Has ILM gotten "smarter" as time goes on?

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Apologies if this topic has already been done - I wouldn't have any idea how to search it.

Whenever I read threads that started more than a few years ago, I notice there's a lower level of sophistication in the dialogue, or at least less pretense of sophistication. Even some of the posters I find to be the smartest wrote things back then that I couldn't imagine them daring to write now. So has there been some general trend of posters sharpening each other? Does the hivemind learn?

― Hurting 2, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:46 (eighteen years ago)

WAHT

― unfished business, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:47 (eighteen years ago)

Well, that's a new one!

― Mark G, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:49 (eighteen years ago)

i would like to respond, though i am condemned by the norm to keep my mouth shut

― Charlie Howard, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:50 (eighteen years ago)

naturally i think the opposite has occurred.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:51 (eighteen years ago)

i think people just grow more aware of the consensus and the various arguments that ilm is familiar with, where when they are relatively new they have no context in which to discuss things other than what they've brought with them when they show up on ilx.

― deej, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:51 (eighteen years ago)

Ok, maybe not "smarter," but it seems like there's been a certain change in standards, like I can't imagine the thread about Jimi Hendrix being overrated carrying on the way it did in 2003 if it was posted now

― Hurting 2, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:52 (eighteen years ago)

I'm with Steve.

― Scik Mouthy, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:52 (eighteen years ago)

um yea sure

― 688, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:52 (eighteen years ago)

But yeah maybe it's just a matter of what deej said about certain posters being here longer and getting used to what the consensus is.

― Hurting 2, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:53 (eighteen years ago)

what steve said. i must admit i can't really comprehend how anyone could think that ilm-now is "smarter" than old-ilm.

― lex pretend, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:54 (eighteen years ago)

Posts in general have got much shorter and less ruminative over the last... five years.

― Scik Mouthy, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:54 (eighteen years ago)

everything changed after doglatin quit

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:55 (eighteen years ago)

after nabisco posts lets agree that this thread is over, k?

― deej, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:56 (eighteen years ago)

hey, don't quote my shit, 688

granted, my question wasn't deeply founded... i wasn't pontificating about this shit before i posted it. i just happened to be listening to the record and was curious about other people's opinions. any harm done there? i seriously think i'm one of the most docile people here, yet i nevertheless get critiqued a fair bit. not altogether fair.

i totally agree with hurting about the hendrix thread, however...

― Charlie Howard, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:56 (eighteen years ago)

for once i say: deej otm

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:57 (eighteen years ago)

A certain level of consensus/groupthink certaintly can prevail on a thread, but I'd maintain such groupthink is a disservice to interesting discourse.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:57 (eighteen years ago)

the hendrix thread is probably the most interesting read on new answers! what do you object to about it, that anyone could possibly think he IS overrated? is ilm that in thrall to the canon now? sad.

― lex pretend, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:59 (eighteen years ago)

i don't know if a new 'Hendrix over-rated' thread done today would be that different. less interest possibly.

i revived the 'Dylan over-rated?' thread and that resulted in some new ridiculous indignation (not towards me - i just wanted to talk about his actually very good Radio 2/6 Music show!) recently.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:01 (eighteen years ago)

sorry charlie, but if i think the thread is poor, im allowed to quote it

― 688, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

or, im allowed to say so, is what i mean

― 688, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

just don't hold a grudge ;)

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:05 (eighteen years ago)

i took caps lock off now

― 688, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:06 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=2330

Good old fashioned ILM

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:07 (eighteen years ago)

i basically read through all the answers, hoping that someone could offer a substantial reason for why hendrix was overrated, and there were just basically a whole bunch of dismal comments. nothing all that informed or interesting, and strangely not a great deal of objection to the original assertion

― Charlie Howard, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:07 (eighteen years ago)

ILM has gotten a lot meaner, and people came off a bit dumber back when they were nicer and less paranoid about showing chinks in the armor.

― Alex in Baltimore, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:08 (eighteen years ago)

alex in baltimore totally otm

― deej, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:09 (eighteen years ago)

yup. you're too hip, ilx

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:11 (eighteen years ago)

part of that too, though, Al, is the slow realization that what you put on the internet = not disappearing anytime soon.

― deej, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:12 (eighteen years ago)

i basically read through all the answers, hoping that someone could offer a substantial reason for why hendrix was overrated, and there were just basically a whole bunch of dismal comments.

my mind is spinning. for starters unless you have nabisco killfiled you should have read his, like, four-paragraph argument as to why hendrix may not be the best thing since sliced bread. please don't tell me you consider that insubstantial, i have read some of your opinions.

alex in baltimore otm - and if anyone does show chinks in the armour now, the thread devolves into zingzingzingzingzzzzzzz.

― lex pretend, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:13 (eighteen years ago)

although really you could put it all down to "people like charlie howard arriving, people like tom ewing largely leaving"

― lex pretend, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)

My very presence has become a chink in the armour for some! :-D

― unfished business, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:15 (eighteen years ago)

thank god i don't apply the same throwaway mentality to the share market as i do to my threads!

― Charlie Howard, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

i'm with the people who say the opposite happened.

― modestmickey, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:22 (eighteen years ago)

thanks lex, whatever

i read nabisco's comment about 'hey joe', was probably the best thing in the thread. otherwise there was some pretty half-hearted speculation that in short, didn't do any justice to the question raised and rendered it not worth asking in the first place.

i'm not equipped to argue coherently right now. i'm drunk on gin and am looking at an early wake up call (for work, alas). but lex, i'm here to talk about music. nothing else. certainly not to get personal.

― Charlie Howard, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:25 (eighteen years ago)

I don't think it's gotten that much dumber, it's just that all of these smart posters that have hung around for so long are no longer willing to flex their intellects so much (i.e. "we done this before, etc."). And the newer folks don't have that bedrock to bounce off. We get one-word cutesy answers from the same dude who used to riff endlessly about his musics. But then my favorite thread is probably that one that sounded like a Snap song.

― pj, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:31 (eighteen years ago)

pj + alex in baltimore have money under their asses.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:38 (eighteen years ago)

ok enough of that

― deej, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:40 (eighteen years ago)

I mean lets be real, fear-of-zings is a pretty silly thing to drive people; its more the realization that you come off like a goofball, with or without zings; i said plenty of zingable shit in the past that no one called me on at the time that i still cringe about now, and not because i care that ethan would have made some sage francis crack in retaliation but more because i'm like 'good lord that was rather naive of me'

― deej, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:44 (eighteen years ago)

good lord it was!

*bows*

― 688, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:45 (eighteen years ago)

Zings are no worse than earnest brow-furrowing politeness that gets rapidly unpolite when it's argued with.

― Noodle Vague, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:56 (eighteen years ago)

ILM never suffered fools gladly.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:59 (eighteen years ago)

That Hendrix thread was started by someone who uses the term "political correctness" lol.

I remember that thread being mentioned on a Richard Thompson one shortly after, with Jess going "fuck ILX is way too in love with the canon these days". At any rate much of the ILM old-guard had already given up on the board by the time it rolled around, "has ILX dumbed down?" threads were already dime a dozen.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 1 March 2007 18:00 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=56430#unread

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 1 March 2007 19:14 (eighteen years ago)

I'm a lot less strident in my opinions than I used to be. The old posts of mine that I'm most likely to shudder at are the ones that take this really firm line on something that I only knew a little bit about.

I wonder if many other old-timer ilxors have a similar sense of declining stridency.

― Tim F, Thursday, 1 March 2007 21:57 (eighteen years ago)

Hmmm...not sure, in my case.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 1 March 2007 21:59 (eighteen years ago)

I am baffled by this claim. Truly baffled.

― Nicole, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:00 (eighteen years ago)

lex OTM upthread

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:02 (eighteen years ago)

(or rather lex and alex in baltimore both OTM upthread)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:03 (eighteen years ago)

i had a lot more time to wax dumbly philosophical in my early 20s than i do now

― strongohulkington, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:09 (eighteen years ago)

i just keep it inside now or tell it to my therapist

― strongohulkington, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:10 (eighteen years ago)

but c'mon ilm has been "mean" since the summer of 2002. some of us were even meaner back then. "why don't you eat me, you clueless cumbubble" or whatever is not exactly as benign as our current culture of the zing.

― strongohulkington, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:11 (eighteen years ago)

we were probably meaner BECAUSE we took all this shit too seriously

― strongohulkington, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:11 (eighteen years ago)

we were probably meaner BECAUSE we took all this shit too seriously

OTM there.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:14 (eighteen years ago)

Perhaps it's gotten more "knowing", but "smarter" ? Sadly, no.

― o. nate, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:14 (eighteen years ago)

clowning someone for a "pick only 5 donnie and marie album tracks" thread is not the same as ripping them for post after post in an actual "argument" (about something equally trivial)

― strongohulkington, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:15 (eighteen years ago)

ILM has gotten a lot less "corny" over the years, cause now everyone's properly schooled in what's "cool" and what's not, and know how to deploy withering sarcasm and sharp casual knowledge of arcane music information to make other people look stupid, thus leading other people to not say much unless they're pretty sure they can snipe through and win the point. Also there's just more people, so any given topic of discussion is going to have more experts.

I do not at all think that's the same thing as "smarter," and would suggest that while ILM these days is a pretty good source for figuring out what's currently geek-credible and what sorts of opinions & behaviors come off corny / embarrassing / STFU, that atmosphere can be somewhat superficial, and doesn't lead to the kind of more ruminative lit-crit deep-reading examinations of music that used to get done.

― nabisco, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:21 (eighteen years ago)

Hahaha O.Nate's perfect word choice with "knowing" says exactly what I mean in about 1/100th the space.

― nabisco, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:22 (eighteen years ago)

I'm a lot less strident in my opinions than I used to be. The old posts of mine that I'm most likely to shudder at are the ones that take this really firm line on something that I only knew a little bit about.

I don't know, you have never struck me as being overly dogmatic about anything on ilm.

If anything, ILM has probably gotten a bit older.

― Display Name, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:29 (eighteen years ago)

"ruminative lit-crit deep-reading examinations of music that used to get done."

its true there's definitely less of this. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not (depends on whose doing the ruminations)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:30 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, one reason it's pointless to complain is that with hundreds of people posting, it would get really messy and tiring for everyone to aim for that. In the beginning ILM threads tended to be like 8 people having an in-depth dinner conversation, where people can go on a bit and there's some communal investment in figuring things out; these days it's more like the House of Commons, where you make your point quick and you may well get shouted down by opposing factions in the bargain.

― nabisco, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:35 (eighteen years ago)

goddammit nabisco why are you always OTM

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:36 (eighteen years ago)

What I remember about old-ILM was impassioned, wide-ranging debates about music - whether about specific bands and songs or more meta debates about criticism - which frequently spilled over to other non-music-related issues, and were frequently windy and sometimes tiring, but nonetheless, had a refreshing enthusiasm and willingness to engage with ideas seriously and at whatever length seemed necessary.

― o. nate, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:40 (eighteen years ago)

I would REALLY like an in-depth dinner conversation with the more interesting/intelligent ILXors! I wouldn't say much, granted, but I'd learn more in 4 hours than I have done here in 9 months...

― unfished business, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:42 (eighteen years ago)

What I remember about old ILX is Lord Custos.

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:43 (eighteen years ago)

What I remember about old-ILM was impassioned, wide-ranging debates about music - whether about specific bands and songs or more meta debates about criticism - which frequently spilled over to other non-music-related issues, and were frequently windy and sometimes tiring, but nonetheless, had a refreshing enthusiasm and willingness to engage with ideas seriously and at whatever length seemed necessary.

Well, as Nabisco, Tim and Jess all say in different but related ways, it's both having the time to talk about this but also the 'space' -- in large part because I think a lot of us were, whether we were building on a lot of previous talk or doing so for the first time, spelling out our various aesthetics and theoretical approaches in a much more detailed way than before, and with a reactive audience at that also heavily engaged in it. Certainly it helped me become clearer about a lot of things, while at the same time revealing further blind spots (a continuing process to this day). As noted, though, if the groundwork's all been thoroughly done, continuous reevaluation is not always a priority, especially if your responsibilities elsewhere are taking up more time than before.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 1 March 2007 22:48 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, I get the feeling that the main people who were interested in having that kind of discussion have moved on - either literally, as in away from the board - or figuratively, in terms of their time & interests.

― o. nate, Friday, 2 March 2007 03:32 (eighteen years ago)

i'm confused, did olde ilm allow people to champion racist popstars a la Paris Hilton??

― gershy, Friday, 2 March 2007 03:34 (eighteen years ago)

leading other people to not say much unless they're pretty sure they can snipe through and win the point.

Welcome to my Internet life.

― Joseph McCombs, Friday, 2 March 2007 03:54 (eighteen years ago)

"these days it's more like the House of Commons"

I fear the Honourable Member for Nabisco is On the Motherfucking Money, as we say in Bethnal Green.

― Frogman Henry, Friday, 2 March 2007 04:21 (eighteen years ago)

SMART is overrated. So many "smart" people in the world. So few of them happy.

― libcrypt, Friday, 2 March 2007 05:00 (eighteen years ago)

If anything, ILM has probably gotten a bit older.
http://www.thegoldenera.net/images/hats/Dennis%20Hopper.jpg
a little older, a little more confused

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 2 March 2007 05:20 (eighteen years ago)

i'm confused, did olde ilm allow people to champion racist illustrators a la Jess Harvell??

Fixed.

― The Reverend, Friday, 2 March 2007 05:28 (eighteen years ago)

Olde-ilx/ingenuous/beginner posting-style: carefully-crafted or direct and spontaneous, hearfelt posts, might not agree with anybody on thread but enjoy the spirited argument with them nonetheless, content to hold out until reinforcements arrive for your point-of-view or archive readers in distant future praise your wisdom

Nieuw-ilx/jaded/advanced posting-style: image-spam, non-sequiturs, meme-zombies, level 1 and level 2 ironing, i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-huis-clos going-through-the-motions inside g00gle panopticon

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 2 March 2007 06:37 (eighteen years ago)

ILM has significantly changed in its predominate style.

What stuck me coming back here after a few years gap was that it seemed much more American. Where the old ILM seemed to have a lot of recovering Melody Maker (circa 1990) readers, its now recovering Pitchfork readers. I'm not sayings thats better or worse, but it does change the tone, some subjects - minor UK bands/scenes and UK music critisism don't have a critical mass of users to develop into worthwhile threads - a shame, there a lot going on and I wish I knew more about it.

Also there is a real lack of strident advocacy for.... well whatever the poster felt like being for or against. I guess not being too enthusiastic can look like sophistication in a weary sort of way, but its quite a chilling technique that would mean other folks are less likely to be gushing .

― Sandy Blair, Friday, 2 March 2007 07:30 (eighteen years ago)

This should have been a poll.

My vote: It has neither got smarter or dumber.

Ta.

― Mark G, Friday, 2 March 2007 10:11 (eighteen years ago)

This thread is pretty smart.

― baaderonixx, Friday, 2 March 2007 10:38 (eighteen years ago)

WAHHHHHHHHH I WISH THE PINFOX STILL POSTED WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

― chaki, Friday, 2 March 2007 11:07 (eighteen years ago)

Hi Sandy!

― Matt DC, Friday, 2 March 2007 11:14 (eighteen years ago)

minor UK bands/scenes and UK music critisism don't have a critical mass of users to develop into worthwhile threads - a shame, there a lot going on and I wish I knew more about it.

I'm not sure this is necessarily true - there's always been a hefty Anglophile contingent amongst US ILMers and the grime and dubstep threads in particular went into a lot of depth. UK music criticism discussion tends to devolve into pointless snark and bitterness straight away and as such the threads are virtually unreadable, but it's still there.

Maybe it's because there isn't much of a geographical spread amongst UK ILX, it's pretty concentrated in London, Glasgow and a few other places. There are big cities like Manchester and Liverpool that seem ridiculously under-represented here and I think that does impact significantly on discussion of smaller scenes.

― Matt DC, Friday, 2 March 2007 11:20 (eighteen years ago)

Umm, so I both agree and disagree with you then.

― Matt DC, Friday, 2 March 2007 11:22 (eighteen years ago)

gershy what about championing homophobic rap stars?

― blueski, Friday, 2 March 2007 11:34 (eighteen years ago)

To be fair The Lex is as happy championing homophobic dancehall as he is RacistParis.

― Matt DC, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:14 (eighteen years ago)

don't forget misogynist hip-hop too :D

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:16 (eighteen years ago)

I'm new here, so I don't really know how stupid or clever it used to be.

But I don't think I've done much to improve things, to be honest.

― braveclub, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:17 (eighteen years ago)

The non-rockists have met some opposition.

― Geir Hongro, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:19 (eighteen years ago)

i wish the pinfox still posted

― 688, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:20 (eighteen years ago)

The non-rockists have met some opposition.

one of those brutes got mud on my trousers

― 688, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:20 (eighteen years ago)

though, thinking about it, it might have been the pinfox

― 688, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:20 (eighteen years ago)

I think we'd all have advanced far further if the terms 'rockism' and 'popism' hadn't ever been invented. They're a blight upon any reasonable musical debate.

― unfished business, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:22 (eighteen years ago)

i know personally i'd have advanced 3-5% further, but i can't speak for the others

― 688, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:24 (eighteen years ago)

though the pinfox was clocking around 15-20% last time i saw him. there was mud everywhere

― 688, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:25 (eighteen years ago)

Sandy!

I don't know if ILM has got smarter, all I know is I miss Prolapse: Classic or Dud. *weeps*

― emil.y, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:27 (eighteen years ago)

i miss prolapse c/d too :(

― electricsound, Friday, 2 March 2007 12:35 (eighteen years ago)

ILM's collective knowledge has increased a lot since the early days: there are more experts around.

― Groke, Friday, 2 March 2007 13:39 (eighteen years ago)

i disagree with louis. rockism and popism remain useful terms, as long as they are applied correctly - like a cream perhaps.

