let the games begin... (P&J02 is here)

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The site isn't linked yet, but you can get there by typing in the following address:

http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/02/

So have at it!

― anonymouslurker, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 15:56 (twenty-two years ago)

It's FORBIDDEN!!!

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 15:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah.

When is the 'street date'?

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:04 (twenty-two years ago)

damn, i hope its not this week

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Wilco = kill me now.

― mark p (Mark P), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:09 (twenty-two years ago)

It's on the street Tues. night. Date of paper is Feb. 12-18.

― Mary (Mary), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Michael Daddino owns the comments section. He's got, like, 50 of 'em!

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:20 (twenty-two years ago)

There are so many ILX people in the comments section! Not mine though but that's OK cos they weren't very good.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:21 (twenty-two years ago)

My old good one was about the Rapture but it was way too long.

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

My Massengill commercial joke got in.

― Carey (Carey), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:26 (twenty-two years ago)

my joke predictions of a few weeks back were/are worryingly OTM; but what happened to bob?

― zebedee, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I saw a couple pages then was reprimanded by the powers that be. I always look at some ballots first, and all I can say is I wish I had actually cast a vote for what is apparently my #1 single (not even one of my top 40 choices...a song I've barely even heard).

― s woods, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Where are all of you reading this?

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Michael Daddino owns the comments section. He's got, like, 50 of 'em!

Hurrah! Well deserved! I was so late with mine, I am sad. :-( But they wouldn't have been much anyway, I'm thinking. Bring on next year instead!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Where are all of you reading this?

Keep trying the link above, occasionally it works.

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:44 (twenty-two years ago)

The page is working intermittently. You just have to keep plugging away. Or else wait til later...nah.

― Carey (Carey), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:44 (twenty-two years ago)

i can't get it to work and apparently my weebles comment went in :(

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:46 (twenty-two years ago)

If it says forbidden, simply refresh. My colleague is currently 1100 deep into the Best Of 2002 list.

― mark p (Mark P), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Me and Sasha Frere-Jones were the only people in the WHOLE WORLD who voted for the Bedingfield album. :(

And I was the only person in the WHOLE WORLD who voted for Scooter in either category. :(:(:(

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I got it to work. Just keep trying.

Heh. They made a mistake and have two entries for Disco Nouveau making it 196 instead of 215. Bad Village Voice bad!

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Also ph34r the line-up for the Sugababes album!

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:52 (twenty-two years ago)

haha tom why are you even going to bother doing the focus group now?

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:53 (twenty-two years ago)

er... I made a mistake too... I meant to say 215 instead of 196. Bad Aaron W bad!

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Evverytime I read this thread title I think it's going to be a Gilmore Girls thread.

― Carey (Carey), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Clearly the only reason to do the Focus Group now is to share my wit & brilliance with the rest of the world. Like, duh.

― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:02 (twenty-two years ago)

No surprise I only got one comment...wasn't even expecting that.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:03 (twenty-two years ago)

"doing the focus group"

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:07 (twenty-two years ago)

dan perry to thread?

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:10 (twenty-two years ago)

i think we got greedy and broke it. i still cant get in

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually the reason for doing it is so ppl who aren't rock critics* get to play - in future I will be more pro-active about this seeing as we 'are winning' critwise.

*i.e. who will vote for SCOOTER.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:12 (twenty-two years ago)

supertramp fear still looms large over the american rockcrit landscape. perhaps too large...

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:14 (twenty-two years ago)

There was a thread recently talking about which critics conformed most to the eventual winnahs of the P&J; I feel like I'm the reverse of that: most of what I picked, I was the only one who voted for it at all. I can't believe that of the hundreds (thousands?) of critics polled, not ONE other person rated David Holmes' Come Get It I Got It. I mean, more people were with me on Kristian Hoffman's &, which I thought was far more obscure (though I'm glad he got the recognition!).

I'm also glad Mountain Goats got more than just my vote...looks like a bundle. Still fighting through the "forbidden"s to find out where they placed.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:20 (twenty-two years ago)

2 years ago I think I was the only person who voted for D. Holmes "Bow Down Before the Exit..."

― Carey (Carey), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Tom needs to finish the FG because I'm NOT in P&J

― jm (jtm), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:27 (twenty-two years ago)

boo! 'slave 4 u' was 2001 mark s!

