A massive argument amongst indie music bloggers spilled over Twitter on Thursday. Or, in real terms, a blip on Twitter’s scanner brought up some pretty big concepts about how new music is transmitted dispersed online, and right from the keyboards of a few “big” name indie bloggers. The whole shindig went down when I Guess … [Read more…]
I recently critiqued an article by Steve Almond that I felt unfairly and naively  lambasted music criticism. Almond wrote music criticism is pointless: I disagreed. And then I stumbled upon something that support Almond’s point 100 percent. I still don’t agree with what Almond wrote, but this piece of “music criticism” by Impose’s Jason Diamond … [Read more…]
Steve Almond wrote a little diatribe raging against music criticism for The Boston Globe a couple weeks ago. I say “little” because his argument is just that: Weak, narrow-minded, short-sighted… All of these things and more. For an author/journalist whose work I’ve enjoyed when I come across it, I was genuinely shocked to see the contempt … [Read more…]
SXSW, the internationally renowned music trade show, officially kicks off the live music portion of the expanding festival tomorrow. It’s the one week of the year that Texas bests every other state in the union in the “holds more music geeks per square foot” contest. In the ever-evolving realm of music journalism, media outlets are … [Read more…]
The finest piece of music criticism in 2009 did not come from a paper of record. It did not come from a music-dedicated blog. It came from the disastrously-produced superhero film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I had the (dis)pleasure of viewing Wolverine the other night, but was tickled pink by one well-put bit of subliminal music … [Read more…]
It’s been well over a week since Jim DeRogatis reviewed the first night of The Pixies’ three-night Doolittle retrospective at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom. DeRogatis caused quite a stir among Pixies fans with statements like: …it’s hard to consider them anything but a cynical corporation cashing in on blatant nostalgia–a hipper version of Creedence Clearwater Revisited … [Read more…]