T/S: Chris Ott vs. The Decemberists/Carson Ellis

A nation of emo kids goes "Who?"

pretty odd vs. pretty otter

http://vdov.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/otter%20small.jpg

(watercolor by carson ellis)

(And no, I don't really care about the Decemberists one way or the other. I liked a couple songs on the last record but I like the Beautiful South better.)

In a sense, the only difference between the Decemberists and Insane Clown Posse is the makeup.

You would rather they actually be from 17th Century England?

I mean, Meloy writing lyrics around his love of Dickens isn't too much different than, say, Robert Plant writing lyrics around his love of Tolkien. It's taking your extracurricular interests and using them to create metaphors for the things you experience as a human. If people didn't sometimes write songs like this, everyone would be either Bob Dylan or Dashboard Confessional.

I don't think he really hung out with Judas Priest or poor immigrants, or knew a guy with contacts with the lumberjacks, but that's just a guess.

Hmm.

how about me NOT calling you out because I really don't give a fuck about your opinion, I'll take that

I don't think he really hung out with Judas Priest or poor immigrants, or knew a guy with contacts with the lumberjacks, but that's just a guess.

Ah, you got me backwards. I'm saying he would be either really oblique (Dylan) or really naked (Dashboard). Literary references provide clues to the dudes who play in the middle of those two extremes

I very strongly dislike The Decemberists' music, but Ott's terrible writing, miserable research (see his fuckups re: the nationality of the show's emcee and the Decemberists singer's Montana heritage), and UTTERLY CLASSLESS response to the singer's girlfriend's comment (questionable itself, but still) - has me feeling for the band.

It's got to be extra frustrating to have a loud and noisy hate-piece
written about you by someone who isn't even a good writer. (Again, seriously, I think there's PLENTY of room for trashing this band, but Ott clearly doesn't have the class or talent to handle the job).

Is he still a regular Ilxor?

Ott's rabble rousing is insulting, not because I'm a fan of The Decemberists, but because he writes a mouthful of shit and expects us to swallow it and then gets pissed because we want to talk to him about it

thats not just a bad writer, thats maladjustment.

I really love the new Decemberists' new record, by the way, more than any of their other records. But this marks the third or fourth time I've seen them, and the third or fourth time that, even giving them the benefit of the doubt and for the first time going in a proud fan of the band, they rubbed me the wrong way. Smug, I thought.

Anyway, the writer's response in the comments section is kind of unprofessional. Way to counter accusations of starting/continuing a mean, personal feud with posts that sound personal and mean and in a lot of ways confirm the (posted) suspicions of the band.

nobody is gonna pull the wool sweater over HIS eyes!

I almost feel sorry for the fan who says that "..it was without a doubt the most entertaining concert I have ever been to." I mean, outside of the band, isn't that the only person who's going to really care about the hand-crafted bile thrown into this review? Maybe people who suddenly feel validated because someone shares their views. Guess what guys, lots of members of the general public find indie rockers pretentious even when they don't wear costumes or write sea shantys or whatever!

As a side note, is The Knife good live? I couldn't tell from that aside Ott tossed in, it seemed like he just isn't so hot on performance art outside of the music and the comment kind of detracted from his Meloy criticisms.

They're really good. And Ott is a douchebag and a hack. Yeah, the decembersists are shitty. But please write about that in a way that doesn't make me want to shoot you in the face.

the Decemberists' 17th-century laments were merely soaked in solecism—coy cunning from a clever aesthete with a woodcut fetish who'd seen Rushmore too many times.

it's funny cos it's true

At the Ballroom, the Decemberists walked onstage to a behind-the-curtain introduction by someone with a faux-British accent almost as bad as Meloy's, asking the audience to "imagine you are standing atop a vast canyon wall, staring miles down as six figures walk into view, the wind whipping at their clothes."

But it was so embarassing to read. Like watching someone rip into some Democrat that I vote for despite thinkng he's an asshole politician, except the writer rips into him for mostly the wrong reasons and comes off looking like an even bigger ass hole. And that bit about white privelege was soo stupid. And then Carson Ellis just made it descend into melodrama, at which point it became pretty funny.

Anyway, I still like The Decemberists, but they can also be pretty lame, and that article mostly sucked.