― zemko (bob), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

wow my ballot is TOTALLY fucked

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:10 (twenty-two years ago)

i hope donut bitch appreciates his NUMBER 2 placing in my list (no offence bri, but you were at like 6 or so)

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:11 (twenty-two years ago)

btw, go bob go:

Meanwhile, history sucks, and headed by two of the dullest works of well-turned semipopularity ever to contemplate their own impotence, our 29th or 30th poll sucks right along with it.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:15 (twenty-two years ago)

If someone with any connection to Ze P&J is reading this, my singles list has a big error, too: "Was You" is by Mary Margaret O'Hara, not Maureen O'Hara.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:38 (twenty-two years ago)

The two or three ballots I've read prior to this are all mucked up, though mostly I gather in terms of the ordering. Luckily mine's not AS bad as I assumed (rather hastily and in my pissed-off-ness) above. I see "Rapture" at the top of my list, which I initially took to mean Rapture the group, instead of "Rapture" the song (by !!O)...I did vote for the song, but not as my #1.

― s woods, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Forgetting what you voted for: C/D?

― s woods, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:48 (twenty-two years ago)

So who compiles this thing? Trained monkeys (i.e. interns)?

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:49 (twenty-two years ago)

i forgot too, scott

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Dubplatestyle: this is is like checking to see how many of your friends got their pictures in on yearbook morning
xo maura ox: i know!!
Dubplatestyle: http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/02/voted_for.php?titleid=101547
Dubplatestyle: who's the OTHER guy??
xo maura ox: he's totally trying to BREAK YOU GUYS UP

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:53 (twenty-two years ago)

two of the dullest works of well-turned semipopularity ever to contemplate their own impotence

Pretty strong words from the Dean there. Way to zap it to those impotent, semi-popular strivers. So we turn over to the Dean's list, expecting to find a bracing corrective to these misguided choices, and what do we find? At number 1, the Mekons, who barely even qualify as semi-popular despite years as perennial critical darlings, and at number 2, the "well-turned" but underwhelming sophomore effort from DJ Shadow, semi-popular purveyor of instrumental hip-hop. Perhaps the Dean forgets that when he points his finger, there are three pointing back at him.

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Here's my lone claim to infamy, or something. Sad?

― s woods, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 18:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Forgetting to select singles *and* submit comments = the ILM shame.

― mark p (Mark P), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Scott noone else voted for Tuuli either!

― mark p (Mark P), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but that one hardly surprises me--no one aside from two eye weekly readers (me and my wife) has ever heard of them (except for Sterling, who let me down on that one...).

― s woods, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:04 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/02/voted_for.php?titleid=100345

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Skipping 229 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

Dudes! No need to tell me what Pitchfork people need to do to get in! JayMC asked me why not and I tried to answer: personally I have very little expectation that Chuck or anyone else in the universe will feel much need to solicit my personal opinion on anything, and don't quite feel the need to pimp it at him.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 13 February 2003 00:20 (twenty-two years ago)

I have not even been very vigilant about trotting it out to its usual streetcorners of late.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 13 February 2003 00:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Well. I was just curious, that's all. I've tossed off an e-mail to Schreibs about it; perhaps he'll reply. Also, nabisco, capping the J is fine, but capping the MC makes me feel like I should be wearing an Adidas tracksuit. Not a very catchy tag, though, is it?

― jaymc, Thursday, 13 February 2003 06:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Thanks to Sterling, what's screaming at me as the REAL story of this P&J is the absence of Irv Gotti: absence from Frere-Jones's essay, near absence from the comments (I was expecting at the least a slew of denunciations, and there was only one), and a measly four votes for "What's Luv." Astonishing. I expect metal and Eurodisco and c&w to get short shrift, since most voters aren't listening and don't care; but Gotti was the main figure this year in what a lot of them think is the vanguard genre.

I'm fine with my singles list, don't think anything should be displaced, but to be honest I knew damn well that the Ian Van Dahl was from 2001, and I kept it on because I wanted to keep "Long Time Gone" and "What's Luv" off, since both angered me for ideological reasons: "Long Time Gone" for having no electric instruments and for those reactionary lines about tired but not Haggard, money but no Cash; "What's Luv" for Fat Joe bragging that he wouldn't go down on Ashanti. (However, Fat Joe does rap on that Tony Touch single I voted for.) Not that I think that most voters were lying in not voting for "What's Luv": if you don't like something's sensibility you often don't like its sound either. In any event, Gotti made hip hop for girls, and not our kind of girls, either.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Thursday, 13 February 2003 06:21 (twenty-two years ago)

What do you think are Irv Gotti's innovations, Frank?

