Mark Prindle: Classic or Dud?

His Miles Davis page is great -- he hates all the classic albums and gives You're Under Arrest the highest rating! He justifies it by saying he doesn't like jazz. It's kind of Chuck Eddy-esque, in a weird way.

I think the best of the online reviewers is Brian Burks, though he's pretty much defunct these days.

Obviously, I've never met the guy, have no idea how he works, and am merely spouting suspicions based solely upon my readings of his website. But his shit just comes off as untrustworthy to me, and that makes him megadud in my book.

Does Mark still hate the Velvet Underground THAT much?

True, Mark's OCD does make for some pretty amusing anecdotes....though it does get old sometimes....still, it's a routine....a decent routine....sure beats washing your hands, washing your hands, pulling a hair, eating the root, pulling a hair, eating the root, locking the door, washing your hands, lockign the door, pulling a hair, BOOMSHAKALAK YA BALD NOW

rock critics, come on , who gives a shit about their *taste*?

"I agree that there are quite a few handy-dandies on here (especially the buzzy guitar rockers "Peace Frog" and "Land Ho,"), but what I don't hear is that unique Doors style I've grown to love. This record is many things - raw, fun, bluesy, varied - but it's not circusy, it's not weird, and poop it, it's not idiosyncratic! Any band could have made this album! Well, any band with a godlike singer."

really loving the "MICRO-REVIEWS OF HIP NEW BANDS THAT THE KIDS DIG" series that he has going right now.

Yellow Swans - Industrial noise, pulsebeat and feedback. If this is music, then my dick's a blueberry.

mark is a treasure.

'The Smiths sprouted out of Manchester, England in the early '80s with an agenda of red-hot hate, fury-stoked fascism and undying contempt for the remnants of the "Peace and Love Generation." A violent reactionary right-wing Oi! band with obvious connections to the National Front, this four-piece of bile (screamer Steven Morrissey, thrasher John Marr, bass pummeller Andy Rourke and blastbeat supremo Mike "Himmler's Hammer" Joyce) knew that its entire "final solution" agenda would be doomed from the start if they couldn't find a more erudite way of couching such horrific (to the comfortable bourgeois masses) slogans as "I wear black on the outside because I hate all blacks on the inside" and "I am human and I need to be loved/That's what all the Jews say." The answer: target America's teenage girl and closeted homosexual population. The rest is "Naz-istory"! '

That "hip new bands the kids dig" page is classic! Just trawled through the lot. I agree with him on very little but he's always entertaining. And thorough, my god.

by coincidence i was reading through his Fall reviews last night (he is one of the all-time great Fall reviewers) and there's one (of a fairly insignificant live recording) where he launches into about 10 pages' worth of movie criticism

what a man

actually i knew about him (and the WRC) long before i knew about ILX...i just wish he reviewed more British stuff lolz

Ariel Pink: Like Todd Rundgren recorded in an airplane hangar.

The magic of OTM-ness

I'm glad to see he got his Wikipedia page back. That was a travesty!

Stone classic - he hates Neutral Milk Hotel almost as much as I do!

Mark Prindle's record is pretty terrible but it has an intro by Neil Hamburger (!)

Mark Prindle's site was pretty much a blog before blogs existed. His Miles Davis page is one of the greatest things ever, and the tons of reader comments slagging him off make it even better. It should be in some kind of Internet museum.

This guy is amazing.

otm. finding mark's site when i was a teenager hepped me to a ton of cool shit and while his taste is very defined, he's really openminded within its boundaries. and most of the time he's funny as fuck.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO great. just because you don't agree with him doesn't mean he isn't the most entertaining writer around. he is also very clear and simple about why he does or does not like what it is that he listens to. he is the opposite of pretentious.

those miles davis reviews are funny as hell.

My tastes only intersect with Prindle's on a few of the usual post-punk suspects, but I have a soft spot for him given that, when I first discovered his site over a decade ago (I haven't revisited it since), his ranking of albums by the likes of SY, Wire, the Fall etc coincided exactly with mine. I know of no other popular critic / blog that credits Killing Joke's Fire Dances as the superb concept suite it is. I'm slightly saddened that he's got some allergy to electro (et cetera), this must be a dismal decade for him...

His video review are awesome!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biMXC2dWhcg

Prindle was one of the oldest review sites I ever read, its how I discovered the Pixies when i was a teenager!

