Sonic Youth Gossip - View Single Post - Are music blogs overexposing developing bands?

pbradley · 05.21.2008, 01:09 PM

Like I said, these worries and gripes are not new. You may have voiced them before yourself. But they need to be talked about, if only so they don't get steamrolled by the defeatist feeling that this slack slide into international-scale boosterism is irreversible. CMJ and Black Kids weren't any kind of Damascus moment—this has been an issue long a-brewin'—but they did remind me that we're at a precarious point right now for the future of what some of us still call criticism. If nothing else, people always love to argue about whether or not critics and reviews are useful as a "buyer's guide," and many have also argued that if music is as oversaturated as everyone says at the moment, it follows that the intermediaries should be more important than ever, even if the MP3-and-no-contextual-information evidence seems to say that the converse is true. Taste is subjective, but right now there are a lot of untrustworthy voices out there, voices with little in the way of insight—hell, voices that don't even really want to start arguments—and yet are nonetheless regarded as the New Critics, at least among those old media types with the power to anoint such empty titles.

It's easy to have a lot of friends when you don't stand for anything—again, having opinions is called "hating" these days—and it's equally easy to look like you're merely out to snarkily puncture hype with no stance of your own when commenting on reviews and trends. But for the bands' sakes—which means for the listeners' sakes, since they can only benefit by a band actually getting, you know, good—a moratorium on slobbering praise, at least when it comes to newborn bands like Black Kids, needs to be imposed by those with the kingmaking abilities. Or maybe listeners just need to start imposing some sort of fine on the "critics." Or maybe people just don't feel ripped off when confronted by the bland realities of bands like Black Kids because they know there will be another mediocre train along soon enough that will at least entertain them until the end of the semester."

05.21.2008, 01:09 PM	#2
pbradley invito al cielo Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: SoKo Posts: 10,621	Like I said, these worries and gripes are not new. You may have voiced them before yourself. But they need to be talked about, if only so they don't get steamrolled by the defeatist feeling that this slack slide into international-scale boosterism is irreversible. CMJ and Black Kids weren't any kind of Damascus moment—this has been an issue long a-brewin'—but they did remind me that we're at a precarious point right now for the future of what some of us still call criticism. If nothing else, people always love to argue about whether or not critics and reviews are useful as a "buyer's guide," and many have also argued that if music is as oversaturated as everyone says at the moment, it follows that the intermediaries should be more important than ever, even if the MP3-and-no-contextual-information evidence seems to say that the converse is true. Taste is subjective, but right now there are a lot of untrustworthy voices out there, voices with little in the way of insight—hell, voices that don't even really want to start arguments—and yet are nonetheless regarded as the New Critics, at least among those old media types with the power to anoint such empty titles. It's easy to have a lot of friends when you don't stand for anything—again, having opinions is called "hating" these days—and it's equally easy to look like you're merely out to snarkily puncture hype with no stance of your own when commenting on reviews and trends. But for the bands' sakes—which means for the listeners' sakes, since they can only benefit by a band actually getting, you know, good—a moratorium on slobbering praise, at least when it comes to newborn bands like Black Kids, needs to be imposed by those with the kingmaking abilities. Or maybe listeners just need to start imposing some sort of fine on the "critics." Or maybe people just don't feel ripped off when confronted by the bland realities of bands like Black Kids because they know there will be another mediocre train along soon enough that will at least entertain them until the end of the semester."
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