YOU GOT THE BEST

Uh, the Decembrists do intentionally lame things all the time.

http://www.tightshiprecords.com/images/releases/thax.jpg

no one can ever top 'showtime at the apollo,' that's for sure.

The show ended with "A Cautionary Song", which had Meloy, bassist Nate Query, and Conlee performing on stage while Moen, Funk, and Molinaro play-acted warring Russians in the audience. As impressive as that moment was, the show's true highlight came two songs earlier, when the Decemberists invited opening act Lavender Diamond to join them on stage. The song they played immediately sounded familiar but unplaceable, until holy shit! It was "Take It to the Limit".

The significance of covering the Eagles in Philadelphia wasn't lost on the crowd.

-- Eppy (epp...), November 15th, 2006.

Yeah. "intentionally" lame. Uh-huh. Just keep drinkin' the Kool Aid, bro.

no one can ever top 'showtime at the apollo,' that's for sure.

How about Steely Dan when Jerome Aniton was (making stabs at) introducing them?

Reading that article makes me think that he was really upset by the fact that people were enjoying themselves. It's a concert, for God's sake. Who cares if there's a big whale and an (intentionally) corny introduction? People are there to be entertained. Maybe the Village Voice is just too hip for that.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... STEVIE DAN!!!!

Because we all know that bands who take five minutes to change instruments ARE SO MUCH REALER, MAAAAN.

Brother J.C. Crawford to thread!

(ts: ott vs elp)

OK, I finally stand corrected on that one.

the article is terrible, none of the statements of fact have a ring of truth, or evidence, or even believable observation to them at all.

and the usage is just embarrassing, there are dozens of words ("solecism"??) that are only barely used the right way. "cuddly pirouettes" edges into "curious green ideas sleep furiously" territory.

doubtless the Dcmbrsts are precious, fey, irritating, mannered, etc. seems like kind of a big target to hit, if that's what you want to say. instead we're told that the Knife sucks, having a tight show means you're a pseud, and something about irish folktales also meaning you're a pseud.

i know lamenting the good old vv days isn't cool anymore but this would never have passed muster a couple years ago

http://www.informationleafblower.com/blog/archives/2006/11/the_top_40_band_3.html

The problem the Decemberists are going to have with being on a major label -- not musically, but "socially" -- is alienating all those 20- and 30-something people who begin to see this as arch and precious. It will annoy these people to see the band selling the dork-inclusion shows to massive audiences. The major-label change inevitably means trading audiences, from that original base to ... well, as with most major-label switches, teenagers -- kids for whom being included in a drama-dork pageant will still seem revelatory and new. And that's really not a bad decision: I kinda love the idea of 15-year-olds going to big-hall Decemberists shows and acting out the whale thing and being pleased to be in a whole giant room of people being as happily dorky and whale-reenacting as they are. To people like me, Colin Meloy will start to look about like one of the Wiggles, sure; but it's really not a bad role for the band to take on.

Captain Whalesword ahoy!

Welcome home Chris

oddly enuff i tht sean carruthers nommed then for me on THIS THREAD but clearly my guilt is metastasizin: this is the thread where the ILM massive teach mark s a *LESSON*

...and this would be a bad thing since when?

all the little indie kidz i see out at shows seem to be having fun.

No they aren't, they're (increasingly, but they always have been) using stock archetypes. John Darnielle writes about "unique" characters; Colin Meloy writes about Shakespeare and Dickens characters, etc.

-- Stephen Bush (theonlyguyeve...), November 15th, 2006.

Good point. Let's hope Colin develops gets stage fright.

Exactly, maybe he's projecting.

-- Bidfurd (Bidfurd8...), November 15th, 2006.

No, Ott's taken a fucking Social Problems class.

His takedown's pretty classless, I agree, but you guys are harping on this sentence like he's being SO RIDICULOUS in suggesting that white people have unearned advantages in society.

But don't people often wear ideological "costumes" that aren't immediately perceptible? Isn't this country, for example, packed with secular capitalists in lip-service "drag" as cosmic Christians? Furthermore, couldn't "doing drag" relate to fandom of a band through whom folks live vicariously? Isn't half of my love of Black Sabbath the fun of how they lend me their demonic awe, and of how they let me imagine the rockingness of years I wasn't alive to experience, just as my sister's fishnets and mascara lend me the fun of her vampy Los Angeles existence that I couldn't access otherwise? You know that you know, in your heart of hearts, that every Decemberists concert contains total imaginationless dolts for whom that band functions as literate/quirky surrogates...

