Tom, I'm younger than you and I've always hated dance music, so disliking it has nothing to do with being "old." Did you know that there have been whole musical eras where most people rejected dance music? It's true. However, I would say that suddenly embracing any and all pop music for the sake of seeming hip in your late thirties does seem "old." Albini's outspokenness and unwavering views on what makes for courageous, substantive art mean that he is a hero--end of story.
The difference between what Josh wrote and what you regularly write on this site is that his writing has some guts. It's about something real and ugly. It's saying the unpopular but true thing, something that Stereogum used to do many moons ago. But sure, keep spreading your materialistic pop propaganda (popraganda?); just know that not everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid.
Yes, could someone clarify? I was big into the first couple of albums when they came out, and I don't remember hearing anything bad about him back then.
This is all very nice, but we must ask ourselves what kind of ghostwriter would actually admit to being one. It's one of those jobs where your duties are right in the name.
Nevertheless, this is still the best song about Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, John Belushi, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman that any of us have ever heard.
Of course this site would find some way to justify putting the worst Kardashian on the cover of Rolling Stone. This is the logical endpoint for the poptimist ideology. Every time I start believing a Stereogum writer has a mind and voice of his/her own, that person starts writing like Tom Breihan...or maybe Tom only hires people who think the way he does.
I don't like Crosby that much, and I don't think he is a hero. That said, as much as I dislike Kanye West, I have seen and read enough Kanye interviews to know that he's not dumb. I happen to find crazy people fascinating; what can I say? However, he has said many, many dumb things that he honestly believes are true, and if those things were all you knew about the guy, it's easy to see how, if you are a rational person in full control of your faculties, you could think he's dumb. I was watching a documentary about Jim Jones, and the reason most of his followers drank the Kool-Aid had to do with the mass delusion that Jones really was as infallible as he claimed. Every time I hear someone defend Kanye West, I just hear a sad person who is drinking the Kool-Aid. At the heart of such a delusion is a desperate need to believe in something, anything, and there are about a million better people/ideas to believe in than a rich narcissist. I like being an American, and I feel fortunate to live here. At the same time, it bothers me that capitalism seems to nurture and reward egoism and materialism and that a lot of people my age and younger want to lionize someone who exemplifies those qualities.
Egoism is repulsive, and the fact that so many people are unbothered by this guy's lack of respect for anyone's talents but his own and are even willing to stick up for him when he says something that is ludicrously false (as false as if McCartney claimed to be the world's greatest rapper) is disturbing.
It means that he listens to music other than Kanye West's and is therefore able to make an observation that someone who is not exactly rational or self-aware (Kanye) is unable to make for himself. I will say that I am disappointed in Taylor for not taking Kanye to task for his abuse of the term "rock star." Carrie Browntein wrote a great rant in her Monitor Mix blog years ago about how meaningless the term has become due to misuse/overuse. First step: You have to play rock music.
Nope. I was excited to hear the older songs and to be part of the first crowd to hear the excellent Hot Traveler. So were a lot of other people that night.
It may seem shocking, but you are the first Stereogum writer to actually give a crap about LOOP. This site totally ignored them when they reunited and did their first tour since '91. Bex and Robert were married in the early days, by the way.
Well, that's never been Sleater-Kinney's position, and I'm glad. People should not allow their art to be commodified. When you do that, you allow someone else to redefine the song's meaning. The song is no longer really yours, and what you have actually sold is a piece of your identity. Janet Weiss was totally right about Lust for Life. Once it was in a cruise commercial, it wasn't the same thing anymore.
If you choose a life where steady work is not guaranteed and you're a bit under the radar for much of that life, something like acting in the occasional commercial is like insurance and could also be used for some future project. It's hard to predict whether the level of recognition she's achieved with Portlandia will last, and I'm sure that crossed her mind. I think she used an opportunity afforded to her by the show to ensure that she could continue her creative endeavors, no matter her level of fame. It's not that much of a leap.
I just bought this album and love it. When I heard that someone from Pterodactyl was involved in this, I knew I had to check it out. I'll be seeing them this week at SXSW.
I guess you think major-scale Sleater-Kinney tours grow on trees. They don't. John Lydon used the money from his Parkay commercial to finance a PiL tour, and more power to him. Carrie Brownstein is an actress anyway, and Sleater-Kinney has never spoiled any of their songs by allowing them to be used in commercials. If you want to know how to be a band with integrity over a few decades, Sleater-Kinney is the model.
It would be nice if, just once, Kanye crossed someone with enough confidence in their own abilities and enough indifference about public reaction that they would have the guts to say, "NO. Actually, I won because I made a better album than the other people, including Beyonce. Kanye should have stayed in the audience."
"Oderus Urungus being snubbed in the RIP montage is a bigger outrage than Beck beating Beyonce."
Wow, with the second part of that statement, you prove that even when you're trying to do good, you can't help also doing something evil. You're kind of the Maury Povich of music writers.
Eh...not really. I am going to refer you to the long post that begins the thread linked below. Enjoy:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded
The only difference between two FLAC files of the same song where one is 16-bit and one is 24-bit is the extra frequencies present in the latter. It is physically impossible for any human, no matter his/her age, to hear the extra frequencies. I am a big supporter of lossless files and anyone or anything that facilitates their use, BUT as far as the 24- vs. 16-bit debate goes, unless you are a dog, you will never hear those extra frequencies. They simply are not within the range of human hearing. In fact, this has been explained very intricately with math before. I know a guy who is studying audio engineering, and he is being taught the exact same thing. Lossless vs. mp3=big difference and 24-bit vs. 16-bit=no discernible difference...
Yes, there was a study done where younger people repeatedly chose mp3s over uncompressed audio. People have gotten used to listening to crap, so that is what they prefer. The iPod revolution has done to music what McDonald's did to the food industry. I figured this out myself around the time it was just beginning. More recently I was making a mix for someone and had downloaded two versions of a song from Soulseek. At first I'd only been able to find a 320 kbps mp3. I didn't delete it, and when I searched my computer, I accidentally dragged that file, instead of the FLAC version, into the player. All the other files on the playlist were FLACs or WAVs. I realized I had screwed up because when I got to that track, it sounded noticeably crappier than what had preceded it. So while it is not possible for humans ears to hear the extra frequencies you get when you listen to a 24-bit file; you are absolutely capable of discerning the difference between a file with all of the information a recording is supposed to have and one where a lot of that information is missing and replaced by white noise as long as you are listening through decent equipment. I listen to CDs in my car through mid-level Polk speakers and a Sony stereo and on my computer through a nice pair of Bose desktop speakers. I don't use earbuds at all; if I have to use headphones, which I rarely do, I have some Sony MDR-V150s that get the job done but are nothing special.
Oh no, he really is a complete monster. I watched an ESPN profile of him. He molested the daughter of one of his trainers. Tyson never did it again, but that's only because the trainer threatened him at gunpoint.
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