― blueski, Friday, 2 March 2007 13:45 (eighteen years ago)

http://i17.tinypic.com/47b7jat.jpg

― StanM, Friday, 2 March 2007 13:52 (eighteen years ago)

i logged out to see what that was

― blueski, Friday, 2 March 2007 13:53 (eighteen years ago)

They are stupid terms IMO. Considering most people can't even decide what they mean is indicative of this. On the other hand, people who do think they know what they mean and then use either one as a musical and critical directive have obviously missed the point too.

― the next grozart, Friday, 2 March 2007 13:53 (eighteen years ago)

I thought it was pretty smart, but maybe that's just me. (xpost)

― StanM, Friday, 2 March 2007 13:57 (eighteen years ago)

i just find antipathy for the terms themselves rather how they're being used to be odd.

― blueski, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:04 (eighteen years ago)

Nedism is the answer.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:13 (eighteen years ago)

Is that like nudism, but with longer hair?

― StanM, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:21 (eighteen years ago)

― m the g, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

'nedism' has a totally different meaning here in glasgow.

or maybe it doesn't.

― m the g, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

Less memes now. More fragmentation. A more functional/informative (rather than critical) purpose.

― baaderonixx, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:26 (eighteen years ago)

What was the first ever thread on ILM?

― braveclub, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:34 (eighteen years ago)

Steve M has a point, actually. My beef with the two terms isn't that they're meaningless, it's that they're very specialised, and some might say outdated (especially 'rockism', 'popism' I can understand, although 'popists' I can't, strange fellas that they are) terms which receive far too liberal an airing here on ILM, when there are hundreds of other analyses which could provide a much more interesting reading of musical predilections. Merely tossing off one of those terms as an insult or an an explanation for someone's critical stance is self-serving and unproductive in the extreme, unless the specific meaning is directly applicable, which, I'd say, can almost never be the case. They both imply some sort of exclusivism, which I'd hope no music-lover would profess to have.

― unfished business, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

what about poppage lol

― and what, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:50 (eighteen years ago)

yeah like groke sez: more ppl are online, more experts/monomaniacs are online, more information is online & freely available = ppl are afraid to attack things on whatever their own terms may be, so less of the decisiveness. or more accurately, 1000000x more of the decisiveness with absolutely none of the desire to have a conversation about it, which all sounds like i'm damning all of the experts but is also equally on the part of all the popist amateurs who've all mass withdrawn into their little cubbyholes of inertia. it is SO BLOODY EASY to hear whatever you wanna find out about now, no work, no chore whatsoever - so why did everyone run away defeated when in 2002 you had shit like toby & sterling & whoever mining dc++ groups and radio rips and shop sites for grime jewels, when everyone wz putting random dancehall searches into slsk? there's no use in complaining about gatekeepers when it only takes 2 clicks to overthrow them now.

― r|t|c, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:51 (eighteen years ago)

everyone retreats into what they know precisely because it's too easy - not only too easy to hear everything else in the world so you don't know where to start, but also too easy to dig around in the darkest corners of your chosen field because it's more comfortable than diving into something you know nothing about with little to no guidance

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:53 (eighteen years ago)

What was the first ever thread on ILM?

this one

― Mark Rich@rdson, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:55 (eighteen years ago)

fair point.

― r|t|c, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:57 (eighteen years ago)

...and when you DO dive into something you know little about, your limited, subjective opinions are torn to shreds by the 'this is my life's work and who are you to say such things about it' wolves...

― unfished business, Friday, 2 March 2007 14:57 (eighteen years ago)

Something that also happened was the huge rise of MP3 blog culture where there's always someone somewhere who's got to the stuff first. And their "get there first" mindset, the way they write about stuff, is so shrill that as rtc says the response is "Well fuck that then", just rereat. So what's missing is the confidence to say "I don't know much about this, and I wasn't first to it, but what I have to say about it is interesting anyway."

Maybe I'm just projecting my own neuroses there!

― Groke, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:08 (eighteen years ago)

the existence of terms such as 'popism' and 'rockism' just represent futile attempts to summarise a wide range of experiences, attitudes and aesthetics, and usually seem to be based on wild, unfounded assumptions about how 'other' people as a whole consume, respond to and understand music. when they start being deployed it usually signifies the death of a thread - not necessarily in terms of length, but certainly in terms of original thought.

i disagree with this too. if applied correctly the terms can actually be indicative of other people's own lack of imagination. there are cariacture people on ILM who insist on trotting out the same old line over and over again, attracting either of these tags as a result. so the problem is more their attitude not the tag.

obv. more sensible people are able to express informed opinions and reasoning of things that make sense - and far less likely to be accused of either 'ism' or being either 'ist'.

― blueski, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:13 (eighteen years ago)

everyone retreats into what they know precisely because it's too easy - not only too easy to hear everything else in the world so you don't know where to start, but also too easy to dig around in the darkest corners of your chosen field because it's more comfortable than diving into something you know nothing about with little to no guidance

Quite. And I say this having spent a good chunk of this year doing such digging around via a few key blogs. But besides acting as comfort food on the one hand, it does provide surprises on the other, and often throws the newest stuff I listen to into sharp relief, often for the better.

Anyway, isn't this world one we always kinda wanted, though? Everything to hand and enthusiasms run rampant?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:16 (eighteen years ago)

― blueski, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:17 (eighteen years ago)

I haven't read the whole thread so don't know if this has been pointed out, but ilm seemed to be a village voice writer watering hole when I first got here - the new times takeover dispersed that group, or cut down on their contributions.

the poxy fules + sandbox + back again, plus the ban on unregistered posting, has chilled things. if the site holds up for more than 6 months it'll probably be swinging once more.

overall it goes in cycles. sometimes a good thread will come up and some interesting folks will come out of the woodwork. I don't think nu-ilm has the chutzpah to pull off a thread like this though:

Who Is Watching The Scorsese Dylan Epic On Monday

― Edward III, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:26 (eighteen years ago)

ilm seemed to be a village voice writer watering hole when I first got here - the new times takeover dispersed that group, or cut down on their contributions.

Most everyone's still around in one form or another, I'd say.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:29 (eighteen years ago)

ha i feel groke has touche'd me neatly cos i wz (ok, am) regularly that very same shrill "got there first" knobhead. and i do keep wanting to slaughter everyone on the rolling 2k7 dancehall thread, its true. but it still remains a shame that some fool could suppress a curiosity so entirely.

the problem with ned's "enthusiasms run rampant" line is that it generally boils down to yknow, no sharing, no caring, no conversating, within and without the chosen field like lex sez.

~~oh and also the charts are shit~~

― r|t|c, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:37 (eighteen years ago)

lex sez

lez sex

― unfished business, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:38 (eighteen years ago)

the problem with ned's "enthusiasms run rampant" line is that it generally boils down to yknow, no sharing, no caring, no conversating, within and without the chosen field like lex sez.

Well, my comment was meant to be slightly barbed. Here's a way to think about it, actually -- music criticism as such has traditionally spent a hell of a lot of time talking about something that you're not actually hearing at the time, or that you couldn't hear at all via usual media sources. Now that you can, something's been short-circuited with discourse, but the flipside is, you can get the music almost immediately. So what's more important in the end -- hearing the music or talking about it?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:40 (eighteen years ago)

WAY xpost - but nabisco's lengthy posts in the hendrix thread really do (sadly) boil down to "not liking" and "in the gut", he admits as much himself. Not that I have any problem with him feeling that way, sometimes tastes (particularly on vocals) just can be a very powerful barrier to enjoyment, access, understanding. Same reason I'm not much into Led Zep or the Beach Boys...

Doesn't surprise me that you'd be in thrall to any crumb of support for your knee jerk anti-rock, anti-canon-rock crusade though :P

too easy to dig around in the darkest corners of your chosen field because it's more comfortable than diving into something you know nothing about with little to no guidance

really?? ;-)

― fandango, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)

my better half refers to ilx as "snobs corner" fwiw. i don't think it could really have been called that 3 years ago.

― the next grozart, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:44 (eighteen years ago)

the problem with ned's "enthusiasms run rampant" line is that it generally boils down to yknow, no sharing, no caring, no conversating, within and without the chosen field

this is exactly my problem with the balkanised rolling threads - often (certainly on the dance bobbins ones) it ends up...just a load of people listing different records at each other. which is tremendously helpful resource-wise as you toddle off slsk-wards (or NOT if you can't get the damn thing to work on a mac) but not tremendously inspiring.

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:45 (eighteen years ago)

talking, duh

it's kinda funny cos remember when it wz all "ahh look at the internet freeing these budding writers from industry chains"! but no ur right, the news agency model rules all online. ur an idolator employee after all, u should know.

― r|t|c, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:48 (eighteen years ago)

my better half refers to ilx as "snobs corner" fwiw. i don't think it could really have been called that 3 years ago.

uh

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:50 (eighteen years ago)

Since when was I an Idolator employee?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:50 (eighteen years ago)

i dont get why dabbling dancehall dilettantes would repress yr own interest in dancehall

― deej, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)

1 comment by ned raggett

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)

Ned: I think the issue is "how do we get to a place where discourse AND hearing improve each other?"

Re: the canon and Hendrix threads or whatever - when I used to sometimes start these my (slightly high-handed) motives weren't "I'm doing this BCUZ HENDRIX SUX" but "I'm doing this BCUZ I WANT TO GET AT WHY HE DOESN'T and the best way to do that is to try and chivvy and challenge the people who love him to think through why instead of just parrot stuff." At its frequent best ILM - and ILMers - have done this with aplomb!

― Groke, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)

are u not!! sorry, i thought thats what i heard. deepest apologies.

― r|t|c, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)

sometimes for me, and when it comes to rock music these days it's pretty much all the time, vocals are a powerful barrier to my enjoyment full stop.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:52 (eighteen years ago)

1 comment by ned raggett

Hooray!

Ned: I think the issue is "how do we get to a place where discourse AND hearing improve each other?"

I'm more than fine with that!

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:54 (eighteen years ago)

ned you really should see if gawker will start paying for all those comments

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:54 (eighteen years ago)

3 yrs ago ilm's snobbery might have been more directed at those who didn't think about music in a certain way, whereas now it's directed at those who don't like the right sort of music (cuts both ways, whether you like boards of canada or paris hilton), or whose knowledge of it is limited?

sometimes for me, and when it comes to rock music these days it's pretty much all the time, vocals are a powerful barrier to my enjoyment full stop.

i was just saying to a friend the other day, so many songs are completely ruined by awful vocals!

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

i mean shit, yr posting more than m and b some days

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

lol @ tracerhand's spot-on-ness

― unfished business, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

ned you really should see if gawker will start paying for all those comments

Yeah but no clickthroughs on the ads, though.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)

"not listening to music in the right way" just as often secretly translated to "not liking the right kind of music" back in the proverbial day

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:58 (eighteen years ago)

the other problem there is that you have threads like 'Alexis On Fire' which are pretty much designed to almost celebrate the audacity of broadsheet critics old-fashioned or 'indie-centric' views on pop, instead of just ignoring them so that they go away!

errrm, no. the problem with that thread is it is predicated on the assumption that petridis's opinions are inherently and automatically worthless, and does so in a particularly sneering and adolescent in-crowd fashion. sad to say, but 99% of the time the petridis-bashing just comes across as music journos slagging more successful music journos out of knee-jerk bitterness. it's not pretty.

I don't even particularly like petridis (and it does annoy me intensely that he ALWAYS gets the lead review in the guardian), but surely the central point of music journalism in general is the communication of other perspectives on this most subjective of art forms - especially when I come at the same sounds from a different background and a different angle, and don't agree with the writer. for example, I have absolutely nothing in common musically with either john harris or the lex - to me they're just flipsides of the same unfathomable alien coin - but they're both interesting writers precisely because of their otherness.

― m the g, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:59 (eighteen years ago)

for "listening" read "thinking," there

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:59 (eighteen years ago)

ilm seemed to be a village voice writer watering hole when I first got here - the new times takeover dispersed that group, or cut down on their contributions.

Most everyone's still around in one form or another, I'd say.

still around, but not posting as much, or been balkanized. chuck posts a lot less than he used to outside of the rolling threads, can't remember the last time I saw kogan, sterling posts a lot less frequently than he used to. there's a lot less "christgau called antony a fat queer!" and then his attackers / supporters duking it out for 400 posts. not saying that's the make-it or break-it of ilm but it provided some interesting dynamics.

― Edward III, Friday, 2 March 2007 15:59 (eighteen years ago)

lots of us only became invited to the watering hole long after we started posting to ilm

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:00 (eighteen years ago)

Unpacking Tom's point a bit more -- asking how we get there is interesting because so many models are out there, but which ones have had traction and how have they shaped the discourse as a result? Set that against a series of technological models that encourages brief snippets and quick flipping between music from all over the place and it's no wonder we are where we are.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:00 (eighteen years ago)

i dont get why dabbling dancehall dilettantes would repress yr own interest in dancehall

oh nah my interest in dancehall is the same as it morbidly ever was, if thats what u mean. cos by 'slaughter' i meant point and laugh at everyone, and therefore that its a shame that someone could lose hope cos of some fool's sniping, ie me. :(

btw if we could all avoid dwelling on the glaring heights of hypocrisy i'm scaling on this thread that'd be grand kthnxbye

― r|t|c, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:01 (eighteen years ago)

you all have such weird ideas about what this place was like back in 2002/2003! it was the same damn website with fewer people and longer posts.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:01 (eighteen years ago)

was there any water in the watering can?

― 688, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:02 (eighteen years ago)

i find it especially odd as this is the most i have seen certain people, who have been around longer than i, posting on ilm in forever and a day.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:04 (eighteen years ago)

Actually only last night I dusted off the old slsk and typed in "riddim 2007" - 1 great francophone pop-dancehall track out of the 4 randoms I downloaded so there's life in the old methods yet.

(Well it sounded great to me at 2 in the morning, haven't dared listen back today. Lord Kossiter - "Balance Gal")

― Groke, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:04 (eighteen years ago)

(though i don't really hang around the various balkanized rollin rollin rollin shit, so i could have just missed them.)

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:05 (eighteen years ago)

Kogan still posts on the teenpop and country threads, by the way.

― Groke, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:05 (eighteen years ago)

sometimes for me, and when it comes to rock music these days it's pretty much all the time, vocals are a powerful barrier to my enjoyment full stop.

Tracer Hand

I've often nearly started a thread to work out exactly why vocals in most indie-rock, "experimental", freak-folk whatever are like kryptonite to me these days... like, does no-one else hear the insincerity? or hear the supposed "weirdness" as insincerity? as trying way too hard to be "unique" at any cost? has everyone else just moved beyond such concerns? is it just not what the 30-ish generation is used to? etc

That hendrix thread (slight return) is an unusual reversal of the usual nabisco-ilm relationship. It's a good read, but perhaps not for the reasons (I'm assuming) lex likes it....

― fandango, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:05 (eighteen years ago)

the lack of xpost notifications is now officially making me want to lob beer cans at the monitor alex in nyc-style

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:05 (eighteen years ago)

i would completely agree with fandango but i don't mind joanna newsom's voice :(

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:07 (eighteen years ago)

i was just saying to a friend the other day, so many songs are completely ruined by awful vocals!

lex pretend

hi dere madonna

― fandango, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:07 (eighteen years ago)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v424/runmdc/ilovethearcticmonkeys.jpg

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:08 (eighteen years ago)

bite your tongue

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:08 (eighteen years ago)

re madonna

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:08 (eighteen years ago)

Joanna Newsom's voice is the LEAST of her problems now! Although yes, I could certainly include her in my theory if I was to say Victoria Williams > Joanna Newsom and THEN I can hear it again.

― fandango, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:10 (eighteen years ago)

when alex in nyc was around more, he often served as kind of a bouncer when things got out of hand

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:11 (eighteen years ago)

"if applied correctly the terms ['rockism' and (shudder) 'popism']can actually be indicative of other people's own lack of imagination. there are cariacture people on ILM who insist on trotting out the same old line over and over again, attracting either of these tags as a result"

This is exactly what's wrong with the terms. They're too often used as ammo. Not as a legitimate analytical tool, but rather as a way to encapsulate and thus ridiculize other people's viewpoints.

The terms aren't useless, though. "Rockism" has been useful to me, personally: it's helped me interrogate my own biases. I'm a white, American male. Middle-aged and straight. I came of age with punk, hardcore, metal and proto-indie rock. Therefore, at heart, my whole aesthetic POV is inherently rockist. Thinking about that POV in relation to the pejorative "rockism" has, at the very least, been an interesting intellectual exercise.

― Pye Poudre, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:11 (eighteen years ago)

my own dissatisfaction with ilx is completely personal, probably stemming from a (long simmering...it's not as if i just figured this out for myself 18 months ago) feeling that so many threads that would and will develop into 500 post "discussions" (like southall's "what's wrong exactly with boys and guitars?" now at the top of new answers) could very quickly be answered "nothing. it's down to personal taste and what the artist does with their materials" and the thread could be locked. we (or maybe i just mean me) (but really i mean we) spent a shitload of time arguing about stuff that seems so goddamn self-evident in retrospect that i'm not surprised when so many people shrug at the endless revivals of same. (and while, yeah, ilm is part of what led me to thinking that so many of these questions are self-evident and i can never shake [for good or ill] the effect it had on both my listening and thinking, it often feels like hanging around yr undergrad studies for a sixth year just because you don't want to give up the collegiate lifestyle.]

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:11 (eighteen years ago)

) sorry, forgot to close the parenthesis there.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:13 (eighteen years ago)

[Removed illegal strongo rumination]

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:15 (eighteen years ago)

the whole vocals-as-marmite thing should be a different thread, I'm not biting anything, but it's off topic here... I make as many *exceptions* for poor vocals by artists I love as I suspect you do lex, is what I was really hinting at.

