Problem World

“HEY WORLD! LOOK AT US! WE’RE THE...

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:24:17 -0500

“HEY WORLD! LOOK AT US! WE’RE THE GREATEST!”

(via the intrepid Sean Witzke)

panpots: Earth - 1968 (Geezer’s scarf!) HARPO OSBOURNE.

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:44:00 -0500

panpots:

Earth - 1968

(Geezer’s scarf!)

HARPO OSBOURNE.

The Absolute Nadir of Post-War Hollywood

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:08:57 -0500

An incomplete list of films that fall under the category of “high-concept sci-fi/action movies, 1993-1995”

-Timecop
-Virtuosity
-Demolition Man
-Judge Dredd
-Tank Girl
-Johnny Mnemonic
-Hackers
-Mortal Kombat
-Waterworld
-Species
-Street Fighter
-Double Dragon
-Brainscan
-The Meteor Man
-The Last Action Hero
-Super Mario Bros.
-RoboCop 3
-Cyborg 2
-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
-Theodore Rex

When kids that were born 10 years ago inevitably turn these movies into camp cult classics, that is when I give up all hope of a society that lets terrible things stay terrible.

Serge Gainsbourg, “Cannabis (Instrumental)” (from...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:02:12 -0500

Serge Gainsbourg, “Cannabis (Instrumental)” (from Cannabis OST, 1970)

Wait: 1970? Really? But this means that Serge Gainsbourg invented glam rock somehow. The movie even came out a full month before “Ride a White Swan” and two months before The Man Who Sold the World! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING.

Y'know what dvd (that I own)?

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:33:29 -0500

douglasmartini:

camiwillknow:

If I had pirated this movie, I wouldn’t have to watch your dumb anti-piracy ad.

“YOU WOULDN’T DOWNLOAD A CAR.” FUCK YOU. I WOULD IF I COULD!

—++==FULL VERSION Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X USA-SPEC LHD [[2008]] (cRaCkEd by /\/\3g@\/\/|-|!pz)==++—.torrent

I just wanted to say that I loved your rebuttal to my piece. You made a bunch of great points, and you know specifically where I'm coming from and why I chose not to apply. With that said, I'm sure you're aware that I don't necessarily find Pitchfork to be "the enemy" in any way, shape or form.

I think there's always going to be an inherent self-consciousness among non-Pitchfork writers who happen to like a record that gets Best New Music'd. People (present company sometimes included) don't want to be "that person". I think you're right though; I think for there to be a true alternative to Pitchfork, it has to be a portal that is not reactionary of the site, one that works completely independent from Pitchfork's sphere of influence.

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:34:00 -0500

Thanks — the reason I went off like that is that you’re a writer (and a dude in general) I respect, so there’s that. I was reminded indirectly of other blogs/sites that overdo it when it comes to being reactionary towards Pitchfork, including some listed on the blogroll of that site you linked to, and in general I think it’s kind of like the way people go off on sports: a ballplayer is a fairly innocuous guy who can be a pest to your team but not enough to make you hate him, and then the Yankees sign him and now thanks to the uniform he’s a total fucking bastard (at least until he gets traded to, say, the Padres). Whether or not Mariano Rivera or Derek Jeter are good at what they do and are also decent human beings, it takes a backseat to the fact that they’re part of an Empire and therefore must be taken down.

(This analogy was weird for me to write because as a Twins fan I hate the bejesus out of the Yankees.)

Budget Fashionistas: On Integrity vs. Opportunity, Writing for Pitchfork

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:02:32 -0500

Budget Fashionistas: On Integrity vs. Opportunity, Writing for Pitchfork:

When I linked my Meridian Signals review to my peer and good buddy Michael Powell, he mentioned that there needs to be a voice for the other side, and I knew exactly what he meant. With Altered Zones co-opting some of the biggest names in the blogosphere, it’s becoming increasingly necessary for there to be alternatives to Pitchfork.

[…]

My status as an artist notwithstanding, as a music writer, I’m trying to be the alternative voice. I’m trying to beat Pitchfork.