― Amateurist (amateurist), Thursday, 13 February 2003 06:24 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm not frank, but he makes disco-rap records in 2002, which is a pretty fucking big deal, considering.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Thursday, 13 February 2003 06:26 (twenty-two years ago)

although the problem is that he's been doing this for a number of years now, just not perhaps as commercially successfully as in 2002 (although when you're dealing with singles which are routinely top 40, if not top 10, that's pretty relative): cf. ja rule's "livin it up", a track on dmx's last album which was a bit like the incredible hulk as the studio singer for salsoul...i'm not sure if they were produced by gotti himself - in fact i'm sure the dmx track probably wasnt - but both bear his fingerprints. he makes tracks which are "girly" but "hard", he's blurred the line between mod r&b and hip-hop probably most strenuously and consistently of any producer in the past few years, but unlike timbaland or the neptunes its by bring the "r&b" (in the classic sense) into hip-hop. he also has pretty string and chime and glockenspiel sounds.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Thursday, 13 February 2003 06:33 (twenty-two years ago)

that last sentence is very true.

― James Blount (James Blount), Thursday, 13 February 2003 06:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Frank, if you had to try so hard to keep "Long Time Gone" off your list than you must have had reasons for liking it as well. The Merle and Johnny lines I agree are somewhat suspect as I can't imagine that the chix lose that much sleep over who's on country radio just as long as they are. I think it was a naked bid to boost their banjo afficionado street cred,yet even there it doesn't make any sense cuz then they would have been rhyming Krauss and Dirt Band with gingham blouse and across this land or somesuch.Plus,the idea of cash and haggard being sandwiched in between the new romantics of the current c&w scene would just sound so wrong and weird. Like jellyroll inbetween miles and trane. What I loved about that song was that it managed to sound so mod despite the olde tymey trappings. It was great punk-pop disguised as amuricana.Their re-working of Stevie doesn't sound half as refreshing or exciting. Shit, I never really paid them much mind before I heard that song. They were cute and all...

― Scott Seward, Thursday, 13 February 2003 06:50 (twenty-two years ago)

another interesting thing about gotti is precisely what frank was talking about above: he gets none of the love from critics that timbaland or the neps do, none of that slobbering to make up for the fact that they finally have an auteur face to put behind all this wet'n'shiny mussolini-machine-music. gotti is so goddamned mercenary, a bit retrograde all things considered, and very much a "classic black entertainment entrepreneur" in the berry gordy sense (while i've no doubt he loves hip-hop as much as you or me or krs-one, his genius is as much navigating and exploiting cutthroat capitalism as it is programming rhythm boxes): his output as such will be a lot easier to dissect in the future, not only removed from its immediate context but also without the weirdness - either commission-based (the neptunes) or sonic (timbaland) - of the other major producers of his day.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Thursday, 13 February 2003 07:01 (twenty-two years ago)

by that i mean, sfj is right: the neps may well go on to produce blink 182 and u2 and the master musicians of jajouka and timbaland may well go on to surround himself with a collection of musicians and either launch deep into the guts of his machines ala lee perry or get on his pony and ride into the sunset ala marley marl and pumpkin and everyone else people try to tell you never fell off. but while murder inc. is no motown, it operates very much within the same context of upwardly mobile, very "black" pop, and while motown had several of its own revolutions (i can't wait for murder inc. to go through its "psychedelic" phase), you'd never expect gordy to greenlight the mekons or chuck mangione or good charlotte. (or the fall, ha ha.)

― jess (dubplatestyle), Thursday, 13 February 2003 07:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Kogan I love Gotti but despised "What's Luv" mainly coz of the Ashanti hook even though I liked her fine on "Always On Time" and whatever other tracks she sang the hook for. I voted for "Down 4 U" instead (which got one other vote -- Laura Singara with a GREAT singles list and better-than-average alt-albums list) which I consider the prototypical circa 2k2 gotti track -- as swirling and granular and gravel-vox as anything he's done. Plus its a total Murder R&B showcase track.

I also cast the ONLY vote for "Last Temptation".

[Also Jess his sound as of Pain Is Love in 2001 totally switched up from what it was prior (I talk about this in my voice article on Ja Rule) and started to rilly downplay the disco in favor of this sonic growl thing which isn't as disturbingly organic as say timbaland's pony, but neither is it as upbeat or offputting -- more like textural tapestry. I think "Every Little Thing" was the apex of his disco-output where the gamelan was so precise that it made no sense without the vocals while now the vocals just seem to emerge spontaneously like man crawling out of primordial ooze. Also gotti has NO FUNK but he has lots of drive like all his fanfare trax, especially for ODB's N*** Please and he brought it HARD on the more technoid disco end of fanfare with "Can I Get A..."]