― fandango, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:15 (eighteen years ago)

errrm, no. the problem with that thread is it is predicated on the assumption that petridis's opinions are inherently and automatically worthless, and does so in a particularly sneering and adolescent in-crowd fashion. sad to say, but 99% of the time the petridis-bashing just comes across as music journos slagging more successful music journos out of knee-jerk bitterness. it's not pretty.

original

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:16 (eighteen years ago)

if i had the kind of patience to still do random or even focused slsk searches these days -- and weirdly you'd think i would, considering that i now spend my entire work day in front of a computer hooked up to incredibly fast internet -- i think i would almost appreciate the rolling nonsense 2007 threads more than the old-school argumentative type threads because at least they're helpful from a TIP! perspective in thinning out the COMPLETELY TERRIFYING AMOUNT OF MUSIC, which has caused me to retreat like a frightened bunny into a protective warren of old favorites and stuff i'm asked to write about.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:16 (eighteen years ago)

ilm you made me a 29-year-old old man!

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:19 (eighteen years ago)

original

no. that's the point. it's really not.

― m the g, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:20 (eighteen years ago)

COMPLETELY TERRIFYING AMOUNT OF MUSIC

This can't be emphasized enough.

Embracing music as process rather than product has been freeing. It just becomes this flow and the physical object is of less relevance. Then things just hit you randomly and you don't expect to ever return to them again, ever.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

no, that's what's made it so terrifying!

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

I've just read those Nabisco comments on the Hendrix thread. So utterly wrong-headed, muddled, unsubstantiated and in places downright racist it actually makes you wonder whether he ever bothered to go beyond side one of his greatest hits collection.

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

I'm surprised at how much I am agreeing with strongo on this. I stick around primarily because it's just engaging enough to keep me entertained, but I can do it while I am at work or while I am stuck at home feeling ill with sinus problems, or while I am in-between chores. Otherwise, I do find it useful as an information source, a source for leads to unfamiliar music.

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=32938

― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:22 (eighteen years ago)

this is probably just the catholic in me unable to relinquish any sort of control and just go with the flow

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:22 (eighteen years ago)

non-malaise reason:

A number of folks are having problems accessing the board from work situations -- it's being looked into, we think it has something to do with web proxies. Traffic has dropped some beyond that, certainly, but life goes on!

Ned Raggett on Tuesday, 27 February 2007 15:10 (3 days ago)

Also, haven't some folks moved over to the dissensus board?

― curmudgeon, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)

we're better off

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)

The vocals are the thing that bothers me most about rock from all eras, although the singing just seems to get worse and worse with each decade.

― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)

just kidding dissensus i luv u boo

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)

this is probably just the catholic in me unable to relinquish any sort of control and just go with the flow

Could be. (Being raised Anglican means it's ridiculously easy to do this because that's what most Anglicans in the States do anyway, at least!)

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:25 (eighteen years ago)

that's barely even a religion, ned

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:25 (eighteen years ago)

why don't you just call yourself a unitarian, already

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:25 (eighteen years ago)

I wish to hell we would! Then we could tell those homophobic assholes in Nigeria to fuck off and die.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:26 (eighteen years ago)

my basic live-and-let-live philosophy these days when it comes to just about everything fills me with the horrifying prospect that i may be turning into some kind of musical libertarian

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:26 (eighteen years ago)

is there an anglican equivalent of still having the hail mary embedded in your head at the age of 23?

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:26 (eighteen years ago)

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:27 (eighteen years ago)

horrifying prospect that i may be turning into some kind of musical libertarian

why is this bad?

― 688, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:28 (eighteen years ago)

is there an anglican equivalent of still having the hail mary embedded in your head at the age of 23?

God no. At most it's like "Well I remember that one hymn, I think."

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:29 (eighteen years ago)

being raised a good working class democrat, collapse of the american left, not wanting to be a libertarian

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:29 (eighteen years ago)

universities don't cease to exist once you've got your degree though strongo! how and when you interact with them once you have is up to you of course

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:29 (eighteen years ago)

Embracing music as process rather than product has been freeing. It just becomes this flow and the physical object is of less relevance. Then things just hit you randomly and you don't expect to ever return to them again, ever.

yeah ned i agree w.jess....i find that the MENTAL clutter of all these fucking stupid albums i've grabbed off YSI threads and shit to be completely MORE overwhelming and fucked up that the records sitting on my shelf...i only say this cuz you've made a lot of comments talking about how feng shui and freeing giving up your physical CDs has been and selling off your stuff, having only MP3s, but for some reason I find it to be worse now, actually...my records...they sit on the shelf and they are either something i play or not, doesn't make any difference... but this constant barrage of new albums and stuff that i feel like i need to listen to on MP3 is just completely overwhelming to me....

i also realize that i never really truly commit to something unless i actually go out and buy it, listen to it in the cd player in the car, at home, etc etc....i have so much shit on mp3 that is great, but there's always the NEW batch of mp3s i "should" listen to....ug....drives me nuts, i'm really considering only listen to stuff i BUY from now on....

which maybe we're just different people, but yeah jess's terrifying comment really resonated w/me.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:29 (eighteen years ago)

Here's the thing, Matt -- years ago, when I was just starting grad school, my advisor told me something pretty smart: "You'll never be able to read all the books or articles that you're supposed to, so just keep up with what you can." The truth of this, applied ever broadly to many different things in life, has become increasingly self-evident, so therefore these days it's all of a piece to me -- it also parallels my collapse in much book-buying, simply because there's both so much to read on the Web and, importantly, I work in a high end academic library. I don't really *need* to buy any more books these days, my checkout list right now is hovering at seventy books. So certainly I'm coming from a definite place and mindset but to me it seems a sensible one.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:34 (eighteen years ago)

you gotta get out of academia and LIVE, man

xpost

i clicked on that "mutant sounds" blog linked on noize yesterday, downloaded one TG live album, contemplated the rest, and realized that this is a whole musical world that i can never be a part of, i shouldn't feel bad for that, and there's nothing wrong with either my HD or my head not being stuffed full of obscure noize and proto-industrial cassettes.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:34 (eighteen years ago)

i kind of like just observing these highly focused mp3 album blogs like some kinda nature show.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)

haha

i have thought for a long time that falling in love with new music needs a physical social context that you're hopefully in love with too but at least holds some interest/comfort/acceptability, no matter how old you are, and whatever else ILX is it's not physical

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)

None of which is to say I don't see where you're coming from. But it's just, I dunno -- I'd rather spend time chatting with friends or planning trips or trying to make a good recipe work these days than worrying about whether or not I've heard everything I should. The music's there, I'll get to things, I'll write reviews and essays and more as I'm interested in them and I'll post here and elsewhere as the mood seizes me. Can't complain about that!

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:36 (eighteen years ago)

(That to Matt etc.)

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:36 (eighteen years ago)

like, will my life be made any richer by listening to some Armenian nut in his basement banging two trash can lids together for 45 minutes? maybe. will it be made any worse by me listening to it once and never again? no, of course not. is it cool if i just sidestep the issue entirely? yes.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:36 (eighteen years ago)

i have thought for a long time that falling in love with new music needs a physical social context that you're hopefully in love with too

trouble is recently i've realised that i everyone i know now loves music i hate, whether it's mimsy, pert scandopop or awful indie-dance by dance acts who unaccountably want to be rock bands

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:37 (eighteen years ago)

but they're both interesting writers precisely because of their otherness.

well 'otherness' is not interesting by default imo

― blueski, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

i kind of like just observing these highly focused mp3 album blogs like some kinda nature show.

With its own freaks.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

also, i can't go to mp3 blogs any more. too fucking much.

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

yeah maybe i should just "give up" (i mean that in a good way, like i was just thinking, "i still haven't heard that final fantasy album", like who gives a fuck!)

i think the real reason i'm leaning towards just "listening to what i buy" i cuz i know how i am, and at least the lack of money to buy shit-tons of stuff will act as a natural barrier to overconsumption.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

xpost yeah the dusty-groove school of LP-rip mp3 blogs is astonishing, and it is totally overwhelming, especially in that so much of the music is so increibly good - which is great of course, but for me at least it requires a serious effort of projection of will and wish fulfillment to ever fall head over heels for the music because it feels like it's being beamed in from some irradiated and entirely automated underground bunker

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:39 (eighteen years ago)

GAH THE XPOSTS ARE JERKIN MY CHAIN

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:39 (eighteen years ago)

also why do people write 'errrm, no'?

just write 'no'

― blueski, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:40 (eighteen years ago)

the fact that the lex, who is six years younger than i, says that means that perhaps it's not just my generation but a basic info-overload burnout around the corner. alternately, 16-year-olds just look upon our meager input receptors with contempt and pity.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:40 (eighteen years ago)

this is partly a function of promos, which i shouldn't complain about, but i'm all too aware that even music i like, i usually get to listen to once before having to move on to the next. apart from when i obstinately get stuck on one thing, like ciara.

― lex pretend, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)

also, i can't go to mp3 blogs any more. too fucking much.

I like the very specialized ones out there such as Germans Under Cover because the brief is so (relatively) focused that it's easier to dip in, true. But it also helps that it's very entertaining and very well written, taking us all the way back to Tom's point, I guess!

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)

Hype Machine has taken all the hassle out of MP3 blogs, but if only they could install a filter that took out all those MP3 blogs that are just "here are 50 Wilco MP3s enjoy" with no writing, that'd be peachy.

― Dom Passantino, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:46 (eighteen years ago)

I'm kind of abstractly touched by the fact that this thread has turned into something worthwhile; it looked initially like it was just going to be a zingfest.

Many interesting points by many good people (Jess, Ned, Lex, more [some with names not in that assonance]).

― Scik Mouthy, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:48 (eighteen years ago)

we can still pull one out on occasion

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:51 (eighteen years ago)

No question ILM's collective IQ has dropped since those much-lamented salad days of 2000-2001. (Insert facetious "9/11 changed everything" joke here.) Many more frivolous threads, much less esoteric arcana. But speaking from a strictly selfish relative ignoramus's viewpoint (I didn't show up here 'til '04), I personally LIKE the more accessible ILM, one where the emphasis is on, y'know, music, less so than sociology or semiotics. I'm an underachieving university dropout and don't know shit about Noam Chomsky. That's my problem. But I also don't GIVE a shit about Noam Chomsky - at least, except inasmuch as he's made any genuine contributions to the world of music. I'd like to see more threads like that classic "What's With The Constant Cymbal Tapping in Jazz?" - those long & winding threads that mix valid opinions, facts, history, useful technical info and consumer recommendations, all without devolving into one of those tiresome, endless thread-derailing arguments. In short, I like my ILM intelligent, not intellectual. Sorry.

And now off I go to rent "Big Momma's House 2" before the video store runs out.

― Myonga Vön Bontee, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:52 (eighteen years ago)

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:54 (eighteen years ago)

i was an anglican and i have the hail mary embedded in my head in both english and latin!

ilm is part of what led me to thinking that so many of these questions are self-evident and i can never shake [for good or ill] the effect it had on both my listening and thinking, it often feels like hanging around yr undergrad studies for a sixth year just because you don't want to give up the collegiate lifestyle.

i really like this point! i noticed, recently, that my music tastes basically haven't changed since 2002, which was when i started reading ilm and basically discarded a load of dumb ideology (that you could only like pop if you weren't serious about it, e.g.), and now i can't imagine going back to that sort of cycling through microgenres of 'alternative' or w/e, being so self-important about the shonky stuff i love. and it all seems so obvious, and I feel like i should be keeping this party line up somehow, hoping that others get over the same hurdles as I did: but 'people like all kinds of things and often this is for awesome reasons which would be really cool to hear' is so hard to get across!

ughhh that made no sense whatever.

― c sharp major, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:54 (eighteen years ago)

(multiple xposts on that one obv)

hype machine puts the hassle into mp3 blogs! you have to know what you're looking for! i don't know what i want, i want an mp3 blog to tell me something is really good and be consistently right about it.

― c sharp major, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:56 (eighteen years ago)

I still haven't gotten over Marcello describing Nabisco's opinions on Jimi Hendrix as 'downright racist'... :-D

― unfished business, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:56 (eighteen years ago)

i was an anglican and i have the hail mary embedded in my head in both english and latin!

Frightening. And I thought I attended a high Anglican church!

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:56 (eighteen years ago)

Also, it's nearly 18 months since I wrote this - http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/soulseeking.htm - and though my habits since then have changed quite a lot, I still think it's pretty relevent.

― Scik Mouthy, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:57 (eighteen years ago)

It's difficult to make ILM work with such a wide range of ages and experience levels with music. When I first came on I felt like I'd just shoot my mouth off half-ignorantly only to be shot down by professional music critics who were 30-50% older, knew 500% as much about music and were 800% more cranky. I remember making what I thought was a pretty well-reasoned criticism of John Mellencamp's "Scarecrow" that included an unfavorable comparison to Springsteen (who I don't like all that much either) only to be told I was spouting "warmed over 70s Rolling Stone crap" or something along those lines. I was six when the record actually came out, and I wasn't even alive for most of the 70s when I would presumably have been reading all this allegedly trite, predictable criticism of Mellencamp as a bad imitation of Springsteen.

I've generally just become less prone to post at all on ILM because I never feel like my record collection is large enough or my opinion well-informed enough.But actually since ILX has been back up I've felt like there's been a bit of thawing in the atmosphere with a lot less snarky "GREBT THREAD DOOD I ALREADY THUNK THIS A MILLION YEARS AGO" type posts.

― Hurting 2, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:57 (eighteen years ago)

Look at that idiotic paragraph about counting the musicians in, which demonstrates a complete ignorance of the blues, of jazz, of the history of black music in general.

Or perhaps some people here were happy just to stop at Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 2 March 2007 16:59 (eighteen years ago)

surely that wide range is what makes ilm work, though? if we were all at the same level there'd either be no use in posting or none in reading.

― c sharp major, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:00 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, Marcello, but I'd suggest finding a jpg of Nabisco somewhere and then hastily recalibrating your claim...

― unfished business, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:03 (eighteen years ago)

i liked that article nick. that's definitely along the lines of what i've been thinking lately.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:05 (eighteen years ago)

ooh marcello, you so crazy

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:05 (eighteen years ago)

Please move this thread to I Must Protest!

― blueski, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:06 (eighteen years ago)

when ILM started i believe mark s was the only "pro" (and stevie T? and the pinefox?)

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:06 (eighteen years ago)

Golden oldies, Rolling Stones, we don't want them back
I'd rather jack - than Fleetwood Mac
No heavy metal, rock'n'roll, music from the past
I'd rather jack - than Fleet - Wood - Mac!!

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:07 (eighteen years ago)

Ned: our organist set the ave maria to music, so we had to sing it on a fairly regular basis. and the vicar taught us to pray the rosary in confirmation classes! good times, good times.

― c sharp major, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:07 (eighteen years ago)

I think the original SLSK article was the first time I was ever ahewad of the curve.

― Scik Mouthy, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:10 (eighteen years ago)

One of the best things about getting older, I think, is abandoning the need to be hastily dismissive of things. But that doesn't mean you have to try to listen to "everything." Best thing to do in music, film, reading, etc. is to follow one's passions while taking care to avoid letting them become a ghetto. God knows that's time consuming enough as it is these days. When I first realized I really liked 70s afro-pop, juju, highlife, etc. I could only get my hands on a handful of recordings without going to great lengths. Now I could probably spend my entire emusic subscription on it.

― Hurting 2, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

Mark S wasn't on ILM when it started - he remains the only person I've ever spammed saying "come and contribute to my messageboard".

Stevie T was at the time a former pro, I think? Mark Morris of Select was on from very early on, too.

― Groke, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:25 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, nick's slsk article was probablythe first thing i read that really codified/articulated a bunch of stuff i had been slowly realizing/feeling/maybe not fully aware of yet.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:34 (eighteen years ago)

and that hendrix thread (at least based on my own embarrassing posts) is a perfect argument for why old ilm was such a vicious trap when it came to pointlessly airing out yr barely informed/reasoned/original opinions

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:56 (eighteen years ago)

Geez, what did I say on the Hendrix thread? And where did Marcello call it racist?

If anyone else said that,* I'd probably get really indignant and offended, but it's Marcello, who I imagine wanders around at night yelling at trees and calling them fascists for not appreciating Saint Etienne or something.

* Apart from maybe the Lex.

― nabisco, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:57 (eighteen years ago)

i don't know much more about hendrix (or music!) now than i did then, but i know better to keep my yap shut

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 17:57 (eighteen years ago)

Jess, the yap-shut thing is problematic, though. Part of why older ILM threads got more ruminative about music was that people were more likely to go out of their "expertise" and talk about how they felt about music -- not about whether it was "good" or "important" in a systematic sense, but just what it sounded like to them, and why. (E.g. I have to re-read the Hendrix thread, but I'm guessing my contributions to it amount to "I don't know much about Hendrix, but I've always found it unappealing for these reasons.")

― nabisco, Friday, 2 March 2007 18:00 (eighteen years ago)

my problem until about 2005 was always attempting to wax wide-ranging when i was really just vomiting back up barely digested received wisdom and stuff i had read somewhere

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 18:10 (eighteen years ago)

probably into 2005 for that matter. (and now.)

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 18:10 (eighteen years ago)

i get the feeling that thats what much of paid music writing is, though.

― deej, Friday, 2 March 2007 18:12 (eighteen years ago)

well it ain't exactly a place for thinking out loud, no.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 18:13 (eighteen years ago)

one definite difference for me about ilm then and ilm now, personally, is that i was very idealistic about the idea of music crit, for good or ill.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 18:15 (eighteen years ago)

(mostly ill, considering that now i realize it's really not for me and that i could have spent the last four years getting a degree, but oh well.)

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 18:16 (eighteen years ago)

jessposts slowly turning into navelgrazing selfanalysis still tops after all this time! the more thingz change...

i luv u boooooooooooobyhead!

― scott seward, Friday, 2 March 2007 19:21 (eighteen years ago)

my entire life is one long descent into navel gazing, scott

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 19:25 (eighteen years ago)

johnnylongtorso.jpg

― ghost rider, Friday, 2 March 2007 19:27 (eighteen years ago)

much like ILM's life is one long descent into gay zings.