I don't care enough about the Decemberists to feel one way or the other about the review (I do kind of hate their aesthetic, but it's not like I encounter their music on a daily basis), but the whiny comments are just indefensible.

were you thinking of revoltingly cloying things such as this?

nabisco i swear to god if you do this i will be first in line to buy your fucking album. fuck a colin meloy, judy blume is where lit dorkiness is at.

For a second I was scared the dude on the left was me!

-- nabisco (--...), November 15th, 2006.

BLUMExCORE 4-EVR!

this is how i felt about flaming lips when i saw them 6 or 7 years ago.

but i'll take up for wes anderson. i understand why he's lumped in here, but the major obvious references in life aquatic were jacques cousteau, aaron spelling and ian fleming (plus also always salinger). i.e., twee he may be, but i think his touchstones are more personal and idiosyncratic than dickensian blah blah blah. (p.t. anderson is actually more dickensian.)

My example of choice for this lately is this band called Happy Bullets, who have a song called "The Vice and Virtue Ministry" that is (supposedly mockingly, but not really) all about monocles and croquet and quoting Tennyson and being aristocrats.

without going too far off ot, i think it's kinda interesting that his last 3 movies have specific but different framing devices: as a play in rushmore, a book in tenenbaums and a documentary in life aquatic. i don't know. i guess i just like wes anderson a whole lot more than i like the decemberists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mbhd4LGR-g

-- You've Got Scourage On Your Breath (papiermachealamphibia...) (webmail), November 16th, 2006. (Haberdager)

POST IT! nu-haberdager beating old-haberdager at his own game he's not bold enough to play!

Roffles.

Or are they everywhere because there's a limited number of people who even WANT to write in-depth about these kinds of topics (and that also have some training, or whatever)?

Seriously though--

Honest question: Do writers like Chris Ott - who actually get published outside of the realm of blogs and such - have followings of readers who like their work? Readers who might see a piece with his byline and think, "Oh, I've liked this guy's stuff in the past, I should check this out..."? Or are they everywhere because there's a limited number of people who even WANT to write in-depth about these kinds of topics (and that also have some training, or whatever)?

They have the ability to convince editors that their views ( as opposed to someone else's) deserve the imprimatur of the publication. Editors tend to prefer writers who are dependably entertaining to those whose specific critical opinions are "correct" in every particular. By "dependably entertaining" I mean both "dependable"--as in "turns in the right amount of usable copy, more or less on time, requiring little rework and engendering few laswsuits"--and "entertaining to the editor," of course.

Much of the ILM exasperation with particular music writers often seems heavily focused on disagreement with specific critical opinions or perceived oversights in emphasis. I think this is kinda beside the point in terms of what matters to editors.

The question as to who gets a byline is not "Is Klosterman (say) right or wrong about Cheap Trick/Billy Joel/Poison/Wilco," but rather "Can Klosterman (say) usually string together 250-300 reasonably entertaining words?"

(the first one is most important -- ON TIME TO LENGTH AND SPELLED RIGHT plz)

On the other hand, between a decision like that and Harvilla's column -- where he can't seem to go report on a show without spending a few paragraphs eye-rolling about "hipsters" or playing regular guy and mocking his involvement in the whole thing -- a whole lot of the Voice music section seems to radiate contempt for the entire enterprise of what they have to cover. And that's just absolutely poisonous, and it's the reason I honestly don't check the section at all anymore. (Yes yes, I know how people love to say "hahaha I don't even read that anymore," but it's actually true for me; it's stopped even occurring to me to look.) Why would I want to read a section that's boldly telegraphing to me that its subject matter is worthy of contempt? I think what Harvilla intends to telegraph is the idea that he's a regular guy, just like you, dear reader, on your side againt ridiculous hipsters -- but the effect turns out to be that the whole music world being covered is stupid and unpleasant and not worth your time anyway.

With a lot of writers who go for the 'populist contrarian' schtick (Andrew Earles / 'Where's the Street Team'; the old Uncut 'Sacred Cows' column, etc.), it's understood that seeming like an arrogrant dick is part of the act. But I am not getting that here at all.

