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

is there a music site even worth looking at in 2023? i can't remember the last time i looked at music reviews online. its been years. i figured they would just make me sad. seems like a bygone era. i'm not going on tiktok...

(there must be brainy cool young writers out there somewhere. does anyone do cool zines anymore?)

i should make a zine. for real! i know smart people. who don't want to make lists. i feel like there is a serious lack of fun when it comes to music writing. its all so......not fun. what i see of it anyway.

i should check in with the quietus. they have always done good work. stereogum....i made the mistake of looking at a best of metal 2022 list and it was rough. to read. i stopped reading it.

blogging 2.0 aka newsletters are all the rage these days, i prob have more fun writing mine than any other kind of writing i do, unfortunately i never have the time to write it

i'm too old to substack or whatever. i think i'll make a real zine. (i don't go to cities so i never see new zines but i know they exist.)

that thing that JBR is on. those are cool. i get e-mails about them. seems like an easy way for people to speak to people online.

the stereogum article on the battle of the depeche tribute bands in la is the best thing ive read in a minute

some friends of mine around the corner have an arts space and they have a risograph machine. it could make great covers for a mag.

x-post - will make a note of depeche tribute bands article.

there is a ton of stuff on here that is probably really good as long as you don't mind searching through it all. i remember reading some outstanding disco writing on one of the RBA sites. they even had a newspaper that i never saw. anyway, i should just shut up and read some of this. there is a long meredith monk piece that looks good.

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/03/meredith-monk-feature

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/pioneering-women

some friends of mine around the corner have an arts space and they have a risograph machine. it could make great covers for a mag.

hell yeah! i could probably get you "distribution" in a few spaces out here in the Bay if you made one ... i put that in quotes because it would be like, storefront record stores and art galleries that no one really cares about except a few hundred people lol

haha, that's good inspiration, cheers! and its a reminder that i could ask my pal raub roy to write something. and you too! we shall see. sometimes i blab a lot and nothing happens. but sometimes things happen too! you never know. i definitely need a summer hobby. i'm going a little stir crazy, creatively. and if those texas winds start hitting massachusetts, i'll be inside for awhile. its been getting pretty brutal here in summer. we get some unlivable weeks.

On the topic of lists, there's this week's "70 Best Alt-Country Albums" over at Paste:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/alt-country/the-50-best-alt-country-albums-of-all-time

Apparently it's repackaged from 2016, but they managed to leave in a sentence about how, if Justin Townes Earle can "manage his demons," he just might be one of the all-time greats.

is there a music site even worth looking at in 2023? i can't remember the last time i looked at music reviews online. its been years. i figured they would just make me sad. seems like a bygone era. i'm not going on tiktok...

(there must be brainy cool young writers out there somewhere. does anyone do cool zines anymore?)

i've heard three of those! ingenue is alt-country? in what world? ingenue is tied with meantime for my fave album of 1992. i wore that knitters album OUT in high school. and obviously that mekons record is top ten of 1985 material. the rest i don't listen to. maybe by accident.

x-post

i like to think that i listen to almost everything but i guess i've met my match with alt-country. i picked up about 50 CDrs of hillbilly and rockabilly and country swing comps and i've been playing them for weeks at the store. someone burned a ton of bear family and euro-reissue label discs of that stuff and they sound great. and they made photocopied inserts of the covers which i always appreciate.

There are definitely still zines and zine shops.

it's so weird because listen I've worked in the content mines and do have sympathy for everyone who's gotta pull up their pants and, say, shit out Taylor Swift article to do numbers when the tour is going on but like who asked for this?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

please don't pull _up_ your pants to shit

writers shit through their fingers

have sympathy for everyone who's gotta pull up their pants and, say, shit out Taylor Swift article

writers shit through their fingers

― ivy (BradNelson)

fine but why you gotta wear pants to do it

first rule of content mine club is shit your pants

I’ve said this many times but Neil McCormick is the *worst* music writer in the British media by a cunt-ry mile. For a start, every one of the Arctic Monkeys is a millennial. pic.twitter.com/ObVQ7pCwtE

— Mic Wright (@brokenbottleboy) June 24, 2023

I'd say it isn't inaccurate to state that Gen X sometimes adopts bands from younger generations, especially ones that play real music with real instruments. Wet Leg are the newest Gen X house band, for example

or older, even.

I have never used "utter" or "utterly" in any piece of published or unpublished writing.