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 13 February 2003 07:09 (twenty-two years ago)

It's bedtime, so real fast: Jess and Sterling said most of it; Gotti's more recent stuff (compared to "Can I Get A..." back in '98) mushes the r&b and the hip hop elements together, so you don't simply have, like, here's the r&b song and then here's where the rapper gets a verse, or here's the rap song with someone singing in the chorus. The rapping comes close to sounding like singing, and the rapper finishes the singer's lines and vice versa (just as rappers used to finish each other's lines). Also, Gotti is the most electro (or Miami, or whatever you want to call it) of the big-time NY hip hop producers, which is what I guess Jess means by disco-rap, though obviously "Cars With the Boom" got onto (or near) the Top 40 with it a decade before Gotti. (And what about Whoot/Whoomp Whatever It Was? Etc.) Honestly, I often don't know which stuff Gotti hands-on produced and which he was just the general impresario for. If he was the guy who produced Ja Rule's "Between Me and You" (I thought it was Timbaland when I first heard it, and maybe it is), he can be credited with setting off hip hop's recent Asian craze - I mean, hitting big with it first (obviously RZA flaunted Asia long before Gotti). Unless someone else who I've forgotten about beat him to it.

But usually (and despite my considering "Can I Get A..." one of the greatest hip hop songs ever) I way prefer Timbaland, and this taste of course comes from who I am which includes my social class (or category or subcategory or classling or whatever you want to call it).

Dixie Chicks: Natalie Maines is the greatest hit-me-right-in-the-emotions hot singer in the world right now. And despite its unplugged rigor, "Long Time Gone" rocks (though no harder than the Kingston Trio's equally unplugged folkie cabaret platters did 40 years ago); but previous hits "Ready to Run" and "Goodbye Earl" are less musically chaste and better, as "Long Time Gone" would have been had it too been less chaste.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Thursday, 13 February 2003 07:44 (twenty-two years ago)

"I'm Real" was probably his most in-between-period track, and its really actually completely unique productionwise, in this sort of light swing groove. Only the trackmasters remix of "fiesta" (i think it was the trackmasters! oh i wish they would do more stuff) really compares.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 13 February 2003 07:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I voted for "Down 4 U" instead (which got one other vote -- Laura Singara with a GREAT singles list and better-than-average alt-albums list) which I consider the prototypical circa 2k2 gotti track -- as swirling and granular and gravel-vox as anything he's done. Plus its a total Murder R&B showcase track.

Amen, that song would be in my top 10. I'm glad someone else liked it. I still haven't sold my Ashanti cd (ok, I tried to, unsuccessfully - no one would buy it), I still love "Rescue," and still really really love "Happy," (which i would rank as my #1 single of the year; surprisingly someone actually did -Phil Dellio, who doesn't vote for albums!), which I am eh, happy, to see placing much, much higher than the other two Ashanti singles (esp. the recycled "Foolish").

I do not have to live my life in shame any longer, nor isolation!!

― Vic (Vic), Thursday, 13 February 2003 08:20 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Sterling nailed it in his Voice piece - when something is that ubiquitous it's very easy to think of it as "just there" and ignore it.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 13 February 2003 09:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm up at 5 AM so this will be brief and stupid, but working with something I hinted at before, Irv Gotti:Hip-Hop::Chemical Brothers:dance. They were screwed over.

― Nate Patrin (Nate Patrin), Thursday, 13 February 2003 11:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Does anyone else that Mr. Xgau is too dour and pessimistic in his intro?

If this really is "the worst P&J EVAH!!" according to him, does that mean he dislikes Wilco/Beck/Flaming Lips' win even more than Imperial Bedroom and that damned Arrested Development album? I guess we'll just have to wait until the next Q&A to find out what "the Dean" really thinks, and what sounded like a good, hyperbolic way to begin an annual write-up.

― Vic (Vic), Thursday, 13 February 2003 11:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Here's a 1-2 album finish worse than 2002: 1986 (Graceland and Costello's King of America)!