Harvilla, on the other hand, always seems to have the problem of liking things defensively, and spending several paragraphs fiddling with shoulder-chips: "You know what? Fine, I really like Grandaddy. They may not be flashy or 'cool' or whatever, but they write great songs..."

how's that for a "shallow reward" lol

THE KLOSTERMAN SYNDROME

HOW'S THAT FOR A "SHALLOW REWARD" LOL

yes otm. i don't see the point of reading it at all these days. anytime a critic obviously feels more important than whatever it is he or she is covering, that's when i check out. anyway, chris ott strikes me as a sort of vile person.

http://pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/Stream_The_Decemberists_Please_Daddy_Dont_Get

sometimes i think people who write like ott are sociopaths.

Nabisco OTM. It warms the cockles of my dork heart.

Haven't read the piece.

yeah, it was all those sad sack white people in the audience who were looking for somewhere to be miserable - not the fun-lovin' Chris Ott... Oh yeah, and that audience is made up of sad sack bloggers, writers and trend-spotters - nothing like our hero... It's the Decemberists who write clumsy, over-ambitious words - not Chris "Cuddly Pirouettes" Ott...

what's more honest:"The Decemberists look down from the top of this mountain, trying to make a living off of blasé malaise." or "I look down from the top of this mountain, trying to make a living off of blasé malaise."?

Who is he really talking about when he writes, "He believes he is a gifted and entitled writer, fit to tackle and retranslate whatever mythologies interest him"? And why does that ambition make him so mad?

Just a thought, maybe he's just sick of Colin Meloy's schtick.

It's also fun to make fun of bands that everyone has multiple orgasms over, and when you criticize said bands they get all defensive, but it's cool because then you get a new login name.

a whole lot of the Voice music section seems to radiate contempt for the entire enterprise of what they have to cover. And that's just absolutely poisonous, and it's the reason I honestly don't check the section at all anymore. (Yes yes, I know how people love to say "hahaha I don't even read that anymore," but it's actually true for me; it's stopped even occurring to me to look.) Why would I want to read a section that's boldly telegraphing to me that its subject matter is worthy of contempt?

i'm trying to figure out a big over-arching explanation for WHY this has happened. not just "new times," but why it's acceptable, why it seems to so many to be the way things should be, even, presumably, to a lot of the people the contempt is directed towards.

There's a very large thread to be written about what internet trained music writers end up doing when they move to the dead-tree media, and how they get instructed to basically turn heel on the exact approach that's made them succesful in the first place, but nobody who works in it's stupid enough to set it up.

So I dunno, maybe that's what works, reader-wise, and maybe if I loved the Decemberists I'd be all worked up and really care what was in the Voice music section -- but as it stands I just get the sense that amid a lot of the same decent coverage as before (in the short reviews and live reviews and such), there's now a big helping of contempt and eye-rolling. And that's the point where I'd actually rather go read electro message boards, or something, where at least people are excited and constructive and have something to recommend to me.

Snider-Man

"Superchunk? Who the fuck listens to Superchunk anymore? Are we going to get in line for Blair Witch tickets later? Put something else on! No - not that one! That's like the second worst Blondie record, idiot!"

Latest DFA B-side, yeah?

This actually makes some sense. I would warrant that in the days of Creem and early Rolling Stone, all the way through to the era of the Big Takeover (for example), critics actually provided a crucial service in introducing people to bands, due to the general lack of resources to introduce one's self to bands.

But now there are so many avenues to find (and actually LISTEN to) music, and the proselytizer role is filled by so many varied technologies, websites, etc., that this function is arguably less important, and negativity and gatekeeping is practically the only role left, especially if the critic desires to make a name for him/herself.

