November 2010
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The "k" in Loko means "krazy"
Today (November 17, for the sake of posterity), my home state of Washington will implement a ban on caffeinated alcoholic drinks. It was a quick reaction to a party last month involving nine Central Washington University students who became ill after consuming the drink known as “Four Loko” at a college party. A federal ban from the FDA is expected as well sooner rather than later. The previous...
March 2010
0 posts
Class War: The Tipping Point of Tipping →
maura:
Foster assigned me this piece!
I’m also an overtipper, although I don’t think it’s necessarily because I’m a music writer (although there is certainly that), but because of the guilt I have that comes with having a family that is notoriously cheap. I remember several times going to dinner with family members and being certain that the tab to our meal came to well...
February 2010
2 posts
takeittothechorus-deactivated20 asked: Matt Bellamy of Muse and Jack White in a guitar solo axe-grind off... who would win?
January 2010
1 post
The Year of Too Much Consensus →
perpetua:
This is an extraordinarily depressing essay by former Voice editor/professional contrarian Chuck Eddy. It’s like a guy who used to be principal of a high school getting really angry about the outcome of his old school’s student council election.
If 2009 was ”The Year of Too Much Consensus” because of its Pazz and Jop results, what was 2008? In 2008, there were 577 critics...
December 2009
2 posts
I very, very, very, very rarely update this blog... →
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November 2009
1 post
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October 2009
0 posts
September 2009
4 posts
As I decided I don’t neglect this blog nearly enough, I started a new one, dedicated to just writing about pop music. It’s here.
From The Stranger’s “back to school” guide:
How to Behave at a Music Show
The basic rule of how to behave at a music show is kind of the same rule that governs how to behave everywhere in life (you may want to clip this one out of the paper and tack it onto your wall): Be mindful of your surroundings and the people around you, and don’t be a jerk. It’s that easy!...
July 2009
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June 2009
1 post
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April 2009
3 posts
I’m sure I’m not the only pop music lover that has had this conversation described below, from Sasha Frere-Jones’ great article on Lady Gaga in the latest issue of The New Yorker:
Dedicated fans of popular music have a certain conversation at least once a year. Call it The Question of Endurance. You and your friends are talking about music, and the conversation turns to a...
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I had just gotten my answers back from an e-mail interview I did with Emily Haines, of Metric (who have an excellent new album out now called Fantasies). I love how the answers to these two (unrelated) questions gel with one another.
Last time I saw your band play was in Seattle in 2007 and if my memory serves me, I thought you said something onstage about putting out your next record on your...
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WatchThe Saturday Knights - Count it Off.
I really love the video to this song, which was from one of my favorite albums from last year. I only wish there was a censored and uncensored version of it. Still, the Sesame Street-inspired theme reveals just how much fun this record is as a whole.
March 2009
1 post
A sneak peak inside The Crocodile →
The biggest story in Seattle music thus far in 2009 has been the reopening of The Crocodile, which abruptly shut its doors at the end of 2007. I had gotten a tour of the space two days before its official opening. The link here is to the feature article I wrote on it.
February 2009
1 post
January 2009
5 posts
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Via Idolator, Pheonix New Times music editor Martin Cizmar:
The [Pazz & Jop] poll was founded by former Voice music editor Robert Christgau, who is the worst music critic ever, in my humble opinion. I almost didn’t want to vote just to avoid furthering, in any way, his legacy of shitty writing.
Robert Christgau in Slate at the end of 2008:
When I was doing Pazz & Jop, more than...
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Slate: The Worst Pop Singer Ever →
I hate stories like this one about Billy Joel. It was written by Ron Rosenbaum, who isn’t a music writer by trade. It’s an extended rant about Joel (who I don’t care for, on the whole) from someone who just doesn’t like him. It’s full of ad hominem attacks on Joel but if you’re going to make the claim that he’s the worst ever, shouldn’t you explain...
NYT: Christmas Essay Was Not His, Author Admits →
I usually don’t take too much joy when authors are found to be plagiarists but when Neale Donald Walsch is the fraud, I can’t help but find some pleasure in it.
Walsch is famous for his Conversations with God books. In the first book he claimed, among other things, that “God” told him that Hitler was in heaven. Boy, there’s an incentive for living a purpose-driven...
December 2008
14 posts
2008
For me, 2008 was a disappointing year overall for music. Not because I was disappointed with the output – compiling this end of year mix CD was pretty easy and there were another 10 good songs I left off but shouldn’t have. No, it was disappointing because so many bands I really like had decided to split up. Locally, The Cops, The Young Sportsmen, The Trucks and Ms. Led all played or will play...
"Our first rock critic president"?
