Rock Journalism

No I don’t expect Spotify to provide them but you better believe I expect Itunes to negotiate on their customers behalf. How can you request 50 cents a song for these songs and not give us the complete (or complete as you can) package

Is Ryan really asking Kevin if the most important goal behind his music is to to be unaware of other music?

Crawford is, if anything, nicer in person and his family is awesome,

The end result of unbridled capitalism is the same as it ever was monopolies, and those who own the monopolies will do anything necessary to maintain them

We know how brutal a fest can be. Iman braved rain, mud and cold. Alyson starves and trains in her marathon gear. Me? I die of late July heat every year more sun burnt and dehydrated than the last.

Ryan overstates the case for Vampire Weekend, and he conflates Ezra’s existential crises into a serious philosophy. But fear of dying is nothing of the sort

“Soundscape” (I love that one: “Substitute for ‘song’ used to describe boring shoegaze, post rock and elecronica records whose alternatively ‘majestic’, ‘eerie’ or ‘glacial’ instrumentals are supposed to evoke grand vistas of some sort. Dimly, the writer perceives that this is all Brian Eno’s fault”)

“No. I think ‘OK…yeah.’ I think it doesn’t matter whether I’m young or old or anything. The way you talk about it, it’s as if our fans are 40-year-old men in flasher raincoats. That’s what you mean by an older audience. We’re talking about 18-year-olds, like that.”

I am sure that you, like me, read in wonder Rolling Stones Magazines wondrous musician (and actor) profiles, wondering precisely how the likes of Brian Hiatt manages to get Bruno Mars to open up like… er, like something that opens… a shellfish or a clam.

While the Johnson Reader currently hasn’t sold as many copies as the Holy Bible, you, dedicated fan of the Rock NYC website, have the power to change this unfortunate course of history and commerce.

It is a little too early to go to town on “The Talkhouse” too nastily, but I better hurry up because you can bet a paywall is in the works. The websiteit just stinks of obsequious star fucking, it is too “Artists May Log In Here”

Jann Wenner and his henchmen don’t give a damn, they are like the folks who sell flowers at graveyards. Nevermind breaking pop was no surprise, the buzz on the album was pretty deafening at the time. Only an insulated bunch of know it alls who fire any one who disagrees with them could get it wrong.

“Such a tricky question, Steve!! But truly – anyone who stays true to their own vision and doesn’t allow the music business machine to sabotage their art is my hero – or heroine!”

This isn’t really a question of taste, I would give it two to two and a half stars I think, it certainly isn’t as good as Dig Lazarus Dig. And I don’t think Matos is just bad, they way I did Aquilante, but I think he knows what he knows and he isn’t so good at everything else.

Nothing really blew me away and part of the reason is that new R&B’s prime attribute appears to be to take the thought process of hip hop self-love and give it a hangover.

Is 50 too old to rock? Apparently not as these popular albums from 2012 prove unequivocally… but who else voted for Public Enemy?

As a special favor to out faithful reader (you know who you are, don’t be coy), here is the top five Pazz And Jop albums for 2012. No, don’t thank me: 1- Frank Ocean, 2 – Bob dylan, 3 – Lemarr Kendrick, 4 – Leonard Cohen, 5 – Fiona Apple -No, dont thank me

Oh, and what is the difference between a 4 and a 4.5 and a 4.7 and a 5 rating? The answer is none, of course.It is Pitchfork being Pitchfork and may the lord have mercy on us all.

It’s that simple, if Amanda Palmer could finance her album, videos and tour with Kickstarter, why not applying the same idea for a music critic site? Music writers David Greenwald and Daniel Siegal, who worked for Billboard, GQ, the LA Weekly, Rolling Stone’s website and the LA Times, want to create a new site for in-depth music reporting and criticism, totally financed by the money they will raise with their Kickstarter campaign.

So here is a guide to what it all means and remember, the future lies not in our stars but in ourselves (which has nothing to do with anything of course)…

Grace’s music is a tangled interlocking of roots and rebellion under a gauzy tinsel town rapping. It is truly rebellious, because it subverts from the inside out and converts from the outside in. She is a singular person, spreading the wings of fashion into the winds of style

here is one tough quote, maybe two. The second one is when Taylor doesn’t appreciate being asked twice about whether “Dear John” is about John Mayer, and the first , to a business associate, is a thing of beauty: “I resent the idea that you can just start a sentence with ‘respectfully’ and then you can say whatever you want”. Wow, hot stuff,eh?

At the end there is no more good reason to review music we like than music we don’t care for, if we review music, all music should be reviewed. Still, because of its immense subjectivity, the value of reviewing music in the first place has to be demonstrated.

What I love about this is not merely the use of the word mere, but how it isn’t really rock criticism as we know it. When you can review well, you don’t have to really prove it. Anyway, here you go… one of the greatest pieces of rock criticism you will ever read:

There may be no money in writing about music, but many a musician has used it as a stepping stone to a career as a pop star!

Of great interest, or at least controversy, is Dylan’s claim he was transfigured by the soul of another Bobby Zimmerman, a leader of the Hell’s Angels who had died several years earlier in a bike crash.

Look at the Post’s real estate and business sections: they work like an ongoing argument between editorial staff and readers on the nature of both. Music works as a part of a larger framework with no inner life and with even its biggest stars relegated to the sidelines.

A Post columnist since 1982, Phil Mushnick writes the media cool column “Equal Time” where he slamdunks the ridiculous Mike Francesca and the powerful, ESPN with equal alacrity

I got a call from Creem Editor Dave DiMartino the day after Kate rushed back to England, telling me they hadn’t been sure when i was doing the interview and were certain it was me who upset them!

What it boils down, is free publicity for musicians willing to downgrade themselves for the puffed out egotism of a rock mag that overreaches as a rule. Both of these women should refuse to participate. Just say, “no, I don’t think so”, and walk it off.

“a xylophone-dotted instrumental played by a half-dozen guitarists, but its almost post-rock surge and otherwise playful countenance make it feel less like a departure or deviation than a great if wordless Spider Bags tune”

When I started writing about music, I was heavy into punk. But one day I received an Ashford And Simpson album meant for another writer via the Village Voice. I called up Christgau and he recommended I listen to it, “You might learn something”. I did and I did.

If you don’t have to pay for music, your need to be educated in music dissipates. If you have the choice of just about anything, and can boil it all down to a list, or, as in Pandora a self programmed radio station, where do you enter into it.

But sometimes, I fall upon somebody elses review of a concert I have also written about and goddamn, that clown wrote circles round me’. Maybe more often that I care to admit.