Shittiest ass music blogs ever: specific pieces in particular

So, in summary, fags and Mexicans made it so I couldn’t see my favoritist band in the whole entire world. Thanks guys.

could be considered an endorsement of sorts.

the fact that the band in question is the Mountain Goats is just coincidence, really. this guy could have written the same piece about any other band with semi-weird touring schedules, of which there are plenty.

1) Personally I didn't feel even slightly skeeved at the surroundings, having been there a number of times before (the only time I HAVE felt unnerved at any LA show was probably Ween at Jabberjaw's old location in 1992, a month after the riots and near some burned out buildings, and even that wasn't really that bad).

2) I heard "Best Heavy Metal Band in Denton" asked for more than "Going to Georgia"

3) "Going to Georgia" WAS played and as I noted elsewhere featured Rachel onstage with John for the first time in ten years, a fact which probably would have caused Mr. Disdainfulfucko to yank off his pud in sheer delight, however much he pretends otherwise.

that said, unless one is really insecure or stupid, the occasional "shitty fans" should never be seen as a reflection of the artist/band in question...

not as much a blog as a LEGIT WEEKLY PAPER IN A VERY LARGE U.S. CITY.. I bring you, Jadeez & Lentilmen, the one and only -- Jonathan Valania! The piece: "Ghost Writing"

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=7618

Ghost Writing

Aborted by The Village Voice, a Wilco review is born in PW.

by Jonathan Valania

This was originally written for The Village Voice but for reasons that will become apparent in a few sentences, it never got printed. Kids, never, under any circumstances, question the wisdom of your assigning editor in print.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before we get started, there are a few things you should know.

First, I'm writing what will, by the end, read like a qualified rave under the withering glare of music editor Chuck Eddy, who's made it abundantly clear that a Wilco hagiography will not run in the Voice. "God, I hate that band," were his exact words to me.

Second, I should point out here that I have been officially banished from the Wilco camp for a Magnet cover story I wrote detailing the Behind the Music soap opera that made 2002 Pazz & Jop poll-topper Yankee Hotel Foxtrot so talked about: the messy divorce from Reprise, the forced-to-walk-the-plank departures of multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett and drummer Ken Coomer, and the handshake drugs that were bought downtown.

Third, in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention I have a brief cameo in I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, the Wilco documentary that came out shortly after the release of YHF. Respectively, let me say that I'm not surprised, I'm not complaining and I'm not bragging. I'm just saying.

You should also know that despite all the amputations, I still unabashedly love Wilco's music. I won't apologize for that, nor attempt to dissuade Mr. Eddy or numerous other Wilco haters out there. I've long admired Eddy's fierce intellect and alchemical knack for finding gold in shit music.

At the same time, I sometimes think he mistakes gold for shit, especially when it comes to indie rock, a genre he seems to hold an almost pathological resentment toward--no doubt the result of some traumatic playground episode involving untucked boys in nerdy glasses strumming sad, fragile songs.

Having said all that, my first reaction to A Ghost Is Born was: This is the most inhospitable Wilco album yet. Unrelentingly desolate and sullen. Stingy with the hooks. Mono-chromatic production. Too much thorny guitar strangling. What's with the 15 minutes of amp buzz? And why pick on Mojo for not knowing nothing 'bout your soul?

I love Mojo.

My second reaction, after precisely four complete listens was: You don't make an album like this without somebody winding up in the hospital.

Overall, A Ghost Is Born picks up where YHF 's disembodied poetics left off. The recording style, once again courtesy of avant-everyman Jim O'Rourke, is limpid and uncluttered in a way that will make it difficult to easily date the songs in days of future past. The tone of the album is uniformly overcast, in a White Album sort of way, which is appropriate for a collection of gray-sky blues.

Still, while this is hardly a party record, there are uncommonly pure moments of joy and exultation amid all the elegiac post-rock folkadelia, hairshirt angst and downcast mutterings from Jeff Tweedy's semiprivate bummer tent--specifically in the Beatlesesque heart-shaped box of "Hummingbird."

In past configurations Tweedy usually just sang and strummed a Guthrie-esque acoustic guitar, but here he uses the electric guitar as an antenna to broadcast the lightning-flashed panic storms that crackle down his spinal cord. At times the album sounds like Marquee Moon rising over Lake Michigan.

The aforementioned amp buzz is actually a 12-minute suite of musique concrete tacked onto the meandering, piano-fed pity party of "Less Than You Think," and just how this will be judged in the mind of the bourgeois reader will depend on how useful you've found the career of Sonic Youth.

Either way, it's a brave gesture for a band of Wilco's stature, and sonically speaking, it's roughly 2,000 light years from Uncle Tupelo's comparatively provincial prairie rock.

Lastly, it's not Mojo that, Tweedy complains, "don't know nothing" about his soul. Rather, it is the titular "Theologians," hidebound academics who map the exact distance between the stations of the cross while people like Tweedy do all the heavy lifting, crucifying themselves in the service of their art. The hard part, of course, is getting that last nail in.

"When the devil came/ He was not red/ He was chrome," Tweedy sings on "Hell Is Chrome." Like YHF, with its accidental pro-phecies of swaying skyscrapers and wars on war, A Ghost Is Born is a spookily prescient album for this, our season of deceit. "There is no blood on my hands/ I just do as I am told," goes the line from "Spiders (Kidsmoke)," echoing the mantra repeated daily from D.C. to Bagh-dad to the caves of Afghanistan.

