Over at Rock Critics, they posted a handful of great quotes from some equally great music writers. My favorite is this one:

… Most rock writers are people with literary aspirations who appreciate music but really don’t understand how to do it — or else they probably would. There are people who write for guitar mags who may have some more knowledge about how to tap like Eddie Van Halen but they have even less elegance or imagination when it comes to the English language. Of course, there are just as many great rock musicians who can’t really articulate what it is that they do.

That’s Deborah Frost, and she’s right. It reminds me of Costello’s famous quip, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” There’s some sort of black hole on either end of the project, whether you’re writing songs and being asked where they come from or hearing them and trying to explain where they’re from.

I can sympathize with a songwriter reading a review of his or her work, scratching their head and wondering where in the hell the so-called critic pulled their words from. But since music is this sort of unique opportunity for people to make sounds from their mind’s silent talents, and almost everyone alive enjoys those results once in a while, music writing and criticism (two different things, I think) remain incredibly important ventures. Sure, it’s not up to one writer to decide the truth or end-all opinion on an album, but it’s even worse to imagine a world in which people have quit trying to verbalize the experience, the meaning, the worth of listening closely.

On a similar subject, Pete at Notes From a Defeatist writes, “I’m also confused by this habit of writing long descriptions of what happens in the piece. I don’t want to know the plot of a book or film before my first encounter with it, why should I be denied the excitement of finding my own way through a piece of music?” He’s discussing classical in this context, and I can understand how that ‘reveal’ is a bit more relevant to that sort of piece, but I think it can fit to a certain extent in pop music, too. Every pop music site races to ‘review’ something the day or week it hits the shelves, and in large part that’s because a) it’s timely news, good form but also b) labels and promoters want to know the album is being discussed, generating buzz and hopefully, sales.

But both a and b have very little to do with the piece itself (in a pop context, I’d refer to the album as the piece), and almost nothing to do with the context of the music. And again, what gives anyone the right to reveal the piece’s path before a listener has had a chance to experience it? I mean, besides trying to sell it (or not) to them? I think that in a lot of ways, music writers could do a lot of good by striving to discuss context, history, meaning and sound, not just descriptions.

And I’d like to make one more small point by adding that when I say we should talk more about sound, I mean the way it sounds, the quality of it, not just comparisons to other sounds. “It sounds like Pavement” is not only lazy and a giant shortchange to the artist, it doesn’t really give the reader anything meaningful. Let’s talk about production quality, small details, headphones and context — let’s talk about the experience, not just the place in relation to others. There are so many bands putting out so many records in short periods of time — entire festivals are organized based around bands with maybe two albums and no existence prior to this century; how could we possibly entertain the notion of thinking about them thoughtfully without doing more than talking about whether or not they’re dance-worthy, hip, “8.3″ or downtempo?

It all eventually comes to mean the same thing, and thanks to thousands of indie music blogs that blurp out tiny glimpses of these thousands of bands, we’ve already seen a decline in both the quality of writing associated with this independent community we love so much, and the listener’s dedication to actually spending time with something, attempting to understand it beyond its face value. If you love songs, none of this should bother you. If you love music, it should be very disappointing.

PGWP’s tumblr post brought my attention to some commentary about Brooklyn Vegan that I found amusing.

Take the recap of June 20’s Gogol Bordello show, the photos of which include several crowd members having a nice rest — they just so happen to have a little crack showing. But it was yesterday’s recap of Feist’s Prospect Park show that really started to edge into creepiness, with a few long-range shots of random women just hanging out.

One of the BV posts in question here.

I am always really happy when other people are frank about how useless a lot of the so-called ‘important’ music bloggers are, and PGWP is consistently on-point in this department. Brooklyn Vegan, though almost universally accepted as an indie-rock household name, is little more than a counter-culture tv guide for hipsters, and sometimes a gossip rag. Tour dates, photos from whatever happened the previous night, and one-sheet recitations are par for the course. Now, as nymag.com points out, it’s borderline voyeuristic ploy aimed at attracting the self-obsessed.