― Alex in Baltimore, Friday, 2 March 2007 19:27 (eighteen years ago)

leave elli$ out of this

― and what, Friday, 2 March 2007 19:30 (eighteen years ago)

full circle

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 19:33 (eighteen years ago)

ilm hit some sorta make-me-ralph nadir at some point last year and i thought i could slip away quietly and get something done, but then it got not so gagsome and i missed my chance. it's all a blur. or maybe i was just in a bad mood last year. i was definitely getting rilly rilly pissed at the "sooooo i like music what else will i like/i own these CDs which one should i play tomorrow at 5 pm mountain time" threads but i should shut up i'm sure people wanna throw rotten tomato at my face too sometimes on the other hand fuck them i rule.

― scott seward, Friday, 2 March 2007 19:35 (eighteen years ago)

ralph nadir

Another screenname floats into the ether :(

― DJ Mencap, Friday, 2 March 2007 19:49 (eighteen years ago)

Anyway, this: "my problem until about 2005 was always attempting to wax wide-ranging when i was really just vomiting back up barely digested received wisdom and stuff i had read somewhere"

is basically me talking about music in almost any medium summarised, except without the 2005 bit. I don't see it as abad thing per se. You can't turn enthusiasm on and off, and if you grow up a dilletante about music you're basically stuck with it, however much you try and deny it to yourself

― DJ Mencap, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:00 (eighteen years ago)

Jess, I like having your voice around. That comment about certain writings - maybe more academically focused - often being about things that were basically self-evident in the first place, for example, cuts through to the heart of lots of stuff. (That's not a diss on having more of an academic focus in general, by the way - just academic work that falls in that category!)

Just a couple of days ago, I was thinking of assigning my world music students to read this kind of general article on how music functions around the world (basically because I couldn't think of something for them to do that was more related to the actual music we're currently talking about in class). But that's what it came down to - "How much of this is self-evident?" I've had that reaction so many times to things.

― Tim Ellison, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:10 (eighteen years ago)

ILX's popism thing seems to work almost like cognitive therapy, giving you confidence in yr own decisions and opinions and perspectives. Then you get shot down by zings.

haha but the point is, I think that confidence is sort of a good & neccessary first step, a way to give you confidence in your own reactions and not feel the need to rely on THE CANON or other people's interpretations of worthwhile music - and you're willing to express those thoughts.

This only takes you so far though ... knowledge and experience have to pick up somewhere. I can talk about rap all damn day but if i want to discuss it with noz from cocaine blunts for example i'm gonna have to realize that he's pulling on a somewhat wider range of listening experiences than i am simply by virtue of his collecteurism and ability to hear those cassette-only bsides and to check liner notes for production credits vs. someone downloading who doesnt realize that pimp c co-produced one track on big mike's debut for example.

I'm not sure where i'm going with this but it seemed to fit in with what nabisco was saying

― deej, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:20 (eighteen years ago)

Good thread.

When I first found ILM, I wouldn't have called myself a "music obsessive" -- what I was attracted to was the fact that people on the site were talking about popular culture and art and criticism in such an intelligent AND intellectual way. The aesthetic debates I'd been having with myself for several years were being hashed out before my eyes, and the fact that it was being done in relationship to POP music, of all things (which I wasn't even listening to at all) was a total delight.

In very little time, ILM shaped the way I approached music and significantly altered my musical diet: I bought into the theory of rockism and all its underpinnings, and that had the effect of making me more omnivorous in what I listened to. Exploring various posters' blogs (I remember a couple of weeks when I read through the entire archives of Hipster Detritus, Freezing to Death in the Nuclear Bunker, Bitchcakes, and M Matos) also made me want to write about what I was listening to and thinking about.

I don't think I'm alone in ILM having had a transformative influence on me, and so I think that Jess and Ned are correct that once you go through that period of figuring stuff out and tackling the big issues, the board no longer serves that particular purpose anymore -- but since you still know everyone and are used to chatting with them, you hang on. I think this could be true for anyone who discovers ILM, but I think it's especially true for the old-timers, when the tenor of the place was so different. (I arrived in early 2003, when things were beginning to change but when there were still four separate threads devoted to related concerns about "class, indie, materialism, and intelligence.")

― jaymc, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:42 (eighteen years ago)

haha but the point is, I think that confidence is sort of a good & neccessary first step, a way to give you confidence in your own reactions and not feel the need to rely on THE CANON or other people's interpretations of worthwhile music - and you're willing to express those thoughts.

Yeah, this is OTM.

― jaymc, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:44 (eighteen years ago)

The talk about transformation is interesting to me because I'd say it was more evolutionary, but then again I came to ILM in a specific context of discussion through alt.music.alternative, where a lot of the initial hashing out of ideas for a number of us took place. Where it was handy for those of there who made the change was that we had a lot more voices to bounce ideas off of instead of the fairly constricted circle a.m.a. had fallen into -- ILM's strongest growth rate probably had to be within its first full year.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:45 (eighteen years ago)

Also, Louis -- I didn't really read Nabisco's Hendrix post closely enough to be able to tell one way or another, but the fact that N. is black doesn't exempt him from the possibility of being racist.

― jaymc, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:47 (eighteen years ago)

I think a lot of ILM becoming more "knowing"/jaded comes from people here getting to know each other and become cliquish or communicate outside the board, for better or worse. I socialize or IM with a lot fewer other posters than a lot of ILM lifers, but even in my limited experience I realize I end up hashing out in one-on-one convos some of the more interesting stuff that a few years ago probably would've played out in public on an ILM thread with more participants (which is one reason why those of us who posted about rap a lot a few years ago can only focus on Rolling threads or off-topic zings, these days). So there's a little less shared experience on a larger level, because some of the revelatory conversations are happening somewhere else, be it blogs or AIM windows or a bar somewhere, and the board itself kinda becomes more limited, or at least more shorthand and peripheral to everyone's dialogue with each other and with music.

― Alex in Baltimore, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:49 (eighteen years ago)

(I arrived in early 2003, when things were beginning to change but when there were still four separate threads devoted to related concerns about "class, indie, materialism, and intelligence.")

Those threads were so much fun! It bums me out sometimes that the natural things to get pulled from the archives and revived tend to be artist-specific classic-or-dud threads -- for obvious search-related reasons -- and those wide-ranging general threads aren't as likely to pop up.

that confidence is sort of a good & neccessary first step, a way to give you confidence in your own reactions and not feel the need to rely on THE CANON or other people's interpretations of worthwhile music

And yeah, OTM, plus this is a lot of why I'm uncomfortable with the zing-based direction of a lot of discussions -- they serve this normalizing effect, kinda like bitchy middle-school kids mocking one another into a rigid system of what sneakers are cool to wear and what movies it's uncool to enjoy. Which is interesting and telling in and of itself, but it tends to work against people digging into really honest opinions and assessments of how they react to stuff.

― nabisco, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:51 (eighteen years ago)

The Lex's post on this thread make me want to punch babies

― JW, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:53 (eighteen years ago)

PS Jaymc I read over those Hendrix posts, obviously, and the weird part is there's nothing in them that has to do with race, racial archetypes, "black" music vs "white" music, or anything I can in any way connect to race -- my main argument was that most of what Hendrix does has been so normalized by constant imitation that I'd need some distance from it to enjoy the originals any more! (Also that he seems to mug for the camera a bit, musically speaking.)

Seriously, it's just Marcello being a nutjob, as is his wont.

― nabisco, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:55 (eighteen years ago)

these threads always turn into a "very special episode" of ilm

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 21:03 (eighteen years ago)

very special like we all hug and tell each other our true feelings, or very special like one of us is popping pills and we need to stage an intervention?

― Alex in Baltimore, Friday, 2 March 2007 21:08 (eighteen years ago)

Right, like when the 4077th M*A*S*H unit watch My Darling Clementine and realize that, deep down, they really like each other after all.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 2 March 2007 21:10 (eighteen years ago)

disgusting

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, 2 March 2007 21:10 (eighteen years ago)

like the intervention leading to the hugs.

i get to be mike seaver. or cockroach.

― strongohulkington, Friday, 2 March 2007 21:10 (eighteen years ago)

Has elements of both doesnt it

― deej, Friday, 2 March 2007 21:11 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljtuGoIIKGs

― deej, Friday, 2 March 2007 21:11 (eighteen years ago)

zach is played by nabisco

― deej, Friday, 2 March 2007 21:13 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.drunkeneagle.com/file/MASH.goodbye.jpg

― Mark Rich@rdson, Friday, 2 March 2007 21:56 (eighteen years ago)

i'm so excited
i'm so excited
i'm so...scared!

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 2 March 2007 22:13 (eighteen years ago)

Music related sociology is sure an interesting subject in a lot of interesting way, but I feel like you are degrading music a bit if that's the only thing you are interested in. I like music for the way it sounds rather than for who I am, and what certain kinds of genres mean to society. For me, music doesn't really mean nothing else than music in itself, that is, nice sound that entertains my ears with nice sound.
I do know it means a lot outside of its actual sound to other people, and that's an interesting subject to talk about for sure, but it is also important to be able to pay attention to the actual music without having to relate it to a lot of outside stuff that doesn't really have to do with the actual sound of what you hear on the recording.

― Geir Hongro, Friday, 2 March 2007 22:14 (eighteen years ago)

I see that Geir has been listening to a lot of John Cage lately.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, 2 March 2007 22:19 (eighteen years ago)

nice sound that entertains my ears with nice sound

http://www.costumenetwork.com/albums/3/pothead.jpg

― scott seward, Friday, 2 March 2007 22:34 (eighteen years ago)

"nabisco otm"

― artdamages, Friday, 2 March 2007 22:48 (eighteen years ago)

i decided just to look at the pictures in this thread and skip the words. its nice cuz theres only two.

― artdamages, Friday, 2 March 2007 22:49 (eighteen years ago)

Also Scott OTM.

― HI DERE, Friday, 2 March 2007 22:51 (eighteen years ago)

but it is also important to be able to pay attention to the actual music without having to relate it to a lot of outside stuff that doesn't really have to do with the actual sound of what you hear on the recording.

That's true, Geir, but it wouldn't make for much of a message board, would it?

― jaymc, Friday, 2 March 2007 22:54 (eighteen years ago)

web 3.0 = music message boards allow users to communicate instantaneously using a vast multi-media library; someone starts a thread titled [clip of Shins song], someone else replies [video of Zach Braff falling down stairs] [picture of corn] [clip of Black Dice live set]; Geir posts [stop-motion animation of Howard Jones]; someone else posts [picture of David Duke]

― nabisco, Friday, 2 March 2007 23:32 (eighteen years ago)

we're almost there, Geir!

― nabisco, Friday, 2 March 2007 23:33 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.bankersonline.com/postcard/pictures/whatever.jpg

― scott seward, Friday, 2 March 2007 23:35 (eighteen years ago)

Well, as long as you discuss guitars solos, chord sequences, arrangements or even production values, you discuss music. As long as you discuss politics, religion, ethics or race, you don't.

Lyrics are somewhere in between. Not really music, but sort of part of the artistic expression anyway.

― Geir Hongro, Friday, 2 March 2007 23:39 (eighteen years ago)

!!!!!!

― deej, Friday, 2 March 2007 23:40 (eighteen years ago)

Geir's really on a hot streak today

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 2 March 2007 23:42 (eighteen years ago)

# taking sides: attack 27 decay 82 sustain 64 release 33 vs. attack 32 decay 80 sustain 62 release 45
# Dmin7: Classic or Dud?
# S/D: Key changes that come BEFORE the bridge

― nabisco, Friday, 2 March 2007 23:50 (eighteen years ago)

Haha there's a sense in which I'd totally take Geir's complaint to heart, though, which is that there's a ton of social-heirarchy stuff that goes on here that sometimes occludes spending a ton of time picking apart how specific pieces of music work. (But that's inevitable anywhere outside a confirmed small group of people who like the thing well enough to care about picking it apart.)

― nabisco, Friday, 2 March 2007 23:52 (eighteen years ago)

Ethics and aesthetics (which Wittgenstein takes to be equivalent) cannot be put into words, because they make judgments of value (6.421). - http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/tractatus/section13.rhtml

― artdamages, Friday, 2 March 2007 23:56 (eighteen years ago)

Wittgeirstein, clearly.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 3 March 2007 00:04 (eighteen years ago)

"which is that there's a ton of social-heirarchy stuff that goes on here that sometimes occludes spending a ton of time picking apart how specific pieces of music work."

more self-analysis. it's a good first step. we are here for you if you need us.

― Maria :D, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:00 (eighteen years ago)

hey wait that was me scott.

― Maria :D, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:00 (eighteen years ago)

anyway, i think i still hang out here cuzza the good spelling. you ever see a message board? sheesh...

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:01 (eighteen years ago)

Whenever I spend any time analyzing the composition of a song, people go "ARGH NO YOU ARE RUINING MY COD-MUSICOLOGY BONER" so I've basically stopped doing that and started going "HAHA LOOK AT THE PEOPLE WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW MUSIC IS MADE TRYING TO TALK ABOUT MUSIC USING CLICHES THAT ARE CENTURIES OLD, LOL PWNED BY SALIERI", which on balance is a lot more fun but has the side-effect of no one paying much attention to me when I do actually have something substantive to say, or (even better) it creates situations where people I never interact with say "Wow, I hate to say it but Dan Perry is right" which then makes me go "WHO ARE YOU AND WHY SHOULD I CARE THAT IT PAINS YOU TO AGREE WITH ME, LOL AT THE SELF-IMPORTANCE OF MAN"

This is the main reason why I'm not on ILM all that much anymore; it's probably best for everyone concerned.

― HI DERE, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:25 (eighteen years ago)

who are you?

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:26 (eighteen years ago)

are you steve shneeeeeberg? wait, he still posts here.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:27 (eighteen years ago)

you aren't crazy tim. he's always still here.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:28 (eighteen years ago)

He says who he is in the post!

― Tim Ellison, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:28 (eighteen years ago)

see, there's tim! hi tim!

okay, i'll read it again.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:29 (eighteen years ago)

;_;

― HI DERE, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:29 (eighteen years ago)

I think this provides a clue:

it creates situations where people I never interact with say "Wow, I hate to say it but Dan Perry is right" which then makes me go "WHO ARE YOU AND WHY SHOULD I CARE THAT IT PAINS YOU TO AGREE WITH ME, LOL AT THE SELF-IMPORTANCE OF MAN"

― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:30 (eighteen years ago)

oh wow i totally read that dan perry line the wrong way. hi dan!

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:30 (eighteen years ago)

dan you still post here!

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:31 (eighteen years ago)

i hate to say it, but dan might have a point.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:32 (eighteen years ago)

^_^

― HI DERE, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:32 (eighteen years ago)

gah xposts

Dan fwiw I like your analytical posts. As a musician I like people who address the more tangible music theory side of things.

― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:32 (eighteen years ago)

(though maybe I should post something of substance to ILM for once before I say stuff like that!!)

― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:33 (eighteen years ago)

i'm totally off the substance in 2007. i'll leave it to others.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:36 (eighteen years ago)

what kind of music does nabisco like? i don't even know. i should start reading pitchfork.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:37 (eighteen years ago)

Definitely, Dan. I've only stumbled across your 'musicological' (?) posts a handful of times (mostly in the archives), but they're always very very informative and cool. A humble request for more.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:38 (eighteen years ago)

fuckin xxxwhateverthefuckpost

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:38 (eighteen years ago)

I don't get why you all think it's so easy to separate a piece of music from the politics, religion, ethics and race issues that surround, contextual, help define and constitute it.

I mean, I see Geir say it, and I just put it on the list of things that I will always disagree with Geir about, but I think ILM would be a) boring without a full discussion of music and b) not all that intelligent (which is to say--wrong-headed and sort of useless).

Which isn't to say that I don't like hearing people with music degrees (or a fair amount of knowledge at any rate) talk about the formal concerns of a piece. But that's not really discussing the piece, to me.

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:41 (eighteen years ago)

Scott even I know Dan likes the Cure and Prince and I never post here!

― Trayce, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:41 (eighteen years ago)

gah i sound like an ass--i really do like hearing Dan (or whoever) clue me in to interesting things abt the formal structure--i just hate it when people say shit like "THIS PIECE HAS NOTHIGN TO DO WITH THE CONTEXT IN WHCHI IT WAS CREATEDED" or whatever

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:43 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I'm very interested in how music, is created, how overlapping soundwaves can create a certain mood or memorised pattern in the mind of the listener, and how timbre, volume and note combine to shape that pattern. Dan, tell us, how does it all work?

― unfished business, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:44 (eighteen years ago)

*extraneous comma before 'is created'

― unfished business, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:45 (eighteen years ago)

no, not dan, nabisco. i know what dan likes.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:45 (eighteen years ago)

omg, was dan fishing? is he lonely? what's up with this thread?

we loooooooooove yooooooo dan pleeeeeeze come back.

i love the internet.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:48 (eighteen years ago)

I don't get why you all think it's so easy to separate a piece of music from the politics, religion, ethics and race issues that surround, contextual, help define and constitute it.

I think Geir'd be the only one to suggest its absolute irrelevance, though the rest of us may disagree about the degrees to which those things influence a piece of music.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:48 (eighteen years ago)

dan, what's the difference between a madrigal and a balletto? hmmmmmmmmmm?

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:49 (eighteen years ago)

i just hate it when people say shit like "THIS PIECE HAS NOTHIGN TO DO WITH THE CONTEXT IN WHCHI IT WAS CREATEDED" or whatever

I hope you don't think I was implying that!!!

― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:51 (eighteen years ago)

you can talk about music as sound and forget the rest. it's not that hard. if you want to. you can talk about music in all kinds of ways.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:52 (eighteen years ago)

I myself am probably nearer the Geir end of the scale than most, although external factors CAN shape my enjoyment or appreciation of a piece of music, so it can't be entirely discounted. Moreover, the context of other music is incredibly important in forming most musical judgements. The flow of an album depends upon the relationship between different tracks, the career of a band based upon the steps between records, the band itself judged by its peers and forebears (and in some cases its acolytes).

― unfished business, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:52 (eighteen years ago)

* for 'by' read 'against'

― unfished business, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:53 (eighteen years ago)

and scott OTM

― unfished business, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:53 (eighteen years ago)

no no dont worry--it wasnt really directed at anyone. i felt mad and now i dont.