Even speaking as a freelancer for the site in question, this is an understandable sentiment — and it’s one I more or less held until I was asked if I wanted to contribute to the site. But when I mulled over the offer, it came down to this: here is a high-profile music website that will pay me to tell indie kids that Mantronix and Steinski are great. Caramanica’s notion of a “Pitchfork hive-mind” in his NYT article was a running gag amongst the staff during the festival: have you ever tried to get five music critics, no matter whom they write for, to agree on 50% of what each critic thinks, much less everything? And so much of what dragged the site out from its early years as a stereotypical bastion of indie snobbery starting around seven or eight years ago was the fact that they started hiring independent freelancers who had tastes the site had no use for in its original incarnation. People who had more interest in Kompakt or Rap-A-Lot than Matador and Sub Pop, people who gave in-depth thought to chart pop instead of reflexively rolling their eyes at it, people who actually went on their blogs and wrote things like “what the fuck are those dipshits at Pitchfork thinking, giving Rooty a 3.8?” When Andrew WK’s I Get Wet went from its original 0.6 score to the 144th best album of the 2000s in the span of nine years, well, that should’ve been a sign of something: people who disagreed with or even hated what Pitchfork decreed eventually got to help shape what Pitchfork decreed. (Maybe this is what people are angry about, actually — that a famously indie-isolationist site is now going around giving high marks to The-Dream albums.) In any case, the rep isn’t exactly a universally-applicable thing.

My interest in defending Pitchfork is partially self-preservational: I don’t like it when people get weird guilt-by-association ideas of who I am and where my tastes are supposed to come from based solely on the fact that my byline appears on a site that has an overinflated reputation. And it’s partially in the interest of fairness, in that many of the current contributing writers are more interested in getting into what makes music work instead of playing the part of breathless kingmaker hypemen. (And people should read some of the contributing writers’ work via other sites or mediums — Douglas Wolk’s 33 1/3 on Live at the Apollo; Tom Ewing on Freaky Trigger — and keep it in mind when they stumble across — or write — yet another blog post about how Pitchfork writers don’t know shit.)

But it’s also a matter of wasted opportunity: people are so absorbed in what Pitchfork’s supposedly doing to dictate/take over/ruin the whole indie-hype criticism beat that they’re letting it dictate their own agendas and skew things into a weird reactionary place, until they actually feel ashamed when it turns out that they like an album that gets a positive review there. I can’t count how many times other review sites have snidely name-checked Pitchfork to make a point about what an album’s really worth, but I can count how many times it actually gave me any sort of insight into what a band’s doing with its music, assuming it is mathematically accurate to consider stopping at 0 as “counting”. Aspiring music critics should spend less time worrying about the pernicious influence of a site they can’t remember the bylines of and more time listening to music without caring what anybody but themselves thinks about it. I would like to see alternatives to Pitchfork — I’d be fine with writing for an alternative to Pitchfork, though I’d probably wind up keeping bylines in both camps on some Yojimbo business — but the alternative has to come from someplace that isn’t fueled by spite, pettiness and the constant urge to look over one’s shoulder. Want to reduce your enemy’s influence? Stop letting them dictate everything you do.

Zoroaster, “Odyssey” (from Matador, 2010) SLUDGE.

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:39:50 -0500

Zoroaster, “Odyssey” (from Matador, 2010)

SLUDGE.

yvynyl: …and for the sick, sick album cover...

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:21:47 -0500

yvynyl:

…and for the sick, sick album cover art!

douglashaddow:

Solomon Burke: Cool Breeze

Composed By, Vocals - Solomon Burke
Engineer - Angel Balestier , Jack Hunt
Orchestra - Gene Page
Other [Music Coordination] - Jerry Styner

Recorded at MGM Recording Studios, Hollywood, California.

If you ever see this in a record shop, pick it up immediately. Even if you don’t own a record player, buy it for posterity’s sake.

I first heard the title theme of this soundtrack after trying to find out the source of the beat to Ghostface’s “Apollo Kids”. It is absolutely, diabolically monstrous.

