bury me in a treasure trough

[brendan62442]

- Be Kind Rewind was very sweet; I don't want to see it again but I loved it the first time. The word "quirky" sort of just means a movie is full of gimmicks, but Michel Gondry's gimmicks are all scene-stealers.

- Slow songs don't mix great with fuzz-pedals, and most of them are boring in the first place. Sorry, Distortion. Stephin Merritt drops

Comments

[stillbornteen]

-I pretty much blocked myself from listening to Distortion after i read Stephen Merritt saying (paraphrased) "Not enough music is original" and "I'm hoping to recreate the sound of The Jesus and Mary Chain" in the same interview
-The first time a cop ever asks me if i know what he's stopping me for, i'm totally pulling a 99 problems.

[brendan62442]

- I'm mostly just proud that you were reading about him.
- I ain't a mind-reader, sir, but I'm reading the signs.

[weasel_seeker]

I think there's space for both. I think SOME of it can be a bit of a stretch, but some of it isn't. While I might disagree about which parts are/aren't a stretch, there's a conversation to be had there that can be as worthwhile in some ways

[weasel_seeker]

RE: blogspot comment, since hear myself type is still commentless.

While I'm amazed that you tracked down that old mix post that clearly, that was quite quite quite specific and not about "pop" per se. At the time. It was more of an aural memory of our trip to Belgium. The pop was kind of there as kitsch or ostensibly "ironic" enjoyment. Because when you're slowly turning into an insufferable hipster without realizing it, you a) deserve to be punched in the face, and b) are only allowed to like that music in that context.

Anyway, I'm not sure what your point was, but it's noted, I suppose.

I can't tell if the hipster post is supposed to be taken seriously or not. I agree with the sentiments in principle, I suppose, especially living in Montreal, hipster hotbed, but the tone of your piece seems rather sarcastic. Is it supposed to be a comment on how being fed up with pretentious hipsters is the latest pretentious hipster trend? Because that's been the case for some time. Heh.

[brendan62442]

A lot of the discussion about pop stuff that's interesting is the stuff surrounding it. Not what it means, etc. but how it gets used, how it gets shaped, how people react to it. It can become a placeholder discussion for broader cultural or societal conversations and assumptions.

This was my favourite part. I did completely overlook that side of pop music criticism.

The wheat/chaff ratio is probably not substantially different from any other genre, and the conversation is there once you're willing to go for it.Be careful what you call "pop". I don't know the technicalities of music, but "pop" to me means that the Magnetic Fields and the Backstreet Boys are mostly doing the same things (which is true). And under that roof, pop music does look the same as any other kind of music

[weasel_seeker]

I mean, I was certainly listening to top 40 to some extent at that point, but there was a lot of stuff that I wrote off solely on the basis of stuff external to the music. I dunno. And yeah, the Magnetic Fields and the Backstreet Boys ARE often doing the same things. It's all pop. It was late and I wasn't being accurate with my language

age-appropriate

[dustyasymptotes]

[tinyfolk]

The Blueprint is kind of a different thing from Black-album-and-later Jay. I like it better, personally. Though I think the song "Girls Girls Girls" is really obnoxious in all the worst ways. I think "Girls Girls Girls pt 2" is 75% better and less annoying than the original.

Distortion was really really uninteresting to me.