Shut Up, Dude: This Week’s Best Comments

Fuck you, Jann

Hey fellow commenters, as this entry marks the 1,000th number one profiled by Tom, I’ve written a blog about the achievement over at TNOCS.com. Click the link below to read and respond.

https://www.tnocs.com/a-milestone-the-one-thousandth-number-ones-column/

It is indeed difficult to have an interview with Janis Joplin, who has been dead for 52 years. I'll grant him that.

Hello TNOCS! I’ve been reading this column on and off for four years (!), and finally caught up.

My fascination with this column is very atypical for me, because outside a few teenage years, I never followed popular music. I’m the same age as the Hot 100, so that means I connect to 1970s music. Here’s an anecdote that demonstrates my obliviousness- in 4th grade I had to write new lyrics to Hey Jude about NYC history. I had never heard, or heard of, Hey Jude, until that assignment. I spent a few teen years obsessively listening to the top 40 (still have the cassettes I taped off the radio), but my attention drifted elsewhere by college. I knew there were people called Mariah Carey and Drake, but couldn’t name one song they’d done.

I’ve treated this column like a course in popular music. I felt compelled to start at the beginning and continue chronologically. I would sometimes spend a day or two reading material on and listening to the music of just one artist. Popular music reflects and comments on cultural, social and historical events, and I appreciate Tom’s approach to this. I learned a lot. I’ve laughed a lot.

And I’ve truly (madly, deeply) enjoyed the comments. Thank you for introducing me to many songs, sharing how music shaped your lives, providing your insights. Brigit, I am a huge fan of you in particular.

Some bullet points culled from about 50.

1. My daughter and her friends spent months creating a video that told the Harry Potter books through ABBA songs - a testament to ABBAs endurance.

2. I was an editor on my HS newspaper when we reviewed Springsteen’s Born to Run. We were prescient.

3. I don’t get rap, but I could have contributed to the Eminem discussion! Lose Yourself was inspiration for My Shot in Hamilton. I listened to this song and did a double take - that’s Alexander Hamilton! Given rap’s huge influence on Miranda, I’m surprised this hasn’t come up on the rap artists.

4. I once lived in Allentown, Pa. Billy Joel’s song was never played there. Like, never.

Oh, and I love Taylor Swift and am looking forward to discussing her!

New beans baby arrived this week! #3, another girl!

I’m wondering if DJ Sabrina is dad rock cause it’s all I wanna listen to these days :)

This interview is going to be used for decades in introductory epistemology classes as an example of intellectual blind spots.

If he simply said that he interviewed these particular dudes because their viewpoints are ones he most resonated with, I think that would be fine. His book doesn’t have to included women or black artists, even though there are plenty of brilliant women and black artists who would make for fascinating interview subjects. But it’s his book and he can include whoever he wants. Still the way he’s trying to explain the choice makes him sound like an idiot at best, and a total shit bag at worst.

Please. If you catch me saying shit like “philosopher of rock and roll”, shove me into the nearest locker.

I read a book last year about Jann Wenner that makes him look like a total boomer blowhard that knows nothing about music past the year 1976.

That book, incidentally, was his autobiography.

[Reads the headline]

"Hmm, that sounds bad. Maybe it was slightly better with context?"

[Reads the post.]

"Ah no, context actually makes it worse."

Tired: sampling "In the Air Tonight"

Wired: sampling "Los Endos"