Comments on: I blame the musicbloggers

By: Jodi

Jodi — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:11:12 +0000

Jaybone, see I disagree because I want more subjectivity on the part of music bloggers. I want them to tell me what they thing is good or bad, and not just tell me what is new.

You see?

By: Jaybone

Jaybone — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:23:27 +0000

Why get upset over some subjective “Best Of…” list? They are never definitive and ultimately mean nothing to anyone…excepting, perhaps, the person who created the list. I’m remembering a friend who, years ago, became apoplectic after a Rolling Stone Magazine list of the best guitar players ever failed to include his favorite in the top ten. I mean, he actually became red in the face! I couldn’t get through to him that the whole thing was meaningless. While such things may make for good bar or restaurant conversation, there’s no point in allowing one’s blood pressure to be affected by it. However, I do agree with you as to the “hipper than thou” attitude one encounters on many music blogs. There tends to be a lack of perspective. As you say, seemingly every new band or artist is touted as being brilliant. There’s an emphasis placed on how new or “underground” a band is rather than the quality of the music. This is fine when one is writing on, say, one’s personal blog — again, the appreciation of music is totally subjective. But there is a way to write about art and music in such a way as to avoid the subjective. Especially if one is writing for a larger entity, one should approach the subject as a journalist might. Too often there does tend to be that lack of an editorial eye, as you point out. And that, of course, points to the larger problem of the decline of the newspaper and other traditional means of news gathering . While the digital medium now allows EVERYONE the chance to publish, not everyone should be considered a journalist. This, I think, is the mistake that a lot of bloggers are making. Anyway…yeah.

By: tito

tito — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:05:58 +0000

(countless other list criticisms self-edited, in the hope of preserving my sanity)

By: tito

tito — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:03:56 +0000

head nods.

as to the list, college dropout was nice but waaaaaayy too much filler to be #2 for the decade.

By: david

david — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:24:05 +0000

Jim Breslin makes a great suggestion, Carrie Brownstein not only points out great music, but she solicits worthwhile suggestions from her readers (Monitor Mix has a lively and intelligent readership).

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:25:40 +0000

Most of the ones I just flat out don’t know are from 2000-2005, which was before music blogs were big and when I was busy with the whole attending medical school thing. In those cases I appreciate it because I can go back and catch up.

The problem is that there’s just so damn much music out there, so even if you’re only listening to the legitimately great records that get released it still feels like a full time job to keep up. The biggest downside is that I can’t remember the last time I let an initially “meh” album grow on me, which is how a lot of my favorite albums worked their way into me.

By: Jim Breslin

Jim Breslin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:22:01 +0000

Good point. I’ve trained my 17-year old son well, so now he’s turning me on to bands he thinks I would like. He just turned me on to the Brand New album, Daisy. Friends on Twitter often make good choices. What I like these days is that I can listen to several songs repeatedly on myspace before deciding if I want to purchase or download.

I trust Carrie Brownstein’s blog. Mainly because she was a great songwriter/musician from Sleater-Kinney, a band which I love. http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/

By: chris

chris — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:04:30 +0000

my blog at http://www.ccsbandwagon.com is very awesome. seriously. no ukeleles mentioned in four years.

By: Jodi

Jodi — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:58:49 +0000

Qualler, I agree that it is difficult to recommend music the masses will enjoy. However, that’s not, as I see it, the music blogger’s job. They should be displaying their unique taste in music, and cultivate an audience of like-minded music fans. But right now it seems that most music bloggers (at least the ones I follow) are too busy trying to break the next big thing and kissing the ass of people in charge of the guest list.

Comparing the role of a music blogger to say a book blogger (a lot of whom suffer from the same problems as music bloggers) is not apples to oranges. It’s the same issue, culling through the ton of crap out there and only writing about the best (or worst, as a way to warn people about the crap).

I’ve been fortunate to find the book bloggers whose taste match mine and have a keen editorial eye. I just haven’t found those music bloggers yet.

By: qualler

qualler — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:16:57 +0000

To be fair, I think it’s a much more difficult task to recommend music that the masses will enjoy outside of those bands that receive major hype from quasi-indie pubs like The AV Club (which still get huge readership in comparison to most other publications). Music is inherently subjective, and is full of different genres that will naturally appeal to some people more than others. Whereas, it’s a lot easier to recommend a TV show and get the point across because there are only so many TV channels that show well-produced, thoughtful scripted programming (HBO, FX, AMC, Showtime, the major networks…what else?) It’s easy to blame music bloggers but comparing the role of a music blogger to the role of any other type of blogger who recommends stuff is apples and oranges.