blogs gone quiet

[seahorsegenius]

Does anyone know whatever happened to Deuce.com? That was one of the most famous blogs on the net for a long time and now it's gone.

 

[stelfox]

sorry, but i find this suggestion completely wrong. if only more music journalists were also musicians or producers! It's one of the weakest aspects of music journalism, the lack of actual musical training or knowledge: i can't tell you how often I have read things that were just plain musically wrong (I very distinctly remember a dissensus thread on 'formalism' which quickly devolved into the claim that 'all pop is timbre, and therefore not music' or some such).

In any case, it's no surprise to me that some of our very best music writers, such as Mr. Clark, Sasha Frere-Jones, Phil Sherburne, Dave Stelfox, or Ripley (perhaps not a journalist but someone doing important research on music, law, and tradition nonetheless), are also musicians, producers, DJs, or a combination of the three.

well, thanks for the props but i really don't know my musical arse from my musical elbow, really. i've never played an instrument in my life, though i do have quite a bit of experience of singing, from the age of about 5 to 16 (something i incidentally wish i'd never stopped). i never learned to read music, either, so any theoretical knowledge i have is much more home-schooled than people like sasha or phil, who do actually know about all these things. as far as my writing goes, i tend to enjoy writing about music from the position of documenting its place in cultural history and its role in the lives of the people who make and listen to it. music is about much more than notes on a page, and, to me at least, the technical side of music is perhaps the least interesting position to approach it from. it's the sort of criticism musicians might want to read, but not anything that can ever really tell a story and that's what really floats my boat, the story. as far as djing goes, for me it's very, very much a hobby, not a profession, and sure, i know how to make people dance and how to make records talk to one another in terms of sonic timbre, rhythm, lyrical theme and occasional unlikely common ground between disparate genres, but that really comes from viewing songs as whole, stand-alone things, not looking at them microsocopically. the one thing that i think i do get right as far as technical musical micro-analysis is concerned, is not over-reaching. i only ever call something "argpeggiated" if it definitely is, refer to glissando or melisma if that's definitely what i'm hearing etc. i'd rather see someone with no knowledge being honest than someone with little stretching themself too far and talking rubbish.

 

[tox]

Do people think that perhaps websites like The Hype Machine have a negative impact on blogging?

While Hype Machine is very useful for finding music I already know I want to download (no soulseek from university!), it doesn't exactly promote good or interesting writing. Recently it seems like lots of bloggers are just throwing up huge numbers of mp3s, in the hope of generating traffic and interest via Hype Machine. This shows little regard for either the artist or the reader.

I suppose maybe there have always been this many mediocre blogs around and I just didn't know of their existance, but its a shame all the same.

For mp3s and quality writing I'm still checking out Music For Robots, Fluxblog and especially Said The Gramophone.