SASHA FRERE-JONES SUCKS
OH GOD DOES HE SUCK
HE IS THE WORLD'S THIRD MOST SMARMY AND UNREADABLE NON-REPUBLICAN-PROPAGANDIST WRITER
Hm, surprisingly, with only one comment in this thread, everything that I wanted to say has been said.
That's likely the only thing anyone here wanted to say.
I forgot sportswriters. I guess they're sort of a separate category.
Okay, I'll ask. Third-most?
Surely Mitch Albom should count twice, as both a sportswriter and a smarmy non-Republican. He's that bad.
I dunno. neb makes people work for these kinds of posts. I mean, "SFJ", I'm supposed to know who that is? I'm supposed to google various representative phrases to know what's under discussion?
Incredibly, the very first hit in Google is the right one.
I'm just not even going to tell you people how much overlap my music library and SFJ's yearly 10 best list had.
He can be pretty annoying, though.
You know who's way worse, though? Chuck Klosterman. Fuck him with a bag of KISS dildos.
Mr. FJ has come up before, under those initials.
I apologize, B-Wo. I know who the guy is.
Anyway I wouldn't want you people getting complacent.
I don't think he necessarily has awful taste, just that he writes and thinks about music in a way so opposite from my own that I just can't get on board with his criticism. IOW, I like some of the things he recommends, but for apparently opposite reasons.
If one were tempted to extrapolate from his New Yorker pieces to his own personal taste, the only conclusion would be that he has extremely boring taste.
I realized it takes a tough man to embrace the tender stuff, that you have to be cruel to be kind, that it hurts so good, and the best part of breaking up is when you're making up. So I rushed down to my computer to tell the world.
that he has extremely boring taste.
Ben, this pretty much describes my taste, so I'm guessing you're right. I am stodgily conventional.
Don't ruin my cathexis with these details.
16: And you'd do anything for love, but you wouldn't do that.
Why are we talking about Sasha Frere-Jones again? Who reads the New Yorker regularly?
Sorry, I'm really tired and am asking snotty rhetorical questions at this point.
He has a "wisdom of crowds" approach to music. His thesis seems to be that critics are pretentious and pointless to a man. It reminds me of David Poland's movie blog. I continually wonder why he doesn't write about the workings of the music industry instead of trying to tease out what aspects of seemingly indistinguishable songs make one of them popular/good and another one unpopular/bad.
18: If it helps, I did enjoy your radio show.
snotty
ding ding ding
It's actually impossible to tell when you're being rhetorical.
It really annoys me that he has this incredible forum and he only uses it to write about music that's already fantastically popular and successful, but I think that's becuase his role is to convince the readership that it's ok to like popular music, since they do anyway. (That and occasionally to stoke white guilt, as we've discussed before.) The like approach in the books section would obviously never fly.
20: Is reading the New Yorker not done anymore?
More signs of my thoroughly stodgy taste!
Who reads the New Yorker regularly?
Yo. (Even though it regularly pisses me off, and I despise their practice of passing off book excerpts as original articles. Still, for general-interest nonfiction there are precious few other sources.)
Sorry, I'm really tired and am asking snotty rhetorical questions at this point.
What? No!
22: that helps a lot.
If you can believe it, the only thing I reliably read in the new yorker is the cartoons.
15 gets it right. Even acknowledging that The New Yorker is hardly a cutting-edge source of contemporary music criticism, SFJ's prominence-to-interestingness ratio approaches infinity.
23: what kills me about the New Yorkers is that they have two music writers, and one covers (almost) exclusively music that is extremely popular, and the other covers (almost) exclusively classical and symphonic music. You can't find any music between those poles, guys? In New York?
Alex Ross is an awfully good writer, though. And I will brook no guff on his account!
The only thing that really bothers me about the New Yorker, really, are the puff pieces about billionaires. Well, and the alleged humor pieces. Okay, and somewhat more than half of the movie reviews. But they do make up for it, sometimes.
His thesis seems to be that critics are pretentious and pointless to a man.
And his columns prove it.
I used to read The New Yorker regularly, but I haven't in quite some time. I don't miss it.
I am happy that they're employing Jill Lepore, who I really enjoy reading. I want more historians writing for national audiences (that are NOT David McCullough, etc).
