Hey Jerry I would have thought even you could tell that I was being fiercely sarcastic when pointing to your review. You even use the ‘my pals’ line too. Although at least you have the sense to edit yourself a bit more. Your point about ‘males’ being scared of a female perspective is just plain stupid and something you always bring up as a ‘cover all’ argument if a male criticises a female. It doesn’t wash, and I think it is more insulting to the female writer than anything, every bloody writer gets lampooned once in a while as does every band. What we should keep quiet because a girl is writing a review???? Come on Jerry, that is the biggest insult of all!!!! If you alter the obvious things like names and references to ‘Mrs Amp’ there is nothing in the review that gives away that a female has even written the piece. Even the line about doing it with Busted could be a male perspective if they were that way inclined, and all power to that too. Freedom of opinions and freedom of press.

The review itself was criticised by people because it was simply hard to read, unfocused, over long, and too ‘it’s my blog’ indulgent in the sense that the author was trying to point out her connection with the band/ or make herself look clever over actually reviewing the gig. There are plenty of reviews like that about, there is nothing original about failing to edit yourself properly. Nothing original about not providing more insight into the band and their music. In the ‘edited’ review BSP are even described as playing ‘Stadium Rock’ tunes! Whatever you say about being original the only thing which makes the reader interested in the author is the fact that the author is reviewing a band that the reader is interested in. The reader wants to be engaged, amused and learn more about their fave band. It can be done in many other ways without conforming.

The difference between me and you is that when you hate something you set out to destroy it, I would rather be a bit more constructive when reviewing a piece of writing. The piece just needed to be more balanced and easy to follow for the reader. I never did Media Studies, I am just a bloody reader. I think that is all me, and the other people making their comments need to be qualified in daring to say something.

Posted by Mark on May 8th, 2004 at 3:17 pm

"Communicate the love or hatred for the music you’re writing about to such a extent that it makes me wanna rush out and buy - or burn - the artist’s records."

The AMP review did not make me want to buy, or burn any BSP records. It just annoyed me.

Posted by Abby on May 8th, 2004 at 3:36 pm

Abby: go back and look at the line you just quoted. Do you understand nothing about context?

Mark: you’re almost certainly looking at the wrong site if you didn’t enjoy AMP’s review of BSP. Because I really do rate it as a piece of constructive, illuminating and amusing criticism. I’m sorry that you don’t. It’s all down to training, y’know… You found it hard to read. Perhaps you’ve read too much soundbite journalism in the past?

Also, sarcasm never comes across well in print. It certainly didn’t read as if you were criticising me, whereas it did AMP. And yes, I will construe that as dullard sexism. You don’t want to be accused of sexism? Learn to express yourself clearer.

Posted by Jerry on May 8th, 2004 at 7:01 pm

Jerry, if anyone read your review they would see very very clearly that I was criticising your ‘my pals’ style writing too. I think you are slightly read faced at being caught out. Like you said yourself ‘Jesus’ how could anyone say your review was not self indulgent too?

And even if it was the case that I slated AMP and praised you (which as we know is not true) your logic is this:

HE CRITICISED A FEMALE
HE PRAISED A MALE
HE IS A DULLARD SEXIST

Man that is the most screwed up, simplistic and ignorant piece of logic I have come by in a long time. Its like saying that if I criticise Som from My Vitriol and praise Kev Sheilds My Bloody Valentine I have a thing against Asian people. When really they are quite simply two bands and I prefer one to the other. Just as if there were are two bits of writing where I prefer one to the other.

I think the solution to this problem is not me having to express myself more clearly but you not knee jerking calling people sexist. And since when have you been one to say about people expressing themselves clearly? I mean if you can’t see my points how I intended them then it must be down to your ‘training y’know’? I mean if you can’t see my criticisms for how they are then maybe you have been reading too much ’soundbite criticism’. I like to think that the frustration you feel in not understanding my original point is the same frustration I felt trying to read the BSP review. Do you see?

Abby clearly had problems with the ‘context’ your quote about burning records was intended so how clearly are you expressing yourself?

Lastly, my original criticism of AMP was constructive, which is more than can be said of your destroy everything you don’t like ethos.

Everyone is so stupid except for you arn’t they Jerry? Not well ‘trained’ enough, not enough of an ‘outsider’ to understand a rambling self absorbed article. Well Jerry you are demonstrating the same sort of bullying and ‘insider’ attitude you demonised when talking about how fans of the ‘cutie’ genre were made to feel liker lepers.

