Comments on: McGarrigle, Radiohead & Me in the Dead Trees

By: zoilus

zoilus — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:28:27 +0000

(That is, go ahead and don’t read it, but then don’t come over and insult me about it.)

By: zoilus

zoilus — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:27:40 +0000

I can sympathize with disliking the exercise - which was the magazine’s initiative rather than mine. I tried to write the piece in a way that anticipated and accounted for that concern. I’d appreciate it, Dugan, if you’d read the piece before presuming that it’s cynical.

By: Paula

Paula — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 19:26:14 +0000

Dugan, that seems unfair (particularly since I assume you haven’t absorbed the actual articles in their physical form).

That said, I won’t be wasting my $$ or time on this, either. I happen to like Radiohead (going on half my life now), Stevens, and Newsom. ILM was distasteful to me in the seemingly regular haterade fests these musicians (and others like them) inspired every time they so much as burped. I really wouldn’t want that negativity in magazine form.

As for Animal Collective, isn’t anything after the Hipster Runoff article just superfluous?

By: Mickey Dugan

Mickey Dugan — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:58:48 +0000

I don’t like Radiohead either.

My solution: I don’t buy their records or listen to them.

If other people like them and feel an emotional connection to their music, it’s no skin off my nose. Good on them for having something in their lives that makes them feel something positive.

What I wouldn’t do, however, is waste recycled paper drafting a cynical self-absorbed article about my hatred. Life is too fu@king short. Live and let live, and get over yourself already.

Then again… you’re a friggin’ a rock critic, which pretty much makes you a bottomfeeder where cynicism and snark comes naturally.

By: robin buckley

robin buckley — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 12:39:47 +0000

the whole maisonneuve thing really rubbed me the wrong way. disappointing.

By: john

john — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:35:57 +0000

I love Mike Love and think Neil is way overrated!

Neil: Incredibly inconsistent & often sloppy lyricist. Monochromatic singer (once he decided on his “style,” ca. 1971? Before that more varied approaches in his singing). Folky stuff tends toward sappiness. Political stuff sometimes veers over toward oversimplified self-righteousness. Tons of shrugg-able songs — many more of that quality than great ones.

Mike: Classic doo-wop-style lead singer, with the casually confident insouciance the style requires. Vindicated (not critically, but popularly) by co-writing the Beach Boys’ last hit (Number One!) without Brian Wilson, years after Brian’s last hit. (”Kokomo,” which I disliked at the time but have grown to love.) Excellent ensemble singer, as the whole group was. Very, very underrated lyricist in the Beach Boys’ early period, as was Brian — together, more consistently good than Dylan, Lennon & McCartney, Jagger — comparable to the Brill Building and Motown writers as lyricists. (Not as brilliant and audacious as Dylan or L&M at their best, but much better than given credit for.)

By: marco

marco — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:35:08 +0000

Though I look forward to a compelling read, all the above sort of seem like easy targets. Personally, I’d like to see someone take Neil Young down a few pegs. On the flip side, I’d also like to see an impassioned defence of Mike Love.

marco

By: john

john — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:48:39 +0000

For some reason I recently looked up what I wrote about your book, Carl, and in my post I said I prefer Celine to Sonic Youth. I still do. Though I’ve never seen Sonic Youth live — I’d probably prefer them live.

Any band that one dislikes is by-definition easy to criticize, no?

By: Matt Collins

Matt Collins — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:56:27 +0000

I mean, hate itself feels overlooked in the discourse of hate.

By: Matt Collins

Matt Collins — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:56:08 +0000

I’d like to see more exploration into what actively disliking something means- it always goes the wrong way; a defense of the thing by the disliker as if to bury the hatchet or the disliker “proving” their dislike, as though conviction could carry it.
But what about examining the hate itself? Wasn’t punk famous for it? Wasn’t it a critical part of BritPop as a phenomenon? Arguably, late/high modernism is all about it, too.
Hate feels overlooked.