I do teach my students to not use absolutes if they can avoid it, true

markedly compelling Glastonbury performance

omg Kate I stole your joke and didn’t even realise, maximum apologies

Neil McCormick, however, reinforced past complaints about the album, ranking it as the band's worst album in a 2014 retrospective on the band in The Daily Telegraph: "Muddy production, perky synths, jaunty pop rhythms and an orchestral ballad make these songs barely recognisable as the heaviest band in history."[21]

Perhaps muddy production aside (and I disagree), McCormick's 1/5 of In Through the Out Door reads closer to a 5/5 to me :)

This is the first thing that I always think of when he's mentioned. Not even U2.

"house band for a generation" is a very bad notion in general which will tend to lead to false and badly written statements.

fine but why you gotta wear pants to do it

My future's so bright I gotta wear pants

omg Kate I stole your joke and didn’t even realise, maximum apologies

― assert (matttkkkk)

just don't use it in your standup set and we're cool

(haha nah you didn't "steal" it you came up with it independently, different thing)

I'd say it isn't inaccurate to state that Gen X sometimes adopts bands from younger generations, especially ones that play real music with real instruments. Wet Leg are the newest Gen X house band, for example

― imago

there is no "generation x", the entire thing about my supposed "generation" is that we don't matter and nobody cares. even the name ultimately derives from a 1964 book about... fucking boomers. to me, my generation are boomers lite. nowadays everybody younger than gen x just calls us boomers and to be _offended_ by that would be the most boomer thing ever. i'm a boomer? ok. fine. whatever.

yeah most of the new music i listen to is from "younger generations", i haven't _adopted_ it, it's just music i find good and relatable. most of the best bands of "my generation" are broken up, dead, or boring. i'm not going to be sitting in a retirement home listening to whatever the fuck the latest tortoise album is, you know?

*John McEntire weeps silently somewhere in Chicago*

judging by his girlfriend mcentire is very in touch with millennials

I'd say it isn't inaccurate to state that Gen X sometimes adopts bands from younger generations, especially ones that play real music with real instruments. Wet Leg are the newest Gen X house band, for example
― imago


not to be all the internet is real life, the amount of real world gen x people who even know who the fuck wet leg is is like 0.0000001 percent

maybe in the US!

In the US it’s Greta Van Fleet

In the US it’s Greta Van Fleet

I’ll say it again

People keep changing the parameters of what Gen X is even … I have never been called or considered a boomer … “we” were basically the population trough kids that were born to be an insignificant demographic minority

Yeah GenXers were born in a baby bust, not a boom. Schools were closing and consolidating when I was a kid because of low enrollment. We’re the kids OF the boomers.

They (we) were even called “Baby Busters” before the Coupland book provided the name that stuck.

soon all generations will agree that Blue Oyster Cult was the only good rock band and peace will reign for a thousand years

History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men...

Schools were closing and consolidating when I was a kid because of low enrollment.

yep. also budgets were being cut for public education and other social programs that benefited children (aka fuck you Reagan) ... and instead we had D.A.R.E. and Just Say No to Drugs and the Satanic Panic

to be fair, also fuck Nixon

and this is why musical touchstones of this "generation" were Danzig-era Misfits and Iron Maiden lol

king wizard gizzard just sold out the hollywood bowl buncha wine drinking gen x-ers filled the place

there's definitely an annoying jam band adjacent fan base developing with them

Also there's a weird old millennial hipster F1 racing thing that I don't like the vibe of

king gizz are core zoomer rock band too is the thing. i'm not into them but who knows, this could change

i used to feel like "gen x" meant anyone in the states who grew up with mass market shit like scooby doo and star wars but now "gen x" just makes me thing "white pavement fan". or even "white people who remember public enemy fondly". maybe it was always like that. the slacker thing. and marketers obviously go where the money is and try to appeal to white millennial/x/boomers in ways that appeal to them. ancient goth rock revival tours. limited edition scooby doo swatches. all that. but maybe i should ask people of color of a certain age if they feel like the term "gen x" or "millennial" speaks to them at all. or if it ever did. I realize its just a fake name that stuck... i feel like even "boomer" meant something different at first. howdy doody. hydrox cookies. still a white thing kinda but broader. and tied in with social justice and Vietnam and blah blah. now i just think of some annoying blowhard talking about seeing Grand Funk once in Springfield, Mass. But that's just an occupational hazard for me. all of this makes me wish i would remember to go to one of those awesome freestyle oldies shows at foxwoods. its right up the road! less than two hours and i could be serenaded by the cover girls and shannon! (i have no interest in most reunion/oldies/anniversary shows. i don't know why. they make me a little sad. i didn't even go see souls of mischief last week TWO DOORS from my store. i have a hard gen x heart. but i will be freestyle until i die.)