vibe accounting

and now I've been listening to Bitch Magnet all morning lol

His drumming with Bitch Magnet is amazing, "Big Pining" is an all-timer for me!

The fact that Janusz Kamiński shot COOL AS ICE is still one of my favorite bits of cinema history

there's a weirdly similar thing happening in the tech sector right now where the people who deeply geek out about how things work are... not necessarily the people reaping social (or material) gain from the things that are working

"no, it's easy, just go to the app store, do a search for 'best qr code scanner app', browse through 20 or 30 sketchy apps with names like 'my best qr code scanner 4 u', figure out which of them is least likely to be spyware, install it, try to click out of the impossible-to-escape display ad, THEN

very good to know, thank you!

wait, is this a thing one can do in the UK?

I remember someone being mad at me in 2000 because I didn't like a Reggie and the Full Effect album and they were like "sorry it isn't Limp Bizkit or Papa Roach" and I went back & forth with them like 5 times pretending to be a nu metal bro

(also, yeah, i just really miss talking shit with my music writer friends hiiiiiiiiiii)

I just don't want to be out here like "woe is me, my pretty good rock band didn't benefit from the unabashed boosterism that pretty good rock bands experienced just a few years prior"

so yea maybe part of the issue isn't "music critics not mean enough" but rather "music critics not articulating opinions about music because opinions are now illegal and the role of the critic is to correctly situate new music within the broader cultural zeitgeist"

like, I remember a lot of self-styled serious crit from that era being like "ok so I just heard this 'rap' thing and it's actually pretty interesting if you have a PhD in semiotics"

it feels like the notion of what constitutes "serious" criticism just got further driven away from the culture of the music itself during that moment, which was kinda... exactly what "rockism" was initially called out for being?

(for the record when people are like "YOU BACKPEDALED ON LIZ PHAIR, YOU HAVE NO INDIVIDUAL TASTE, PWNED", like, no, I was in the "if it [is/sounds] popular it must be bad" camp when I wrote the original review which is not actual an articulation of individual taste, plus I articulated it badly)

like, i am largely being kind of a jerk here, but it was pretty wild to experience a broad shift from "the kind of music you're making is interesting and worthy of support" to "the kind of music you're making is intrinsically problematic and if you're not already popular you're probably bad"

also some people out there who swung real quick from "if it's popular it must be bad" to "if it's popular it must be good" in a way that betrays a real lack of individual taste and discernment vs seeking out the "correct" cultural/critical framework 👀 👀

definitely some people out there who saw "meet different genres of music on their own terms" and heard "rock music bad go write a 20,0000 word derridean critique of cam'ron" 👀