It’s not even that New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones dislikes the Chris Cornell/Timbaland collaboration Scream. He seems disappointed by it, vexed that someone he idolized let him down.
Former New York Times music-biz reporter Jeff Leeds resurfaces on Sasha Frere Jones’ blog at The New Yorker, and the two discuss a few topics, including the current state of the art/commerce divide. More »
Former New York Times music-biz reporter Jeff Leeds resurfaces on Sasha Frere Jones’ blog at The New Yorker, and the two discuss a few topics, including the current state of the art/commerce divide. More »
Yes, that’s right–Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET is when our live coverage of the Grammys, which will be filled with the walking dead and the incredibly awkward, begins. It’ll be my first liveblog from my four-person orange couch! Here’s the nominee list, so you can read up on who’s in, who’s out, and who’s up for Best Polka Album. And to get you even more excited for Sunday, here are a few final news items on the show, presented in handy bullet form:
Every year pop critics await the coming of January with a sense of trepidation and a healthy amount of schadenfreude, because it’s time for our own year-end analysis, Jason Gross’ annual rundown of year’s worst music writing. (Gross’ long-running look at the dregs of rock scribbling is actually part of a package of the worst and best music writing of the year. But c’mon, we all know which part we really care about.) And now that our trepidation has passed (nothing we wrote in ’07 made it to Gross’ “Bottom Of The Barrel” category!), we can get to the schadenfreude (which of our peers did make it to Gross’ “Bottom Of The Barrel” category?).
Who knew liberal do-gooding race man Sasha Frere-Jones would have a secret BFF in New York Times conservative goof David Brooks? In an op-ed fretting over the “segmented society,” Brooks references both SFJ’s infamous New Yorker “indie rock ain’t African-American enough” tract from last month and critic Carl Wilson’s class-focused rebuttal, as he points out popular music’s heretofore unnoticed contribution to average folks being “anxious about fragmentation and longing for cohesion,” which is the “driving fear behind the inequality and immigration debates, behind worries of polarization and behind the entire Obama candidacy.” Crap, we were pretty chill when the shocking revelation was that the overeducated indie rock leisure class wasn’t funky enough, but dividing us as Americans and failing to groove? Only Professor Stevie Van Zandt can save us now.
If you read just one response to Sasha Frere-Jones’ attempt to ramp up his Google Blog Search hits, make it Carl Wilson’s argument in Slate that the problem facing indie–aside from the fact that it’s a “genre” with boundaries that are seemingly defined by the biases and record collections of… More »
If you read just one response to Sasha Frere-Jones’ attempt to ramp up his Google Blog Search hits, make it Carl Wilson’s argument in Slate that the problem facing indie–aside from the fact that it’s a “genre” with boundaries that are seemingly defined by the biases and record collections of… More »
Well, after three days at CMJ it’s official: Judged on the guidelines laid down by New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, our worst fears are confirmed and indie rock has actually failed at being convincingly “black.” It is now the Jamie Kennedy of musical genres.
Presenting the next installment of the Sasha Frere-Jones score, where Idolator rates the indie rock bands we see at the CMJ Music Marathon based on how musically “black” they are, taking the learned teachings of New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones as our guide. This time we lay down the ground rules so you can play along at home, and we offer a little more explanation of the reasoning behind our little experiment.