jasonfranks

Via , New Music Express has published their Top 10 Albums of the 2000s. As Def points out, the 2000s aren't yet over, and... I've discussed my loathing of music journalists several times before, so I figure I need to comment.

This is NME's list:

1. The Strokes - Is This It
2. The Libertines - Up The Bracket
3. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
4. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell
6. PJ Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
7. Arcade Fire - Funeral
8. Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights
9. The Streets - Original Pirate Material
10. Radiohead - In Rainbows

 
Dear Powderfinger,

Boys, I've never been a huge fan, but I like a couple of your songs and I always sort of respected you for being the mainstays mainstays of domestic Aussie indie rock. You've never been exported well; aside from brief appearance on the MI:2 soundtrack the local bands that have gone on to crack the US have been always of the bigger and dumber variety: Blink 182 The Living End, the Vines, Jet, Wolfmother. I don't wanna call you boys soft, but, like your music, you fellas have always been the sensitive types who've stayed home to look after Mum. I've never doubted yoru credibility before, but I'm afraid I gotta call you on this new one.

See, I caught the video for your new song, All of the Dreamers, on TV over the weekend and... well, where to begin? Ok, let's start witht he first line:

"But when you come down to the barrio. Get a feel of the peoples scenario."

I'm really sorry, but that is just fucking terrible. Yes, it rhymes, but really? This from the same 'acclaimed songwriters' who penned My Kinda Scene? But it's worse than that. See, based on the video clip, I'm pretty sure that you don't know what a 'barrio' is. (Hint: Downtown Melbourne isn't it). The Melbourne CBD is as much the barrio as P!nk is a rockstar.

Now, okay, I know there's almost no Hispanic people in Australia to put you wise, but I still have to call you on it. And fellas, I'm as happy as anyone to see the return of flannel and stubble,  but the waxed eyebrows are ruining the effect. It's all getting a bit boy-band for my taste. 

Pull up your socks and wash behind your ears, chaps. I expect better.

-- JF

Big interview with Seasick Steve in The Age's Good Weekend magazine a couple of days ago. Good Weekend does this pretty often, sometimes they have good articles about intriguing people and I was hoping this would be one of them. Steven Wold, aka Seasick Steve is most definitely qualifies.

In the second paragraph, the writer describes one of his subject's performances:

"He yowls and wriggles and struts and yells, while all the time tearing from his guitar the sounds of dueling zoo animals strafed by mortars."

I stopped reading right there. This is what I hate, loathe and despise about music journalists: their inability to write about actual fucking music. Zoo animals do not duel and mortars most definitely do not strafe. I have Wold's albums and they are lo fi, authentic blues all the way. Authentic, unlike the music journalist who covered him.

I don't mind a bit of humor or sarcasm in music journalism, provided that it's executed with wit, but since the 80's it's become the default tone for this genre. Thus we have an army of pundits with a surplus of attitude and a deficit of knowledge of music (not to be confused with E! gossip). Heaven forbid that music be described with musical terminology. Pitch, volume, timbre? Rhythm, melody, tone, tempo, key? I guess inane metaphors are much more exciting.

Dueling zoo animals! Strafed by mortars! Ha!

I've read dozens of reviews of pop artists' albums this year that have decried the use of Auto-Tune. Well, guess the fuck what? Auto-Tune has been in use since 1997. I bet the journo who leanred about it six months ago is really proud of himself now: it's a big step up from spending his days reclassifying all the music he didn't quite understand. Hey, did you know Black Sabbath was a Stoner Rock band? Despite having been formed in Biurmingham thirty years before the Stoner Rock scene grew out of the California deserts? Trippy, huh?

I guess my real problem is that music journos think that they are tastemakers when they are, by and large, trend whores. For ten years the only music worth reporting on was studio pop, mainstream dance music and designer punk--which coincidentally is what the major labels happened to be flogging. Now rock and roll music (played  by actual musicians) is well and truly back and these idiots are running arouind pumping the metal horns salute and shouting 'Rawk!'  I call  bullshit. For ten years these guys gave credible reviews to music recorded by reality show contestants and dancing models, now they want tell us that integrity is in? No-oh. I want music journalists who will decry shit and champion real music... without needing to be told which is which. 

Course they're not all scum--only 99% of them. And they are everywhere, not just the web. Glossy magazines, street press, major and minor newspapers, I don't understand how come the cretins are the most visible proponents of this genre. There are a number of decent publications out there (outside of the guitar-oriented mags that I read). MOJO, in particular, stands out--the writers are knowledgable about music history as well as theory, incisive and entertaining. But they're the exception to the rule; I almost feel as if that's their niche.

Huh. I didn't start this off intending to advertise  MOJO, but I guess if I'm going to do that I may as well pimp Seasick Steve as well--that's where I first discovered him, after all. Go buy his albums; they are for real and for true.

-- JF