‘Your too intellectual I will beat you to the ground’
or
‘You are not intellectual enough I will beat you to the ground’

It is one and the same. Take a look at your own ‘training’.

Posted by Mark on May 8th, 2004 at 7:54 pm

The above is a fine piece of constructive criticism, Mark - neatly argued and thought out. You’ve really made me see the error of my ways. Of course you’re not a sexist. Of course I’m wrong to defend one of my writers! Man, I feel so stupid now…

Posted by Jerry on May 8th, 2004 at 9:28 pm

Mark said:

"Whatever you say about being original the only thing which makes the reader interested in the author is the fact that the author is reviewing a band that the reader is interested in."

Surely this is the fundamental difference here - there are two approaches to music journalism, and one is to believe that any piece of writing should only ever be about the subject of the piece. That may be valid, but it seems obvious to me that there are a lot of people who want to write pieces that have value in themselves, aside from the music in question - and crucially, there are people who want to read that kind of thing, too.

Posted by Joe on May 8th, 2004 at 9:33 pm

Jerry didn’t you realise sarcasm was my trick? You can’t use it back against me. Otherwise the universe crumbles. Just a few points:

Yes, whether you believe it or not, I am not sexist. ‘All my best friends are black’, oh no sorry, wrong cliche.

Secondly:

No you are not stupid to defend one of your writers. But when you mis interpret a criticism, and then go banging off ill founded ‘its all down to sexism (Jerry Thackery TM)’ arguments, someone has a right to take you to task on it. I find being called sexist as offensive as being called a racist. Your reasoning is lazy. In ‘Live Through This’ your accusations towards masculine hair metal bands, and your love of riot grrl because of the female empowerment aspect are pefectly cool. But in this case I just think you are displaying a knee jerk persecution complex on behalf of a female. I don’t know whether constantly harbouring this and bringing it up uneccessarily is down to a deep seated desire to impress the girls with your ’sensitivity’ at every opportunity or what. Then again you dismissed Miranda Sawyer out of hand in your lecture so maybe you are constantly having sexist thoughts and projecting them onto others because ‘every male must think like that, how can I repent?’. Well I don’t want to be a part of your concensus on every male thank you.

Thirdly, I am not trying to say you are idiot so there is no need for your hollow cry of ‘oh what an idiot am I, my kingdom for a horse’. You are ‘The Legend’ of course, you have two names, you are friend of the stars because they like your personality and not what you can do for them in your capacity as media dude, you are a producer of fine records that you keep mentioning at any and every opportunity….you are…oh no, hang on I am going down the trying to destroy route. Bad idea, that is your domain eh?

Joe: Good point, and I certainly don’t believe a piece of journalism should just focus on the ‘band’, the writer should just remember why the reader is ‘tuning in’, I totally think the listening experience for the individual person is fundamental. I just think that there is a balance to be reached and a need for the reader not to feel ‘excluded’ from some sort of ‘friends with the band, look at my life of lig’ club, or ‘oh my friends are not enlightened’, ‘oh look how wordy i am even when it is not neccessary’. It just annoys people. Any other more self indulgent stuff should be left for lifestyle logs. I thought I was reading the ‘music mag’ part of the site, I thought it was for succinct, flowing, punchy, passionate and informative reviews. Yeah, be a bit #arty# in the review, express the fact that your heart fucking burned when they played ‘that’ song, or
if you couldn’t stop thinking about the singers fake moustache while you tucked yourself up for the night. Just do it with some style and self restraint. Leave the ‘lig’ style, over the top, confused narratives to the realms of weblogs (or ‘responses’ to weblogs maybe). hehe, a bit of self depreciation for me. Now I nearly have the full set of emotions..can I swap pacifisim for an Alan Shearer shiny?

Posted by Mark on May 9th, 2004 at 1:46 am

For the record, that review said plenty about the band. Unlike any other piece I’ve read about BSP, it said something similar to what I had been thinking about them.

Similarly, the ’sexist’ argument seems a bit weak. There are enough holes to pick at in the comments without it.

Posted by Jim Cassius on May 9th, 2004 at 10:47 pm

You’re getting bored of this…! (Wipes brow in astonishment.) Man….!

