Welcome to Pitchfork.
For them far out hep katz who ain’t into the whole, click-clackin’ on links jive…
[B]
The Village Vanguard. New York City. 1961.[/B]
We was sittin’ there watchin’ the stage. Waitin’ for the man they called Coltrane to come out and do his thing. It was me and my four droogs. Them bein’ Peter, Georgio and Dim; Dim being really Dim.
‘Round an hour’d passed and the place was packed straight through to the back. I’d just dropped some dollars for ‘Trane’s Giant Steps six months back. Now was the time, this was the place. The Village Vanguard. New York City. 1961.
I was only there for the first night, see, but them cats at Impulse! just made my life complete. They put out four CDs of all that sound ‘Trane put out those nights. But you know my type, man. Can’t afford to eat, let alone spend some heavy cash on music. So I only got the essential. Live at the Village Vanguard: The Master Takes is one disc, makin’ it one-fourth the cost of the box set. And you only get the best stuff.
Man, the opening beauty of “Spiritual…” It’s like a dream I had: I floated on the River Nile, smokin’ some fresh weed, relaxin’. But I ain’t ever gonna see the Nile anyhow. This track’s as close as I come, and it’s close enough. Best of the best, though, has gotta be “India.” It’s only when you listen to a perfect old jazz tune like this that you realize how much drum-n-bass is derived from this music. ‘Trane takes it to heaven and back with some style, man. Some richness, daddy. It’s a sad thing his life was cut short by them jaws o’ death.
Shit, cat. It don’t make a difference. The man produced enough good music to last me a lifetime. This Village Vanguard thing’s just another example of the genius of Coltrane.
Yeah, I know, but this is egregious on a far higher level to any of tens of hundreds P4k reviews I have come across.
As much as I dislike Pitchfork, nothing they’ve ever done has bothered my as much as you just did with “P4k”.
I was watching TV a few days ago when a window commercial comes on. The commercial ends with the tagline “If your walls could talk, what would they say about your windows?”
My wife and I just looked at each other in confusion, unable to wrap our minds around the strange double hypothedical that the commercial was asking of us. The best I could figure would be “OWWW!!! Why are there big gaping holes in me!”
I dont knwo who wrote that line, or if they deserve to get fired, or soem dubious honor for their work.
OH GOD
ewwwwww
and ewwww pitchfork
This is why David Cross’ “Top Ten CD’s That I Just Made Up (and accompanying made-up review excerpts) to listen to while skimming through some of the overwrought reviews on Pitchforkmedia.com” is so great.
That is completely different, I’m not talking in terms of opinion but the writing itself. (And I think they were pretty in the right for that review.)
You guys aren’t even close. I’m sure you’ve all heard of that mythical Rolling Stone critic who ripped on Led Zeppelin. This man was wrong to the tune of more records sold than any other critic in the history of talking about records because you can’t make them yourself. He basically pioneered this Wagner James Au meets himself style of critical self-wankery.
Anyways, last year, this guy moves to my town, and proceeds to write an article trashing local bands. This pisses everyone off, and he’s persona non grata overnight. Some other idiot meets him, and tells him that he should write an article about the Madison comedy scene, even though he’s never actually said anything nice about anyone, ever. So then he comes to an OPEN MIKE at a dive bar, stays for half of it twice, and then wrote an article full of old man complaints, pretending that he actually watched an entire show, instead of the first four people, who are made to go first, because they aren’t very good. He also complains about the vulgarity, despite the fact that he was at the same time trying to perform a one man show about his time working at Hustler, where he swears all the time.
Now, this is where the worst piece of music writing ever comes into play. After reading the article, I and some other comedians begin to make fun of him over the internet. He complains in real life to comedians I know to try and get me to stop, and I don’t stop. Then he moves away and writes this.
That is the worst piece of music writing, because it is a letter from a whiny rock critic complaining that nobody appreciates his uniformly negative opinion, and telling us that he is leaving town because of it. It does not get more emo than that, and it does not come from a more famously lousy rock critic than that.
I will add this, as someone with proudly pedestrian tastes, I had wanted for years to actually meet this man, the man who gave my brother all of his lousy highbrow indie opinions, and I met him, and I told him to fuck off, and it was everything I ever dreamed that it would be. It was like slam dunking over Michael Jordan, winning a date with Michael Jackson, and biting the ear off of Mike Tyson in one fell swoop.
Finally, someone understands me. But yeah, one of the John Mendelssohn articles I linked adopts the same faubonix as the Coltrane piece, god, faubonix is bad. I’m suprised no one has weaponized it yet.
John Mendelssohn is a(n) (in)famous douchebag, one of the worst critics to ever attempt rock criticism. And yet I cannot hate him for one reason: If you have ever heard the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society album, and if you have ever gloried in that album’s wonders, you have John Mendelssohn to thank for it.
The absolute only thing that fucker ever, ever got right in his entire life is that he fell head-over-heels in love with the Kinks circa 1966 through 1969. When Reprise/Warner Brothers didn’t renew the Kinks record contract and let them leave for other pastures, it was Mendelssohn who begged the A&R guys–who had famously failed to press or promote the Kinks (who were banned from touring in the US at that time) during the period between the initial hits (“You Really Got Me” et al.) and “Lola” to do something to showcase the material from that period. Mendelssohn lobbied furiously for Warner to do a greatest hits-if-they’d-been-hits package, and that double album of singles and b-sides, The Kink Kronikles, and Mendelssohn’s slavish praise in his famous liner notes on the album (which introduced the phrase “God save The Kinks!”) turned the tide of musical opinion in Ray Davies’ favor forevermore. (It may be tough to understand it now, but at the time most “hip” rock critics thought the Kinks were irrepressibly square and unhip and Edwardian.) If Mendelssohn somehow avoids rotting permanently in rock and roll hell, it will be for that reason only.