The Crisis of Music Journalism

"Music journalists." "Rock critics." "Music critics."

What do these people even really do?

I was reading an article in the New York Times yesterday on that band Sleigh Bells. They are really bad and corny (see playing in front of a massive American flag on stage while using a Jackson guitar) but that's not the point. Also the issue of hardcore washup hipsters (see the guitar player having been in Poison the Well but "grown up" and moved to Williamsburg from Florida) is not the point. What IS the point is the article itself - what the writer says, how she says it and why I think she says it.

Basically, the concept of music criticism has long since run out of steam. I have felt this for quite some time, but have not been able to articulate it until reading this article. I feel like there are two things going on here. There really hasn’t been anything good or exciting going on in pop or rock music for a long time. Like probably ten years or so. Secondly, rock critics have been trying to make their own niches for many decades at this point. There is really only so much you can say about music that actually makes sense and is grounded in reality. After a while, you get out into esoteric spaceland and start putting your creative writing skills to work without much connection to what is actually on that record. There are a ton of rock and pop critics, with countless more having come since blogs hit big, and they are all in competition with each other. Just as in so many other fields, you have to make yourself stand out. There is a problem here though. A real one.

You see, when you merge the two issues – a lack of interesting music and a glut of critics who ran out of anything original to say a long time ago – you get a whole lot of emptiness. Take this Sleigh Bells article for example. The way this woman writes about them, they just sound like the most interesting band in the world:

FIRST came the recorded sound: drums and riffs, some demonically heavy marching band. Next, a couple of guys with guitars, who immediately started messing with their pedals in the darkened club. Two minutes later there was Alexis Krauss, with ripped jeans and a distinct saunter. She raised her arms as she reached the microphone, the black-haired queen of this stage. White lights exploded behind her, over a wall of Marshall stacks…

Sounds pretty exciting.

The new record is unmistakably Sleigh Bells, with dense but bigger production that puts Ms. Krauss’s voice into sweet relief over Mr. Miller’s dark metal peals. It is even more guitar driven — Mr. Miller discovered a model, the Jackson USA Soloist, that he loves — and more narrative and lyrical, with a crisper focus on arrangements and harmony over beats.

And then you hear it. Not very exciting anymore. It’s actually pretty boring. I don’t mean to single out Sleigh Bells. It’s not like they’re the worst band in the world. There are vast chasms of yawn inducing, download and delete bands. But Sleigh Bells is the impetus for this.

So why is this? Why does the writer speak of the band like this? I argue that she doesn’t have much of a choice. She can’t just say that they’re shit. If you only ever write that bands are garbage, you won’t make it too far in the journalism biz. So you are left writing positively of bands that often are garbage. What do you do? Make things up. Who cares, right? You can’t get fired for exaggeration like you can in fact-based journalism. You take your creative abilities and run with them. Run far. Like a marathon far. I guess part of it is that she is writing for the New York Times, where 95% of the readership doesn’t know a thing about underground music. This a novelty for them.

But this is a really common thing, the overselling and overhyping of music, where everything is so overblown. I read shit like this all the time. The band will sound really great and exciting and like I said above, then I hear it. And I wonder what the hell the author was listening to. I imagine that it’s the same thing, but they have to find something to say about it.

Latterman reunions reviews - three shows

This past weekend, I saw Latterman play three times. I'm usually not big on reunions, at all, but these dudes are legit and as much as I know them, are pretty much the same if not more punk than they were five years ago. I used to see them all the time and they and some of their future bands played my house several times when I used to do shows. These shows were ten dollars, with $1000 going to Queer Rock Camp in Olympia, so everything is good there as well.