My appetite for reading words (bad, good or indifferent) partway inspired by me is legendary - but even I gave up reading this a couple of thousand words ago. Is being buffetted with endless wave after endless wave of Mark’s pedantic, sixth form liberal drivel similar to the experience of seeing British Sea Power live? Please God no. Don’t give up now, lad. Another 20 or 30,000 words more of this and you’ll have bored this entire site to death. And then you can feel very proud of yourself. More fledgling artistic endeavour snuffed out underneath the crushing weight of sheer tedium.

(Look. I do realise that all you really want is a big hug and a cup of hot chocolate from someone you’ve heard of, but you can fuck right off. You ain’t getting it from me. You can’t even spell my real name right despite the fact I still use it constantly. Now go away and find some criticism that doesn’t challenge your blinkered view of art. You’re frightening the neighbours.)

PS: Jim, you’re fired.

Posted by Jerry on May 10th, 2004 at 1:36 am

Crushing bore? Man look who is writing about their gardening like anyone cares. The same self praising rubbish every day to go with it.

Jerry you silly silly man, if I wanted a hug from you I would have taken the easy option and emailed you with some rosy missive about how much I love your work. I think it is far far more difficult to challenge someone like you who thinks they are someone well known, and always right in making spiteful missives, when they are actually ‘well hated’ except from the handful of sycophantic bands who want a good review from you at the time. Even those bands end up hating you, I have spoken to enough folk who say what a nasty person you are. You even managed to annoy the ‘nicest man in rock’. So please, please do not take my end comment about me laying off of you like I meant it. No matter how much you try writing yourself (shoehorning) into some sort of more important position than you were in it doesn’t wash.

If me taking you to pieces for your knee jerk sexism argument is sixth form then I think your original accusations (’oh they are men man against women they must be sexist, the article is great’) were bordering on the level of an infant school argument. If you being taken to task on your weak ‘artform’ arguments (that ignore any context, expectation or media type) is sixth form then what does that make your poorly thought out sweeping analogy of going to see a painting and ‘not knowing what it is about doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the painting’? You can’t seem to get your head round the fact that art that fails to meet its expectation is bad fucking art, that different media types place different emphasis on subject matter. i didn’t do media studies and I bloody well know that. I think the article in question is more sixth form than my arguments will ever be.

You fail to address any of my points relating to you using weak knee jerk ’sexism’ accusations because you know that you simply are very very fucking wrong. You are just someone who hates being challenged, you resort to petty insults because of your limited brain power. You can’t adequately take down ’sixth form’ arguments any other way. That is the problem with the internet isn’t it? People can answer back. Take you off your throne for being blinkered and self absorbed.

You call me ‘liberal’. You know what sort of people do that don’t you Gerry? (see what I did there I spelt it wrong!). The sort of people who call others ‘liberals’ are themselves usually bigots. Like I want to spell your name correctly, unlike you I can run decent argument off of the cuff without needing a buffer. 20,000 words is fucking easy, come on lets get to 30,000. You flake out when you are challenged with ‘oh you are boring the site’. I think this is the first bit of interesting fucking debate you have had on your insular self praising world for a long time. Like anyone cares about you having plumbers round or your garden flowers!! Get a grip. Even your own staff had to admit that your sexist argument was weak. You just skirt around it and do your ‘hey everyone, look at him going off, what a loser, i’m a has been ‘journalist’ I must be right’. Point and stare and claim that everything poor is ‘art’, that everyone else is blinkered, fire off the ‘ashamed of my male species’ argument, start making bad analogy. I just feel sorry for the decent writers you have onboard because someone like you, with your feet so steeped in old fueds and bitterness. Someone sitting back on the past and lecturing, taking swipes at easy targets like Q magazine. Well what are you?

Talk about frightening the neighbours, have you taken a look at your diary page picture?

Posted by Mark on May 10th, 2004 at 10:57 am

Whoa! You’ve got some issues there, man. Maybe you should take them to someone who cares?

Q> How many BSP fans does it take to change a lightbulb?