I bought Chicago XX and Jurassic Park The Album CDs from his band Low Maintenance Perennials and they were a lot of fun too!

Holy shit, how much of this is real? Genuinely kinda concerned for the guy is this is for real. This all comes from his latest batch of reviews, specifically the Killing Joke EP:

"Look, I'm no fool. I know there are certain things that shouldn't be posted online. The problem is that I post them anyway. Perfect example:

I've been going through a strange period, as you may know from my recent reviews and Facebook updates. My wife up and left me after 15 1/2 years together, and I've been dealing with it by hanging out with friends, going to karaoke twice a week, trying to meet new people, and drinking way too much. I'm not going to name names, but one of those four activities needs to go.

I'm not an alcoholic, understand. I only drink a couple nights a week, and never drink alone. I don't even keep any alcohol in the house. It's just that when I do drink, I drink WAY too much. No beer, no wine, just double-shot after double-shot after double-shot of vodka. So I hope that helps to explain what I did last night, and why I'm posting it here as a reminder to myself and a warning to you.

What happened is this: I was tanked at karaoke as usual, having a good old time chatting up the LAYDEEZ, dancing like a fool and singing such hits of the day as "I Can See For Miles" and "Punk Rock Girl." Things were swell and everything was just nifty. But then around 3:30 AM, two minor things happened that sent my sloshed mood into a complete tailspin. The first is that the karaoke woman snipped at me so I thought I'd done something to piss her off. The second is that the karaoke man asked me to go home, so I thought I'd done something to piss him off. As it turns out, she was pissed at him (not me), and he saw me falling asleep and didn't want me to get thrown out. But I didn't know that until today.

So I left the club, got in a cab, got home, posted on Facebook that I was about to commit suicide, opened my front door wide so my body would be found, ran the hot water in the tub, got in with a knife, tried to slice the veins in my arms open, failed because the knife was dull as dirt, posted on Facebook that I'd tried but the knife was too dull, heard the door buzzer buzz, checked it out to discover that somebody on Facebook had called 911, let the police and ambulance people in, got some clothes on, followed them out to the ambulance, and was held in a psych ward for eight hours.

So now let me tell you about what happened last night. First of all, I MISSED A NOTE in "I Can See For Miles," then I b

My point is this: I don't want to die. I didn't even want to die last night. I was simply out of control because I was so drunk. If that knife had been adequately sharp, I might be dead now -- not because I'm legitimately suicidal (I'm not! I promise! I'm feeling pretty good!), but simply because I was too drunk to realize what I was doing. I absolutely have to take this experience as a Hard Stop Warning that if I continue to deal with my grief by binge drinking twice a week, I'm going to wind up in jail, dead or worse. (an undead zombie)

So let this be a warning to you all: if you're going to kill yourself, don't post it on Facebook. It makes you look like an asshole."

ouch

Yikes!

I've been a fan of Mark's for over ten years now, and this is very very upsetting. I really hope he turns his life around.

Mark is great. Hope things work out for him.

I'm friends with Mark on facebook, and he's seriously going through some mid-life crisis shit at the moment. Luckily he has a pretty substantial group of sympathetic fans.

I hope the dude is OK as I have gotten some laughs from his site and found a couple of records from his page.

The interviews are really the gold on his page. Added up, there is a pretty good overview of an era of american punk/indie rock people on there, just from the interviews, which are really off the cuff stuff.

:/

one of my favourite reviewers, dude's got my backing

Yeah, I've been following him forever, he's brilliant. Unfortunately, he seems to be one of those critics that has inspired a legion of writers that try really hard to write like he does but end up flailing.

absolutely agreed; there were a ton of prindle-like sites that popped up in the early-00's that were just terrible.

prindle is still king - but honestly the hatemail he posts is usually better than the actual reviews

How long has his site been down? Just noticed it today.

Never mind, must have just been a temp thing.

Mark Prindle is now a dad!! I can't help but smile at the news; I've never met him but I did have him on FB around the time when the above was posted and got fairly depressed upon realizing that all the drunken, dark, bizarre stories on his website that I thought he was making up for comic effect were actually true. Best of luck, dude

yes very happy to see he's turned it around.

Also I recall him having written several times about how he didn't want to have children so this is also kind of funny

i had no idea he had retired his site. that sucks; i loved that site.

Really wish Mark would consider doing some new writing.