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

This wasn't published on a student site, that's a professional national public radio site.

It's not like I'm trolling student newspapers, it's considered a major outlet of music coverage in my city

Shit. I misunderstood... okay, I take it all back...

Ah ok I see why ppl reacted that way... For the Brits this is sort of like a BBC site equivalent

Yes, that's the website for Minnesota Public Radio

In that case it can gtfo

http://blog.thecurrent.org/2013/12/15-minutes-in-fargo-with-martin-zellar/

looks like she asks the same basic questions to everyone

A lot to learn here:

"Well, after listening to some of your 'stuff' (sure), I’d agree (not committing) with the people (they exist) who said (ready to blame them if this doesn't go well) it’s a type of (open to interpretation of course) alternative, indie style (two descriptors make it feel descriptive!)."

Yeah, I mean these are definitely a failure of whoever's running the intern program there. "Being published" is not the same as "learning."

imo there are few learning experiences more important than getting shot down hard. I know some people find the experience too upsetting, but, you know, grow some skin already.

sure, but i mean the fact that these pieces have been published is a sign that nobody is being 'shot down hard' in the long or the short run.

Isn't NPR's business model centered around publicly humiliating interns anyway?

xp editors have ceded this responsibility to commenters now

NPR != MPR, though?

re The BPB, do you think there might be some chance that no one with experience was willing to do the interview, precisely because of his terrible reputation, at which point it was thrust on to the intern with five minutes' notice? Because it certainly doesnt read like said intern had lobbied hard to interview a hero, does it?

sure, but i mean the fact that these pieces have been published is a sign that nobody is being 'shot down hard' in the long or the short run.

― maura, Thursday, 23 January 2014 17:05 (3 hours ago) Permalink

right, that was exactly what I meant by my post

Everyone undertaking a conversation with such a fantastic and unusual person should do a good bit of research before getting on the phone. You should be able to find out whether or not he's been to Minneapolis pretty easily with some internet research. Then you can skip straight to questions about the movies he's been in, his facial hair, the evocative lyrics he's written, where he lives, and the stuff not yet on the web. What made you want to talk to him in the first place? Don't underestimate how helpful publicists can be to brainstorm good discussion topics, and they'll definitely know ways to get their clients talking.

So tell me more about your facial hair and evocative lyrics. Also where do you live?

Looking at it, it looks like it could have been an email or gchat interview. Those come out horribly sometimes, especially if the interviewee responds with single line answers and the interviewer isn't prepared to interrogate further.

The interviewer looked like she had no idea who he is as evidence by the line I broke down slightly upthread. I don't think any blame is on BPB.

wouldn't you be a little insulted that MPR was wasting your time with this interviewer who clearly didn't care? what's he supposed to do?

to this writer's credit she wrote a better story on transgender issues than 99% of the professional critics reviewing the against me! album.

(which is a false equivalency, yes, but A) if we're talking about "doing a good bit of research"... and B) everyone in college writes inexperienced stuff, because they're inexperienced, and the grind of the internship cycle / online publishing just means people can read it.)

Even if she were interviewing a complete nobody that would be a sorry, half-assed excuse for an interview.

Feel like at this point, mocking the AV Club's music writing is like mocking a student paper's music writing (speaking of being topical to this thread!), both are shooting fish in a barrel but AVC shouldn't have gotten to this point, they shouldn't be this bad.

I bring this up because of their "Same Love" piece, written for the Grammys. I'm sure what was written in it (rap doesn't say anything about civil rights, but Macklemore is here to save everyone) was written by a lot of straight music writers but ugh.

At least in their music, hip-hop’s biggest artists weren’t too concerned about civil rights in 2013: Jay Z may have donated the “charity” of his “presence” at the occasional Trayvon Martin rally, but his album was more focused on reiterating that he is still very rich, while Kanye West eloquently quoted Martin Luther King’s “thank God almighty… free at last!” to refer to unrestrained breasts. Meanwhile, on the most pressing civil rights issue of the times—gay marriage, which he professes to support—the exhaustingly clueless Eminem suggested on “Rap God” that he might “break a motherfuckin’ table over the back of a couple faggots and crack it in half.” In the face of such squandered opportunities to use rap to say something meaningful about anyone’s rights, it was utterly refreshing to see the somewhat geeky, un-posturing Macklemore (along with utterly nondescript sidekick Ryan Lewis) step up to the plate and deliver thoughtful commentary on the changing tide on gay rights in America.