For example, if I see a band in a listing for upcoming concerts, I can log onto myspace, check their page, play a few songs, and develop my own opinion. I don't have to drive to the record store and buy a record, or have a friend make me a mix tape, or whatever.

i think this very well may be the case in a large regard (although i probably have a dog in this particular fight). one thing that sort of astounds me about the internet-noise around bands is that it's really an echo-chambery sort of thing--you can have 10, 12 blogs championing a band, and it sounds like more people are doing it, in part because they're all linking to one another. i guess it's a more distributed system of what used to happen around here with certain artists, in a way?

the reporting part of the job is gone on the writer's end. the imagining part of the job is gone on the reader's end. you just click the fucking link.

it's actually hard to talk people into liking something when they hear it, it's a lot simpler to talk someone out of liking something, especially if they're on the fence...

so maybe writing of the "bitchslap" school of writing emerges because it's easier to feel as though you're having any affect on readers at all, and being the bitchslap guy is supposed to set you apart from the hundreds of "trend-spotting writers, bloggers, and shills" that are your peers/competition

only trouble is everybody's the bitchslap guy at once, all the time.

in the end critics may have to make a choice between being "gatekeepers" and being, well, interesting. with the rise of music via intarweb, there's a lot less use for critic-as-recommender, the guy who tells you which albums to buy and describes them to you--this, to me, is the big reason RS and spin and whoever have reduced their reviews to 150 wds.

what would be nice is if critics realized this and wrote less abt. whether or not an album is "good" or "bad" or "worth buying" (and obv. not all critics do this by any means) and we started seeing more interesting pieces of real criticism aka why is this piece of music interesting? what is interesting about it? why does it appeal to ppl? does it appeal to me? but i guess that might just be a fantasy of mine. (nb i realize that plenty of critics are writing like this but certainly not the d00dz in the voice or wherever)

And I've kind of been gambling that this precisely ISN'T the case, as I'm still interested in the idea of web radio and satellite radio providing gatekeeping/tastemaking services, and critics finding their new niches in these realms and as playlist constructors (interior decorators of the stereo).

Yeah, see, the great value of this is that it's something listeners can seriously use -- there's an actual need for it. (I probably start to sound like a hippie when I talk about this, but it's true.) A lot of listeners enjoy stuff without thinking about it in vast critical terms, or without being able to articulate what they're responding to in it, and if you write a review that articulates that stuff, they genuinely care: there's no piece of mail more gratifying than the one that says "I really love this album and you've helped me understand why." Better still, there's the opportunity to actually help people figure out how they feel about stuff, or to change the way they understand a piece of music. The thing that's frustrating to me about something like this Ott piece is that he could have done that, I think -- he could have explained something about what the Decemberists are doing without making the whole thing a series of value judgments, and still led people to the same conclusions he has about the band. (And if he weren't pushing the value judgments, I'm guessing the piece would wind up more accurate and useful and informative.)

The other weird thing is that people's perceptions of new music can be pretty highly informed by their understanding of old music, or just other music, so there's a lot of value to being able to pin down what's "at stake" with a particular act -- how it works and what it means, rather than bombastic claims of good/bad. And this is the thing that seems counterproductive about the kind of "contempt" I'm talking about here: writing a piece like this just contributes to exactly the kind of style-based "what's cool to like" sheeplike method of music-listening people are supposedly so contemptuous of! Whereas a what-it-means/how-it-works approach at least encourages people to be thinking about the content of what they're hearing.

(Social camps and sides can be totally fascinating and are a big part of what music is all about, but -- for one thing -- I suspect critics should spend slightly more time figuring out those camps than they do participating in or reinforcing them, and -- for another thing -- lots of writing doesn't even seem to participate in those camps in any interesting way; it just repeats the talking points of one viewpoint or another. One good thing about Ott is that he seems fairly interested in the idea of social groups in musical taste, which is something it'd be interesting to seem him write about in an exploratory, questioning way.)

christgau on Thu Nov 16, 21:37, 2006, says:
I don't read the Voice music section much these days, and often don't like it much when I do, but thought I'd note for the record that I loved Ott's piece. Went to see the same Decemberists' show with fond hopes and found Meloy's "showmanship" so ordinary and his band's "musicianship" so static that I walked out fearing that I'd given their perfectly tuneful major-league debut--an impurity I've never believed reflected in the least on a record's quality--a half star too many. Someday I may find time to play the thing and make sure. Liked Harvilla's (second) Dylan column too--that's CYA with class, Rob.

oh god no!

