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This is a quote about music journalism from one of the smartest Mexican internet posters ever. Thank you Mexico.
''Yeah, the record-review-as-philosophical-investigation is such a joke. I guess we have Lester to thank for that, as much or moreso than Marcus.
You're right about the outsider aspect of this kind of "criticism." I get the sense from a lot of these reviews that the writers don't have a very clear idea of what it means to make music, in the most literal sense, and that they imagine it to be a magical process that involves, you know, Artaud and "fire" and a reckoning with mortality and history or whatever. Music making is mysterious, but not in the way that these guys imagine. It's about lugging equipment around, getting wastered, practicing an arpeggio 'til your fingers hurt, fucking up, scribbling shit in a notebook on the subway, arguing with bandmates, listening to records, trying and failing to copy a song you admire, duct-taping gear, tripping on cables, the temperature of the practice room, having a shitty day at work and then trekking to the studio to get a few hours of recording in, daydreaming, jerking off, listening to your own songs over and over, breaking strings, breaking drumsticks, rewriting lyrics over and over again until they work, editing, erasing, doing it over, etc. etc. etc. until you finally get what you want.
If you come from a DIY background the music-making process is demystified because all that shit is laid bare: you know what a rehearsal studio smells like, you've seen your favorite drummer lug his gear into an illegal shitspace in the middle of nowhere, you've probably recorded something yourself, and you're not likely to buy someone's line of bullshit about how their nth-generation synthcore is "inspired by Ballard," or how it's a commentary on urban ennui and the tension between blah blah blah and blahblahblahblah. 'Cos you know it doesn't happen that way.
The graduate school idea that Serious Art Must Have a Conceptual Hook -- and this is 100% an academic / artworld idea -- has infected not only pop music criticism but pop musicians themselves. So assholes like Tearist or Zola Jesus wind up in an echo chamber with the Lil' Greils and Lesters of the blogosphere where they flatter each other back and forth ("You're important! You're intelligent!" "Yes, and so are you, for noticing all my Big Ideas!") ad infinitum.
Everything Is Serious. Even Britney Spears and Lady Gaga are serious in their unseriousness. Where'd that crock of shit come from? Probably Dylan, or the legion assholes who took Dylan seriously.''
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