― Nate Patrin (Nate Patrin), Thursday, 13 February 2003 12:20 (twenty-two years ago)

I forgot the word "think," natch. =)

― Vic (Vic), Thursday, 13 February 2003 12:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Translation question from P&J comments. What do you imagine when you see this
"pomo mindgame ingroup Mensa music"

― H (Heruy), Thursday, 13 February 2003 13:35 (twenty-two years ago)

What do you imagine when you see this "pomo mindgame ingroup Mensa music"

Truman's Water and Thinking Fellers Union Local #282 but that's sooooo mid-90's.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Thursday, 13 February 2003 13:59 (twenty-two years ago)

The spirit lives on.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 13 February 2003 14:16 (twenty-two years ago)

And thus two threads are tied together with a bow and knot. ;-)

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Thursday, 13 February 2003 14:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Okay I lied I do like "What's Luv" and don't like "Foolish".

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 13 February 2003 17:50 (twenty-two years ago)

You Irvoids get little sympathy for me. "Happy" was tripped-out drug fun but Fat Joe and Ja Rule have the most gratingly obnoxious vocal styles I ever heard. The latter utterly constipated, and Fat Joe sounds like he's yelling from the back a room.

And I was the only person to vote for Good Charlotte. Last year, the only one to vote for Sugar Ray's Sugar Ray. Sentimental Spectorized Pop-Punk Anthems of the TRL woild...THAT'S what don't get the respect.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Thursday, 13 February 2003 19:52 (twenty-two years ago)

P&J stats

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 13 February 2003 22:10 (twenty-two years ago)

The Spice Girls' "Wannabe" is back-in-the-day and avant that Nas and Timbomissy ought to learn from but won't, though Irv might, and four autobiographical pieces, except there used to be five of them, right?

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Friday, 14 February 2003 00:05 (twenty-two years ago)

*ducks*

― mark p (Mark P), Friday, 14 February 2003 00:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Y'all are forgetting about Irv's masterful work on Ashanti's "Rescue" and "Foolish" - "One In A Million" resurrected!

I still check for "I'm Real (Remix)" and "Livin' It Up" most of all though.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Friday, 14 February 2003 00:48 (twenty-two years ago)

It makes sense that if Sasha doesn't like the sensibility of some music he won't like the prose of the people who like the music either. You can't guarantee it of course, anymore than you can guarantee that if you don't like a musician's sensibility you won't like his music. What hit me, though, as soon as Sterling mentioned Gotti, is that Gotti gave Christgau an opportunity to raise the issue of taste and social class. And he didn't take it. Nor did Sasha, of course. So how about us?

This is something wrote in Why Music Sucks in 1987:

Coverage is diverse in some "PBS" 'zines, but tone-of-voice, point-of-view isn't. Imagine Spoonie Gee or Teena Marie writing for one. (Would they be welcome at the Voice, even?)

One of my contributors responded by calling me self-destructive.

(Won't try to explain what I meant by PBS here, except to say my metaphor was that the post-punk world had turned into PBS for the young. PBS = educational TV, snooty upper-middle-brow culture, public affairs programming. "PBS 'zines" meant 'zines [like my own] from the indie world. Anyway, Teena Marie types and Spoonie Gee types don't show up on ILx, either.)

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Friday, 14 February 2003 04:51 (twenty-two years ago)

The quote was something I wrote in Why Music Sucks. The proofreading part of my brain must be tired.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Friday, 14 February 2003 04:54 (twenty-two years ago)

That's the same problem that vexes basically all criticism, all "academic" endeavors, any project wherein people write about something: the small point is that it's self-selecting, and it's already a particular slice of individuals who even want to write organized commentary, and the large point is that it can never decide what it means by quality -- it has to set up some sort of form and technique and lingua franca to act as a gatekeeper, and it's continually vexed by the issue of whether things that don't conform to those standards are "not good" or just "a different perspective." (You can observe this issue unfold in any art and in any critical project.) It's a surprisingly rare person who can look at something with no evident knowledge of those standards and accurately divine whether its content is worthwhile or not. On some level it sort of is like trying to pick which high-school drop-out would actually do a brilliant job running a Fortune 500 company.