A> Well, before we even start to discuss whether you or I are qualified to change the lightbulb, I’d very much prefer it if you didn’t pretend to be a comedian and left the telling of jokes to the people whose role in life is to tell them, also I think you’ll find that jokes - even if you were allowed to tell them, which you’re not because you’re not a professional comedian or even a musician, who are after all allowed to tell the odd joke from on stage as part of their art if they like because by the very nature of strapping on a guitar or writing a few stadium rock chords are intrinsically more valid than you or I - are very often just kneejerk reactions to situations that intelligent people are much better able to cope with by arguing in a constructive, intelligent and open manner over the course of several years… (continues in similar vein for another 30,000 words until the entire world has cease rotating on its axis)

Posted by Jerry on May 10th, 2004 at 11:49 am

Man it is long but not overlong stuff, so quit on the ‘too long for my brain’ stuff. I suffered the reams of your 100% less interesting ‘me me me me’ crap in your book but I still read it. My writing covers the bases of your ignorance every time you bring up a new form of witless comment, with just enough line space. Who cares? Well you obviously care enough to write more witless comebacks. I mean that nonsense you just wrote in an attempt at parody is just simply nonsense, you have no capability to parody me where as I can parody one of your reviews down to the tee, do you want me to try?. You just keep dodging out of the fact that you are simply a two dimensional caricature with a set of two dimensional weak arguments.

‘It doesn’t help that his views are presented with an insufferable air of self-importance ("Here’s what makes me different from you: I understand the power of music") and stale cliche ("You fly too close to the sun, you’re going to get burned"). Consistency isn’t a strong point either; at one point, he dismisses Soul Asylum as a crap band, only later to include them in a list of great rock bands from Boston (uh, Everett? They’re from Minneapolis)’.

Posted by Mark on May 10th, 2004 at 12:08 pm

Jim,

Yep the ‘they are all sexists’ argument is weak. I agree that aspects of some of the comments you can pick holes in because they are simply insults (i.e. - the pygmy one)but I think many of the comments are valid. One important factor is that the criticism was not just that it never covered enough of the band, it was also the way it was written (clumsy, over the top, lig stylee, i know the band..etc etc). Like I said in my original comment, the piece did have some good stuff in there. It just had a hell of a lot of bad stuff too, and whatever you say it did nothing for BSP and more for the ‘i am so poetic ‘, ‘look at my life ME’ ‘my pals in the band’ school of writing’. The band were a sideshow, a tool for the author to try and show everyone how clever they are, it could have been any band and I expect the article would have read the same, and been just as clumsy and badly written. BSP are an amazing band and it just didn’t seem to say anything more than the fact the band have some ’stadium rock chords’ and that the author knows one of the band and went to get drunk at the gig..to me that is not getting to the heart of the disparity (themes of nature and death), the dark humour, the discordent sound of the music, the succinct and punchy experience of THAT gig (not any old gig where you drink vodka and bump around with mates), how it made the author feel (in a well written manner?). I don’t know what you were thinking about them that it remined you of?

anyway, I am getting bored with this and its Jerrys birthday on Wednesday (?) so maybe I should stop cramming up his diary pages.

Posted by Mark on May 10th, 2004 at 12:41 pm

Are you obsessed with Everett?

Posted by sam on May 10th, 2004 at 12:52 pm

I would have though it is pretty easy to find quotes like that all over the web so I would have thought he is proving a point. Isn’t Everett obsessed with himself?

Posted by Gracie on May 10th, 2004 at 12:56 pm

"Even your own staff had to admit that your sexist argument was weak."

Forgetting the inferences that makes about me, yeah, it was weak - but not completely without foundation (put Lester Bangs at the top and see what happens). And ET’s argument is infinitely more interesting than this drivel.

Mark, you have some ‘fair enough’ kind of points to make but please get a grip. To construct some teetering monolithic argument around them is a little off. As I said, she said plenty to me ABOUT THE BAND as well as ABOUT HERSELF: in particular, the idea of somehow being liberated by some solid indie rock.

Why do I always get dragged into these things?

Posted by Jim Cassius on May 12th, 2004 at 12:04 pm

Oh dear Jim, that doesn’t smell of an ickle bit of backtracking in an effort not to upset the big boss?

I think you are missing the point of what Mark and others are saying. Even if she said a bit about the band and herself, the overall picture was of a poor liggers diary.

Posted by Gracie on May 12th, 2004 at 12:22 pm

I live in fear Gracie. But it was hardly backtracking. You make me sound like an embattled Defence Minister.

I take Mark’s points, just he asked me in particular about what I thought she said that I’d agreed with. S’all.

Posted by Jim Cassius on May 12th, 2004 at 3:49 pm