Jan 22with news of Pitchfork going behind paywall i decided to collect my favorite music writings i encountered over the years. the real heads will tell me some of this is surface level s*** pulled from wikipedia, but nevertheless i decided to mention these; maybe they were so highly cited and regarded for a reason. i did not include books here and i kinda cheated because its not ten articles and whatnot. anywhos here goes
1. frank sinatra has a cold by gay talese
written at a time when all that gonzo s*** wasnt as overdone, its a massive profile that looks into the biggest american musician at the time. a small challenge here is to describe this article without once using the word 'humanizing'
2. steve perry - a bit confusing, frankly by fire and air blog
fireandair.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/steve-perry-a-bit-confusing-frankly
a small blog article looking into journey's steve perry from someone well-versed in opera music and how demanding that job is. this is a unique piece because it describes something barely recognizable in the popular music industry with much precision and insight
3. where were you when elvis died? by lester bangs
written once again before pretty much the entirety of music journalism became 'lester worship', its one of the first piece 'about' music that i consciously read and it stuck with me. attached as a pdf scan--same format i first read it in 15 years ago. id also include lester bangs' interview with lou reed (let us praise famous death dwarves) and his review of the stooges fun house but theyre surprisingly difficult to find online. i have them in a book
4. ghostface killah's supreme clientele review by jeff weiss
had to include what is by and large one of the best reviews ever published on pitchfork. i think jeff weiss is one of the best hip hop journalists of our lifetime. his passion of the weiss blog will be featured on this list again. i dont think theres just about any other person who has his way with words, he writes how those actually cool lyricists rap
5. the final dark days of don caballero by fred weaver
this is as real as s*** gets in terms of describing an indie tour in the year 2000. one true sequel to henry rollins' get in the van. my favorite thing about this article is how absolutely bleak it is although whenever i hear don cab's music it sounds nothing like pure bliss to me. don caballero is an influential long-defunct math-rock band
6. sacramental perspectives on KA by elmattic
elmattic.medium.com/sacramental-perspectives-on-ka-1d1777a40851
gotta be the most recent article here, it came out shortly after KA's passing and its this massive document into his creative process that went through just about every piece of media about him to tell us as much as possible about one of rap's greatest musicians
7. the making of MF DOOMs ? and dead bent videos by adam bhala lough
passionweiss.com/2021/01/03/mf-doom-dead-bent-video
shoutout passion of the weiss, this interview came out shortly after DOOM's death and its a great first-hand account into these real real earl days of MF DOOM. i like that they dont mince words and paint bro as a real roughneck hustler in this one; i always felt like people thought its mostly a persona but nah, DOOM seriously wasnt nice to a lot of people if you know his history
8. the beautiful one by dan piepenbring
i believe this is an excerpt from princes' autobiography that came out before or after his death and was notoriously short. its a mesmerizing look into prince. ill read the book someday. apprently this guy cowrote the charles mansion book with tom oneill which is really cool!
9. thurston moore 3-part interview from 1988
youtube.com/watch?v=BZpBe0cyHE4
once again just incredible to see the life of one of the biggest musicians, all of that music in his apartment and how dorky and nerdy he is. mind you this is recorded almost exactly one MONTH before daydream nation came out. i imagine a whole ton changed immediately after that. i need to download all three parts of this just to make sure i have this on me forever
10. james browns' love power peace live album review by some dude on the internet
rateyourmusic.com/release/album/james-brown/love-power-peace-live-at-the-olympia-paris-1971
this is the real power of writing words about music -- you can summarize one of the most grueling and sweaty listens of your life with a sentence and its gonna sum up exactly how you feel about it. yeah its gimmicky to include a one-sentence album review in here but with how much i love this album i think its the most succinct description of any music that ive ever seen
finally ill say its been surprisingly hard to source all of these articles as most of them have been behind a paywall for a while, as well as most free access copies of it disappearing over time. especially with lester bangs stuff its just so strange. i might just print these out on a4 papers like my parents used to do
- OPJan 22
anyone who cares about music as a hobby knows its not really pitchforks and fantanos but blogs and html websites that should be really preserved and open for access. for many years it has been worrying how easy it is to just make something disappear on the internet, contrary to how everyone says that whatever's in there is there forever. cant even watch Everyday Struggle without hassle these days. once they start disappearing old forums to free up space for ai s*** boy oh boy its gonna be trouble
Jan 22Growing up, reading blogs and browsing old forums was how I got into hip hop and came to love the genre.
A lot of the writing in entertainment related fields is bad because it's all functionally ads.
I could rant about how nerds like Fantano and Pitchfork b******ize music or about how blogs had a love for the genre that current commentators don't
But some media that made an impact on me:
GHOST reviews or wtv his name was. I know someone will
Decoded by Jay-Z. I didn't learn a lot about Jay-Z but the book left a lasting impression.
Jeff Weiss's semi-obituary article about Drakeo. I don't even remember when I read it but I started listening to Drakeo because of it.
Shea Serrano's writing. I'd likely consider it corny now but it made a big impact on me in high school.
There are definitely more I'm forgetting. S/o that one article on a hip hop blog written by a white ex-rapper about a beef he'd had with a Black rapper where he made a video lynching a look alike or something.
The article was about how Will I Am explained why it was offensive, but even as an edgelord thats why too far and you have tk know better. Come on lol