21: instead of trying to tease out what aspects of seemingly indistinguishable songs make one of them popular/good and another one unpopular/bad.
Sheesh Ned; what part of "it's the clever juxtaposition of antithetical ideas" don't you get? It takes a true radical to embrace the mundane.
I find Chuck Klosterman too absurdly cartoony to get annoyed by.
30, 35: Agreed on Jill Lepore and Alex Ross, who are both excellent. Not enough to make me want to go back to reading regularly, though.
I don't think I've ever seen an issue of the New Yorker where I was interested in reading more than half of the articles. But I suppose that goes for most magazines. I'd resubscribe if - as I was complaining in some other thread - their history book coverage wasn't so poor (they do deserve credit for having writers who give the impression of depth, though).
23: It's actually impossible to tell when you're being rhetorical.
For what it's worth, I take this to heart. Under advisement. It's partly intentional, though, the ambiguity.
I know someone who insists on reading every issue of the New Yorker, cover to cover, in order. She's six months behind.
31: Well, and the alleged humor pieces.
That Thurber dude is the suxxor.
40: She first subscribed seven months ago.
Completely off-topic, but I've just discovered that lemon sorbet + cold lime sparkling water is sorta awesome.
41: the humor pieces in the Remnick era. And only some of them, I suppose.
Under advisement. It's partly intentional, though, the ambiguity.
Some people have strange ambitions.
I recall being amused by the humor pieces in the mid 90s.
I know someone who insists on reading every issue of the New Yorker, cover to cover, in order
When I was underemployed and between undergrad and grad school, I did this.
But it was because I was desperate for things to do; this was also the era of taking community college classes for fun. (Totally recommend poetry and German, less so some of the other ones).
I used to read it cover to cover. Then I got tired of it.
True story!
I could listen to your stories for hours, Sifu.
32 gets it right. Writer, kill your darlings. Then kill all the rest of your words. Then retire from writing. Be true to your philosophy.
I used to read it cover to cover. Then I got tired of it.
Me too! Awesome!
50 -- Geez, even one hour would have to contain like 1,000 stories. It's like the world's most boring grindcore.
54: I'm the Morbid Angel of this thing that happened once.
I don't think I've ever actually read a whole SFJ column. Judging from the excerpts I've read, though, I don't think I could stand to.
Morbid Angel isn't grindcore. Perhaps you're thinking of Anal Cunt. but really, who isn't.
57: hah! You've fallen right into my trap! They may not be grindcore, but they were on a seminal Earache records grindcore compilation and earned much of their original notoriety from their connection to the grindcore scene!
(Doing a little stupid circular dance of victory.)
I think I know one of the guys in Anal Cunt.
I love having no idea what people are talking about. It confirms my suspicions about myself.
58: Are you sure you aren't thinking of Napalm Death?
But really, who isn't thinking of Napalm Death with those memos being released today.
61: I'm totally thinking of Morbid Angel.
As far as I know I've never actually heard any of these bands, so not to worry, Parenthetical. I just spent a lot of time grindcore and/or metal adjacent.
46: The ambiguity is not that hard to figure out: why are we interested in Sasha Frere-Jones? Who reads the New Yorker? Take those as straight questions. See where the answers take you. Don't you (doesn't one) do this all the time?
Sorry to neb, who I tend to think does the same thing all the time.
Parsley. If you mean it straight, you mean it straight. Come on!
63: I can't begin to tell you how uninterested I am in your quasi-philosophical attempts to get everybody to interrogate the roots of their shallow, pointless existences.
Who reads the New Yorker?
Nobody actually reads the New Yorker. Seriously. It's just that it costs only about 24 cents per issue for a 2-year subscription, and it seems like more trouble than it's worth to cancel.
I mean, I read the New Yorker because it's something to read. I talk about SFJ because it's something to talk about. Some of us read things just because, hey, something to read that's brief, some of us talk about random crap with people on the internet, some of us judge every little thing that other people do and find it ambiguously wanting. Everybody needs a hobby, no matter how transparently embarrassing that hobby is to everybody else.
Grr! Grumpy Sifu probably should eat something and finish reading this David Sedaris piece! Grr!
64: Okay, I mean it straight.
65: Sifu, I don't care what you're interested in.