Another slant on this is that it's extremely hard to get a democratic sampling of voices when the thing you're doing is by its very nature the enthusiasm of a limited number of people. This is actually the one good thing about tokenism: done properly it can be the thing that invites the token group to come participate legitimately.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 14 February 2003 05:59 (twenty-two years ago)

That drop-out / Fortune 500 analogy isn't meant to carry any class connotations: it's just that after a while it becomes easy to lean on the organized things that supposedly "qualify" someone to do a good job with something, to the exclusion of those who haven't passed the "tests" but could nevertheless do a great or even better job. The paranoid fear is that minus the tests there would be actual unorganized democracy, with all the infuriating idiocies that naturally entails, which everyone supports in the abstract but becomes a really vexing issue to someone actually trying to collect the "best" possible work to print.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 14 February 2003 06:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Nabisco yr. problem is that you think if you have described a problem you've solved it. Instead you've gone halfway to entrenching it.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 14 February 2003 06:34 (twenty-two years ago)

The thing is, it's the Voice's job as a supposedly intellectual magazine to vex the reader with such questions, and the Voice consistently fails to do so, possibly because not enough readers want to be vexed in that way, but most surely because it's become ever more ensconced in standard "journalism" where the raising of such questions is simply incomprehensible to editors. Compare the Voice now to the Voice 25 years ago and note how impersonal (voiceless) it is now compared to then. (This is not Chuck's fault or Bob's fault. Neither of them is editor-in-chief.)

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Saturday, 15 February 2003 01:00 (twenty-two years ago)

here's MY problem with the Pazz'n'jop this year...in the form of a jaunty jingle! (forgive me...I'm not drunk but I might as well be)

Xgau calling to the faraway towns
Now that war is declared and the year’s come down
Xgau calling to the critical world
Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls
xgau calling, but damn he hates us
“All your phony Wilcomania: please discuss!”
Xgau claiming that you ain’t got no swing
‘cept for the Neptunes and that Missy thing

[chorus]
A cold war is coming, sales are zooming down
The mags stop selling, so we all must frown
Your critical error fills xgau with fear
Xgau is frowning, impotent and bitter!

Xgau mocks the imitation zone
But you rarely get printed if you go it alone
Xgau calls your picks the zombies of death
Cuz your folk-rock moodies don’t give him no breath
Xgau called me and I don’t wanna shout
But when xgau was talking…I started nodding out!
Xgau called me but I don’t like his A’s
He’s the one with the 9/11 malaise!

[chorus]
xgau called us, yeah, I was there too
And you know what we said? Well, some of it was true!
But don’t color our comments if they’re not worth your while
Cause when I see the full text, full of passion and smile!
I never felt so much a' like!

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 15 February 2003 02:49 (twenty-two years ago)

how many rockcrit inboxes is that gonna end up in over the coming weeks? very funny

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 15 February 2003 03:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Anthony, that's nice.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Saturday, 15 February 2003 03:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I was just thinking the other day that the entire malaise is still explainable by Frank's central thesis in WMS #1. Only that the problem is increasingly boring as well as frustrating.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Saturday, 15 February 2003 04:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Also this might be the place to note that the order of my ballot was totally screwed up somehow, especially the singles. Did this happen to anyone else?

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Saturday, 15 February 2003 05:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Anthony that is WONDERFUL

― M Matos (M Matos), Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Tim it happened to EVERYONE else. Chuck's been trying put them right so it might be worth asking

― M Matos (M Matos), Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Ha ha sorry I find it hard to keep up with the ILX avalanche these days.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Saturday, 15 February 2003 06:54 (twenty-two years ago)

A friend of mine emailed me to say that Kylie has been voted "GREATEST LIVING AUSTRALIAN." (Didn't say who did the voting.) 7th place seems rather pale praise for the greatest living Australian (on the other hand, this is the first time she's ever place Pazz & Jop, though not the first time she's ever placed on my ballot).

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Saturday, 15 February 2003 07:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Greg Norman wuz robbed!

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 15 February 2003 07:30 (twenty-two years ago)

As was David Nichols!

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Saturday, 15 February 2003 08:02 (twenty-two years ago)

thanks for the compliments, guys.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 15 February 2003 18:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Not a bad year at all.
A dreadful fucking year.

It's gotta be some sinister, Bizarro-like plot to dull our collective senses even further. I can already feel what's left of my brain going numb, numb, numb...

Non-existent artist of the year award goes to either Ari Fleisher or Colin Powell: for lying more artfully to the American people--and therefore the world--than Bush or Rumsfeld could ever hope to (at least while the cameras were rolling, which is after all what really counts, right).

What the hell did Wilco/Beck/Flaming Lips do last year that could compare with that kind of a performance?

― J. Sot (J. Sot), Sunday, 16 February 2003 14:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Kogan is a jazz-fusion critic.

― Cozen (Cozen), Friday, 28 February 2003 22:59 (twenty-two years ago)

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