Pazz & Jop 2004 Appreciation Thread

This is SO our Critmas (Miccio OTM) but also kind of the World Series too.

*see posts elsewhere about betting on the top 40

"Galang" was the year's weirdest/best pop single. British-Sri Lankan Maya Arulpragasam, the Zadie Smith of grime, seemed engineered in a critic's laboratory: young, gifted, mixed-race, female, politically minded, art-school educated, child of a bona fide revolutionary, populist enough for the polyglot dancehall, punk enough to co-write with Justine Frischmann and hire Diplo as her DJ, gorgeous enough to work as a model. As a life-during-war-time party anthem, peerless.

Will Hermes
Saugerties, New York

USE OTHER EXOTIC FETISHIZATIONS PLEASE. (Then again it's true how when comments like this were written that nobody had seen anything like the MIA thread yet -- not that that fully excuses it at all.)

It's weird to me that the U.S. presidential election is all over this poll, from Christgau's essay to a lot of the comments. It just never occurred to me when writing about the year in music to make any reference to Bush vs. Kerry; I guess I just keep politics separate.

I was surprised at that myself, or at least the vehemence. I don't THINK I made much reference to it in my comments, if at all.

Ernesto Lechner
Glendale, California

Dude! I didn't even know there was a new album from them, so clearly I have not been following Mr. Cibula's comments as I ought, as he surely has heard this. I loved Jessico so this is a good sign...

"Whee! I was almost number one!"

uh, I think he used them all--and I think that was his entire point.

http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/04/critic.php?criticid=4711

take note of his #1

GOD I'VE BEEN DYING TO TELL ALL YOU GUYS THIS STUFF

Fred Mills
Wadesboro, North Carolina

Oh sweet Jesus.

(x-post)

I hope he finds that via Google. He needs to know.

iTunes 4.7 minipink smart playlist=Van Lear Rose

Toast Lite 5.2 Critical Karaoke comp= Speicher 2 (out of order)

Danger Mouse The Grey Album= College Dropout

Amy Phillips
Brooklyn, New York

What a retard.

Well, I trust your take on him, certainly -- but I think it was poorly phrased. He might have been making a joke on such constructions, it's just not that funny in the end (not that I'm innocent of bad jokes or anything).

"Hey Ya" - 322 points last year
"Roses" - 8 points this year

I think "Roses" might actually be a better song.

Rob Tannenbaum
Manhattan

meooowwwwww

True, but how have I not been alerted until now to the fact that William Shatner has a cover of "Common People"?

>Xgau's ... prose accretes into impressive bulges

Bulges, yes. Impressive or bilious?

Dear Chuck (and Robert),

Another year, another ballot! (Is it that time again?) And what a year it was—thanks to you, Chuck, I finally made it into the Voice music section. There was that 60-word review of Scarface (NOT Al Pacino, I learned soon after the assignment, but a former "Ghetto Boy"), and then 2500 words worth (wasn't he a poet? haw haw) of Celine Dion analysis: if most people get to put in their two cents, I got to put in a whole dollar! Of course, it figures that my writing career would begin taking off just when my band got its first gig. Everyone knows that we music journalists are just frustrated musicians who smear the stars with sour grapes, and it has always been my hope to become a real person by joining a succesful bar band. Well, they might not've served alcohol there, but, lemme tell you, those folks in the Howard Johnson were drunk on my fleet-fingered blues lickin'! Anyhow, a smeared byline in the Voice looks sorta like a name on a back-lit marquee, if you squint at it, and I sure appreciated the chance to make more money.

Anyhow, 2002 is in the books, and I'm pleased as punch we made it through the year without a single major act of terrorism on our shores—not including the Avril Lavigne's dive-bombing of the pop charts, of course! I swear, between Swedish guitar bands becoming the new teenpop androids and my wife leaving me, I felt as out of place as a muppet in a Weezer video most of this year. Thank god the Strokes, Ryan Adams and the Chili Peppers (and let's not forget the Boss) proved rock wasn't dead after all—it was just hiding in a cave in Afghanistan! Thanks also to Missy and Nelly, eclectic, forward-thinking rap stars whose indomitable sass penetrated my darkest hours and made me say, "Crack a window—it's getting hot in herre!"

Rock on,
Kevin McFrench

Nick Catucci
Brooklyn, New York
Christian Hoard
Manhattan

PERSONAL INFO—per(sonal) the Poobahs' request:
Age: Over 20
Address: 3 Plain Lane, Cleveland, OH 14321
Phone: (937) 782-9391
Email: rockandroll@plaindealer.com
SSN (Not that you'll print any of this, but hey!): 937-78-2939
Still white, still male, still heterosexual—and still wishing I had a fatter paycheck! I've written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer nigh on 15 years now and am beginning to wonder whether pop music is as bad as I proclaim it is in my weekly column, or if I'm losing touch. My daughter opts for the former, and I'd have to say I do, too, haw haw! I mean, c'mon, between that floozy Britney and all this "bling-bling" stuff, everything the Rolling Stones stood for has been smudged beyond recognition, like a fresh Dealer after a thorough reading. I can't claim to know much about "keeping it real," but I'll f'sure tell you that Bob Dylan and Alicia Keys can. The knock-knock joke-crackin' trickster and proud young sister give a geezer hope. Don't get me wrong; I've got an open ear cocked toward trendy acts like Bush and—my daughter's fave—Eve 6. But man cannot live on airheads alone! Anyway, it's always been my dream to write for the Voice. Let me know if you're ever in a bind and could use a review or three!