69.2: then why'd you ask me to think about why I read the fucking New Yorker? Because maybe -- though you're not interested, you understand, in what I'm actually interested in right now -- maybe someday I'd realize that I'd just been floating along in a trance of conformism, and I'd have you to thank for snapping me out of it? Come on.
I realize I'm reading a lot into your comments, but seriously, if you aren't keeping things ambiguous so that you have deniability when people call you on being astoundingly judgmental more-or-less constantly, then your method is pretty fucking mysterious.
Grr to everybody back. I have to say that the attempt to watch over the eldest cat here when she's not doing so well is freaking exhausting, and I hope she doesn't hang on terribly long. That's awful.
70.2: I did not realize that I'm being astoundingly judgmental more or less constantly. I'll attend to my own comments more carefully.
seems like more trouble than it's worth to cancel.
For months after I canceled, the amount of New Yorker e-mail asking me to resubscribe exceeded the amount of spam I received at the same e-mail address.
The rest of us have rich, meaningful, New-Yorker-free lives. Neb just reads it in small doses since the meaninglessness it causes helps him better learn German.
I read most of the New Yorker most of the time. Does that mean I can't qualify as upper middle brow?
I think we've had the New Yorker fight here before, actually.
We have always already had the New Yorker fight.
I don't read the New Yorker -- like several middle-brow US publications the articles are usually 6 times longer than their content merits -- but I do read the LRB. Which probably puts me in the equivalent UK demographic.
Good music writing is hard to find, though. The Guardian generally does a better job than most specialist music magazines, I find.
Naw. It's a magazine that some people read. Pretty straightforward, really.
For months after I canceled, the amount of New Yorker e-mail asking me to resubscribe exceeded the amount of spam I received at the same e-mail address.
Oh, if it were just a matter of annoying email, I think I'd know just what to do: the "block sender" function is not just for the electronic chain letter 'prayers' that one of your aunts just might happen to forward to your account, you know (the threat of dire misfortune for failing to comply with the terms outlined in the email, illustrated by the large and sorrowful eyes of a 'Precious Moments' figurine, God o God). It's the phone calls to which I strenuously object, and of course they always call at supper hour.
Parsimon, that's really rough about your cat. I'm sorry.
One of the blessings of living on the right bank of the ditch is that I had never heard of Sasha Frere-Jones until now, and it will be very easy never to hear of him again.
What does the title of this post mean?
A reference to a musician that only Wolfson has heard of.
why are we interested in Sasha Frere-Jones? Who reads the New Yorker?
Only those of us who wish to revel in our aspirations to upper-middle-middle-upper-classness.
Anyway, I like Sasha Frere-Jones. He isn't my favorite music writer, but on what he's chosen to write about--mostly evanescent, middle-of-the-road pop/indie--he isn't the worst. And I don't even think that "trying to tease out what aspects of seemingly indistinguishable songs make one of them popular/good and another one unpopular/bad" is a completely pointless exercise; or no more so than writing about pop music to start with. Besides, he's no Chuck Klosterman or Nick Hornby, thank God.
87: I'm glad someone else said it.
I read the New Yorker (and the LRB), and I am always interested to read a Sasha Frere-Jones column. More often than not they're disappointing, but he manages interesting observations about pop music with sufficient frequency that he's worth reading.
Then again, I'm interested in "aspects of seemingly indistinguishable songs"
OT, or tangential to T movie report, brief:
"Mumblecore" is a SoA movie school, mostly NYC
Hannah Takes the Stairs is in rotation on Sundance, I have watched it three times recently. Interesting,
Remember Seberg & Belmondo in the apartment? My favorite part of the movie. That may not be what mumblecore is about, but is my first impression.
What does the title of this post mean?
Tough meat subjected to long cooking at low heat becomes very tender, because the collagen breaks down.
Thanks. You answered my question and taught me something about cooking.
90: Nice explanation. Who are you and what have you done with nosflow?
beamish is banned!
As if this place could survive without me.
why all the Klosterman hate? I think he´s funny.
Besides, he's no Chuck Klosterman or Nick Hornby, thank God.
See, I actually like Nick Hornby. Eh. SFJ just rubs me the wrong way, although, as admitted previously, I'm a person of no taste and thus unable to judge such things.