It's Easter as I write this, and Jesus Christ has risen from the box office. Jeff Tweedy is in rehab, a crown of Vicodin thorns 'round his skull. And thousands of miles away, on the fruited plain where the Tigris intersects the Euphrates--the place the theologians call Eden--the chrome devil has come and a ghost is born on the hour.

....

So, as you can see, the actual album review is in there somewhere, after a good deal of pathetic and, otherwise, really boring interntal rock music crit scene bitching, whining, moaning, etc.. something weekly paper readers really, *yawwwwwwwwn*, care about.

But we can't forget the cherry on the cake:

"I love Mojo."

......

the ever powerful one line paragraph. Kinda sneaks up on you, BOO it says!

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=8544

The Bomb Squad

Why you should buy the new U2 album.

by Jonathan Valania

Because some bands have greatness thrust upon them and other bands thrust greatness upon themselves. Because U2 knew that if they had it both ways, they could be bigger than Jesus.

Because in the early '80s, if you listened closely, you could actually hear Bono's mullet. Because the Edge figured out early on that with the right ratios of pinging echo to pealing delay, the electric guitar could build cathedrals of sound that are holier than thou.

Because Bozo-haired bassist Adam Clayton and pretty boy drummer Larry Mullen Jr. could make rock do what it does best: rattle and hum. Because in the greed-is-good '80s, speaking out about faith and hope and sex and dreams and peace on earth was a thankless job. Because U2 actually went down to the demonstration to get their fair share of abuse.

Because Jesus spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert being taunted by the devil and never cried uncle. Because U2 went to the desert (aka Joshua Tree National Park) and were tempted by Elvis Presley and America and cried "hallelujah!"

Because by the end of the '80s U2's anthemic pieties had grown insufferably self-serious. Because in the early '90s U2 learned the importance of not being earnest.

Because Bono told Rolling Stone: "I've learned to be insincere. I've learned to lie. I've never felt better!" Because Achtung Baby was the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree, and it was even better than the real thing.

Because all the cyber-punk theorizing and dystopian consumerist burlesques of the PopMart tour were dead-on, even if the songs were not.

Because 9/11 turned back the clock on the promised 21st-century hypercapitalist utopia of a free-range chicken in every pot, an SUV in every garage and high-speed wireless everywhere in between. Because it's no longer too late, tonight, to drag the past out into the light. Because on that soft September morn, we were harshly reminded of all that we can't leave behind.

Because despite all that, sometimes even new messiahs have to put down the weight of the world, look up at the sky and notice that, hey, it is a beautiful day, and then step back and let the Edge take it from there. Because during the Elevation tour, U2 reapplied for the job of best rock 'n' roll band in the world, aced the interview and got hired.

Because How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb proves that U2's new sincerity is the same as the old sincerity, only better. Because if the Nuggets-meets-War garage-shake-bamalama of "Vertigo" doesn't completely rock your world, we seriously need to send out a search party for your groove thang.

Because when Bono sings, "The boys play rock 'n' roll/ They know that they can't dance" and follows it up with "at least they know," well, pardon my French, but that's fuckin' funny. Because U2 should be doing commercials for Apple. Because I dare you to name two other artsy commercial entities with their combined mega-unit-moving stature that are quantifiably trying to change things for the better.

Because, as Bono sings on "Miracle Drug," "freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby's head," and don't let anyone, not even the president of the United States, tell you that some people hate the scent of a newborn baby's head.

Because only a fool would try to save the world, and Bono was fool enough to care--and God bless him for giving it the old college try.

Because Bono was willing to sleep with the devil if he could lift the boot of world debt off the necks of the dying. Because, as the man sings from behind those ever-present blue-state-tinted shades, where you live should not determine whether you live or die.

Because "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own," and we all need something to lean on--be it God, dope, rock 'n' roll or your father's deathbed.

Because, in the words of Max von Sydow's character in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, "If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up." Because Bono recently told The New York Times: "I don't talk about my faith very much, because the people you might want to talk with, you don't want to hang out with."

Because we live in a time when religion is no longer, in Karl Marx's famous estimation, the opiate of the masses--it's the crack cocaine. Because U2 knows that the last thing the world needs right now is more cocaine.

Because what the world needs now, in the words of another philosopher, is love sweet love. Because only love can dismantle an atomic bomb, and no band on earth has a bigger, more immaculate heart than U2.

Because you can snort, you can scoff, you can even hate on them, but you simply cannot deny that they come in the name of love.

I don't think excitedly yelling out or requesting songs is a shitty thing to do at all. What's wrong with requesting to hear a song that you really like (esp. from an artist who as this dumbass points out you aren't going to see live all that often)?

Because I would like to see the artist do whatever show he or she wants -- I've bought a ticket not for a song, but for an overall experience. If the artist asks the audience for requests, that's cool.

"WEEEEEEEE... HAVE.... A SETLIST!"

"Your requests.. are ignored -- *makes snooty facial gesture*"

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=5788

Fuck YEAH DUDE!

but for me its the new "eulogizing elliott smith" fetish that must stop.