…

Lyrically, Macklemore’s ruminations aren’t always profound (Wow, people can sure be nasty in anonymous YouTube posts!), but “Same Love” feels empowering simply because he’s so earnestly addressing the topic at all.

http://www.avclub.com/article/macklemore-amp-lewis-same-love-is-more-than-a-pro--200929

http://blog.thecurrent.org/2013/12/15-minutes-in-fargo-with-martin-zellar/

looks like she asks the same basic questions to everyone

I love Oldham, but reading this one basically made me think, "See Will? That's how you answer an underprepared kid's questions in a kind, reasonable, professional manner."

i was thinking about starting a thread of screenshots of avclub's terrible new article titling but i'm uncertain of its mass appeal

looking at just the titling is hate-reading's version of "just the tip"

http://s18.postimg.org/jhuhbt3vd/royals.png

oh my god, Todd VanDerWerff is terrible enough when he stays in his own lane

ikr!

and yeah i never read the articles because i'm trying to not drive myself to violence and the titles are literally enough for an entire lifetime of hate

i should post quotes from Todd's ode to Royals' finger snaps to rile you up

haha the first line: "It’s the finger snaps, I think." no that's it for me.

the other hilarious thing is that with their disgusting redesign they also decided to ramp up their # of regular features 5000% so every time i visit there are like eight new supposed regular features i'm seeing for the first time and will possibly never see again and every one has some long introductory paragraph explaining the regular feature

it seems tragically difficult to maintain it all and now they're probably realizing they could just scrap the regular features thing and be like every other website on the internet

I think they have a regular column dedicated to food scenes in movies, which is a nadir of something

seriously i have never seen these before this week:

Sketchhistory
Internet Film School
Keyboard Geniuses
What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Stop the Presses!
Firsties

oh god, "Firsties"

insert ouroboros.jpg here

Internet Film School isn't too bad, it's actually written by Scott Eric Kaufman of the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog; he also teaches visual rhetoric at UC Irvine. But yeah, overall AVC has gone right over a cliff.

At this point I only read the Newswire and select TV stuff. The music coverage has always been suspect at best, though.

no, not always.

Hi there, UCI employee here. Known Scott for a while but he left a year or two ago and now lives in Baton Rouge. And yes, the best writer of the current AVC bunch by a mile.

I like Ignatiy Vishnavetsky a lot too, he's way too good to be writing for AVC, but whatever, I bet they pay better than any other gig he's had, save that time he co-hosted Ebert Presents or whatever it was called.

no, not always.

As far back as I can remember, at least. Did it have a non-crappy heyday?

Admittedly I did like their metal column. 'Till it got axed.

sean o'neal's a treasure and they're lucky to have him

not a huge fan of the stuff i've read from ignatiy, never sure what the hype is about

http://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/macklemore-grammys

this is as bad as you think

i don't really remember the dates i liked the av club for music. there was a period around 2002-2005 that i read it pretty frequently and treated it as a 'second opinion' after the voice that i tended to trust more than e.g. most glossies, and then i sorta drifted away from paying attention and i couldn't tell you what happened since why. from that period there were a bunch of names that ended up showing up elsewhere/around both online and in print that were all pretty decent too. i think a lotta good ppl probably passed thru there over the years.

there’s certainly no other major rapper willing to be as overtly pro-LGBT on a record

this is surely false - plz counter, ILX

get the feeling that perp is ignoring a lot of female rappers there for a start

"i think a lotta good ppl probably passed thru there over the years."

yeah -- in the current publishing climate, "too good for __________" is a weird thing to say about any writer.

nicki fucking minaj

was the article about the importance of pharrell's hat any good?