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:55 (eighteen years ago)

you can talk about music as sound and forget the rest. it's not that hard. if you want to. you can talk about music in all kinds of ways.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy.

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:57 (eighteen years ago)

yeah i get that--sorry if i misrepresented--i just mean that when you do that youre literally only abt the music formally, taken objectively (a more extreme postmodernist would probably say that you can't do that, because the way we talk abt sound is structured by the socio-cultural norms where we're talking)--if we want to throw arnd words like "meaning" and discuss a piece as such, we don't get to take out "culture" or "religion"

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:57 (eighteen years ago)

hi, rockist! how is sheena ringo!

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:59 (eighteen years ago)

i don't think youre really "forgetting the rest," scott; no one can shut out all of the factors that have constructed their own personal tastes in music and structured the way they think abt sound.

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 01:59 (eighteen years ago)

max otm.

louis, the divide between us has become clear.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:01 (eighteen years ago)

altho fuckit im just making the stoned undergrad (ie shitty/reductive/pompous) version of derrida's argument--"there is no outside-the-text" &c and im sure i sound like an asshole so feel free to ignore me sorry for bothering

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:01 (eighteen years ago)

o max why to slay me

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:03 (eighteen years ago)

i'm really pretty good at just listening and not thinking. and i can listen and think. and i can be tired and listen and i can listen when i'm mad and i can listen FOR stuff on purpose. i mean, when i hear birds outside, i'm not always thinking of everything that i know about birds. or the context of the birds. sound can be sound.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:10 (eighteen years ago)

how is sheena ringo!

What a coincidence, I am sending some of her stuff to someone right now, as I listen to her.

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:10 (eighteen years ago)

(Although it turns out, to my surprise, I think Muzai Moratorium is better than Shouso Strip.)

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:12 (eighteen years ago)

i am now watching an umm kalthoum video in yer honor.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:14 (eighteen years ago)

nah but what i mean is that sound isnt absolute--i believe that you can turn off personal bs (even maybe political bs and if youre good at self-awareness maybe a lot of cultural bs) but you cant turn off the way, at its most basic levels, that your consciousness structures the sounds youre hearing. so even if its "just sound" its mediated by stuff thats been wired into you genetically but also culturall, socially, etc.

btw scott i think youre a great writer. also i bet youre a pretty good dad.

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:15 (eighteen years ago)

sorry did that sound creepy? i am ston3d. but if youre a nice to yr kids as you are on ilm, youre a great dad.

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:20 (eighteen years ago)

i am ston3d.

no kidding

― m coleman, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:22 (eighteen years ago)

i'm not always so nice! grrrrrrrr!

yeah, alright, there are obviously forces in my ears beyond my control. but i can't worry about that. you should always have yer ears as open as wide as they will go. that's all i'm saying. and just listen.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:23 (eighteen years ago)

derrida got there first, but barthes put it better.

― unfished business, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:25 (eighteen years ago)

no im not saying dont be open minded! i just mean that none of us is as objective as we might think we are/wish to be. (i think thats sort of geir's deal--he wants to take music in absent all other considerations so that we can be "objective" abt it and judge its worth objectively or whatever).

and hey m coleman sorry for sounding like a turd.

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:26 (eighteen years ago)

FFS people, I'm not fishing! I am stating why 98% of my posts are goofy messages to online and real-life friends as opposed to structural dissections of various pieces of music; I am sure that on some level this has contributed to the sense that ILX in general (not just ILM) has "dumbed down" as time has gone on; a lot of what Jess/Alex/Nabisco/et al have said is ringingly OTM to me and I was offering a Perry-ized take on the same theme (IOW, I can only take responsibility for what I have done to contribute to the environment, so I'm going to talk about what I've done as opposed to what everyone else has done).

(haha also the big honking thing I'm leaving out is that I mostly post at work and I'm busy enough there that I rarely have more time to type more than four sentences at once, ergo it is much easier to operate in "dick joke" mode than in "SERIOUS CAT IS SERIOUS ABT MUSIC" mode)

― HI DERE, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:30 (eighteen years ago)

see, it's really easy for me. i don't really expect anything from ilx. if i get cool info/stuff, that's cool, but i create my own fun here for the most part. i can't expect other people to uphold some mythical standard of excellence. it's life really. sometimes good. sometimes dumb. and that's the way it should be.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:37 (eighteen years ago)

max dude you didn't sound like a turd I was laughing cause I just read yr previous post and thought "this guy is on marijuana"

― m coleman, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:37 (eighteen years ago)

mostly i'm just addicted to clicking thru threads. it's soothing. and the spelling thing. the spelling thing is key. i mean have you seen what message boards are like? yeesh.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:38 (eighteen years ago)

I make more way spelling mistakes here than I do IRL

― m coleman, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:40 (eighteen years ago)

ha shit sorry i really need to stop posting when hi b/c everyone elses posts read like direct personal attacks and it comes off as way more serious and then i re-read my own posts im like SHIT WHY DO I SOUND LIKE SUCH A HIGH-ASS COLLEGE STUDENT and then its like oh duh.

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:42 (eighteen years ago)

I don't think Geir's approach to music is overly analytical; he just hears what he likes, like everyone else. He just happens to quantify what he likes in an esoteric way.

― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:48 (eighteen years ago)

i get irritated bc its never "i think that..." or "my opinion is..." its always "peter gabriel is better than phil collins, period" as though he has a big fucking chart on the wall of his bathroom with the zombies or some shit at the very top and e-40 at the bottom next to a big "0" and if you asked him abt it hed whip out a slide ruler and a chalkboard and fucking prove it to you with SCIENCE.

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:51 (eighteen years ago)

xpost

esoteric as a jackboot

― m coleman, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:52 (eighteen years ago)

Wasn't there some thread where Geir said at the beginning of every one of his posts there was an implied "In my opinion..."? Or am I dreaming this up?

― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:54 (eighteen years ago)

fyi I'm not trying to be all Capn-save-a-Geir here, I just remember that post for some reason

― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:54 (eighteen years ago)

ned to hongro circa 1996:

Other than that, you finally seem to have gained something
close to wisdom by noting the 'subjective' nature of this whole
discussion. Tell me, why didn't you state that up front? It's
taken the whole damn month to get to this one point. Furthermore,
why don't you live up to your words and stop trashing music you
don't like simply for existing, when as you say it is subjective...

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:55 (eighteen years ago)

hahaha

― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:56 (eighteen years ago)

there should really be a best of google groups archive thread.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 02:57 (eighteen years ago)

I like Geir's presence. He provides a staunch musical constant against which we can all test our own critical methods.

― unfished business, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:01 (eighteen years ago)

Hahaha http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=Geir+hongro&

― HI DERE, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:03 (eighteen years ago)

"*rolls eyes* Oh dear. Rather pathetic to see you stooping to this
level of attack, yes? Doesn't it strike you as a bit insensitive
and ridiculous to be comparing the person who orchestrated the deaths
of millions with an avant-garde composer? Does this even cross
your mind as being somewhat beyond the pale? Are you that lost in
your own world of musical folly that you think equating Hitler and
Schoenberg is a sensible thing to do?

Sir, you are a fool, but I at least hoped you also had something
akin to a heart. Pity -- doesn't seem to be the case now. Knowing
that in fact you happily equate a musician who violates your
musical 'rules' with the symbol of fascism is frankly scary,
despicable, and disgusting.

Up till now it's been fun toying with you, which is what nearly
all of us have been doing anyway. I think the bloom's off the rose
now... "

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:03 (eighteen years ago)

"Geir Hongro er homo!!!!"

uh

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:09 (eighteen years ago)

The other day I decided to see what I was doing 10 years ago on the interweb, via Google Groups, and OF COURSE it was arguing about subjectivity with G.Hongro :(

(I was also fighting with the long lost PETER PRODGE, who made a very brief incursion into Greenspun ILM and then vanished without trace)

― Groke, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:13 (eighteen years ago)

omg Peter Prodigy! All we need is to find Kat Marco and Heather the Garbage Fan and it would be like Old Home Week for the AMA refugees!

― HI DERE, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:14 (eighteen years ago)

old people be nostalgin'.

― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:16 (eighteen years ago)

i heart ned. GOOD DAY SIR! YOU WILL BE HEARING FROM MY SECONDS UPON THE MORROW.

― scott seward, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:27 (eighteen years ago)

curtis, this is us in 15 years' time

― unfished business, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:27 (eighteen years ago)

Hahahahahaha LJ OTM, GAZE NOT INTO THE ABYSS

― HI DERE, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:28 (eighteen years ago)

t/s: maaaaaaan, that paul edward wagemann was a dick vs. holy crap you remember when passantino reviewed the kaiser chiefs' fourth album?

― unfished business, Saturday, 3 March 2007 03:45 (eighteen years ago)

I think its kind of awesome that after all the "Has ILM gotten stupider" threads the old cats finally opened up on the ILM SMARTER thread.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 3 March 2007 04:16 (eighteen years ago)

I'm a relative newbie, but I gotta say, ILM is WORLDS above the other message boards I've participated in. The discussions are generally pretty cogent, and people don't call each other gay when they disagree, and the only times I've ever really been jumped on are when I say something stupid/blatantly wrong, in which case I'm getting what I deserve anyway. It's mostly been a pleasure posting on here.(This statement, a of course, only really applies to the Rolling Metal Thread. I don't know what the rest of you yahoos do)

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 3 March 2007 04:46 (eighteen years ago)

people don't call each other gay when they disagree

noize board takes care of 95% of that

― gershy, Saturday, 3 March 2007 04:58 (eighteen years ago)

GEIR HONGRO FACTOR ANALYSIS

― libcrypt, Saturday, 3 March 2007 05:22 (eighteen years ago)

Hahahahahaha LJ OTM, GAZE NOT INTO THE ABYSS

Dan OTM too. /adjusts teef

― Trayce, Saturday, 3 March 2007 05:34 (eighteen years ago)

God I was reading usenet the other day. I was a complete dork on alt.music.4ad :(

― Trayce, Saturday, 3 March 2007 05:35 (eighteen years ago)

well duh

― blunt, Saturday, 3 March 2007 05:44 (eighteen years ago)

(I mean, who wasn't, over there, probably)

― blunt, Saturday, 3 March 2007 05:45 (eighteen years ago)

ts: people on nu-nu-nu-nuILM talking about Derrida vs ILM (mach whenever) talking about poop

― artdamages, Saturday, 3 March 2007 13:15 (eighteen years ago)

btw since HI DERE is Dan I gotta say he is, for my money, probably THE funniest poster on ILM/ILE and i think he is from MN (represent). also: http://img.shopping.com/cctool/PrdImg/images/pr/100X100/00/77/54/e1/a9/2002051497.JPG

i rest my case

― artdamages, Saturday, 3 March 2007 13:20 (eighteen years ago)

Speed Limit 140+ BPM is always OTM, esp. 3.

― HI DERE, Saturday, 3 March 2007 14:50 (eighteen years ago)

Where's Blount from Georgia these days?

― curmudgeon, Saturday, 3 March 2007 15:52 (eighteen years ago)

didn't he suffer a serious injury at some gig?

― unfished business, Saturday, 3 March 2007 16:05 (eighteen years ago)

to get sincere for one second before i log out and start lurking again for 6 months ILM felt like a fucking utopia when i first googled my way in circa 2003. i think i read almost every old thread around that time, had no idea what 3/4s of the posts meant, learned about post-structuralism, fantasized about becoming a writer, started listening to dance music, got tricked into liking grime cuz it was part of some kind of continuum or something, read people 20,000 word blog thinkpieces and flunked out of college. i would be stupider had i not discovered it.

if someone who was like me were to discover ilm today they would find it incomprehensible (as i did) and go back to downloading TV On The Radio b-sides mp3s from brooklynvegan.com.

― artdamages, Saturday, 3 March 2007 16:06 (eighteen years ago)

its not become different in kind, but in degree [more snark, more outright cruelty, and more noobs who don't bother to learn the culture before posting 40 times a day)

― artdamages, Saturday, 3 March 2007 16:10 (eighteen years ago)

do you think they would? i'm not so sure: the way ilm works, with reviving old threads all the time, means that you're not just dealing with ilm-as-it-is-now but with ilm-as-it-has-been, both the positives and the negatives thereof. And very often, when there's a thread revive, people (whether random googlers or regulars) don't notice that it was from 2003 or whenever.

― c sharp major, Saturday, 3 March 2007 16:11 (eighteen years ago)

its become completely impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff

― artdamages, Saturday, 3 March 2007 16:13 (eighteen years ago)

xpost there: was in response to artdamages' if someone who was like me were to discover ilm today they would find it incomprehensible (as i did) and go back to downloading TV On The Radio b-sides mp3s from brooklynvegan.com".

(haha i just tried to type html and some red warning text snapped up! awesome.)

― c sharp major, Saturday, 3 March 2007 16:13 (eighteen years ago)

has is really become impossible? i suppose people who used to be more consistently sincere and thoughtful have become disillusioned with it, tired of it, and therefore more likely to resort to ilx-shorthand, references to old arguments to avoid having to make the same points again, quick obv zings - which, especially to a new reader, is likely to look more like noise than signal? but the wheat's still findable, even in threads which are 50% "boy this thread is a dumb idea"-type posts there's still good ideas to be seen.

― c sharp major, Saturday, 3 March 2007 16:22 (eighteen years ago)

I was a little nonplussed when I first started lurking on ILM in 2003, it really did seem like a Village Voice adjunct or clubhouse for rockcrits of a certain persuasion. now that seems contained to certain threads.

― m coleman, Saturday, 3 March 2007 16:56 (eighteen years ago)

"I'm a lot less strident in my opinions than I used to be. The old posts of mine that I'm most likely to shudder at are the ones that take this really firm line on something that I only knew a little bit about.

same here, tim...

― titchyschneiderMk2, Saturday, 3 March 2007 16:59 (eighteen years ago)

More critics used to post here -Yancy Strickler, Jody Rosen, and others...

― curmudgeon, Saturday, 3 March 2007 17:58 (eighteen years ago)

I don't think Jody Rosen ever posted here. (Or if he did, it was only once or twice.) Yancey still shows up occasionally.

― jaymc, Saturday, 3 March 2007 18:10 (eighteen years ago)

in re the original question, i think ilm as a sort of hivemind entity has grown smarter due to accumulation of data, perspectives, more sophisticated ways of thinking about music and its assorted relationships and ramifications. but because of that, past a certain point people tend to fall off of participation in the general run of "POV" or "T/S"-type questions, because they just seem less interesting. (instead people gravitate to the balkanized threads of their particular interest, or to noize board, or wherever.) so the daily run of ilm tends to be dominated often by newer, less acculturated or assimilated participants, which makes your average collection of daily threads look kind of uninspired to the more veteran posters. but the board needs the newer participants to keep it from turning into just 5 or 6 Rolling threads.

i don't know if the snarky snarling and hazing is really any worse now than ever. i think it's a sort of inevitable feature. people learn to deal with it or not, i guess.

― tipsy mothra, Saturday, 3 March 2007 18:59 (eighteen years ago)

if someone who was like me were to discover ilm today they would find it incomprehensible (as i did) and go back to downloading TV On The Radio b-sides mp3s from brooklynvegan.com.

I just want to say that I found ILM around this time last year, and as a 20-yr-old college kid who thot he knew something abt music, I got my brain broke by ILM. Now, as an English major w/ an appetite for theory, and a reader of the New Yorker, the NYT and the Voice (not in the im so smart sense, in the i like to read good music criticism sense--i mention the new yorker cause sfj more or less made me think that being a music crit might), I was open to a lot of these debates, and had maybe begun to have them in rudimentary cave-drawing ways, but the dudes and dudettes on ILM were articulating them in ways that were endlessly fascinating and new (and still are sometimes). I think artdamages is right, it's gotten a lot snarkier and a lot more cynical, and i'm still quite hesitant to post enthusiastic or unconsidered opinions (or, god forbid, express a like for "underground rap" or "jam bands") for fear of being shat upon (and yeah, there is a real clubhouse sense amgnst the older posters [by which i mean like 8-15 yrs older than me] who know or have met each other in real life and are established crits and stuff and its hard to break in and feel like ppl know you, but thats not something that you can or should change to make googlers like me feel more welcome), and its sort of a shame that threads like the jimi one probably couldnt happen

but consider that maybe one reason it wouldnt happen isnt just that some assholes would swoop in to accuse everyone of racism or post a zillion pictures in a row, but also bc the googlers and PEWs will be all up that piece spouting opinions so ill-considered and worthless that ppl who actually want to have that conversation will stay well away. ilm used to be really smart partly because it was small and much less well-known and highly-indexed; its dumber now if only because people like PEW can find it immediately and smear excrement all over the virtual walls. if nothing else, the snark can act as a policing aspect--LJ has been making fewer and fewer roll-yr-eyes comments (and so have i frankly) because he got burnt a few times. now everyone could stand to be nicer, but i dont think the snark is ruining ILM, as such. i got here a year ago and stayed despite the fact that ppl ignored or made fun of my posts, and i still come back almost every day. there isnt really a comparable msg board on the internet.

i know--gay gay gay gay gay earnest earnest gay. just wanted to throw in the opinion of a college kid whos new to ilm but for whom its still a pretty awes place.

― max, Saturday, 3 March 2007 19:00 (eighteen years ago)

DISQUALIFIED POST

Reason: 3 or more uses of "gay" with less than 2 associated levels of meta-irony.

Result: PLS DELETE SELF.

― libcrypt, Saturday, 3 March 2007 19:26 (eighteen years ago)

sometimes there are threads that sound good, but you know that people are going to take it some ridiculous route. yeah, that's this thread.

"smarter" is a weird way to ask the question. the intelligence quotient of posters probably hasn't changed. but there is more information, more access, more archives.

ILM has definitely become a better resource, that's for sure.

― Cameron Octigan, Saturday, 3 March 2007 19:37 (eighteen years ago)

I don't think it's gotten that much dumber, it's just that all of these smart posters that have hung around for so long are no longer willing to flex their intellects so much (i.e. "we done this before, etc."). And the newer folks don't have that bedrock to bounce off. We get one-word cutesy answers from the same dude who used to riff endlessly about his musics.

