Wed 17 Oct 2007
I can’t even begin to list the issues with this piece. The pitch e-mail is a good place to start. The conception the next best. Based on sound, Arcade Fire are about as white as it gets. Thanks for the scoop. Who does not know or expect this? Why would anyone attend an Arcade Fire performance (or one by any other TOO-WHITE!!! indie rock band mentioned here) and decide that “exposing” their lack of “soul” would make a pointed magazine article? It doesn’t matter that one of the members hails from non-white descent, they could be comprised of Ethiopians and still be white, seeing as how they basically rewrite the Hooters for hipsters. The based-on-sound angle (not always taken in the article) would make TV On The Radio pretty white as well. And Wilco isn’t exactly the Pharaohs. Uh…Indie Rock is too white? Who’da thunk it?!?!? The closest Indie Rock gets to black is when it thinks it’s black (Jon Spencer, The Make-Up). Don’t listen to Indie Rock if you want a Stax boxed set. What the hell is going on here? Reverse slumming?!? Or just slumming? I should afford less quality to a form of music because it doesn’t share sonic or emotional attributes with Black, indigenous, or traditional forms? I suppose that argument has been made for ages, but why now? It’s as pointless as me pitching “There’s Not Enough White Indie Rock in Modern R&B.” Maybe I should pitch that.
Bee Tee Dubya….not a lot of research went into this post.
October 17th, 2007 at 8:16 am
“They basically rewrite the Hooters for hipsters.”
Earles, you win. I quit.
October 17th, 2007 at 9:21 am
ahhh…how quickly the whole disco-punk of the early 00s has been forgotten.
October 17th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Yep. Thin, flash-in-the-pan genres tend to be. But even more interesting genres fall through the cracks within months. That’s a problem with the fans/culture, not the music.
October 17th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
re: Jones article–Pretty harsh backbiting and ever more backlashed indictment from a former member of the band Ui.
For real, how could any self respecting cracker finish reading that article after Jones asserts that he “spent the evening happily pressed against the stage” at an Arcade Fire show?
The only good thing about this New Yorker piece is that it reminds me to take ‘Blues Brothers 2000′ off my Netflix cue.
October 17th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
THANK GOD whatshisnamehippie Barhart is not copying R. Kelly. What the hell is wrong with this writer? Other than being one of the instigators of the aforementioned “disco-punk” revival, that is.
October 17th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
I think he was staring down one last crate of cutout Ui CDs on the way down to his building’s dumpster and got mad.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Priceless passage btw me and an associate today:
[15:37] xxxxxxxx: my editor [redacted] knows SFJ, says he’s a “rapist”
[15:38] mosurock: in what sense
[15:38] xxxxxxxx: rap-isty
[15:38] xxxxxxxx: rap-ist
[15:39] xxxxxxxx: he thinks all music should represent it’s origins in africa
[15:39] xxxxxxxx: and complains about it nonstop
[15:39] mosurock: oh, see I thought you meant he raped somebody
October 17th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
I am glad I read the rest of that post…that is easily the beginning of a juicy rumor.
The more I think I about it (which, admittedly, hasn’t been too much) I think that article was a total “phone it in” and he just got noticed by the wrong peoples.
October 17th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
i never knew the New Yorker was so pro-Gary Young.
October 18th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Sasha is tecnically a very gifted writer. But the reductionism in this article is definitely suspect.