Best Music Writing 2009 (The Book)

Best Music Writing 2009 the book, edited by Greil Marcus, is out October 12 on Da Capo:

http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/dacapo/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0306817829

There's already a review, which I'm going to go check out now, up on Popmatters: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/110734-best-music-writing-2009-by-greil-marcus-daphne-carr/

2007 was the best one.

Dunno dude, it had that awful article about dynamic range compression by that South411 dude in it! ;-D

Has any place listed the actual table of contents yet?

not til November 5th in the UK :( according to Amazon

Nov 2nd NYC Best Music Writing reading
NYC Reading November 2nd

Monday, November 2, 2009, 7pm
Housing Works Cafe
126 Crosby Street, NY
Free (books to donate highly encouraged)

Featuring:
Greil Marcus, Guest Editor

and 2009 Contributors:
Josh Eells
Charles Talyors
Jace Clayton
Nick Sylvester
Carrie Brownstein
Jody Rosen
Paul Ford
William Hogeland
Jesse Serwer

What Nick Sylvester piece is in there?

http://neojaponisme.com/2008/12/22/2008-girl-talk/

a co-written piece on Girltalk

http://www.housingworks.org/events/detail/best-music-writing-panel-with-greil-marcus-carrie-brownstein-and-more/

Can someone attend this and tape it for YouTube or Vimeo?

I need to move to NYC.

I like bits of the Girl Talk piece but this = ?!?

"Remember what happened when synthesizers became readily available in late disco, giving birth to house music: We first got Frankie Knuckles’ “Your Love,” but then we got, you know, everything else after that. Some of it was awesome. Most was terrible."

Nick Sylvester

Jeezus wept.

Nick Sylvester, Maker-Upper?

wtf

is the Carrie Brownstein piece the one where she tries to like Phish

Sylvester's a really good writer.

I have not seen any evidence to support this contention but tbf I haven't been paying close attention

http://www.riffmarket.com/2009/01/re-hipster-runoffs-animal-collective.html

A lot of people dislike that piece around here, but I think it's really good.

lolz that's one of his pieces that I *do* know!

terrible. I think I offered my thoughts on that article on some AC thread

:-)

I didn't know about HRO until early 2008.

lies, every Harvard undergrad knows about the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra

is the Carrie Brownstein piece the one where she tries to like Phish

It sparkles as brightly as the one in which she tries to like Madonna.

maybe she should write a piece about trying to like Nick Sylvester

Reporter dude in the last season of The Wire was based on Nick Sylvester, FYI

argh that nick sylvester hipster runoff piece is even worse experience than the original hipster runoff post. and both are worse than that animal collective album, which isn't good to start with. (was charles aaron really afraid a.c. would be "the next moby"? they should be so lucky.) can we just gently spade all of this under along with all of the other stupid stuff that's happened this year?

is an even worse experience. reading it, i mean.

i thought twitter was supposed to teach people word-count discipline.

^ I don't like that idea

Hmmm, the Girl Talk piece makes me go "oh, c'mon, that's not fair" to GREGG JIVE BUNNY GILLIS which is unforgivable. It's not that hard to give the dude a fair and decent essay-length wedgie, is it?

Much better candidate is Mike Barthel's "Girl Talk Is Not Fair Use": http://idolator.com/5081637/girl-talk-is-not-fair-use

xpost:

you don't like word-count discipline? it has a lot to recommend it.

i mean, i'm not a fan of rote tl;dr dismissiveness (or of twitter fwiw). but jesus christ. by the final third or so of that sylvester post i had that terrible feeling you get when you ask some innocent question to somebody at a party and end up being buttonholed by a long rant about their fight with the zoning board. by the end of which you're sure that whatever ill is being done to them, they probably deserve.

nick sylvester was one of the best music critics when he was still working - the shit with the piece about 'the game' is whatever it is, but his music stuff is consistently really great

i mean, i'm not a fan of rote tl;dr dismissiveness (or of twitter fwiw). but jesus christ. by the final third or so of that sylvester post i had that terrible feeling you get when you ask some innocent question to somebody at a party and end up being buttonholed by a long rant about their fight with the zoning board. by the end of which you're sure that whatever ill is being done to them, they probably deserve.

― STRATE IN2 DAKRNESS (tipsy mothra), Monday, November 2, 2009 5:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

lol u read his personal blog

asking N if he's a fan of word-count discipline is making me laugh. LOVE YOU NABZ!

x-post

lol u read his personal blog

because someone linked to it. i was tricked!

xpost

Agree with Jordan here, and I'm not talking post-Game thing. But I still think Mike cuts to the interesting starting point for the other piece in one sentence (and he likes Girl Talk): "What I don’t like is the way that Girl Talk’s music has become a political statement--because it’s not a very good one."

Some of the plain-old-music stuff -- the idea that the mixes are technically terrible and sound really flat and ugly a ton of the time -- is well-done but doesn't really get at what actually irks me about Girl Talk (but I don't seem to care about dynamic range compression, either...), while the Pitchfork connections just seem bitter and/or paranoid.