I've only been here for a few years, but from reading through old threads and comparing them to now, this seems like the most reasonable conclusion.

― Z S, Saturday, 3 March 2007 20:57 (eighteen years ago)

I don't post all that often anymore, but I think what still draws me back here, aside from habit (No. 1 with a bullet six years running) is that it's catnip if you don't insist music be thought of only one kind of way. I like Dan going structural-musicological even when I don't quite grasp it or agree with him, and I like purely sociological examinations of things. I like on-the-fly reasoning and very thought-out reasoning, both in abundance here. I've grown comfortable in my interactions with certain people here. Has it gotten "smarter"? I've done too much bitching about the place to say yes but I'm always grateful when it is smart, which is a good amount of the time.

― Matos W.K., Sunday, 4 March 2007 11:54 (eighteen years ago)

(or, god forbid, express a like for "underground rap" or "jam bands")

dont worry, dude. ive been doin this for years and im still up in hurrrrr.

― chaki, Sunday, 4 March 2007 14:20 (eighteen years ago)

one thing i really, really miss are the threads about individual pop songs which have just come out, which everyone regardless of their own musical background would pitch into with collective enthusiasm/hand-wringing/whatever...pretty much all new songs get confined to whatever rolling thread they belong in, now.

― lex pretend, Sunday, 4 March 2007 15:27 (eighteen years ago)

Once again it goes back to a general lack of consensus on ANYTHING right now but yeah the giddy excitement of the Work It or 1 Thing threads was great.

― Matt DC, Sunday, 4 March 2007 15:58 (eighteen years ago)

That new Avril Lavigne song had the potential to have a thread of its own. I was annoyed enough by it to post something, even though I would otherwise not be paying attention to her, and of course others were inspired to discuss at length why they think it's great. (It's probably too late to start that thread now since it's already been done so much on the teenpop and Avril C/D threads.)

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 4 March 2007 16:04 (eighteen years ago)

I think Jody (Aleph) Rosen weighed in once on an Elvis Costello/Billy Joel beef.

gypsy mothra otm. Matos otm too, more or less.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Sunday, 4 March 2007 16:30 (eighteen years ago)

I've seen Jody Rosen post here, but not regularly.

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 4 March 2007 16:40 (eighteen years ago)

I'm not really annoyed by certain songs or albums that might have gotten there own threads being swallowed up in "rolling" threads now, especially since the rolling rap threads allow for talking about all the little leaks and shit don't really deserve their own threads (and also means less of the old ILM hivemind where any rap album that gets a good-sized thread like David Banner or whatever become the de facto rap album of the year for half the board). I am annoyed, though, that most of the American Idol discussion here (aside from the ILE thread) seems to be on the teenpop thread, because I'm not going to read or contribute to that thread to any large degree just on principle (I actually like a fair amount of what could be categorized as teenpop, I just feel the bile come up in my throat when I read any of the bullshit on that thread, the whole backwards logic of somehow being 'popist' or non-'rockist' or whatever by talking about Ashlee Simpson as a some kind of genius auteur in the way an old school critic would talk about Springsteen just makes no sense to me).

― Alex in Baltimore, Sunday, 4 March 2007 23:02 (eighteen years ago)

despite bitching i've done in the past, i think ilm is getting better all the time

― james blount, Sunday, 4 March 2007 23:04 (eighteen years ago)

Hi Blount!

― scott seward, Sunday, 4 March 2007 23:11 (eighteen years ago)

talking about Ashlee Simpson as a some kind of genius auteur in the way an old school critic would talk about Springsteen just makes no sense to me).

OTM in my opinion. I understand the rationale behind the poptimist outlook, but it doesn't sit well intuitively. I have no difficulty taking Ashlee-the-singer 'seriously' as an artist deserving of serious critical examination, I run into trouble treating her as an "auteur" who has a hand in every aspect of her productions.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 4 March 2007 23:22 (eighteen years ago)

Do people talk about Ashlee as an "auteur"?? I have a feeling you and Alex have a different problem w/the rolling teenpop thread, a problem - or problems - that don't have anything to do with feeling your arm twisted to talk about her as an "auteur"..

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 5 March 2007 01:07 (eighteen years ago)

Well the Ashlee thing was more an example/symptom of a larger trend, but come the fuck on, the first post in the 2007 teenpop thread is about how Ashlee is a "probing and restless brainiac" who's in danger of having to dumb herself down. I have no problem with taking pop (or 'teenpop') seriously and praising it on terms other than as a guilty pleasure or acting surprised to like it or whatever, but it's starting to feel like certain posters/critics are so afraid of being seen as only liking this stuff in an ironic or half-hearted way that they're investing a really insane degree of analysis and over-intellectualization into it that would make me just as queasy were it applied to indie rock or crack rap or whatever.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 01:24 (eighteen years ago)

It's all because I'm here now. (No one else said it! What were you waiting for?!)

― Andi Mags, Monday, 5 March 2007 01:37 (eighteen years ago)

I wouldn't go so far as to say that fear is a motivation behind any 'over-intellectualization' that's going on, and fwiw I love the writing on the thread! It doesn't bother me that it happens to be about teenpop in the slightest.

What I have difficulty believing is the idea that (for example) Autobiography was crafted with a specific narrative arc in mind vs. crafted with maximum POPTUNEness for selling to a major segment of the market.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 5 March 2007 01:54 (eighteen years ago)

Al OTM, hoosteen they are aware of this. They'd probably just respond to you that the artist's intent is irrelevant to the listener's interpretation and that the listener can put any narrative they see onto it w/out considering what the 'real' narrative is (there is no real narrative etc.)

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 01:59 (eighteen years ago)

fully aware in cosigning Al that I and plenty of others on the board have been guilty of this at some pt.

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:00 (eighteen years ago)

I'm sure they're aware of it, most of the Teenpop dudes are a lot smarter than me! It just seems a completely unacknowleged truth within the world of the thread and it kinda bugs me. Pretty sure it doesn't make me an ageist or a sexist though, Tracer.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:09 (eighteen years ago)

Uh, yeah, by saying said "afraid" I didn't mean to imply that it was all about fear or whatever, I just meant that there are a lot of stigmas attached to how to listen to or talk about pop music (mostly associated with the 'rockism' boogeyman) that people are very self-consciously avoiding now, sometimes to the detriment of their ability to actually talk about this stuff intelligently or at least not sound like total crackpots. I mean, yes of course it just shuts down discussion to dismiss the stuff as "disposable" or "corporate," but to go all the way in the other direction and talk about it with some kind of breathless awe isn't really any better. Sure there are some unpleasant sexist mindsets that go along with Ashlee Simpson's public image as a vapid, lip-syncing reality show dimwit, but I'm also not going to pretend she's a musical genius as some kind of corrective measure to score one for feminism or the respectability of teenpop or anything. And I'm definitely not going to make any argument either way about how important the artist's intent is to the listerner's interpretation, that all really depends on what you're saying about the music and both approaches can be valid.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:15 (eighteen years ago)

al otm

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:20 (eighteen years ago)

I'm reading over the teenpop thread and frankly I'm not seeing a lot of what you all are talking abt. I mean, this whole sentence from the first post--Radio Disney's dominance is skewing the "teenpop" center ever younger, which may leave a probing and restless brainiac like Ashlee out in the cold, faced with the choice of dumbing herself down for the adults or dumbing herself down for the kids, or simply fading out - though Aly & A.J. continue to probe restlessly and lucratively within the Disney confines. Hilary is poised to jump danceward whether or not there's a market to receive her.--seems to be hyperaware of the role the market plays in the teenpop world; and to call Ashlee a "probing, restless braniac" doesn't strike me as any better or worse than calling Thom Yorke or Jay-Z the same thing. Frank Kogan's talked about this before, too--when he writes about Ashlee and the readings he has of her pieces, he refers mostly to the lyrics, which, if I recall correctly, are her own (in whatever sense of authorship you might subscribe to); if I'd criticize him for anything it's the reliance on auteurism as a theory (one that I'm not necessarily sure he subscribes to), not in its application to teenpop (and frankly--and this is obviously personal preference--I get a little bit of a thrill seeing the kind of language once applied to Dylan applied to Ashlee, if only because it's a total fuck-you). I mean really, reading his posts (and he's the one who I would think is most "guilty" of this), I just see some really hardcore fandom from a particularly smart dude who isn't willing to settle for a facile engagement with the artist he likes. Eventually that's what it comes down to--Kogan thinks Ashlee is a genius, Al doesn't. But he does think she's a genius, and it seems sort of unfair to ask him not to talk about her as such.

― max, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:47 (eighteen years ago)

Although Al, I guess I'd be OK with what you're saying if you'd say the same thing about, say, T.I.--Sure there are some unpleasant racist mindsets that go along with T.I.'s public image as a gang-banging, drug-dealing thug, but I'm also not going to pretend he's a musical genius as some kind of corrective measure to score one for multiculturalism or the respectability of rap or anything.--but to single out Ashlee for what seems to be no other reason than yr own dislike of her (er, not dislike--distrust in the idea that she's a "genius" or an "auteur") strikes me as unfair.

― max, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:52 (eighteen years ago)

Unless you've got a chart, Geir-style, that can prove to me using mathematical formulas that Ashlee is objectively less of a genius than T.I. or Bob Dylan.

― max, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:53 (eighteen years ago)

I would argue you're being far too reductive of T.I. and not enough of Ashley

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:57 (eighteen years ago)

Really? I mean, granted, I'm defending someone who I know very little about, but I'd warrant there are as many levels to Ashlee's stuff as there are to T.I.'s. But maybe that's the problem--I'll admit that I don't know Ashlee well enough to defend her music as such, just Kogan's approach to it.

― max, Monday, 5 March 2007 03:04 (eighteen years ago)

And frankly, since Ashlee's had an entire TV show to cultivate and deepen her image, it wouldn't surprise me if there was more available to examine and think abt, thus giving the critic less of an ability to reduce Ashlee (or deny her irreducibility).

― max, Monday, 5 March 2007 03:07 (eighteen years ago)

I think T.I. has created a much more in-depth persona than Ashley. That isn't saying that 'objectively' that means his music is more enjoyable but it seems pretty clear that over the course of four records he's built up quite a storyline and character vs. i don't get that out of ashley. But then i'm not really paying attention.

at the same time, i would argue that praise for T.I.'s album hasn't really been auteur-based and largely rap gets a lot of 'well half these tracks suck and half these tracks rule why cant they stop producing skits too many guest artists' -type criticism in general. Exception that proves the rule being the David Banner thread where it got some ridiculous over the top stuff like Banner was the first conflicted rapper or something.

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 03:50 (eighteen years ago)

rereading what you wrote i don't think that Al is arguing for dampening enthusiasm, its about reigning in your writing so it doesn't rely on so much hyperbole etc

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 03:51 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know, this current conversation speaks well for the intelligence level on ILM. At least, there are people here smart enough to be able to string together big words correctly!

Seriously, though, go take a look at a non-ILM message board. Whether it's gotten smarter or dumber over time, at the very least the base intelligence level is worlds above your average bulletin board.

Also, I like cookies.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 5 March 2007 06:57 (eighteen years ago)

I dip into ILM these days - I probably open it at least once most days, just because my job involves sitting at a PC a lot of the time, but I don't feel like I have the time or inclination to use it anywhere near as much as I used to, either on dayjopb time or my time.

I never really used any of the other boards much, ILE to an extent but very, very seldom elsewhere, and because of where I am I never got involved in the social network aspect, except for that one time I came to London and ate chips with Matt DC and Kate and DR C and a few others (there was an incident with a pint being poured over someone?).

Because of the fact that I only dip in and out of ILM these days, I seldom even look at any of the "rolling" threads - because I don't consider myself an afficionado of any of the rolling genres, they seem kind of aline to me, and so I'm probabaly missing out on lots of interesting stuff that would appeal beyond genre-heads. But then there's the Jess/Ned/etc. thing of just thinking, "well, I'm not gonna die if I don't know about this r'n'b song that has a Tuvan throat-singing sample in it". So I do miss the threads for individual songs, "Work It" being a terrific example, where excitement boils over and it seems like everyone here goes nuts, no matter what their musical creed.

If ILM is to stay smart, and I think it will, it needs new blood, and hot-headed, idealistic, naive blood, like Louis, like I was five and a half years ago, to both learn themselves and to keep old heads sharp. The worry is that the embedded culture can put off newcomers.

The removal of the x-post alert, while seeming frustrating right now, might well be good in the long run re; enabling longer, more ruminative answers. If you're less worried about multiple x-post alerts, you'll be less inclined to hit submit ASAP after the first pithy comment or zing.

― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 5 March 2007 09:42 (eighteen years ago)

Ageist? Sexist?? Again - who are the people saying these things??? Name names!

xposts

certain posters/critics are so afraid of being seen as only liking this stuff in an ironic or half-hearted way that they're investing a really insane degree of analysis and over-intellectualization into it that would make me just as queasy were it applied to indie rock or crack rap or whatever

again with the vague finger-pointing

it would be helpful for future threads if you could let us know what an acceptable level of analysis is, Al

its about reigning in your writing

fuck that

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 5 March 2007 10:37 (eighteen years ago)

Sure there are some unpleasant sexist mindsets that go along with Ashlee Simpson's public image as a vapid, lip-syncing reality show dimwit, but I'm also not going to pretend she's a musical genius as some kind of corrective measure to score one for feminism or the respectability of teenpop or anything

right on.

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 10:58 (eighteen years ago)

I'm also not going to pretend she's a musical genius as some kind of corrective measure to score one for feminism or the respectability of teenpop or anything

but Al needs to name names!!!! who is actually using the words "musical genius" in connection with ashlee simpson - besides Al (and others) saying she's not one? why would it be a pretense to say that, anyway? what does "musical genius" mean (she can play her nose like a flute? she has composed violin concertos? she is a catalyst for her collaborators to exceed themselves?) (the only person i see on the rolling teenpop thread using the word "genius" is somebody from some other blog being quoted saying that Hillary Duff's new single is "genius")

also the second part of this sentence is incredibly dishonest: no one has connected ashlee simpson's facility with selling records and making music with "respectability" or "feminism" - that's Alex, preemptively heading these concepts off at the pass

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 5 March 2007 11:26 (eighteen years ago)

fyi i can't stand ashlee simpson but it's mainly because i think she looks like sean penn

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 5 March 2007 11:27 (eighteen years ago)

I don't contribute to the Teenpop thread, though I read it sometimes, but the idea that Frank K is "pretending" anything about his reactions to Ashlee is risible.

(Maybe some of the other posters there are, or maybe they're pretending they're Frank, I don't know)

It doesn't seem to me odd to imagine that work done primarily for commercial gain might also be animated by genius, or be created by a "probing, restless brainiac". It also doesn't seem odd to me that said genius might be the person whose name is on the work, even if she's young and famous and pretty. And if somebody has called their record "Autobiography", then looking for autobiographical content might just be a good starting point when criticising it.

Of course these not-odd things aren't always true, and none of them may be in Ashlee's instance. (I don't know; not heard the record). But to assume pretence based on yr own sweeping assumptions of how a genre works? Not a leap I'd like to make.

― Groke, Monday, 5 March 2007 11:30 (eighteen years ago)

no doubt frank's reactions to ashley simpson are sincere but they'd be more a hell of a lot more convincing if he addressed and assesed her music on its own terms. comparing her to bob dylan and the stooges is a non-sequitir and an obv provocation to rock fans -- why is punk rock always trotted out as the ultimate template for everything that happens in popular music? isn't that "rockist"? anyway as a reader I find lyric dissections boring and beside the point, and as a listener I was appalled by the sloppy singing and half-baked accompaniment on her album. fwiw I used to edit/write for a teenpop magazine in the 80s.

I read the rolling thread occ and intend nothing personal abt these objections, what I do object to on the intellectual level (coughs) is the somewhat hectoring tone of some of the so-called poptimists but frank w/his self-deprecating and constant questioning is not a major culprit there.

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 11:58 (eighteen years ago)

aren't ill-thought-through objections to less credible pop stars like ashlee simpson and the creation of ridiculous "poptimist" strawmen which have little to do with what anyone is actually saying, the kind of thing which ilm was meant to have hashed out five years ago?

― lex pretend, Monday, 5 March 2007 12:18 (eighteen years ago)

(there was an incident with a pint being poured over someone?).

just another typical london fap!

― blueski, Monday, 5 March 2007 12:19 (eighteen years ago)

Er, Frank Kogan is a rock fan. Not to mention a provocation fan. And I don't believe he's ever accused anybody of being "rockist" (a word he hates.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 5 March 2007 12:25 (eighteen years ago)

I understand the rationale behind the poptimist outlook, but it doesn't sit well intuitively. I have no difficulty taking Ashlee-the-singer 'seriously' as an artist deserving of serious critical examination, I run into trouble treating her as an "auteur" who has a hand in every aspect of her productions.

well, is this a problem with the dudes on the teenpop thread, or with you?

I'm also not going to pretend she's a musical genius as some kind of corrective measure to score one for feminism or the respectability of teenpop or anything

why do you assume it's "pretending"? i dunno, it seems to me that if anyone's making any unqualified assumptions about what ashlee simpson is, it's the people with very little knowledge of her music who refuse to understand why the people who DO know her music in depth get what they do out of it.

