Elbows Music Blog Community

okay serious question...

Has Simon Reynolds written anything worthwhile lately? (no Gnarls Berkley and Arctic Monkey don't count) Has he introduced cutting edge band using his position? What is his batting average of introducing new underground bands?

as of now, my view, he is a major whiny ass has been.

Yes, congratulations Hugger!

haha, squashed, what are you even talking about?

squashed..."Has Simon Reynolds writes anything worthwhile lately? (no Gnarls Berkley and Arctic Monkey don't count) Has he introduced cutting edge band using his position? What is his batting average of introducing new udnerground bands?"

before you point fingers at an established critic...point the finger at yourself and answer your own question

Hugger -> totally did, love the band, amazing live too!

Melody Maker closed down in 2000

i only read DIY zines, what's melody maker?

that's great news hugger.

i've just landed features editor on Sounds.

in terms of the article, i think Reynolds makes some very good points but i want to get back to something Sean said a while back...

"for me the boom of mp3blogs has been utterly disappointing in the way that this trend faded. so many mp3blogs have become an even more extreme version of the awful 30-word album reviews that have become standard in the industry. essentially one-liners or genre descriptors rather than any kind of interactive, engaged analysis.

i guess i wish more blogs modelled themselves on fluxblog, and less on the iTunes Music Store."

this common stance by many of the people who have been blogging for longer than most baffles me a bit. i personally love the democratization of music discussion and obsession via blogs and to have more people doing more of the same thing as fluxblog or stg isn't what i'm after at all. what i hope for and enjoy finding is innovation and something different/creative with the way people approach talking about the music they love. to think there's a proper (or preferred way to go about being a music blogger) is gross and pointless - the beauty of the medium is endless freedom.

like everything else, there's the good/bad/in-between and there's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.

headphonesex ... I don't read his stuff very often, but I know from a cursory look at his blog (i'm not sure where else he writes to be honest) that he's been raving loads about Skream and Burial.

Did you post anything about it?

"Raynold's blog is a major pasting dump. He coulda at least fix all those question marks. Is that some sort of cruel po-mo typographical experiment I have to discern?"

hahahahahahaha - whatever trophy it is that we can give the man, i think he deserves it...

I know what I like, and I like a lot of different stuff, and I am willing to spend the time to find it and say "hey this is pretty great."

this is all I want out of a music blog, really.

people without strong opinions shouldn't write blogs

I think good work DOES encourage good work, at least by those who have the capacity and drive for it. I for one am still excited about music blogs, and the ones I find disappointing I just ignore. As someone else has stated here, the playing field is big enough and diverse enough for any music fan to find something to satisfy his or her taste.

I've only read "Rip It Up" by Reynolds, which I thought was well-written and comprehensive. I tend to avoid the blogs written by professional critics (SFJ, Zoilus, Reynolds, etc.) I can understand why music critics might feel threatened by how the internet has democratized (or even socialized?) the work of critics and tastemakers. On the internet, opinions are like kittens. I will pay money for INFORMED opinions, written by critics with a sense of history and a well-developed writing style, and that's why I buy books written by Reynolds, Jon Savage, Nick Kent and Greil Marcus. It's not just that they were there in 1969 or 1981; the value of the critics to me is how they make sense of those experiences and place them in a historical, cultural and political context. "England's Dreaming" by Jon Savage is a perfect example of that.

I am old enough to have self-published a fanzine back in 1981, inspired by writers like Ira Robbins and Kickboy Face, and by the DIY ethos. The explosion of mp3 blogs reminds me of the excitement I felt during the fanzine era, when artists became accessible to fans like me who wanted to write about music. It disappoints me that Reynolds doesn't feel that way.

The explosion of mp3 blogs reminds me of the excitement I felt during the fanzine era, when artists became accessible to fans like me who wanted to write about music.

Yes, amen to that. I remember the fanzine era and blogging is the same thing but accomplised via a different medium. It is just as exciting as it was back then and just as widespread.

Merz, I agree completely: music blogs are digital fanzines! As a teenager, I was able to meet and interview members of the Bad Brains, die Kreuzen, the Embarrassment, the English Beat and other great but lesser known bands. That level of accessibility was one of the great things that happened in the wake of punk, and it was a good thing for music journalism. Suddenly you didn't have to be Jann Wenner to talk to a band.

Yes, thanks. I'm done name dropping. I mentioned bands I met as examples of how little old me was able to score band interviews. But OK, you got me.

I guess I am taking on the role of Simon Reynolds' apologist here, though in my first post on this discussion I said I was disappointed in his opinion of music blogs. But here I go: First, I think that the book "Rip It Up" is full of "interesting insights about actual music." Second, if old critics (or bloggers) deserve to be flamed for their age, then young critics or bloggers who don't know their popular music history and can't write coherently should be entitled to the same.

The less stingy and over-intellectualized a blog is, the more I seem to identify with it.

In my mind, blogs are a way for normal people to interact with other normal people about subjects that normal people are interested in. That doesn't mean you can't be a brilliant writer, you sure can. It's just that once you start kicking people out of the party and setting rules about what a valid mp3 blog is, anyone not inside your newly designated circle gets turned off and leaves. Then again that may be some folks' goal.

Well, "right blogs" as in blogs attempting to do the Great Rock Writing he's looking for as opposed to ones that are more blurby or less analytical, which is the majority of blogs.

i'm not trying to draw lines in the sand here. he's taking issue with blogs as a whole but it seems like he hasn't stumbled upon the blogs (or the webzines) that actually are doing more extensive pieces.

Dave, I think it's pretty fair to say that Simon's complaint isn't that NO blogs are doing what he wants (he owns one of the web's longest-running musicblogs), but rather than most aren't. and that this disappoints him.

and i also think it's important to note that the QUALITY of writing isn't at issue; rather the APPROACH.

sean gramophone ... (he owns one of the web's longest-running musicblogs)"

I'll start calling his blogspot site a blog, if he quits doing such a lousy copy/paste job from microsoft word .doc. Otherwise it's just a spamblog albeit with non viagra ad content. He doesn't care if people can read it or not, it's just another outlet to advertise his stuff. A lousy attempt at that too.

it's not about edgy, it's about thinking.

hmm. . .