Personally, I’m not sure I have a problem with seeing a girl’s ass crack as part of a festival’s photo “coverage”. Sure, it’s invasive and creepy, but it’s not the worst offense. What really troubles me is how easily people (both deeply immersed and only tangentially concerned) in the music community get swept up in the exact sort of shallow and meaningless sidebars that we laugh at others for looking at. It’s alright to look at “nightlife photography”, bizarro scenesters posing with a can of Sparks and ironic sunglasses, but if our mother picks up an Enquirer, we very quickly look down our nose. Personally, I don’t really see a difference.

It’s disheartening, but not really surprising. Especially considering how most so-called music blogs are barely coherent attempts at regurgitating an email from a press agency or MySpace bulletin. Hardly anyone is taking the time to actually critique or discuss new music, even fewer are doing so in any sort of open forum that enables a community’s involvement in their own culture. If the web truly is the new frontier of the ’scene’, it must strive to be more than this, a collection of URLs vomiting the same useless information, the same shitty cameraphone iterations, the exact vapid utterances that drove us all away from mainstream music in the first place. I gave up on music blogs a long time ago, but there is little more gratifying on the web than the occasional thoughtful listener who still discusses what they hear, has albums not mp3s, and goes to shows because they still have some interest in supporting a community, not being immortalized (by their own design or someone else’s) as “here” — when they are clearly so detached from it, we have a hard time identifying what “here” even means to them (this link to a lengthy piece by Eric Harvey is well worth your time, and discusses this last point of mine much better than I do in this moment).

So no, I don’t feel sorry for ass crack girl on Brooklyn Vegan. If I knew her and she felt imposed upon, I’d sympathize, but the real aberration here is the implication of something more sinister, more disappointing. It’s not Brooklyn Vegan’s fault, though. This is, apparently, the kind of thing thousands of people want to read and look at each day. The faux ironic indie dance club crowd has already cornered the market of nobody celebrity (for more on this with a firmly planted tongue in cheek, I recommend Hipster Runoff), and Pitchfork was posting photos of unknown attendees last year as well (scroll down for random “hottie” indie chicks captured forever in the annals of good taste), so BV is hardly revolutionizing anything in the community, they’re just cementing their uselessness.

I certainly understand that BV’s issue does veer a little left of center in terms of normal “here’s some folks in the crowd enjoying the show” type concert photography, of which there is plenty, and plenty that’s good. I get it: someone is covering an event and uses the zoom to hone in on some cute girls. It’s a smidge creepy, sure, but mostly it’s just obnoxious. After all — what the fuck do they have to do with anything, anyway? Who gives a fuck? People were there, big whoop. If I’m the kind of person who really gets some sort of valuable experience looking at concert photography, I’m hugely pissed that my second hand experience is slighted because we have to “capture a mood” or “set the scene” with “real” confirmations of “good looking” people who actually attended something.

I’ve rambled about this aimlessly for much longer than I thought I would, but I suppose it touches on a couple things that really irk me in general, whether or not this particular instance existed. Again, I’m glad I know where to look for some more thoughtful discussion.

And yeah I know. Relax, what’s the big deal, who cares, it’s just the internet.

Search for “slayer raining blood my friend’s band”. Or just “slayer raining blood cover.”

This is my favorite one, it’s worth mentioning that it’s a group of highschool kids at a talent show. The girls filming (and squealing with delight) totally lose their shit when they begin the synchronized head-banging breakdown section, losing control of the camera in the process. Simply amazing.

When I was in high school, Slayer t-shirts were only cool if your parents had allowed you to go to the concert the night before. If you were just a dirty punk kid (*raises hand*) with a shirt that read “Born Against”, you got sent to the principal’s office, not lauded by cheerleaders.

Oh these kids, I’m here to tell you.

The Summer Mix Series, curated by Yewknee, is back in full swing for 2008. Already there are tons of great mixes popping up. I can definitely recommend Yewknee’s, Agrayspace’s, and Elastic Heart’s. There are many more, but these are my standouts at the moment.

My Nosedive mix is there, but expect a new one from me very soon.

“On New Year’s Eve of 1972 I attended a great party thrown by someone I didn’t know and inadvertently fell into a protracted conversation with this nearsighted social worker about 20 or 25 who kept babbling about his Volkswagen until I finally had to say: ‘Wait a minute. Are you telling me that the owning of a Volkswagen is a social, or a political act?’”

(via)