V. true.

(or if gwyneth's too old, zooey deschanel.)
-- gypsy mothra (meetm...), November 16th, 2006 8:33 PM. (gypsy mothra) (later) (link)

Maybe Bryce Dallas Howard?

http://www.montanaartistsrefuge.org/images/artists/ellis_sm.jpg http://www.filmweb.no/bilder/multimedia/archive/00091/Bryce_Dallas_Howard__91628o.jpg

one of the memes we flog repeatedly around here is the music-writer-as-buyers-guide vs something better (and agreed, max otm). my sense of the history of this is kind of rough... like, the first "music writing" in the 30s and 40s was in recording and radio bod trade magazines, and it really was a buyers guide with very little critical anything in it (good quality! hot seller!). then, xgau himself aped the buyers guide format, ironically and not. the "noise boys." uh then there's the brit-crit golden age, running from glam through punk and then uh ending later. and now felix dennis has turned everything to shit and drained the money out of it, and blogs/downloading maybe threatening the whole enterprise with obsolescence.

but i don't know any of the inbetween or countervailing events or anything, and that doesn't seem satisfying or correct as a narrative anyway.

Thank you for this insightful review. I was at this concert, and I have to admit that I spent the entire event lamenting Colin's phonetic pronunciation of "Tain." I was utterly consumed by it. Did they play music? If so, I didn't hear it! I turned to the privileged WASP dancing not but .30 metres from me (badly, of course, being a Caucasian *et al*) and pleaded with him to cease pretending to enjoy himself and return to his hedge funds! He responded only: "Taaain," as he produced a lighter and burned a 100 dollar bill. I believe he was a Kennedy, or possibly a Vanderbilt. It is difficult, even now, to sleep at night.

the other maybe-fact i forgot was RS trying to be GQ in the 80s and failing

(xpost hahaha)

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII'M SORRY
FOR SOMETHING THAT I DIDN'T DO

I'm going to cut it there because I'm using some of these ideas in future pieces, but...as far as the Decemberists, I'm fine with Nabisco's take: they are the Goth Wombles. It's prog excess, pseud dalliance, all of that, but because they're "po-faced" or cute, or, "not widely known to be wealthy enough to be able to try to make music for a living" UHHHH - they get a free pass. That offends me intellectually and socially.

Someone asked me what I thought about Stephen Merritt in light of this piece, and that really made me scratch my chin: What does Stephen Merritt think of Colin Meloy?

The other night my friend Angus Batey and I were talking about this very subject in a great discussion that I only wish I could have transcribed (for Angus's contributions, not mine!). His take is more pessimistic than mine, but there is something here that needs further articulating -- it's not that there hasn't been such talk already, rather that there needs to be more of same.

hahahaha x-post!

http://www.livetheatertickets.com/the-wiggles/the-wiggles-pic.gif

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/programGuide/program/The%20Doodlebops%20for%20program%20guide.jpg

And this is bad because...? I've been waiting my whole life for that to happen on a mass scale.

The ability to engorge on music strikes me (sort of) as what it must be like to have "fuck-you" money. In other words, no limits except for time and patience. The only uniqueness is your impulse, which, when you can have anything you want, either becomes incredibly pronounced or non-existant.

My comment was more about "mannerisms and clothing styles." You can have a real need for tastemakers/gatekeepers and still reject the above.

it's easy to have a zillion songs on your hard drive (especially if you're not even paying for them; consider the vested interest in that context) and impulsively experience an enormous amount and variety of music without any sociological attachment. Or at least, in hindsight it is. I guess this discussion is more about the impact of this situation, about how well (or how transient) scenes or fads or trends become in a commodity market.

i dunno...all those emo kids and stuff sure seem to have a style of dress and identify themselves with that style of music...or hip hop fans...or metal fans...

Don, you're assuming people experience that sociological attachment because they have to, or are led to by circumstance. But it's likely that in a lot cases people experience that sociological attachment because they want to, or need to. That attachment is a tool lots of people find really, really useful in teenage identity formation in particular; it doesn't matter if mp3s give them the option to avoid it, because it's something they're actively seeking out.

(I'd suggest that different music-distribution models just happen to change the identities and attachments you have to choose between -- e.g., as of this decade it's feasible for a 19-year-old to cultivate a self-image as an discerning eclectic who knows a great deal about countless varieties of music, something a pre-internet 19-year-old would have a hard time faking even if he knew it was an option. And yet still, the world is still full of girls with dyed bangs and striped leggings who dig AFI, as sociologically attached as teenagers have ever been, mp3s or not.)