What I meant when I said Freddie Gibbs’ photographer had...

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:12:46 -0500

What I meant when I said Freddie Gibbs’ photographer had “a Pharoah Sanders hat”

What I Learned at Pitchfork Festival

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:31:00 -0500

-Failure to enunciate can lead cabbies to think you’re going to the “Detroit Festival”, which can subsequently lead to their making confused Kwame Kilpatrick jokes

-El-P should do a split mutual-remix EP with Joker

-My Blackberry’s camera phone was clearly never meant to zoom in on anything

-It is hard to tell if strangers give you random thumbs-up because they recognize you somehow or if they just like your shirt

-I would pay to hear Hannibal Burress do a spoken-word comedy album backed by instrumental music from Liars

-Missing Robyn: a big, big mistake

-Lingering impressions of his B stage meltdown means that the next time I see Michael Showalter do anything I will find it hilarious and entertaining

-Listening to Eugene Mirman’s standup CD several times for review purposes in January does not actually prevent that same material from being funny in a live setting six months later

-If you are Modest Mouse and you open your set with “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes” I can feel OK about missing all but the first ten minutes

-The Hold Steady line from “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” about the bus not stopping because there were too many kids doesn’t apply to CTA

-Always hydrate; always always always

-Outdoor reverb acoustics only makes Kurt Vile more powerful

-You can play the keytar without looking like a dork as long as you are Dam-Funk

-Skipping Raekwon because “I wanna sit down; besides, I saw him with El Michels Affair as his backing band four years ago and how could he top that” means you will miss a chance to see a child breakdancer do a four-minute headspin

-JSBX still sound good, largely due to the insane energy levels that allow Spencer to completely spaz out in 90-degree heat while wearing rubber denim pants

-Freddie Gibbs apparently rolls with a photographer who wears a Pharoah Sanders hat

-I clearly picked the best possible first-ever LCD Soundsystem show to attend

-Thanks to Flash Taco’s idea of playing the videos for “One” and “Enter Sandman” while we waited for our food, it seems apparent that the genre of Taco Metal is the wave of the future

-Washed Out sounds great outdoors on a hot but breezy Sunday afternoon (NOTE: re-file under “Obvious Things I Suspected But Needed to Have Confirmed During the Pitchfork Festival”)

-Lightning Bolt is a good soundtrack for basking in improbable but heroic late-inning Minnesota Twins comebacks

-Pitchfork Festival attendees are Serious Fatties

-Surfer Blood’s “Swim” sounds like a classic when heard from a huge bank of speakers 500+ feet away

-Based on Skerrit Bwoy’s stunt of jumping from a ladder directly onto a female dancer for daggering purposes during Major Lazer it is clear more hypemen should take cues from Cactus Jack (safety permitting)

-People who choose to see Sleigh Bells instead of Big Boi get what they deserve

-I probably would have felt less surly and alienated from Pavement’s set if Jon Wurster did the introduction instead of that reverse-meta-ironic dude from Drag City

-A new idea in the tradition of ambush-based nonsense like Rickrolling and Icing: having someone in your group sing “EVERYBODY DANCE NOW”, thus compelling one or more people to start singing the riff from the C+C Music Factory song; first person to crack up loses

-Sometimes bar kitchens close at 10 PM! Whoops!

-It is impossible for hilarity not to ensue when you get a bunch of drunk music critics together

loudminority: Read the Label: The record label logos shirt |...

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:08:53 -0500

loudminority:

Read the Label: The record label logos shirt | Stones Throw Records

Vertigo, Fania & Wild Pitch, together at last.

stuffaboutminneapolis: The new IDS Center, scheduled for...

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:20:00 -0500

stuffaboutminneapolis:

The new IDS Center, scheduled for completion in 1972, will create a beautiful, new environment in downtown Minneapolis. This block-square city-within-a-city will include a 57-story tower, eight-story annex, 18-story bank-hotel, and a two-story Woolworth Building. In the central area of the block will be a vast, glass-canopied Crystal Court. Pedestrian skyways on all four sides will link this court with the rest of the downtown area.

