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

glad all you guys are around to explain sexism and the way the internet works to me, whew

i have a whole host of reasons for feeling the way i do about this particular blog, not the least of which is that such an experiment was once performed on me, only it was more high concept (there was an end goal) and it was never made public (though my husband did make lovely bound copies for the participants).

okay, i'm out. seeya peeps lates. one luv.

http://rlv.zcache.com/dont_ask_jeeves_ask_me_shirts-r4bc0b8ccd4e84a4384c634e900558a79_8n2rj_324.jpg

oh but the wolf eyes guys liked it! wanted to make that clear. they are nice enough fellas.

scott, your pitchfork thing was hilarious

maura otm, there's a super high degree of 'i am just a girl' going on in the way that makes it viral
comparable to a kid listening to records. or your stoner cousin. but less marketable as less "adorkable"; this video explains a lot of the appeal and derision imo
https://mtc.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/FBD07082241052805603967344640_14e61eb7a1d.4.8.15931423460955070825.mp4?versionId=Zt52IjShOoBU7Vp7Yxzbl0jRFfjuucsL

yeah, i don't think it's evil. it just bugged me. especially how the husband gets the last word on a lot of entries and "explains" things after she is done. there is a great piece of writing to be written about male/female music relationships and the tyranny of the record collection, but this isn't it. i see a lot of women stand behind their husbands/boyfriends in my store while the husband/boyfriend looks at records and the woman is literally only looking at whatever the man decides to look at and in a lot of cases - brace yourself - he will then hand the records he wants to the woman to hold for him as she follows him around the store and it drives me a little crazy. so, this blog just reminds me of that for some reason. i wish them well though. even if they bug me.

― scott seward, Monday, March 17, 2014 1:19 PM

You know what? I am also familiar with this stereotype, both as a person who has worked in record shops, and spent a great deal of my life hanging around record shops.

But have you ever actually gone and asked those women why they are trailing around after their partners, instead of choosing their own records? Because I have spent a lot of time talking to women about music, and specifically about why they don't participate in music-culture more, even though they are interested in music and enjoy listening to it.

And one of the things that comes up in talking to women about why they don't participate in music more (whether that's women who don't make the purchases at a record shop, or women who are super into music and will make their own purchases, but don't participate in music forums etc.) one of the answers that comes up again and again is: the fear that they will be disparaged for their choices, be sneered at for the way they engage with music. Dudes in record shops will laugh at the CD you want to buy, and dudes on messageboard will tell you that are you ~listening wrong~ or engaging wrong.

So when you witness this whole phenomenon, as both a dude who works in a record shop and a dude who posts on a music messageboard, and you decide that the way to compensate for this is to: disparage a woman on a blog writing about music, for writing about music ~the wrong way~ I'm sorry, but you are contributing to this phenomenon way more than some librarian failing to understand an Albert Ayler record.

I think Maura gets at *something* when she says that it is the gendering of this blog, and how it reinforces stereotypes which is contributing to its "shareability". But I think there's a way to talk about that and address it, and a way to just contribute and reinforce those things. And this thread went down the wrong way.

how about there's a super high degree of she's an outsider crashing into the nerdworld

Anna Minard has been doing something very similar in The Stranger for years, a column called "Never Heard of 'Em."

i dunno someone who has NEVER heard of Albert Ayler listening to Albert Ayler and writing about it? seems p. interesting to me

you really don't think the tone is faux-naïf bloggy branwell? i mean, that whole bit where she learns about what a gatefold is...

i didn't know the husband did that TLDR podcast--this is starting to seem like one of those dumb Hannah Rosin/David Plotz projects

i hope my post wasn't the nail in the coffin there!

many women do not participate in music culture because of the unwanted attention it invites. this blog invites that sort of attention, which i find disappointing more than objectionable.

i can't believe *some* people don't know about gatefolds

*rolls eyes*

it does make me want to do a blog where I force your standard record bro to listen to the weird and varied world of any female artists whatsoever (this seems like an exaggeration but it's not) but something tells me the prose would not come out so publishable

As someone whose tone is *constantly* misread (being told I am faux when I am being genuine, being told I am angry when I am empassioned, and so on and so forth) I am very, *very* hesitant to read "naif" or "faux-naif" into the tone of any writer with whose work I am so little acquainted.

i'm not saying 'i can't believe she knows what a gatefold is,' waterface. i'm saying that the way she talked about learning what it was involved extremely gendered language and affect, and those affects tie into how "shareable" the site overall is.

