ROCK IS BACK!

Or so says the latest cover of Rolling Stone featuring...yawn...The Vines. Unfold the cover to see Craig Nicholls giving two middle fingers to the camera! Wow, that is so bad ass! Gimme a fuckin' break. Bands like The Vines and The Strokes will never revive rock. They both have a crappy schtick and once you've seen it, there it goes. I'm not even completely sold on The White Stripes, and I bought their latest. Note to consumers: don't be fooled. With perhaps the excpetion of The White Stripes, these bands will quickly be gone. Care for a second album? Nah, I knew you prob'ly wouldn't.

Some of you have undoubtedly already checked out blogcritics.org, a collection of "the web's best critics" or something like that who use the Blogger as their main tool of criticism or something like that, "updated continuously". Well, that'd be dandy and all, I s'pose if most of the main page's picks weren't all written by the same 4 or 5 people. Then you look to the left of the main stuff and see this huge list of the rest of the best. Who wants to troll through all that?

Sorry, but if I want reviews and such, I'm still going to go to the music mag sites. There's something about going through a regular publication online, much like there is going through a favorite print publication every month or week or whatever. And that's another thing; I like sites that aren't updated "continuously". Lemme know when the damn thing's gonna be done, whether it be daily, every other day, every week, every month, I don't care. Don't do this "come back every five minutes to see if something new is up" shit. Just get the stuff together and present it all at one time. This will make me wanna come back regularly if I find enough cool or interesting things on your site to peruse. Doing that whole crap shoot routine where one article might be good every 30 minutes is just stupid, and lazy I think. There is a modicum of dignity to having a staff who can turn things in on a deadline.

Anyway, back to the idea of blogs as building blocks of criticism. It just seems like a crap idea. Anyone can now write and be a critic! Well, yeah, technically they can, but realistically, no, they can't, because a lot of these people can't write, even if some Joe shmoe says they are indeed among the web's "best". Besides that, there are just way too many blogs. A lot of times you get the feeling that you're just speaking out into the void when you're doing regular postings such as this one. I often thought that the blog was best used as just writing stuff down when you felt like you needed to, and if people read it, great. If not, then that's halfway expected but at least you got it out of your system. Frankly, though, I don't need to troll through a bunch of blogs to read various reviews on the new Chili Peppers album, nor do I want to.

'Nuff said.

You know what bores the piss out of me? Music web sites that constantly pour out good reviews. What the hell? Everything is good? How valid can that opinion be, then? I know I'm known at times to enjoy a good album thrashing, but hell, that's part of the fun of this gig. Alert people to the outright shit as well as the good stuff. And what I can't stand even more than that are these little capsulized reviews...maybe 150 words tops with a grading scale. What can you say in 150 words about an album? That's like barely out of an introductory paragraph most times. Sounds great...A+.

Granted, I know the big mags do this at times, but they for the most part have some writers who have some skill at doing quickie reviews. However, I was browsing through my worn out copy of the AMG and wondered why the hell some of these people were asked to contribute when all they would give would be a one SENTENCE review. Something like "This album was a better progression over the last." Seriously. And then 3 stars or whatever. What the hell can you ascertain from a shitty review like that? C'mon folks, put some meat and potatoes behind your criticisms. At least make me laugh a bit. Some people are afraid to write anything bad at all about anyone and choose not to write at all. Why? 9 times out of 10, you don't know these bands or artists. You don't owe them anything. Sure, you get a slab of hate mail from time to time, but just like anyone else in this business, bad press is just as good as good press.

I got talked about on all sorts of Majandra Delfino fan boards because I pissed on her lousy debut album. But you know why? BECAUSE IT SUCKED. A lot of Delfino's fans loved the way she sang on Roswell and were looking for those songs. Guess what? They weren't on there. Instead, the fans got 6 bad overwrought pseudo goth/industrial babblings that made Trent Reznor look like a genius (oh, you didn't know he wasn't?). Some of the fans saw that this stuff was shit and bitched about it while others just accepted the fact that they blew about 17 bucks for 6 songs and tried to convince themselves it was good (I sold mine complete with press kit and glossy b/w 8x10 of Majandra for 50 bucks on Amazon). Nevertheless, my review got picked up and spread like wildfire with the 16 year olds who think Majandra is beautiful and how dare I say anything bad about her music! How dare I! There were requests for my email address, I was labeled a dick and an asshole and all those other fun body parts. But hey, I was honest with my review, and it got a good reaction. Let's just put it this way: MAJANDRA WILL NEVER BE A POP STAR. You heard it here first. I don't care if she was a singer before she was an actress, her music sucks. Period. Amen. Thank you.

Waiting for news? Oh it's all the same stuff. Review writing, interview conducting, music listening, video game playing, booze imbibing fun! I wish there was more to report, but really, things have been quiet around here lately, and I've been doing so much writing elsewhere that I haven't really felt like putting thoughts down here that weren't really all that great. Of course, I could be slagged for none of this blog being all that great, but I'm not one of those low self-esteem pity me and my plights people. I don't care if this blog is considered complete shit or a golden treasure. It is what it is.

Oh, I did have a fine time at the zoo the other day. Huge zoo, lovely aquarium. Nice 3 hour jaunt through all sorts of animals and fish and the like. Plus it was cool going there and seeing an actual run down part of town (Pittsburgh is phenomenal at hiding its rough spots) with boarded up windows hiding abandoned shops right next to...fully thriving shops. Strange delights.