Thursday, December 1st was at Maxwell's, in Hoboken, New Jersey. Maxwell's is a great venue for shows of the non-basement variety. It's really small, has been around forever and pretty much every band (including Nirvana and Fugazi) has played there. The sound is generally really good. No one who works there has ever hassled me, so I guess they are cool, ha. Anyway, some bands played before Latterman but I only saw a few songs of the one before them and that doesn't matter at all anyway. Latterman went on with really no fanfare around 10:30 and opened with "My Bedroom is Like for Artists Part 2," "Doom! Doom! Doom!" and "This Project Is Stagnant (Get It out of My Face)", as you can see above. They sounded as good as they ever did back in the day. Then they played a few songs from We Are Still Alive, I think five, which answered my questions about who would be playing the guitar that wasn't Phil's - Mike and Brian. Mike played most of the set, and Brian came out (after being paged for a minute) for four of the five We Are Still Alive songs. I think the songs they played from that record, not in order, were "Water Manes at the Block's End," "'I Decided Not to Do Them'," "If Batman Was Real, He Would Have Beaten the Crap out of My Friends," "This Basement Gives Me a Fucking Headache" and "We Work the Night Shift." Then Brian went away and that was the end of him. Following that, they played most of No Matter where We Go, as well as a "new" song, "Our Better Halves," which is the last song they recorded, but never got released until now on a one-song seven inch they were selling at the shows. As for No Matter where We Go, they played every song with words, with the exception of "We're Done For," which is a little perplexing, given the subject matter of the song - the social indoctrination of men into a sexist way of thinking, behaving and living - and that making men aware of this shit was always, at least to me, a big part of what Latterman was about. Oh, and there was only one song from Turn up the Punk, We'll Be Singing - "There's Never a Reason Not to Party." Bummer on that, but they weren't that comfortable playing songs/singing words that they wrote over ten years ago, which I guess I understand, but I promise there's nothing outwardly embarrassing on there! So yeah, they did their set, and included the "encore" song in the set instead of coming out and doing it, which is nice. Encores are pretty lame, unless you are legit about to fall over and need a minute.

The next night was at the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Had to watch Yo Man Go, but we survived. I guess you could say we were still alive. Anyhow, Latterman played and that was all that mattered. They played the same set. Brian was again nowhere to be found initially. Jeff from Bridge and Tunnel came out and laid down some brutal vocals on "There's Never a Reason Not to Party," as he also did on Sunday, and I would assume Saturday, as he said he would also be at that show. Phil's head (a Peavey 5150 - I remember he used to play this Fender Rock Pro head, at least he's got all tubes now) broke and they switched it out for some Mesa. They were really good again. They had some problems with people stage diving and crowdsurfing. Matt and Phil were calling them out for it, with them being the staunchly anti-stage diving people they are. It was cool. No one was hostile toward the band for it, as least as far as I could tell. It stopped pretty quickly, until the last song, because really, what can they do at that point, stop playing? Probably not. People were definitely more wild than the night before, but no one was really out of hand, especially considering that it was a punk show with a few hundred people and I've seen some people do really, really stupid shit in similar circumstances. So yeah, overall, good time. They definitely played with more energy than the night before, which I suppose is to be expected. These were consecutively the largest shows they had every played, I believe. Oh right. There was some piece of shit with a Hot Topic embroidered patch vest of every band he listens to, as well as one reading "If it has wheels or tits, it's going to give me problems." After Yo Man Go was done, I'm pretty sure I watched a woman who had been standing behind him tell him off for it, at which point he sheepishly looked around and walked out. I didn't see him again.

Skipped Saturday's show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.

Sunday night was at the Bell House in Brooklyn. It was "sold out" but they definitely don't have a policy of packing the place, which I REALLY enjoy cause you can still move around quite freely at pretty much all times and no one has to be up your ass. So, Latterman played again...and it was the same set, but it was with the most energy I saw out of the three shows. If you closed your eyes and pretended you were in a basement, it was as though nothing had changed. Matt and Phil were still in great voice, Pat was playing hard as fuck, and the music was really tight. No one stagedove and maybe a handful of people crowdsurfed, but not to the extent that anything was said about it. This was the best night out of the three, as far as their performance. Really high energy and fucking spot on. They closed again with "My Bedroom Is Like for Artists," as you can see below. There are other videos of these shows, but I didn't take them, haha. They thanked everyone and each other and hugged and whatnot and that was that. They didn't practice any other songs, so they had nothing else to play, though I guess they could have played a song again, but that would be weird.

Final thoughts - it was good to see them all on stage again, pounding it out. They made the songs from We Are Still Alive sound a lot better to me, as I am not a huge fan of that record. I think the production is strangely stale and sterile sounding, the songs are not that upbeat and the lyrics are kind of bummed. It's just a different Latterman, and it doesn't really sound like Latterman live. There are definitely some great songs on there though, and I will be revisiting it for sure. The first two records sound like the band sounded when they played, and the songs from We Are Still Alive fit in much better live than they do on record. It would have been nice to see them play "The Biggest Sausage Party Ever" or "We're Done For," keeping with the band's decidedly pro-feminist stance. Whatever the case, they played really well and I was happy with the song selection, overall. Would have been nice to see them play some different songs from night to night. Where was Pat's Baltimore Orioles shirt? I definitely didn't feel like they were going through the motions. They all seemed genuinely into it and appreciative of people being there and being able to play again. It was also kind of reassuring and uplifting to see a bunch of people who had been friends for so long and who I know had some really serious issues for a while back together and putting things behind them. It makes me feel a little bit of hope in a world that rarely gives me hope for anything.