Also can't read this piece without thinking of the Stylus thing that pissed me off at the time: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/ostinato/everythings-great-and-we-like-everything.htm

anyway. nick sylvester is not even in this book. what's in it that's good?

oh, i'm wrong, sorry. he is in it. just not the hipster runoff blogpost. at least, i hope.

it's the girl talk essay

is there a list of pieces anywhere?

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Music-Writing-2009-Capo/dp/0306817829

Click on the cover, then go to the TOC.

I like the /rupture piece on DJing/DJ culture.

getting nickrolled here

john jeremiah sullivan is a great features writer, haven't read the piece in the book though

woot Tom, grats!

Yuval Taylor's "Funk's Death Trip" on Maggot Brain is also good.

Guessing I didn't get Skye Sweetnam an honorable mention in this thing a second time...

i heard /rupture on john schaefer's show today (with carrie brownstein), he talked about that article, it sounded interesting.

xp: i read the maggot brain piece, i thought it was good but a little term paperish.

Agree it is a little on the drier end.

I adore Rosanne Cash, but that selection is perfectly pleasant in that NYT manner.

TM: One interesting thing about the internet is a sense that anyone speaking is stepping on your valuable time. We have less of that sense with print. When you buy a magazine you often want more. You paid for it, you are carrying it around. You often want something you can dig into at length. But on the internet you are perpetually "browsing" and have no editorial assurance that something is worth it, so there is far more of a demand that things be kept tight. Here, I think, are two results of that:

(a) Writing on the internet does not usually Keep It Tight by being precise about words or exercising "discipline" or creating density of meaning. Often it keeps things tight by using whole other methods of communication, like flippancy or snark or allusion or attitude. (This stuff communicates best to people who already know what you're trying to say, and can be really effective and interesting, but it's not nearly the same thing as exercising "discipline" to make an argument pointed, clear, and brief.)

(b) Someone can casually try to trace out an argument at what's actually a fairly normal length for an "article" and everyone will go "OH MY GOD what the hell is all this rambling," really sorta regardless of whether the actual quality/tone of the piece is rambling or not.*

* This is something I think we should all probably understand about the internet and therefore try to adjust to by being brief and precise, because it's really easy for people to lose interest and go elsewhere; also I don't think anyone should write an article-length blog post the way one writes a blog post (i.e., if you're going to write at article length you should put as much thought and revision and care into it as an actual feature article); how the Sylvester piece fares with that stuff is a whole other subjective issue. But the idea that there's something inherently bad or archaic about someone trying to trace out an argument at a length and level of detail that would really quite normal on a printed page is kind of sad to me.

well i was mostly being snarky about sylvester and that post in particular. and the hipster runoff piece he was responding to, which was also interminable -- whether parodically or not didn't matter past a point. i don't have any personal rules about how long things should be. it's all that subjective sense of how well a writer holds your attention. and of course blog posts are different than even something someone writes for an online publication; even good blog posts more often read like rough drafts than finished pieces, because there's no real incentive to take them beyond the rough-draft stage, nobody suggesting edits or reorganization or anything like that. what makes that particular sylvester thing hard to read is that it is a poorly focused and borderline incoherent response to something that was poorly focused and more-than-borderline-incoherent to start with. so he's talking circles around circles.

but in that case it probably would have done him some good for somebody to say "you need a nut graf, and keep it to 600 words." he might have been forced to figure out what he was trying to say.

I read it a long time ago -- and I think argued with people about it on here -- but remember thinking it wasn't really looping or incoherent, that it just had the type of argument/response that's sort of a process to be led through. Maybe I'd feel differently today. But I actively enjoy that kind of argument, the type that leads you through it.

Carrie Brownstein X 4 ha ha ha

the animal collective thing would still be long even for a full length magazine article. i think so atleast, maybe it just felt long? also i'm pretty sure it made me love MPP a little bit less.

I actively enjoy that kind of argument, the type that leads you through it.

i can, if it has a coherent idea behind it. i just thought that one was mush built on mush.

xpost: i don't know how i'd feel about it if i actually liked the album. possibly more annoyed, possibly less, hard to say. it's possible that some of the same things that bother me about the album bother me about the writing-about-the-album. a certain kind of clattery self-absorption.

what makes that particular sylvester thing hard to read is that it is a poorly focused and borderline incoherent response to something that was poorly focused and more-than-borderline-incoherent to start with. so he's talking circles around circles.

OTM

xpost basically now i sorta feel like i'm listening to the soundtrack to the resolution of this dude's coming-to-grips-with-not-being-young/cool-anymore mid-life identity crisis. just sort of a lingering thought at the back of my head i have to ignore.

argh jeff weiss

What's your ish with Weiss?

so does this book actually have the best music writing of the year in it?

went to that panel tonight. nice time