I like the Powerline blog for its political stuff. I can’t differentiate between the 3 guys, and rarely notice who posts what, so if I’m tarring them all with the same brush, sorry.
However, I usually just scroll past when they do a music post. Whoever it is, or maybe all of them, who writes about music is almost always full of shit. They worship safe “common wisdom hip” blather and write ludicrous, uninformed and basically tone-deaf bullshit when they do write about music. I think whoever it is takes people like Lester Bangs seriously. Hardly any non-musicians know monkeyballs about music and their opinions are usually worthless. To reverse a trope, just “shut up and listen”, don’t try to analyze it, don’t proselytize either, because your taste sucks.
Ironically, the only time I’ve ever written about their blog is when they were sucking Neil Young’s balls so they could host advance tracks from his anti-Republican and anti-George W. Bush screed based on impeaching the president. They agreed not to criticize the record in return for running free ads for it on their site. That’s some serious sack-sucking. My guess is, they figure Neil Young is one of those safe, uber-hip rock gods whom everyone says “oh yeah, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, slobber slobber, Neil Young, classic stuff. Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday while we’re at it!”
Which brings us to their ‘defense’ of Joan Baez. Its typical wannabe with the kool kids bullshit. Neil Young, Orbison, Baez, almost anyone they blubber about, hasn’t done shit in 40 fucking years, any tiny entertaining thing she’s done, its been played to death and wasn’t really much at the time anyway.
Her flavor of the week protesting is all that’s kept her on the D-list celebrity circuit, and it still gets moonbats to pay her to appear at concerts. Otherwise no one would listen to her. You got a protest, trot out Joan Baez with her frosted wig.
Don’t even get me started on Johnny “Mellancamp” Cougar. He saw his career going down and decided to save the family farm. Why not a benefit for buggy-whip makers or Save the Eight-Track Cassette? By the time an industry needs a benefit, its over, jack. Remember all those stereo shops like Sound Advice where you bought a $500 Dual turntable with a strobe and then you needed a $150 needle cartridge to go with it? What ever happened to those. Why didn’t Johnny Melonhead save those?
And finally, she sucks. Even as a folk singer, and they all suck. Let me clue you desk-jockeys in on some other facts. Johnny Cash had a few cool novelty songs. Most are tedious to listen to. Orbison sounded like a fag on most songs. Frankie Vallie has more balls than Roy Orbison. The blues shit you slaver all over is typical and common. Its not a big deal. She’s even worse than Dylan in the irritatingly self-important when you are all smoke and mirror and obscure references and you rely on critics to figure it out and explain it and give you depth.
“Her art is special.”
Yeah, like that kid with the helmet in the Olympics.
Defending a political hack like Baez whom you mistake for a musician just points out how little you actually know about music. You are probably a Rolling Stone subscriber who thinks that “Almost Famous” is a great movie and wears a Stones t-shirt to the Stones concert. Maybe the hat too. You might even be a (god help us) Dead-Head. You are mixing up pop-culture relevance or trivia with decent music. I defy anyone without a tin ear to sit through an entire Joan Baez concert or album. You’ll rip off your penises and cram them in your ears just to preserve your sanity (that’s right you “professionals”, you lawyer fucks, we real musicians have at LEAST two. One of mine is also a ninja sword).
Stick with the musical allusions in the titles of your posts, and lay the fuck off reviewing and retro-retrospecting pop-culture darling musicians. Hey, why don’t you do B. B. King! Ooo Sam Cooke! Eric Clapton! Fucking Peter, Paul and fucking Mary, while you’re on a folk kick. Get all the easy shit in there. Ramones. Fuck, do Nirvana, show how cross-generational stupid-hip you can be. All those people are ANTI-cool. They were good for a while, they were entertaining, now they are repetitive when they aren’t out and out sucking -even the dead ones, who we have to hear all the time on soundtracks and whatnot- and the live ones hang around annoying us with how they suck now when they were good for a short while. They should be euthanized after they put out the first lame LP.
And while we’re at it, all annoying celebrity musicians should be castrated when they start blowing so they can’t procreate. Then we wouldn’t have to put up annoying little shits with Sean and Julian Lennon.
Or Rufus Wainwright. I liked him better when he was a Tit-Man (only cool LWIII fans will get that one, so just skip over it if your boss forces you to wear a tie to work, like those tort-monkey Powertools).
When you discover a real talent like Pat Sky’ “Songs That Made America Famous” you might be onto something. In the meantime, quit trying to be hip. You sold out early, you have your professional practice and your oh so hip political blog. You don’t know shit about music, you don’t know good music, you are irritating parroting something you read in Spin or Music Maker or something 20 years ago and took it to heart. Ooo Phil Ochs! So hip and happening! He speaks to me!
Why do successful people think they know everything about everything? Powerline pontificating about music is as bad as Baez pontificating about politics. And don’t talk about movies either. Just lay off pop culture altogether, although like Glenn Reynolds, you guys would probably good only at geek culture, like Star Wars and crap like that. Stick to that. (Ugh, he even flogs his brother’s lame ass band, Rusty Gate or whatever they are called).
The Great Oz has spoken.