i see a lot of women stand behind their husbands/boyfriends in my store while the husband/boyfriend looks at records and the woman is literally only looking at whatever the man decides to look at and in a lot of cases - brace yourself - he will then hand the records he wants to the woman to hold for him as she follows him around the store and it drives me a little crazy. - lol change 'woman' to 'kurt' and 'man' to 'courtney' and this is the story i've heard of when kurt and courtney were in athens. obv the gendering plays a role, it's a tumblr spin on according to jim, they don't make those dumb sitcoms where the wife is the slob loser and the husband is the mature adult that rolls his eyes at what a loser he's married (wait - is that what the good wife is about?), but the npr aspect is central, if this was some metal chick going wtf and laughing at her bf's anthrax records it wouldn't have nearly the shareability (though it would have considerably more readability).

fair enough, branwell, maybe i've just been reading too many sites for women (cough) lately to see that tone as a little archly studied

it does make me want to do a blog where I force your standard record bro to listen to the weird and varied world of any female artists whatsoever (this seems like an exaggeration but it's not) but something tells me the prose would not come out so publishable

― katherine, Monday, March 17, 2014 3:32 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha otm

maura otm re tone

this is kind of npr intern has never heard public enemy all over again also

yeah i mean it's very 'lol at the dumb person' whether that dumb person is the guy who owns too many records or the woman who doesn't know how to properly discuss them

everyone is terrible, the end

yup

I am also aware that women are rewarded for writing a ~certain way~ and disparaged for writing in ~certain other ways~ and it's very hard not to conform, maybe even subconsciously. But that does not mean that I am prepared to jump on a woman for expressing herself in a way that women are routinely taught and rewarded for expressing themselves.

standard record bro has records by female artists. contemporary female artists otoh...

Kate Bush for sure

whatever we're all just contributing to the inevitable book proposal

i bet this woman hasn't even heard ott's night bus mixtape

You guys will all do this viral marketing shit for me when my book goes online, right? Nope, didn't think so. Baby my tone is bad.

When I pulled this album off the shelf I said, “oh, it’s an open-y!” And Alex was all, “alright, do you want to know the technical term for that?” And I was all like, “shut up I’m looking at this,” because he was sounding condescending, but now, I’m over it and want to know. It’s called a “gatefold.”

OK this doesn't seem gendered to me, but what do I know? It just sounds like a couple's playful banter. But that's just my take on it.

glad all you guys are around to explain sexism and the way the internet works to me, whew

― maura, Monday, March 17, 2014 11:17 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe you can start a blog where you look at "internet" sites and marvel at how many words they use and stuff and then a man can chime in and explain it to u? i think this could be something

My Exes' Stupid Browser Histories

I guess what trips me up about this is that A) my internal monologue when approaching new records or new genres looks a lot like this, I *know* my internal monologue has looked a LOT like this for years -- does that make me a dumb girl? what about seward's thing on pitchfork, which was the same idea -- is he a dumb girl? or is it about what people are bringing to it (which, to be fair, seems to be a lot of the point).

and B) not all of it is as terrible as it's made out to be -- the hook is obviously to respond to the style and none of the substance, but like, the bit about the fertility calculator? that could completely go in a review. the bit about "it sounds like sawing through pipes" could completely be part of a capsule blurb or something.

'some of this stuff is awful enough to be actual pop criticism' is not the best defense. good enough for a capsule blurb! i guess this project does have merit.

you guys laugh but w/ a little polish this thing could yield a nice listicle and then who's laughing?

you guys say this is a turd and i know it just came out of my dog's ass but i'm telling you if you put some ketchup cheese and a pickle slice on it and put it between two buns you could sell it at mcdonalds so don't try to tell me it's not edible

the pathology of a hack

cool, except that wasn't what I meant at all. basically the vibe I get from this is "a lot of rough pre-draft notes." do I necessarily want to read someone's pre-draft notes, no; would Alex's hypothetical pre-draft notes blow up and be A Thing, probably not; do everyone's pre-draft notes resemble this, probably more than they want to admit

it's a blog it's not perfect
it's still not that much worse than 99% of music shit you read online

^

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AZaK5xk4qZg/UyLSWyDehcI/AAAAAAAAgEY/TKVTuczcAmY/s1600/A+meeting+of+the+Mickey+Mouse+Club,+early+1930s.jpg

Man, I just wrote out a post which is not even going on the passive-aggressive second thoughts posts thread. But instead I am going to self censor and not say what I'm really thinking here because that's ~what girls do~.

it's still not that much worse than 99% of music shit you read online

agreed, when i found out the npr connection i was like 'oh, that's why anybody has noticed this'. it's not worse than 99% of the music shit npr actually pays for.

btw not that anyone asked, but the experiment i referred to above was not music-related

"But instead I am going to self censor and not say what I'm really thinking here because that's ~what girls do~."

or maybe you're just growing up. it's never too late.

Wow, you're still a condescending asshole, at least that hasn't changed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5TxpJVKKQ8