From the promotional book Minneapolis, City of Lakes that I found at Hunt & Gather this weekend.

This was maybe half a decade before I was born, but it seems almost inconceivable now to imagine Minneapolis as a city with only one big skyscraper. (That pyramid-topped old building in the background, the Foshay Tower, was the previous tallest building in the city — at 30 stories — all the way until 1972; it’s not even Top 15 anymore — at least, not if you leave out the antenna.) It’s also pretty surreal to see the IDS Center in white and copper when it’s more black and silver-blue. Here’s the skyline in recent years.

ReBoot + “Worker & Parasite” + drugs = man, I...

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 17:47:09 -0500

ReBoot + “Worker & Parasite” + drugs = man, I don’t even know what

carpr0n: Quantum mechanic Starring: BMW M3 GT2 by Jeff...

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 09:25:01 -0500

carpr0n:

Quantum mechanic

Starring: BMW M3 GT2 by Jeff Koons

(by antsphoto)

On the one hand, I’m not a big fan of Jeff Koons, and the fact that he now has something significant in common with Alexander Calder is not something I am entirely thrilled with.

On the other hand: daaamn.

"Loving sports, by definition, requires a certain suspension of disbelief and logic. We are all..."

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:04:58 -0500

“

Loving sports, by definition, requires a certain suspension of disbelief and logic. We are all pouring our hearts and souls into cheering for men (and women) who do not care about us, who are not like us, who are not the type of people we would ever associate with (or even meet) in real life. We deify them because it is hard to find people to deify in the real world: Sports spans every age group, ethnic group, political persuasion, and all else that serves to divide us, separate us. We cheer for athletes because sports does not matter, not really. We cheer because sports is, ultimately, harmless.

And we trust that they will at least pretend. We trust that they will recognize the ultimate ludicrousness of this whole enterprise, that these are grown men wearing tank tops, throwing a ball up and around, running on wood, that this all exists because we allow it to exist, that the illusion must be maintained. We trust that they understand how good they have it, how much we give them, against our own self-interest. We trust that they are not laughing at us.

That trust felt broken tonight.

”

- Leitch on LeBron. A few of my non-sports-fan friends tend to think the whole aspect of following professional athletes is ridiculous, but it’s interesting to see what kinds of events cause sports fans to agree.

(As an aside, this whole LBJ ordeal is something I should keep in mind when I think about Joe Mauer’s somewhat disappointing season so far — for all the things a hometown sports icon could put a fanbase through, statistically regressing after signing a huge contract to stay in the place that raised him seems pretty inconsequential in comparison.)

Wiley drops 180 Free Dubs on the unsuspecting Internet

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:07:20 -0500

Wiley drops 180 Free Dubs on the unsuspecting Internet:

sonraw:

There goes MY free time this weekend.

Wasn’t he going around circa Playtime Is Over talking about retirement? Whoops.

hotdoorknobs: This. All day. Yes yes yes.

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 13:48:43 -0500

hotdoorknobs:

This. All day.

Yes yes yes.

"AP: Can you name one central way that doing the Consumer Guide for 41 years has shaped the way you..."

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:38:34 -0500

“

AP: Can you name one central way that doing the Consumer Guide for 41 years has shaped the way you think about popular music?

RC: There’s gotta be two, but they telescope into one. The first is how many people are making not necessarily great but pretty damn good pop albums in an enormous variety of modes and genres. The second is how by simple repeated exposure to this vast quantity of music can open you up to it, making your life more interesting, more various, and more fun — and making you smarter too, which matters to me.

”

- Robert Christgau in an “exit interview” with Ann Powers. I don’t always agree with him (exhibit A), but this does get at a few things I hinted at yesterday.

Wayne McGhie & the Sounds of Joy, “Going in...

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:00:00 -0500

Wayne McGhie & the Sounds of Joy, “Going in Circles” (from Wayne McGhie & The Sounds of Joy, 1970)