," there was a letter to the effect that "even though he was the head of an Evil Empire, blah blah, he was a dominating figure on the world stage for decades, blah blah. He will be missed."

http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/sharemed/targets/images/pho/t052/T052188A.jpg

We won't have Stylus to kick around anymore?

So THAT's why Todd Burns told me two weeks ago they weren't looking for any new contributors.

Not because I'm rubbish, after all.

"If people this bad start sending us reviews because they think they'd fit in, I'd rather quit." :-)

i will miss the left hand path metal column. invisible oranges may be of interest to metalists out there.

RIP Stylus Memorial Thread 10/29/07
RIP Stylus Memorial Zing Thread ??/??/??

"I'm convinced our commenters were the most grotesque group of gnomes in God's great earth."

Maybe if you weren't such a raging homophobe...

That's it, Stan. I killed Stylus.

Sorry everyone.

i will miss the left hand path metal column. invisible oranges may be of interest to metalists out there.

Yeah, I'll be following Cosmo's writing. He really gave us a break by reviewing two of our albums earlier this year for Stylus, which was (and is) a really big deal for us, and I exchanged a few emails on industry/publishing stuff. Neither was very metal, and one was folk, but he really took the time to get into them. Total bro. All the best for his future (and everyone else!).

ugh. back to surfing the blogs then.

Hi Nick, Alfred, nice to meet you. I'm on ILM under this name (obviously). Following both yr blogs, etc.

And to Nick especially -- I know you've taken a lot of shit in Stylus comments over the years, but I really really *really* like your writing. Influenced me a lot over the years. And great tastes too, man, keep waving that Mark Hollis flag, Lord knows I love him too.

will feel empty @ end of the year time. stylus always had the best lists (and i don't mean taste wise, but maybe that, too).

Stylus is doing year-end lists this week.

i assumed that might happen.

Pretty sweet if you ask me.

Dom is still a dick though...right?

Some things never change.

An iconoclast like Dom may not win any popularity contests, but that's not writing is about.

err not WHAT writing is about

Dom is my favourite Stylus writer, btw. My girlfriend's brother saw him once at a train station in Bristol and rang me to say "I've just seen that scarf-wearing internet cock friend of yours; I recognised him from Myspace. He's a cock". I was touched.

Favourite Stylus writer <i>besides myself</i>, of course.

Fuck an html tag.

The two Todds made me cry over my toast this morning.

Fuck man. We're over, bar the screaming.

lol "cock friend"

I feel simultaneously like we failed pathetically and also suceeded magnificently. Does that make sense? Happysad. But mainly sad. Pretty fucking gutted, actually.

A phoenix shall rise...?

So are all the best writers off to Pitchfork?

From the article in the New York Observer:

Scott Plagenhoef, who was a top editor writer at Stylus before becoming the managing editor of Pitchfork, said the site would be dearly missed. . . .

Mr. Plagenhoef said he has been talking to Mr. Burns about Stylus writers who might now find a home at Pitchfork. "We've consulted with Todd and talked about certain writers who are a good fit, and we're in the process of possibly bringing on board a few people," he said.

So, to answer your question: probably.

Well, for one Pitchfork pays, and secondly, there are a LOT of great writers on the staff, past or present, no real bests, which is what I really liked about Stylus.(I mean, obvi, there were bad writers too, but I thought the general quality was unusually high).

And jaymc, if you are who I think you are, I thought your writing on the site was consistent and engaging, and I was kinda bummed we didn't get to meet in Chicago this past summer. Maybe next time.

Also, I thought Anthony's writing for the site was really, really great. He was one of the first writers I REALLY liked before I came to Stylus, and I haven't really been hearing his name mentioned. So, props Anthony.

Thanks, Tal. My memory is kinda fuzzy -- were you in Chicago when Alfred was around?