The All-New STYLUS.

Yeah, I really wish the Singles Jukebox could live on somewhere else.

Me too, but I think WBS had burnt out on it just as much as Todd had with the main site. Not only was he in charge of finding and uploading 20 songs a week, he was then saddled with the unenviable task of begging people to submit blurbs about them. Bear in mind, I greatly preferred the 2007 system where we weren't assigned songs and could write about whatever we liked, but that left Will pulling teeth when nobody could be bothered to say anything about Daughtry.

Makes sense, but I'm really going to miss that the most I think. It was great for me to keep on newer singles from older albums I might have ignored.

Will definitely miss reading the singles jukebox, but I have to admit, I found it really difficult to write for (I signed up in the summer and came through with maybe 4-5 reviews). The turnaround time was just too quick. If you didn't claim your songs early on by sending in your review, you wouldn't make it in. I can see the advantage of this from a publication's perspective and from a reader's perspective, but trying to shape snap judgments into some kind of coherent review I was comfortable with was incredibly difficult. I'm fussy and slow at this stuff, so maybe it's just me, but I reached a point fairly early into the process where I thought, no way can I keep up with this. I don't know how some of the regulars did it--unemployment?

Still, I'd be happier if it was still around. In terms of my new song playlists, I bet half of my titles were discovered thru the jukebox. I don't know where I'm gonna pick up on some of this stuff.

I had some trouble with that, too, Scott. Mostly what I'd do was download everything that hadn't gone up yet on Sunday, listen to them on the way to work on Monday morning, and send a batch or two during the rest of the week (usually no more than 6 songs total). Sometimes I'd get off that schedule, though, and end up not being able to submit anything at all that week. And Mondays were usually shot for me, too, since I didn't have enough time to listen over the weekend.

It became easier when Will started creating a publication schedule, so I knew that if I wanted to review a particular song I had to have it in by a particular day. Before that, you're right, a song would often go up before you knew it.

Esteban Buttez offered to write for the Singles Jukebox and got turned down!!

SO MUCH FOR THAT THEORY!!

Shut the fuck up already.

i thought he had his own board where he could be unfunny?

I wasn't aware of this and I'm sad to hear the news. Stylus was a welcome reminder that people are still capable of caring for and writing about music without regard for its potential appeal, and/or the writers' misplaced sense of involvement therein. It is a beautiful thing to consider for how long Todd and his compatriots maintained such fanatical altruism; even more so if you understand how little they benefited, and how much they sacrificed.

I lost a lung while reviewing a Fat Joe album. So much sacrifice.

Burns owes me about $16,780, which I expect to reclaim in two days in the form of Jaegermeister shots.

Alex, you're confused - I was talking about the people that ran the site, not the thundering nobodies from which they accepted copy.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64/bartleyride/9ea8cc38.gif

Alfred, isn't Jager a bit crass for you?

I've written for other sites, so I can't exactly say I have no dog in this fight, but at least mine are currently muzzled, and -- here it comes -- I will really, genuinely miss Stylus and its often insightful and generally talented writers.

Thank you Liz C. for reviewing my band.

<3

Couldn't you guys write goodbye articles that suck instead of all these great ones? *sigh*

And that's it; no more updates, ever.

Maybe tomorrow Todd'll be all like "it was just a Halloween horror prank, lol!" :-(((

Shut the fuck up already.

WELCOME TO REAL LIFE, SON

I just checked the site and saw something about Ned Raggett and a Xanadu piece.

what baffles me is why if all the writers are all like 'no one else does what the site did, it filled a gap, no one else will let us write whatever we wanted' etc they don't club together and start a new site?

Isn't there like 40 or so of you?

like a phoenix from the ashes...it might've been harder work but c'mon...do you love what you do or not?

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000000ZGO.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg

wbs did a great job keeping the jukebox on top and relevant i have to say.

Goddamn, those essays today really killed me.

Yeah, good stuff all around.

would have liked to see blurbs for all albums/singles but i'm just being selfish. anyway, i'm in the (fairy large 'round here, it seems) boat of people who can thank todd for my first writing gig. he's a cool dude and put up with a lot of my bullshit. RIP.

Makes me want to book a last-minute flight to NYC, to be honest.

I just checked the site and saw something about Ned Raggett and a Xanadu piece.

Uh?

Alfred off-handedly mentions Ned in his year-end essay; I don't know about Xanadu.

mike powell's essay is A++++. good thing he's been writing for the voice and such.

Powell: all-round best writer Stylus ever had.

Makes me want to book a last-minute flight to NYC, to be honest.

DO IT.

dom otm.

xp I never knew it was happening until Ian mentioned it last week!

Anyway, I won't go. I just moved into a new place and have spent too much money lately on movers and furniture and such, but I'll dearly wish I was there.

so is the site going to stay up for awhile?

It'll be up for a long while, which saved me gi-normous printing expenses.

I just checked the site and saw something about Ned Raggett and a Xanadu piece.

Uh?
Someone said something about it being a joke and I thought about the time Freaky Trigger went down.

It'll be up for a long while, which saved me gi-normous printing expenses.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 2:48 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

does that mean that there are intentions to keep the domain and server up for the foreseeable future and preserve the archive? or is there a good chance that the archive will up and disappear a year or two down the line?

Burns said it'll be up for at least a year.

I just read again the piece on Steely Dan's 'Gaucho'. Amazing stuff. My work week is about to get a little more boring.

I re-read that, too, and yeah, it's good, but with one strange thing: what makes him think that "Babylon Sisters" has anything to do with an interracial relationship? He just took the lyric about "jungle music" and took it to mean that the appreciator of said music had to be black? There's nothing in the song to suggest that. And the gaucho of the title track is not automatically of any specific ethnicity just because gaucho is a Spanish word. Weird assumptions, those.

But assumptions make rockcrit fun.

Burns said it'll be up for at least a year.

Needs a backup after that. someplace!

Hopefully some ILX obsessive has it all stored next to his lunaci picture collection.

we got rid of that harvell guy, so it should be fine now. ;)
-- todd burns (toddburns), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 17:08 (4 years ago) Link

^^^the real reason we went under

It was actually because people into finding out about music got sick of Dom's sub-student (and I mean even below the scarf wearing ponces who mistook sacrasm and watery venom) button pushing waffle.

^^real talk

You were the one who hired me to write at the Guardian, man.
xp

I remember Dom was a normal guy who posted here and then suddenly everyone started ripping on him one day?