I think T.I. has created a much more in-depth persona than Ashley. That isn't saying that 'objectively' that means his music is more enjoyable but it seems pretty clear that over the course of four records he's built up quite a storyline and character vs. i don't get that out of ashley. But then i'm not really paying attention.

i guess the last sentence is key! for me i think the persona ashlee's built up over two albums plus her public "celeb" persona is very strong and very compelling, much more so to me than T.I. at this point i should say i much prefer T.I. because i prioritise how things sound, and swizz beats productions and massive synths >>>> guitars. ashlee is one of the few guitar-based acts around i love right now though...

no doubt frank's reactions to ashley simpson are sincere but they'd be more a hell of a lot more convincing if he addressed and assesed her music on its own terms. comparing her to bob dylan and the stooges is a non-sequitir and an obv provocation to rock fans -- why is punk rock always trotted out as the ultimate template for everything that happens in popular music?

if it was ciara or britney spears or hilary duff we were talking about i'd agree that it was a non sequitur but have you even heard ashlee simpson's music? frank is comparing it to rock because that's exactly what it is. sonically, lyrically, it has a rock template - i suspect a punk rock one, even, though i don't know much about what that entails. if you read the thread the main comparator is courtney love, which doesn't strike me as assessing ashlee's music on the wrong terms at all.

tom/tracer/max otm.

― lex pretend, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:16 (eighteen years ago)

considering nobody's been called a douchebag or told to fuck off yet I'd call this a healthy debate!

yes I have heard ashlee's music repeatedly and involuntarily HELLO ve HELLO ve HELLO ve maybe in a few years I'll do an about face and decide she was ahead of her time, stranger things have happened.

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:39 (eighteen years ago)

Now if only Frank would weigh in himself and clarify...(or maybe he's gonna do so on the teenpop thread)

― curmudgeon, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:59 (eighteen years ago)

haha I'm kinda glad I didn't think to look at this thread at all since the last time I posted. I don't even know if I can begin to formulate a response to all this (especially Tracer Hand's need for me to spell everything out with names and pull quotes), but I will say deej is right that hyperbole more than anything else is what I was going on about. also I was singling out Ashlee more out of her being an obvious teenpop thread hero than any personal dislike or vendetta of mine -- I like a couple of her singles fine, thought she was cute before the nose job, etc.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:06 (eighteen years ago)

well i'm glad this thread also got swallowed by a rockism debate.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:11 (eighteen years ago)

fuck xpost notifications, MY KINGDOM FOR THE "NUKE FROM ORBIT" BUTTON BACK

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:14 (eighteen years ago)

also I do kind of hate to come off like I'm personally attacking Frank or anyone else, but at the same time I'd rather instigate this kind of debate for better or for worse than not question the nature of the writing on the teenpop thread or its status as one of the most popular/active threads on ILM these days. but really all I was saying at first was that I wish the American Idol discussion on there had its own thread!

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:14 (eighteen years ago)

there's an am idol thread on ile isn't there? i would assume the people there don't write multi-paragraph treatise on the genius of skye sweetnam.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:15 (eighteen years ago)

c'mon, people were talking about Hendrix before, the R-word was never far away.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:15 (eighteen years ago)

i always mean to go on youtube and watch everything that gets talked about on the teen thread, but then i forget to. someday.

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:17 (eighteen years ago)

Sundance Head! i'm a big fan of his dad.

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:19 (eighteen years ago)

ilm's "critical" relationship with teenpop:

2002: discussing the avant-garde/punk/serious auteur/provacateur/dada/20th-century composition/hip-hop/free jazz/rockist/popist/papal/paypal/anthropomorphic cat/rockabilly/salmon farmer credentials of avril lavigne = fun, because it got a rise out of people like alex in nyc.

2007: discussing the same = awful, because it's a fucking closed-circuit echo chamber and what was once useful for poking holes in the received wisdom of music fandom and criticism has taken on a gross tone where if you diss pop tart [x] you're somehow worse than idi amin and those who commit identity theft put together

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:20 (eighteen years ago)

I don't think it's a stupid debate or anything - it was the buzzword "pretend" that got my back up, seemed like a throwback to long-gone days so I got into atavistic reaction mode.

I don't really have a problem with the Teenpop thread, if I did I hope I'd join in on it more - but I don't feel the music as immediately or deeply as a lot of the posters there. I wonder if there should be more about emo on it. Its popularity is because Frank (and others) are constantly linking to it elsewhere, boosting it, trying to get people involved - it's because of their evangelism that it thrives, not because of the rest of ILM.

― Groke, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:20 (eighteen years ago)

i'm being facetious but not by much.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:20 (eighteen years ago)

Should I read this thread?

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:21 (eighteen years ago)

no.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:22 (eighteen years ago)

Meh means rubbish. It means boring. It means not worth the effort, who cares, so-so, whatever. It is the all-purpose dismissive shrug of the blogger and messageboarder. And it is ubiquitous. On the I Love Music messageboard, for example, 4,010 separate discussion threads feature the use of "meh".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2026533,00.html

ILM strives to further encapsulate music with three letter words. Smarter, then.

― Gukbe, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

yeah the lack of Alex In NYC really is the problem here.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

strongo OTM.

― the next grozart, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

i find that number dubious as in the olden times you couldn't search for less than four letter words!

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:25 (eighteen years ago)

now playing on radio disney: aSHLEY tISDALE!

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:25 (eighteen years ago)

alex in nyc was a useful corrective. don't know what you got til its flaming pabulum is gone.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:25 (eighteen years ago)

I always forget that i get radio disney on my teevee.

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:25 (eighteen years ago)

2007: discussing the same = awful, because it's a fucking closed-circuit echo chamber and what was once useful for poking holes in the received wisdom of music fandom and criticism has taken on a gross tone where if you diss pop tart [x] you're somehow worse than idi amin and those who commit identity theft put together

no, jess, this is bullshit and you probably know it's a function of where you're at rather than where teenpop or its boosters are at.

i) this is still the received wisdom of music fandom and criticism as the previous fifty or so posts have made abundantly clear, so they still need holes poked in them
ii) "if you diss pop tart x you're worse than hitler" is simply not true - who does this? people who attack the genre or its stars in an idiotic way, or from a position of lack of knowledge and no interest in changing that, you'll probably get called an idiot, but no more than any other genre's fans. and if anything it's the people who'll rep for paris hilton, avril lavigne, ashlee simpson who'll be on the receiving end of the attacks more often than not

― lex pretend, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:26 (eighteen years ago)

Strongo I think it's more like - the Rolling Teenpop thread is a place where the 2002 argument has been definitively won, so now it's a little hothouse where a criticism that contains all this stuff can thrive undisturbed (there are very few trolls on it, which always amazes me a bit). Is that a criticism that engages or interests me? Yeah (because people like Kogan and Finney are doing it)., but not massively: maybe if I was American it would engage me or disgust me more.

― Groke, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:26 (eighteen years ago)

WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE RICH WHITE GIRLS

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:27 (eighteen years ago)

It's also a hothouse where the people who are into pop music are forced to discuss it without the reflexive defensiveness Lex just displayed! (And which I displayed further up, so it's not that I think the defensiveness is wrong, just unproductive)

― Groke, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:28 (eighteen years ago)

personally i don't post much on the teenpop thread because guitar-based confessional teenpop engages me less as a genre than as one-offs, compared to dance teenpop, but the out-of-proportion attacks on the way it's being thought about and discussed do crystallise a lot of what's wrong with ilm now.

― lex pretend, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:28 (eighteen years ago)

xposts, obviously.

lex: i fully admit that there's plenty of "where i'm at now" at work here. but really, paris and ashlee and avril don't really come up all that often in my daily life, so i'm not forced into defend/refute position that often about them, and i think most of my friends would just find it tedious if i was trying to sell them on a pop song by "defending" it in any way at all.

tom: i agree with you, actually. (i think the lack of trolls has a lot to do with the fact that, since it is a little hothouse environment, people are either intimidated by its self-referential density and the language used in it and the number of posts and the fact that it's a small group of posters [like any of the balkanized threads] or they just don't care. some people i know are also kinda grossed out/skeeved out/weirded out by it.)

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:31 (eighteen years ago)

Vanessa Hudgens!

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:31 (eighteen years ago)

cf. miccio's megan's law jokes or [FEMME POSTER WHO REQUESTS ANONYMITY LEST SHE GET DRAWN INTO THIS DEBATE]'s "TO CATCH AN ILX PREDATOR" joke.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:32 (eighteen years ago)

Hannah Montana!

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:33 (eighteen years ago)

scott you're just making names up now.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:34 (eighteen years ago)

ilxor meh

Maybe this is how they got it? (Pretty sloppy, if so, since some of those hits aren't going to lead to ILX.)

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:34 (eighteen years ago)

"if you diss pop tart x you're worse than hitler"

He said Idi Amin, not Hitler!

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:35 (eighteen years ago)

a subtle distinction.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:36 (eighteen years ago)

the identity theft people are worse.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:36 (eighteen years ago)

At least they get paid off it.

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:37 (eighteen years ago)

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:38 (eighteen years ago)

i'm not making up names! there is SO much of this stuff. i think that's one reason why a thread for it is a good idea. it's a good way to keep track.

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:38 (eighteen years ago)

most of my friends would just find it tedious if i was trying to sell them on a pop song by "defending" it in any way at all

the defensiveness is kind of immediately forced by people attacking the fact that you're trying to sell them a song by paris or ashlee in the first place without reading/responding to exactly what it is you've said about it.

the teenpop thread is a hell of a lot less creepy than some of the ones i've read about cat power or courtney love.

― lex pretend, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:40 (eighteen years ago)

i think if, back when i was in college, you would have told me that i would once be facing charges of anti-intellectualism for not taking ashlee simpson seriously, i...i don't know what i would have done. learned a trade.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:40 (eighteen years ago)

as someone who has daily interaction with members of the target audience of teen pop I find some of rolling thread discussion to be unintenionally well not creepy but sort of untethered from reality. also humorless.

This.

The main problem with the teenpop thread is that the critical style used in it appears to have come right out of 1974 or something, where lyrics are analysed as poetry, someone having a half decent song is evidence of them being a genius, and people seem utterly ignorant (or at least uninterested) of the process behind the music. The teenpop thread is basically a Bob Dylan thread with all the names changed.

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:40 (eighteen years ago)

What makes the teenpop thread creepy?

― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:41 (eighteen years ago)

xpost

well, haha, ilm has ALWAYS been misogynist.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:41 (eighteen years ago)

Corbin Bleu!

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:41 (eighteen years ago)

Can we just all be thankful ILM doesn't have a rolling J-Pop thread and be done with it?

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:42 (eighteen years ago)

The music industry has always been misogynist. ILM just reflects that.

― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

dom otm. it's like the less funny version of that thing i saw in an old issue of blender at work the other week where they placed nick lachey's lyrics side by side with those from blood on the tracks and made you guess which was which.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

i guessed wrong pretty often!

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

mostly i'm mad that now that i've involved myself with teenpop thread discussion i'm going to end up in someone's live journal post about what a buncha jerkoffs ilm is.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:45 (eighteen years ago)

William Blake reads like a seven-year-old if you're in the mood to perceive his work that way.

― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:45 (eighteen years ago)

that or a government watchlist.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:45 (eighteen years ago)

Oh if you're lucky, Jess, Robin Carmody will call you a fascist once a year in his blog.

― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:45 (eighteen years ago)

Lack of xpost notifications: making ILM impossible to read since February 07

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:45 (eighteen years ago)

Can we just all be thankful ILM doesn't have a rolling J-Pop thread and be done with it?

I wish it did have a rolling J-pop thread. I need someone to point me to other worthwhile things beyond Shiina Ringo, but I don't like most J-pop I've heard.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:45 (eighteen years ago)

people seem utterly ignorant (or at least uninterested) of the process behind the music

this is true but it beats going on and on and on ad nauseam about i) the process behind the music ii) the fans of the music iii) the social context of the music - all of which as a replacement for never ever talking about the music itself

― lex pretend, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:46 (eighteen years ago)

less funny version of something in Blender = not registering on laff-o-meter

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:46 (eighteen years ago)

Oh if you're lucky, Jess, Robin Carmody will call you a fascist once a year in his blog.

You need to read Carmody's views on Gym Class Heroes. That's some next level shit right there.

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:46 (eighteen years ago)

The other thing about teenpop was born out of the whole Paris Hilton agglomeration, which is that if you're going to take listening to something as a deliberately provocative act, try and make it something people will care about _before_ you beat its carcass to death over 40 threads.

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:49 (eighteen years ago)

oh sweet jesus don't bring her into it

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:51 (eighteen years ago)

Please tell me wtf Gym Class Heroes is and where I can read Carmody's opinions on same, kthxby.

― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:51 (eighteen years ago)

I retract my previous statement.

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:51 (eighteen years ago)

he doesn't call you two facists. he calls you "outdated class warriors". there is a distinction.

― 597, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:53 (eighteen years ago)

yeah Dom got to the heart of what I was really getting at all along (only difference was he said Dylan where I said Springsteen). the funny thing is, it's not like I'm some staunch opponent of this stuff. my favorite singles of 2006 included Chris Brown, Ciara, Omarion, Kelly Clarkson, Cassie, Pussycat Dolls, Jessica Simpson, Pink, Lloyd, Vanessa Hudgens, Click Five, Paris Hilton, JoJo, The Veronicas, and Jesse McCartney. so it's not that I dislike all 'teenpop' or am angered by anyone else liking it, fwiw.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:54 (eighteen years ago)

he doesn't call you two facists. he calls you "outdated class warriors". there is a distinction.

True, true. I like that he's still calling us outdated class warriors based on a couple of four-year-old remarks.

― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:57 (eighteen years ago)

ground zero for new disney journalism:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0011,saunders,13242,22.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0042,saunders,19036,22.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0011,saunders2,13249,22.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0323,saunders,44552,22.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0247,saunders,39983,22.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0415,saunders,52599,22.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0023,saunders,15449,22.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0419,saunders,53355,22.html

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:01 (eighteen years ago)

It's also my superficial impression that there is an awful lot of discussion of lyrics on that thread. It's a lot easier to apply lliterary critical type strategies to lyrics than to music, for obvious reasons. I think it's also a much easier to apply the sort of sociological slant of which Frank Kogan seems so fond, when you focus on lyrics. I haven't read the thread end to end, so maybe there is more discussion of how stuff sounds, and how those sounds evoke feelings, than I realize. That Mordechai Shinefield analysis of the lyrics to Avril's new hit felt very unconvincing. I don't hear, "Hell yeah I'm the motherfucking princess" as too ground-breaking or even particularly powerful.

Still, overall, I actually like that there is a Rolling Teenpop Thread. On rare occasions when I already know some of the music discussed, or when I try some, I generally don't like it much though, so I don't bother with it. I'm not interested in trying to be talked into appreciating it. That usually doesn't work with me anyway--at least not in the sense of moving from not liking something to liking it because someone verbally pointed something out about it.

(Maybe they should change it's name to "The Controversial Rolling Teenpop Thread.")

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:05 (eighteen years ago)

Having never read the thread, I'm curious as to why teenpop is segregated from just plain old pop. What does the "teen" prefix designate?

― Mark Rich@rdson, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:07 (eighteen years ago)

It's one of those distinctions that you know when you hear it. Teenpop is what they used to call "bubblegum" back in the day.

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:08 (eighteen years ago)

I guess you'd have to ask the teenpop thread denizens, but I think it means pop music targeted primarily at teens and maybe even also pop music that is widely embraces by teens (perhaps to the extent that it becomes a badge of distinctively teenage identity?).

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:09 (eighteen years ago)

xpost...probably.

Fair enough. Pure speculation here, but my guess is the actual teens posting on ILM are probably into indie rock. Are teens capable of teenpop analysis?

― Mark Rich@rdson, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:11 (eighteen years ago)

That's another issue as well: the teenpop thread doesn't look at teenpop from the eyes of its target audience. Aren't the teenpop thread posters, with the occasional exception of Jessica P, all male as well?

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:12 (eighteen years ago)

the audience for so-called "teenpop" is actually preteens or tweens as they're now known in the US.

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:13 (eighteen years ago)

Aren't the teenpop thread posters, with the occasional exception of Jessica P, all male as well?

Yeah, but that's true for most of ILM.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:13 (eighteen years ago)

The Cheetah Girls!

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:14 (eighteen years ago)

Don't be an ageist.

Frank discussed on theTeenpop thread how some/most of the music they are writing about is actually liked more by pre-teens.

― curmudgeon, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:14 (eighteen years ago)

There are a handful of teens or recently-teens on the teenpop thread. But Dom's right in that "bubblegum" would be a fair stab.

Maybe there is a niche for a Rolling Mainstream Thread 2007.

― Groke, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:14 (eighteen years ago)

well I will give Frank credit for pointing out at the beginning of the 07 teenpop thread that "Most actual teenagers listen to emo or goth or rock or hip-hop or r&b" and I don't really have much of an issue with people listening to music they're not the 'target audience' for.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:16 (eighteen years ago)

Sir Strongo, you are incredibly OTM on this thread to the point of being magic!

― J, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:16 (eighteen years ago)

People who spring to my mind as Teenpop regulars:

Frank, Chuck, Tim Finney, Lex, Mordecai, David Moore (male)

Jessica P, Abby McD, Moggy (female)

I think, much though the O NOES PAEDOS IN OUR MIDST gagsters would like to believe otherwise, it's as much or more gender-balanced as most ILX places. (not very)

― Groke, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:16 (eighteen years ago)

interesting the original bubblegum music like the Monkees Archies and K&K/Buddha groups was targeted at pre-teens as well. I was exactly in that demographic, 11 years old in 1969. OTOH the audience for Duran Duran in the 80s, at least in the States, was teenaged girls.

most of the teens I know have genre-specific tastes, either hiphop/R&B specialists, punks or classic rockers. note: I am related to these kids or know their parents, I'm not crusing their myspace pages.

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:18 (eighteen years ago)

Do any of the rolling threads look at music from the POV of its target audience?

― Groke, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:18 (eighteen years ago)

it's also dominated by "proper" writers which is weird, to me at least. Is it a case of people going supernova on music?

― the next grozart, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:19 (eighteen years ago)

OK, so it's basically what you listen to when transitioning away from the Wiggles.

― Mark Rich@rdson, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:19 (eighteen years ago)

Do any of the rolling threads look at music from the POV of its target audience?

I would think some of the dance-oriented threads do.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:21 (eighteen years ago)

there are people on this thread who don't know what teenpop is.

― the next grozart, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

I've now posted on this thread defending/analysing the teenpop one about 10x more than I have ever posted on the actual thread, which is a grim reflection of something or other.

