Parsing The Pop: Critics Get Heavily Meta In Their Ballot Comments
Welcome to the first installment of Parsing The Pop, where we’ll spotlight ballots, comments, and statistical anomalies from our 2006 Jackin’ Pop Critics Poll. If you’d like us to break down the data in any particular way, please drop us a line; to start, we present a selection of comments on the blogged-down bog of the rock-critical world. (And we owe a lot to Michael Daddino, who helped point us in the right direction when he put together his own selection of comments on I Love Music.)
After the jump, a few writers comment on technology trumping content, blogstalking writers, and rock-critic flame wars.
What I’m saying is this: 2006 was an exciting year for music, but it was an even more exciting year for Music Writing. The monsterbeast is changing, sprouting more heads, more legs, more teeth, more stomachs and totally feasting on all these parts of itself. Even so, as interesting as all that Lord of the Rings shit is, it’s 12:13 am on Monday December 18th and I just want to unplug my computer and listen to Cornershop tapes on my walkmen.
…one thing went down the proverbial shitter: music critics. Could there have been a worse year to be a writer? Paid writing gigs dried up, one of the remaining outlets for respectable music journalism got caught with its pants down (on so many levels), etc. Maybe it was a lousy year for music after all, if the best we could muster was hurling insults at each other. I can only hope in 2007 we learn to stop shitting where we eat.
And yes, reading all these rad writers’ blogs has been a nice, though mildly stalker-y, way to stay in touch with a group of people I never see/ talk to anymore, at least to have a vague sense of consensus and concerns. But I’m rarely satisfied after a good hour or two’s worth of blog-reading, even if in doing so I’ve also participated in the theft of intellectual property and seen a famous person’s un-bearded clam again. I just can’t help but think, might not all this bloggeration be better spent doing something worthwhile, something that “sticks”? The answer is, probably not. And again, I fear that I sound like (or am) a boring old man. Hooray! I can’t wait for the new year.
Technology is winning the battle for content supremacy, just as it always has. The tumult and ineptitude in the music press mirrors what’s happening in the music industry at large, as both industries make the infuriating transition from a mature phase to one of decline. The good news is that while the machines that drive the business continue to sputter helplessly, the music itself has never been better.
O-dub runs Soul-Sides.com, one of the best music blogs on the net. While most of the blogosphere was sucking off the Decemberists, Mr. Wang was biguppin’ Afro-Fillipino boogaloo-star Joe Bataan and “Little Miss Dynamite”, Sugarpie Desanto. This was the year of the whiney white boy, the year where being the sniveling little turd in eyeliner and women’s pants paid off BIGTIME. O-dub had nothin’ to do with any of that.
Later today: A few albums that didn’t show up on the Jackin’ Pop lists.
Jackin’ Pop Critics Poll 2006 Contributors This is the thread where I repost comments from the Jackin’ Pop poll… [I Love Music]