I'd buy this if online social networking wasn't so damn popular. As it is, kids (and I use that term loosely) have lists of interests, throw music videos off YouTube on to their myspace profiles, embed pictures of their favorite bands and actors, and seem to constantly add/remove themselves from facebook groups expressing opinions about trends. Due to online social networks and changes in the way I've seen people socialize, people are more selective than ever in making friends that have an overlap in their tastes and are able to articulate their particular identity in terms of cultural consumption.

This isn't to say that there's not more variety, though. You're going to be more likely to see more influences gelling into one whole, not the overwhelming influence of a few bands. But really I think people, and especially young people, are still opting to take up the look of their favorite band -- and holding a camera a couple feet above their heads to take a self-portrait.

I'm not denying that, I'm saying that the music world used to be more limited because of distribution and cost. I'm saying that it has flattened the horizon and that the impact of this really hasn't been determined. In the past, your outlets for exploration were very much limited because of distribution and cost whereas now they are exponentially larger, larger to the degree that I suspect overwhelms and perhaps leads to apathy. Or maybe because of technology, your niche/identity is much more precise. Or maybe it's more multidimensional. The tool you refer to is so much more powerful, so much more immediate than before. I think it goes farther than simply giving teens (or any music fan) more identity options to seek when the options are overwhelming in scale. In some ways, this abundance of options changes your perspective on your starting point.

unless you want to start engaging in big battle royales ! with those foam bats!!

when someone makes moral judgements about "kids" because of how they dress it's a pure flag, it's being sheep, (... insert list of clumsy mixed metaphors here)...

when someone looks down on a kid for dressing a certain way, it's because they're either still thinking like a 9th grader

Anyway, the horrible side-effect of that knowability/mockability is -- in my egotistical opinion -- that it results in pieces like these that are basically positing the grounds for the eye-rolling. And if lots of critics write that way, it begans to have an actual stifling effect on music where you just make music fuck-all boring, because no one's comfortable advancing any kind of aesthetic for other people to mock. And I'd say the path of indie-rock over the past 15-20 years kinda confirms this, to my ears: the bands people on the internet feel most ready to praise are the ones that are competent but not actually doing anything that could be interpreted as pretentious or silly. Intended or not, the particular attacks chosen in this piece stand a chance of encouraging that sort of thing, so that soon enough a band comes along sounding just as plain as the Decemberists, but knowing that if they want to avoid being made fun of they should avoid doing any whale-story reenactments or picking historical shit to talk about -- just talk about girls, nobody will pay any attention -- and then we have something I'd consider way worse.

hahahaha if only. when i got to college, i was mystified that the people who seemed to be the most clueless about music were the new yorkers. imagine living in the self-proclaimed "media capital of the world" and not knowing there was punk beyond, like, green day and the offspring!

This is silly--do you really think that the kind of people who wouldn't ask someone what their band t-shirt was all about are now going to now go on the internet that night and google it instead? And the Hot Topic effect is just another iteration of the commoditization of subcultures--I'm sure it seemed vaguely scandalous at the time when you could buy, like, Doors and Grateful Dead posters in Spencer Gifts.

This is silly--do you really think that the kind of people who wouldn't ask someone what their band t-shirt was all about are now going to now go on the internet that night and google it instead?

No, my point is that instead of thinking "that guy likes some freaky stuff I don't know about," people will think "I already know what that guy is doing, for he is one of those 'emo' types I have seen extensively parodied on YouTube." I.e., people's general awareness of and savvy regarding these kinds of music-fashion things is totally elevated by the internet. (Similarly, pre-internet, I could have walked by 6 furry couples a day without knowing what the hell was happening, whereas post-internet I would go EWW, FURRIES.)

Spencer's is the obvious predecessor to Hot Topic, sure, but I don't feel like Spencer's had any kind of current cool to attach itself to -- it was basically all fart jokes and Jim Morrisson posters in there. Which meant that I knew countless people with Jim Morrisson posters who'd never listened to the Doors and evidently never intended to.

And I think people could go to stores and pick up those outfits, you just had to live in an urban center. So it's just an expansion--they're in malls now.