― Groke, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, sorry, I guess I didn't know what teenpop was. Actually I should have known better because they are always talking about the Disney channel and so on over there.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

Well, Chuck has pointed out many times the similarities between Ashlee Simpson and Courtney Love, and that makes perfect sense to me. So I'm not sure they should necessarily be in different categories, except that Ashlee is younger and prettier and has had slightly less plastic surgery.

― Mark Rich@rdson, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:24 (eighteen years ago)

(there was an incident with a pint being poured over someone?).

That was me. I was doing an impression of Dave Q doing an impression of a Cuban guitarist or something and knocked a full pint all over Pete.

The moral of this somewhat pointless post is that ILM these days needs MORE DAVE Q.

― Matt DC, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:32 (eighteen years ago)

Keke Palmer!

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:33 (eighteen years ago)

Jonas Brothers!

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)

teenpop names are almost as fun as techno names and tennis names!

― lex pretend, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)

"well i've been to the year 3000/not much has changed but they lived underwater/and your great great great great grandaughter is doing fine!"

I dig that Jonas Brothers song. It's number one on Radio Disney right now. The latin number by the Cheetah Girls is better than their cover of "Route 66". just saying.

― scott seward, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:44 (eighteen years ago)

jonas brothers actually sounds like a microhouse act. or 50s folkies.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:45 (eighteen years ago)

jonas brothers v jonas bering v jonas bjorkman

― lex pretend, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:46 (eighteen years ago)

The last 60 posts on this thread have resembled a pair of boxers circling, taking jabs, but never going in for the kill...

It is my belief that as a forum entitled 'I Love Music', anything falling under that paradigm should be accepted as a topic of discussion, and ANY honestly-held opinion, even if it be slightly underinformed or hastily thought-out, should be entertained. The teenpop thread itself is ten thousand times less offensive/idiotic/infuriating as any contention of that thread's validity. I myself don't post on the teenpop thread because I have little or no interest in teenpop, but if there are those for whom it is a crucial aspect of music, their ideas have as much right to be aired as the rest of ours'. This thread for the first 300-400 posts at least, was extremely interesting, revealing, and constructive, but just now it's been obfuscated by a fight that will NEVER be won, mostly because of dumb refusal (or inability) to understand the other side. This applies to the 'pro-teenpoppers' as well; their participation in this debate has prolonged what should have been left hanging.

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:54 (eighteen years ago)

p.s. the lex's last post is what should have happened originally, a bit of levity used to dilute what was becoming increasingly nasty and futile.

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

Louis OTM.

― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)

ANY honestly-held opinion, even if it be slightly underinformed or hastily thought-out, should be entertained.

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:57 (eighteen years ago)

dude I was criticizing the thread not questioning its right to exist.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:57 (eighteen years ago)

while i agree with the inclusive spirit of his post i think there's something to be said for thinking before you post.

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:58 (eighteen years ago)

how do you think people should talk about teenpop?

― lex pretend, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:58 (eighteen years ago)

ya rly, deej, and my honestly-held opinion is GIVE ME BACK THAT THREAD we were having before it all got so rudely interrupted.

I wasn't contributing much to this thread earlier, incidentally, because my thoughts on the matter couldn't possibly be as relevant or interesting as those others' who've been around far longer. This was pretty much read-only, and a great read it was too...

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:59 (eighteen years ago)

If you want to criticise the teenpop thread, do it ON the teenpop thread, and relate your criticisms DIRECTLY to the content therein, i.e. make it PART of the teenpop thread. What is a thread, after all, except a series of sentences circled about a central theme? What then, therefore, is criticism of that thread except a continuation of these sentences?

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:02 (eighteen years ago)

if Louis isn't loving the TeenPop by the end of the year then ILM has FAILED.

― blueski, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:03 (eighteen years ago)

oh, and deej, you're right that you should think before you post, but one's opinions EVEN THEN are often liable to have less information behind them than other peoples'. In such instances, even when your own knowledge, although from your perspective enough to form a cogent point, proves insufficient, your point should still be open to discussion.

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:05 (eighteen years ago)

What is a thread, after all, except a series of sentences circled about a central theme? What then, therefore, is criticism of that thread except a continuation of these sentences?

is this some kind of joke or did you just discover marijuana

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:08 (eighteen years ago)

I tripped over my own rhetorical shoelaces :-(

All I'm trying to say is that threads should be criticised internally by addressing their subject from a new perspective. Individual posts can be criticised more exclusively and directly, but you can't take on an entire thread without participating in it.

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:11 (eighteen years ago)

you're a weird dude

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:12 (eighteen years ago)

it's not like I deliberately attacked the teenpop thing on a different thread as some passive-aggressive maneuver; a lot of people in this thread have been bitching about "rolling" threads in general, I responded to that and said something specific about one of them, and the conversation/argument took its turns from there.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:15 (eighteen years ago)

But this is a meta-thread about ILM, and hence a good place to talk about other ILM threads, sentences and all. Some of this discussion would amount to trolling if it were posted directly onto the teenpop thread, I think. I don't want to interfere with the teenpop thread, and if I were going to participate, I'd feel obliged to read more of it and read it more closely, which I don't feel like doing.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:15 (eighteen years ago)

yeah what he said

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:17 (eighteen years ago)

I get the impression that teenpop thread is to entrenched, incorrigible, music writers as porn is to sex, or something.

― fandango, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:18 (eighteen years ago)

Alex, very little of my criticism is directed at you. It's directed at those who turned it into a full-blown flame-out.

RS, the very fact that some of this would amount to trolling on the teenpop thread surely makes it extraneous? Jess' posts may have been quite FUNNY, but as constructive contributions, they've pretty much totally derailed this thread.

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:18 (eighteen years ago)

I like the rolling thread balkanization. I'm not sure what the alternative is. Start a new thread for every song or album or even artist, no matter how little chance there is that anyone will have anything to say?

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:20 (eighteen years ago)

Maybe I'd be more sympathetic to y'guys if I actually read the teenpop thread and was similarly repulsed by what I saw, but again, this is irrelevant. That thread 'belongs', in a way, to others, who have entirely different opinions on music to me. I'm not keen to interfere with their debate, it would hinder it, and therefore I wouldn't have contributed to ILM in a positive manner.

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:20 (eighteen years ago)

I would guess that the teenpop posters (some of whom have already appeared on this thread) will find our comments and can address them if they like.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

Louis the only derail here is you calling it out as a derail, adding yet another level of meta and kind of obscuring what was pretty illuminating I thought, inbetween the somewhat obvious contributions from teenpop invested posters.

― fandango, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

stop pontificating about what or doesn't constitute a valid contribution to ILM

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:22 (eighteen years ago)

holy shit hahahhaha

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)

pope louis I speaks ex cathedra

― m coleman, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:25 (eighteen years ago)

keep going dudes and we can definitely prove the thread title wrong

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:26 (eighteen years ago)

well i'm glad this thread also got swallowed by a rockism debate.

strongohulkington on Monday, 5 March 2007 14:11 (2 hours ago)

that is all

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:26 (eighteen years ago)

louis maybe you should read ilm for another few years before posting again

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:26 (eighteen years ago)

ah my "derailment"

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:27 (eighteen years ago)

advice a number of us prob. should have taken awhile back

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:27 (eighteen years ago)

i'll try to post more about sentences circling around the busby berkley pirouettes of nabisco otm and the dialectic of unanswerable arguments in light of the modern dillemma of rockism and its discontents in the future.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:28 (eighteen years ago)

nah your beef with ned was classic roflz

xpost do i mean deej or jagger lol

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:28 (eighteen years ago)

also i love the new "jaded" deej.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:29 (eighteen years ago)

naturally i think the opposite has occurred.

otm.

close thread.

― nathalie, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:29 (eighteen years ago)

and what you've derailed this thread with another layer of meta. Kudos

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:29 (eighteen years ago)

what is a thread, after all, except a series of sentences twirling about like a couple of fairies

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:29 (eighteen years ago)

jess, i quoted you from 2 hours ago to demonstrate how OTM you were, the fact that you then launched into an amusing if pointless deconstruction of the teenpoppers (and you were by no means the worst offender) is irrelevant. seriously, i mean nothing against you.

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:30 (eighteen years ago)

ilm can suck the earnestness out of anyone. in six months i fully expect louis jagger to be posting six word zing fragments and mocking his 19-year-old replacement.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:30 (eighteen years ago)

you've killed earnest deej
http://www.seinfeld-fan.net/pictures/george/george_costanza003.jpg

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:30 (eighteen years ago)

lousteen or whomever it will be

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:31 (eighteen years ago)

I do quite miss the old ILM. :-( I felt completely out of place, as a result of a serious lack of braincells, but I still long back to those days of highbrow chatter.

― nathalie, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:31 (eighteen years ago)

DAMN THESE XPOSTS.

RIP CULTURE OF THE ZING.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:31 (eighteen years ago)

I like the rolling comedy show when I find it funny. I hate it when I don't find it funny. I think this stance is true for most.

― HI DERE, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:32 (eighteen years ago)

I'm actually still pretty earnest in DJ Premier -related threads

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:33 (eighteen years ago)

That said, it completely drained me and as a result I felt completely depressed. Maybe because I never felt at ease, always the outsider, also because it was very male... Various reasons really. But moaningh won't bring it back of course.

― nathalie, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:33 (eighteen years ago)

maybe ilx's shitty new format will mean that we all get back in touch with our lapsed earnestness

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:33 (eighteen years ago)

Moving from sub-jess/trife to sub-matt he1geson

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:33 (eighteen years ago)

I may be exaggerating of course.

― nathalie, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:33 (eighteen years ago)

Oh Jess, how we can fool ourselves. I doubt it.

― nathalie, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:34 (eighteen years ago)

nath on some midget from twin peaks belgian pig latin shit

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:34 (eighteen years ago)

nathalie i find it kind of heartening that five years later i still never have any idea what you're talking about

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)

Earnestness is overrated; the big problem is that cynicism is also overrated and, in this particular idiom, there's very little good middle ground that scans as interesting or memorable reading.

― HI DERE, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:36 (eighteen years ago)

i miss old funny pre-baby nathalie who wasnt above bumrushing an ally depressoid thread or indie guilt c/d to make rapid-clip incomprehensible lolz

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:36 (eighteen years ago)

ffs I stand by everything I've said here. I suspect you're all picking up on me on trifling rhetorical grounds. The earnest sentiment I display doesn't sit well with your desire to take a pot-shot at whomever you choose. I'd like to think I wasn't pontificating but giving my own perspective of what's been happening here over the past few hours, i.e. NNNNNNGH.

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:37 (eighteen years ago)

we're a bad influence ethan. we turn nice english as a second language speakers into cruel zingmeisters.

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

"Pink, Lloyd,"

zomg

― Frogman Henry, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

You weren't pontificating, you were masturbating? Gross, dude.

― HI DERE, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

louis we're on to mocking foreigners now, do keep up

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

quoting jess != the truth, the final word

I thought he was overreacting and it (hi dere old friend rockism debate) probably would have burned out in 50 posts.

― fandango, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

(As per usual I am kind of talking to myself with random scatological humor asides to play to the crowd.)

― HI DERE, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:40 (eighteen years ago)

louis we're on to mocking foreigners now, do keep up

Louis's greek, it's allowed.

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:40 (eighteen years ago)

normally meta is a guilty pleasure, but this is excruciating!

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:41 (eighteen years ago)

i figured jagger was his stage name

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:41 (eighteen years ago)

half greek-cypriot, dom, get your facts right...

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:41 (eighteen years ago)

Why is it funny when jaymc divulges other people's personal info but megacreepy when anyone else does it?

― HI DERE, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)

you'd think a couple of non-whites like louis and dom could find some common ground

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)

with jaymc the creepiness is always implied so there's no need to comment or dwell on it

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:43 (eighteen years ago)

I think I speak for many ILMers when I say, on reading this thread, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ALL TALKING ABOUT

― Ronan, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:43 (eighteen years ago)

race

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:44 (eighteen years ago)

Ronan = hero

― HI DERE, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:44 (eighteen years ago)

louis = gyro

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:45 (eighteen years ago)

I just woke up and kind of want to respond to various charges above, but I don't want to derail the Greek-bashing.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:47 (eighteen years ago)

no xpost notification, fixed usernames, no "skip to unread answers", no "display only last 50 answers", no automatic hyperlinking of URLs... = ILM got dumber.

― fandango, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:48 (eighteen years ago)

but the greek bashing is a derail of the teenpop derail, which was a derail of the teenpop imposition, which was a derail of the original thread, and so derailing that wouldn't make a difference to the FUCKING ENORMOUS TRAIN WRECK that is this thread.

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:48 (eighteen years ago)

"Skip to unread" works for me dood.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:48 (eighteen years ago)

"The Greek people are anarchic and difficult to tame. For this reason we must strike deep into their cultural roots: perhaps then we can force them to conform. I mean, of course, to strike at their language, their religion, their cultural and historical reserves, so that we can neutralize their ability to develop, to distinguish themselves, or to prevail; thereby removing them as an obstacle to our strategically vital plans in the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East."

Kissinger OTM

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:48 (eighteen years ago)

i was getting ready to ask if dom was reading geobbles now

oof. not a good look america

― deej, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:49 (eighteen years ago)

I don't mind the homosexuality. I understand it. Nevertheless, goddamn, I don't think you glorify it on public television, homosexuality, even more than you glorify whores. We all know we have weaknesses. But, goddammit, what do you think that does to kids? You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates. You know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. Neither in a public way. You know what happened to the popes? They were layin' the nuns; that's been goin' on for years, centuries. But the Catholic Church went to hell three or four centuries ago. It was homosexual, and it had to be cleaned out. That's what's happened to Britain. It happened earlier to France.

- Ashlee Simpson

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:53 (eighteen years ago)

I have the greatest affection for them [blacks], but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.

- Aly, of Aly & AJ

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:01 (eighteen years ago)

do we really need to fake racist remarks by teenpop iconz when we have Paris doing it for real?

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:03 (eighteen years ago)

very good hoosteen

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

It was not suddenly bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.

-Vanessa Hudgens

― Curt1s Stephens, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

youll never get the coveted 'hoosteen otm' if you keep on as a biter

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

has paris ever been in xxl's negro please??

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:05 (eighteen years ago)

Why covet hoosteen otm when I can get called faggy gay fag on the regular?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:06 (eighteen years ago)

have you been hanging out with mickey?

― strongohulkington, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:06 (eighteen years ago)

The film begins with Hilton topless in a bathroom with the camera on her breasts. She shows her face briefly before stepping out to the room (it appears to be a hotel suite).

Hilton is now behind the camera with the night vision on. Nixon has a robe on and has an erection. Then Nixon takes the camera from Hilton and the two have sex. Nixon shoots the scene from a point-of-view perspective as the camera zooms in on the vaginal penetration. (It is also discovered at this point that Hilton's pubic hair is shaved.)

The scene then shows Hilton answering her phone. Nixon tells her to hang up and the two continue having sex. (Paris: "Wait. Let me get my phone." Nixon: "Yo, fuck your phone!")

Hilton now has Nixon on a chair in front of the TV and begins performing fellatio.

Next is a similar scene from the beginning where Hilton is videotaping herself once more topless in front of a mirror.

The movie shifts briefly with the two on a plane and then a swimming pool at an exclusive resort.

Hilton then goes to the hotel's bedroom and sits on chair where Nixon removes her panties. She takes a sip of champagne. Nixon jokingly tells her she is underage and should not drink.

The two move to the bed where the camera is set across from it to show Nixon penetrating Hilton vaginally from behind and with her leg on his shoulder.

In the next scene, Hilton has Nixon on a chair and is now completely naked while performing fellatio on him once more. This session goes on for almost seven minutes straight. After a while, Nixon ejaculates on her breasts to end the film.

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:08 (eighteen years ago)

!!!!!!!

― Curt1s Stephens, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:08 (eighteen years ago)

it was the only logical progression

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:09 (eighteen years ago)

srsly

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:11 (eighteen years ago)

ok I'm outta this thread before I become part of a trifecta with LJ and Hoosten

― Curt1s Stephens, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:12 (eighteen years ago)

you can be their mascot

― and what, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:13 (eighteen years ago)

Did she give him the classic "five seconds to go" hand countdown?

― Mark G, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)

we're the chorus of ILM

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

"Lily Allen shot to fame on the back of Myspace, but she's better known for her hyphy ska pop"

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

Good old shooting on backs!

― Mark G, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:19 (eighteen years ago)

I notice there's a lower level of sophistication in the dialogue, or at least less pretense of sophistication

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 5 March 2007 17:40 (eighteen years ago)

At first I was assuming that was referring to Cynthia Nixon and I was very scared.

― HI DERE, Monday, 5 March 2007 18:15 (eighteen years ago)

Anyway, a reason why posts are generally shorter is surely that people are aware that with no xpost warning they have to respond fairly quickly, for fear of losing the thread of debate amidst the replies of others, and the typing-time can be cut with a pithier response.

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 20:49 (eighteen years ago)

ilx ruined

― JW, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:38 (eighteen years ago)

There was no xpost warning back in the Greenspun days, either, but then again there were only a couple dozen regular posters, so it felt a little bit more like an email list than a chat room.

― nabisco, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:41 (eighteen years ago)

Anyway, a reason why posts are generally shorter is surely that people are aware that with no xpost warning they have to respond fairly quickly

Or hit "Refresh" right before they post.

― Curt1s Stephens, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:44 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, but.......

.....

;_;

― unfished business, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:48 (eighteen years ago)

i'm hallucinating. i was certain that i posted on this thread but i can't find my posts anywhere. BOO

― nathalie, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 10:10 (eighteen years ago)

you did post, but you need to load the whole thread to read them (ctrl+f 'skipping' to find the link quickly)

― blueski, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 11:14 (eighteen years ago)

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h143/Aramyr/bad-dudes.jpg

― gershy, Thursday, 8 March 2007 06:20 (eighteen years ago)

Gershy, is your real name Ann Coulter?

― curmudgeon, Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:15 (eighteen years ago)

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