Shameful Otaku Secret!

It may not have been true, but…

So I was working in the basement on some stuff, with the mp3 player on random. I went upstairs for a minute, and as I was walking back down, I heard a weird song coming from the basement. I thought, shit, that sounds a lot like the Beatles but how is there a Beatles song I totally have never heard? As I got closer, I recognized the tune, but it wasn’t the Beatles. It was “Sub Rosa Subway” by Klaatu…

Read the story here. They got a little screwed in my opinion, but it’s not like a Badfinger story or anything. It’s more about how everyone loves a conspiracy.

I was never that big of a fan of the Dismemberment Plan, I suppose they were just fine. And I haven’t heard any solo material by their frontman – since I didn’t really care for the band, I didn’t really think about the subject too much. But this Dusted Magazine story about taking your music “journalism” with a grain of salt – spurred by a 4-year-old event – chilled me to the bone. The moral is: remember that even music writers with “cred” (and a hard-on for James Murphy) have to sell ad-space so you get to look at all those American Appalling ads, and they’re not beneath cheap stunts at the expense of artists or the art in general.

if Travistan gets a “0.0,” then what should a neo-Nazi punk record get? And doesn’t the idea of something rating a zero point zero suggest that it somehow has no value, or even that it doesn’t exist? In this case, maybe. After receiving the Pitchfork goose eggs, Morrison might as well have ceased to exist. Showing an appalling but unsurprising inability to think for themselves, many of Pitchfork’s readers turned their backs on Morrison the instant the review was published.

While my former cohort here continues to elevate a site most people assume to be spam by writing about his favorite new crust records, apparently the people at Pitchfork are trying their best to fill in the spaces between Radiohead albums with pageviews in any way possible. Do it for the love, people, and most importantly: think for yourself and listen to what you love. Even if it’s J Mascis! At any rate, this is a great and eye-opening read.

Well, sort of an interview. It’s really a list. But music nerds love them lists, right? It’s the last ten songs listened to by Oxbow singer Eugene Robinson, who hands-down wins the “most literary person last seen holding his cock” award. It’s always highly entertaining reading anything the guy writes, and in this case, none of it is about anal sex or face punching. From his note on “Stayin’ Alive,” by the Brothers:

When I listen to this song I am in no measure at all involved in anything other than taking it as seriously as one might take a record by Stravinsky. Go ahead…laugh. You are a fool.

Not to mention, the sheer tangent factor of “View to a Kill.” Check it out. And check out the Oxbow site for more of Robinson’s writing.

As you may know, our site is far inferior to Pitchfork (in the way that, say, cabernet sauvignon is inferior to a boat race), so of course I have to grab the hyperbole filter and check up on the masters every once in a while.

Gorilla vs. Bear reports that Pitchfork has given Girltalk’s Night Ripper LP the “best new music” tag on the front page. I couldn’t be happier. Though they turn it into more of an essay on mash-ups than a review, they’re spot on in saying that it’s great, fun stuff. When I lived in Pittsburgh I played a few shows with Girltalk, not to mention Greg’s previous group The Joysticks (at the time they were in high school, and often augmented with names like The Joysticks Battle the Scan-feed Relay to Your Skull), and I can vouch for the fun-factor, as well as the mind-blowing sheer amount of source samples he crushes together.

With the idea of the mash-up pretty well known in the mainstream anymore, I hope that artists like Greg, previously getting by in the “experimental” world, get a little recognition. The world needs nerd power, and plenty of people can get into his hyperspeed party anthems. Definitely check out the samples PF posted, and by all means support Illegal Art and Girltalk by picking it up.