True words

Brilliant insight.

"Racism continues to reflect a disparity of power and it is as egregious today as it was in the eighteenth century because the advent of less dramatic forms of dominance is not progress. More insidious in modern social relations is the fact that white people do not have to expressly target black people in order to exploit them. They only have to locate their interests in private and public policies that have disparate impact. Freed from involvement in color-specific political decisions and specific acts of racial oppression, white Americans can more easily imagine the injustices of their society to be natural or irrational."

- Craig Steven Wilder, A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn, p. 241.

Failing (flailing) police state in Brownsville, Brooklyn

93 stop and frisks per 100 residents. Yikes. Make sure you don't spit on the sidewalk next time you are in Brownsville. They'll probably let you go though. Check the video. The fat white pig is my favorite. You can tell he's new.

Neon gear at JC Penney

Now it's easier than ever to look like you listen to MGMT without knowing who they are.

If you cannot read it, the shirt says "HELLO MY NAME IS ______ AND I'M A TEXTAHOLIC". Front page of the JC Penney circular. Damn.

This is strongly reminiscent of the "grunge" fashion wave that took the world by storm for a month in 1992. The main differences are that this shit always looked stupid and it never had any basis in anything.

Hipster bike culture

blows. From an email I got from Timbuk2 advertising this piece of shit. Makes me want to send my bag back in disgust. If I could afford something else, I would. And also take a dump in it.

Mind you, it only holds PBR.

I guess it's fitting to also use the fourth of July as a celebration of alcoholism.

Show

New York Police sodomize a 24 year old Brooklyn man, part 2

So now, despite earlier claims to the contrary, these pigs did quite a few things very wrong.

From the New York Times today:

A New York City patrolman used his baton to sodomize a man in a subway station, and two complicit colleagues helped him cover it up, the Brooklyn district attorney charged on Tuesday as he unsealed indictments against three police officers.

Using graphic detail, the district attorney described an attack that he said left the man, Michael Mineo, with a gashed anus and blood on his hands.

Then, when Mr. Mineo screamed and later showed his hands, he was “ignored by the police officers,” said the district attorney, Charles J. Hynes. At one point, the officer who wielded the baton, Richard Kern, gave Mr. Mineo a disorderly conduct summons with an invalid date and threatened “that if he reported the circumstances to anyone, he would be arrested and charged with a felony,” Mr. Hynes said...

The grand jury heard from 20 witnesses, including three officers who were present during the encounter — at least two of whom cooperated with the authorities. The grand jury also reviewed forensic evidence, including DNA from Officer Kern’s baton that prosecutors said matched Mr. Mineo’s...

Officers Morales and Cruz, both 26, face charges that include hindering prosecution and official misconduct. Officials said that there was no evidence Officers Morales and Cruz assisted Officer Kern in the assault but that they knew what was happening, did nothing to stop it and helped conceal it. “Both Police Officers Morales and Cruz have been charged with a cover-up,” Mr. Hynes said. “In essence, they tried to make this thing go away."...

Then, said Charles Guria, an assistant district attorney, Officer Kern was seen shoving his retractable baton repeatedly between Mr. Mineo’s buttocks. Mr. Mineo was wearing low-slung pants, which had begun to slip down during the chase. Officer Kern’s act, Mr. Guria said, tore a hole in Mr. Mineo’s underwear, ripping his skin and causing him to bleed. Afterward, Mr. Mineo stood up and started yelling about his injuries.

He was taken to the police car, and Officer Kern asked him if he had been hurt.

Then, Mr. Mineo “reached down and showed proof he had been injured,” Mr. Guria said. “He reached into his pants and showed his bloody hands.”

Officer Kern gave Mr. Mineo a summons for disorderly conduct. The summons was defective, said the assistant district attorney; it said he had to appear in court in January 2008.

One law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said on Tuesday evening that the invalid date was an attempt to make sure that “no one would ever hear what the disorderly conduct was about, assuming it would be rejected” by the court, the official said...

And the one laughable moment:

Officer Kern left the courthouse a little while later and was rushed into the back seat of a waiting car. Reporters yelled questions, which he did not answer, and a spectator shouted: “You’re going to jail!”

New York Police sodomize a 24 year old Brooklyn man

for smoking weed. Weed that he didn't even have when they caught him and brutalized him, ripping his asshole with a nightstick or whatever they used. And then they didn't arrest him, releasing him with a summons. He promptly went to the hospital, and now the Brooklyn District Attorney's office is investigating after internal affairs, of course, cleared all four offending pigs.