As for the idea that this expansion caused this sort of easy scorn--well, a) were people not making fun of people in other subcultures before? Disco, new romantics/wave, ravers, etc.? I mean when did Heavy Metal Parking Lot come out? When was the first metal parody? When was that punk in Star Trek? I think it's more that the subculture model of the 80s/early 90s ("OUR BAND COULD BE YOUR LIFE-ism") was to a certain degree unique, if only because of the historical/technological/cultural context, and so maybe people who grew up in that and had their identities forged in that model are just letting out a big can of "it ain't like it useta be?"

-- nabisco (--...), November 17th, 2006 9:16 PM. (nabisco) (later)

dude, i bought a bauhaus t-shirt at the alley at clark and belmont during my first visit to chicago in like 1988 or something.

chris, you "ott" to find a new line of work.

the oh it's so easy for kids to be cool now thing is overstated i think, i doubt any amount of internet-acquired knowledge of obscure music or hot topic-bought finery makes much difference to the social life of a shy kid with divorced parents, braces, and a lisp (or whatever).

i'd imagine myspace and other such chances to actually connect with other kids who care about the same shit might have a greater affect.

What I'm saying about kids/future modes/etc is nothing to do with what I said about the Brists, and I'm really sick of talking about it. I more than got it out of my system in the article-n-response, and I've conceded elsewhere that the piece was condensed to a point where it possibly read harsher than intended (bam, bam, bam, no lulls). But you know...of the number of things left out because they were cheap or not specifically-enough the band's fault, the one that pissed me off the most at the show was the girl, the violinist, holding a guitar she couldn't play at all during at least three songs. 100% pose. And to anyone defending poor Meloy, Seattle Weekly has a nice tidbit about him complaining they weren't on the cover this week.

is it strange that this whole post makes me jealous? (not just Guadalcanal Diary, the oatmeal thing too)

kaito

but nobody cares about the dudes.

i like kaito, they're lots of fun live. the last album was kind of meh. why are we talking about them again?

i was from a little town and they were sort of the 10,000 maniacs/they might be giants of the metal-ish stuff we knew about. we didn't have MTV for awhile, so didn't get exposed to a lot of stuff like college rock...some punk rock from the couple skater kidz, but they didn't like any faggy type stuff.

r-a-d-i-o-h-e-a-d

When was it ever anyone's major artistic intention "to establish themselves as a unique or even not-obviously-referential act??" Generally speaking, I am sure that inspiration has had more to do with the desire to do something good, do something creative within a particular aesthetic context that has some sort of personal significance for an artist. It's one thing to argue that the great availability of music and information about music creates, as you say, less impetus to "fix things or freshen the landscape - not sure that I agree with that or if it's true. But it's another to cook up this argument about an alleged artistic crisis resulting from the situation. Do painters experience this crisis when they look at a 1500 page history of painting book?

When was it ever anyone's major artistic intention "to establish themselves as a unique or even not-obviously-referential act??"

contradict this:

the desire to do something good, do something creative?

At least insofar as "creative" indicates (to me) "original" a.k.a. "unique"? Not that I don't see yr larger point, but

Do painters experience this crisis when they look at a 1500 page history of painting book?

I think that answer there might be "yes"--and it might indicate why we see a general move away from painting as the major form of "high art" over the past 25-50 years (not that painting is dead, obv., but compared to 1906 or 1806 or fuckit even 1606, the percentage of "recognized" "unique" "creative" artists who are painting is smaller). In fact I'd think that painting/high art is a much better example of "the weight of history" changing the nature of an artist's aspiration than pop music (c.f. Eliot & other literary Modernists, obv., whose hyperawareness of the "history" [or whatever] of literature led to the creation of some of the more starkly interesting and original pieces of writing [for their time] ["these fragments I have shored against my ruins" &c.])

-- gear (speed.to.roa...) (webmail), November 18th, 2006. (gear)

otm. in a thread full of boring crap i don't care to read about, thanks for saying something completely off-topic that i agree with.

these dudes totally nail it:

http://cover6.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/Large/03/943403.jpg

I get the feeling that I'm not really responding to you directly, though. Are we talking abt. the same thing?

I guess what that means is that when I see a theatrical rock act, I want them to act *well*. The Decemberists are just way too arch, or smug, but not funny or fun enough to justify it. Every time I think I'm starting to like them a lot I see them live and it sets them back a bunch in my estimation.

I know, I know - stop seeing them live, right?