COMMENTS: It's 2002—is teenpop dead yet??
Blonde Joke: Someone should tell Pink to change her name, now that her hair is blonde!
Moulin Rouge—Video, or semi-pornographic musical accompaniment? Eve and Gwen Stefani's "Let Me Blow Ya Mind"—Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Bubba Sparxxx—Bill Clinton's long-lost brother?
Is anyone else having trouble keeping track of these remixes?
The Strokes—"Hey Dad, can I be in a cool band?"
Bob Dylan—The new Dylan?
Jakob Dylan—The new '80s Dylan?
Lost: Electronica
Found: Disco (Ouch, I know)
Someone to Chase These Boybands off the Charts—Wanted!
Osama Bin Laden—Also wanted!
Anthrax (the band)—Feeling pretty weird right now
Daft Punk—Not punk, but possibly daft
Jay-Z—Stabby McStab Stab
September 11th—What's up with that?!

America: A Tribute to Heroes (Uni/Joint Network)
Bob Dylan, "Love and Theft" (Columbia)
Lucinda Williams, Essence (Lost Highway)
Alicia Keys, Songs In A Minor (J Records)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Mercury/Lost Highway)
Joe Henry, Scar (Mammoth)
Pete Yorn, musicforthemorningafter (Columbia)
Dolly Parton, Little Sparrow (Sugar Hill)
Ben Folds, Rockin' the Suburbs (Epic)
John Mellencamp, Cuttin' Heads (Columbia)

Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott, "Get Ur Freak On" (Elektra)
Alicia Keys, "Fallin'" (J Records)
Ryan Adams, "New York, New York" (Lost Highway)
U2, "Walk On" (Interscope)
Afroman, "Because I Got High" (Universal)
U2, "Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" (Interscope)
Train, "Drops of Jupiter" (Columbia)
Lifehouse, "Hanging By a Moment" (DreamWorks)
Incubus, "Drive" (Immortal/Epic)
U2, "Elevation" (Interscope)

Cheers!
Kevin McFrench

Nick Catucci
Brooklyn, New York

Weird, I thought that this was common knowledge by now...anyhow, I was very very skeptical of it, but it ended up as my #2 single of the year...some further comment about it over on Post your Pazz'n'Jop 2004 Comments HERE

xpost!

Christopher O'Connor
Syracuse, New York

He could've saved a lot of time by just writing "Gosh, those guys sure are unhappy! Doggone if I don't get it!"

Instead he had to go and sound like a jackass.

Instead he had to go and sound like a jackass.

Um, that was meant as a positive comment. ... I love the Dirty South ... I'm talking about the larger than life quality of the personas at work, which is what drives it.

So please, fuck you ... :-)

Couldn;t you see Lil' Jon, banner and the Yin Yangs and Lil' Flip doing the same thing?

Get it now, dude?

Too bad he only had like three or four Spanish-language records out of 20 that he voted for! (Nina Sky and Luciana Torres and Gordo Jose y su Squad del Terror do not count.)

I think Ken Tucker is a film critic now, but he was a TV critic for a long, long time, dating back to the 1980s with People and, until recently, with Entertainment Weekly.

The LA Times has Gus Gurza on that beat. He burps out a reviews column about once week, features more infrequently. The record reviews, however, appear reliably and along with Don Heckman's jazz reviews easily outnumber the pop reviews the Times publishes. And it doesn't publish many -- about four a week, only on Sunday. That's miniscule, even well below miniscule, compared to the size of the paper, its general scope and venue.

Gurza was in P&J in the past, maybe last year. Most of the Times' features staffers -- note, I said "staffers" -- who write about pop music don't appear to me to be in P&J. Maybe I'm mistaken. Hilburn is the only name that jumped out and anyone who reads him regularly could have predicted him in with the top scorers in the alignment stats.

Where was this? (In the comments in P&J? I didn't read every word of them.)

And two of those weren't too great really.

Yeah, stands to reason.

Consumer Guide Reviews:
Changing Horses [Elektra, 1969]
The usual magic bullshit, often tedious but full of wondrous surprises. B+

Relics [Elektra, 1971]
Way back in the 1960s I tried to figure out whether these acoustic Scots were magic or bullshit and concluded that they were both. But lately they've lost something. Only two of the eighteen songs on this compilation postdate March 1968. Which seems fitting--they recorded "Way Back in the 1960s" in 1967. B+

(xpost)

There may have been some new writers like that this year (I haven't compared), but there's not enough interest from non-Latin-music-specialists, so the presence of some writers from Latin Beat or The Beat just ends up being diluted.

(What's that statistical breakdown thread called?)

http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/04/critic.php?criticid=3167