From Jody Rosen in Slate:
I ended our conversation last year by wondering aloud about the contents of Barack Obama’s iPod. We now know that our first black president is also our first rock critic president, with a canonical playlist—Innervisions, Blood on the Tracks, “Dirt off Your Shoulder“—that places him squarely in the mainstream of the Pazz & Jop poll votership.
Are downsized critics to blame for their own...
In one case yes, said Seattle Post-Intelligencer art critic Regina Hackett. Writing on her PI blog (since taken down but Google cached here) about her art critic colleage at the Seattle Times, Sheila Farr, Hackett wrote (with the bitchy title “Seattle Times art critic signs off. When was she on?”):
After the Seattle Times eliminated her job, art critic Sheila Farr declined to stick...
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Charles Mudede has a great feature in The Stranger this week (there’s a sentence I don’t write often) about Seattle hip hop. I especially like this passage about the future of Blue Scholars in the post-Bush era:
But what kind of stories will he tell in a world that is shaped by Obama? Can we expect the same kinds of experiences, voices, difficulties? “There is no doubt there is...
I had just picked up a copy of Eric Weisbard’s 33 1/3 on the Guns ‘n Roses double album Use Your Illusion and was drawn to this part of a sentence on the back: “with ‘alternative’ as dated as hair metal…”.
There was a debate on Line Out this week about whether or not The Stranger is an “alternative” newspaper because they offered a...
Facebook, the movie?
From Gawker:
Yes, there’s going to be a book about Facebook’s creation, adapted for film by Aaron Sorkin, bestselling author Ben Mezrich confirmed. But it won’t have lots of sex and cooked Koala, per a Gawker report.
Those were the best parts!
Mezrich wrote the book behind the blackjack movie “21.” In May we obtained and excerpted Mazrich’s Facebook book...
The London Guardian has an interesting story about musicians being upset at their music being used as a means of torturing “enemy combatants”. It says:
Amongst the songs most used are: Metallica’s Enter Sandman, Eminem’s White America, AC/DC’s Hells Bells and the Sesame Street theme song. One of the reasons for using loud music in this way is that it leaves no marks...
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It's EOY time, and I finally get around to...
As a music writer, one of my favorite habits is to make annual Best of the Year lists - like a lot of my peers. This is how I voted in one of the annual critics polls:
Albums: 1. Be Your Own Pet - Get Awkward (15) 2. The Rosebuds - Life Like (14) 3. Marnie Stern - This is it… (13) 4. Sons and Daughters - This Gift (12) 5. Lykke Li - Youth Novels (11) 6. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (9)...
November 2008
1 post
I couldn’t help but notice this gem in the Letters to the Editor section of The Stranger this week. It compares and contrasts STIFF (Seattle’s True Independent Film Festival), SIFF (Seattle International Film Festival) and HUMP! (The Stranger’s amateur porn contest that screened two weekends ago):
EDITOR: I recently read your description for the HUMP! film entitled Flesh!...
September 2008
4 posts
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There is an interesting column in the Seattle Weekly by John Longenbaugh about how theater critics are being shut out of Shrek: The Musical (which is in a trial run here in Seattle through September 21. It opens on September 10 but began letting people in the door for public performances on August 14.
He points out that it is a sham because:
But it’s certainly true that something’s...
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August 2008
5 posts
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“There are strong similarities between Michael Corleone and Alexander Portnoy....”
– Dick Schaap, reviewing The Godfather for The New York Times Book Review, April 27, 1969.
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WatchI just watched this video on Stereogum and love the aesthetic of it. The black and white goes especially well with the barely emotional melodies from Ladytron. The commenters on Stereogum are much less forgiving but I think the zebra stripes fit the song. The pattern is simple but artistic, just like the song, which pretty much repeats its one-line chorus for most of the second half.
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Today on TIG I had a post called “Radical or Pro-Parental”, which was about the outrage one “concerned parent” had about taking her daughter to the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls and her daughter came home with a Bikini Kill tape. I don’t want to rehash the arguments I made, but I’m pretty much pro-Rock and Roll Camp for Girls across the board on everything and...
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July 2008
51 posts
“Saturday, August 9th 1077 The End Presents The Vans Warped Tour featuring Angels...”
– Tickets still available? Ya don’t say…
Christopedia: the Christian encyclopedia that the... →
toomuchawesome:
Oh. My. God.
Here’s a taste of what the site offers:
Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a African radical Muslim father from Kenya, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., and a atheist white American mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. According to divorce records they were married on February 2, 1961 in Maui. No guests attended the ceremony.[1] Barack Hussein Obama himself has...
Zappos offers Twitter classes
rkb:
“Zappos Finds a Use for Twitter. Really!” Inc.
Twitter seems like just another online distraction to some people, but it’s almost become part of your company’s information technology. Wait a minute — Twittering didn’t actually rescue you from the balcony, did it? You probably had a phone…?
Actually, I text-messaged my co-workers, who were still attending a conference session at the time,...