But it doesn’t move me

Musician John Roderick, in Seattle Weekly, is bored with bored music hacks and their boring boredom:

But the median level of music writing has declined, much of it hovering consistently at the level of bratty piss-taking. The number of reviews I’ve read in the last year that contain the word “meh” just boggles my mind, as though we’re expected to consider the writers’ own boredom more fascinating than the music they’re charged with critiquing.

Roderick unwittingly disparages the music that he’s ostensibly defending; very often it really is less interesting than the response, and it takes an almighty effort to write anything more helpful than “Here is another record by Coldplay and it sounds like a Coldplay record and Coldplay fans will like it” or variations thereon. “Go on,” says the real critic, “impress me.” And all too often there is no reply. Only when music (or any other product) is magnificent, or ghastly, or teetering somewhere between the two, is it worthwhile making any comment. A critic is not obliged not to be bored, any more than an artist is obliged not to be boring.

Moreover, what’s wrong with boredom as an attitude, as a stance, as a provocative statement of intent? Ennui, disaffection, meh-ness has been a key component of youth culture and popular music for decades: the Situationists saw it as an inevitable response to the banality of modern life, and it reached its zenith in the glory days of punk. I think it was Schopenhauer – although it may have been Rat Scabies – who said “Life swings like a pendulum backwards and forwards between pain and boredom.” And a reviewer musing on his or her own pain is, perversely, even more tedious than one who goes on about boredom.

PS: On vaguely parallel lines, listen to this interesting Radio 4 documentary about on French punk, available till next Thursday.

...so they buy The Lurkers instead

This offends me, but not necessarily for the reasons the Daily Mail might want me to be offended.

PS: Damn. Just realised that a better title would be something like “Kate and Sidney Pudding”.

Whatever happened to Matt Belgrano?

Chris Bowers at OpenLeft describes how “the progressive political blogosphere” has been swallowed up by the professionals:

Only five years ago, the progressive political blogosphere was still predominately a gathering place for amateur (that is, unpaid or barely paid) journalists and activists unattached to existing media companies and advocacy organizations. Those days are almost completely over... It was, really, inevitable. Avant-garde, “outsider” developments which prove to have real support are invariably co-opted by any successful, institutional establishment. At the same time, these avant-garde movements are often willing to be co-opted, since established institutions usually have vastly greater resources than the independent, shoestring distribution networks of the avant-garde... RIP to the amateur progressive blogosphere. It provided a regular feeling of revolutionary ecstasy while it lasted, but there was no way it could last very long. It was a transitional period into a new media and political paradigm, not a new paradigm unto itself.

Bowers is talking about the US, and specifically political bloggers in the US, and more specifically still, left-wing political bloggers in the US. But I think he’s articulated quite nicely what’s happened to blogging as a whole since I started (nearly half a decade ago). Like punk rock, blogging managed to change the old order, but effectively burned itself out in the process, with old media’s embrace of the idea being something akin to John Lydon selling butter. OK, some of us old farts are still keeping the faith (Look! Patroclus is back!) but for the most part we’re just hanging around the King’s Road, charging American tourists to take photos of our preposterous haircuts.


PS: Vaguely relevant ponderings from the defiantly un-progressive Iain Dale.