May 2013
2 posts
Hardcore for Nerds: Punktimism v. Poptimism →
hardcorefornerds:
I think the question is whether ‘poptimism’ and ‘punktimism’ are really that different from each other (and the latter, much more even than the former, is a thing constructed primarily for the purposes of this discussion): if they’re not, they should naturally overlap; but if they are, and oppose each other, then the proper response is not to triangulate between them as if...
“It’s offensive to those not in the tiny ultra-privileged world that can be bored...”
– More, Better Sociology (via nathanjurgenson)
April 2013
6 posts
“The punk mentality used to be a default ethos among rock kids, but over the past...”
– Nitsuh Abebe, “This Is Punk?” Best sentences of cultural criticism I’ve read this year. (via judyxberman)
——
Love Nitsuh and Judy both, but this isn’t Nitsuh’s strongest work.
The “punk mentality” used to be a “default ethos” among “rock kids”?* I guess this depends on where you grew up, but...
“The punk mentality used to be a default ethos among rock kids, but over the past...”
– Nitsuh Abebe, “This Is Punk?” Best sentences of cultural criticism I’ve read this year. (via judyxberman)
——
Love Nitsuh and Judy both, but this isn’t Nitsuh’s strongest work.
The “punk mentality” used to be a “default ethos” among “rock...
“Part of my own affection for Kim Gordon, I realize, is her association with an...”
– The Top 50 Gifs of Me Dancing At Coachella, Being Like, “Fuck Yes Kim Gordon (And Lizzy Goodman)” (via lindsayzoladz)
Boys: it is still cool to call yourself feminist.
(Also: we think this piece is good, and suggests something important: to the extent that there’s a renewed interest in 90s...
Apparently this Turkish blog wrote about us? →
Any Turkish-speaking readers want to summarize? Google Translate isn’t much help.
March 2013
2 posts
LGBTQ Equality goes beyond marriage →
We’re pro-marriage. While feminist and queer critiques of the institution as it is currently practiced are important, we reject the idea that marriage is fundamentally about preserving patriarchy or private property or whatever. When marriage belongs to everyone, you can do whatever you want with it. You can make your marriage (or non-marriage) an expression of your most awesome feminist...
Lady Gaga →
towheegordon:
yourfaveisproblematic:
Her racist brownface V Magazine cover
More brownface
Posing with people in blackface
Appropriating and sexualizing the sari
Appropriating and sexualizing the burqa
Appropriating the niqab, and wearing it together with a purse with the word “cunt” written on it
This
She’s ableist and uses a wheelchair during her performances
...
February 2013
10 posts
DJ Sprinkles interview
Since I am unable to believe in the authenticity or purity of identities of any kind, when I invoke “identifiable” sounds (a “queer” sound, a “black” sound, etc.) I am doing so to question the social relationships around their construction, proliferation, and distribution. The moment we become lazy about our use of those “identifiable” sounds...
Just North of Something Important: Consumer... →
barthel:
The thing I’m most mystified about currently in terms of the way people talk and think about the internet is the almost total disdain for traditional labor issues. Everything is about economic efficiency and service to the consumer. If something can save you, as a customer, some measure of time or annoyance, it’s worth employees being fired, or working without health insurance, or...
“While today’s youth are eager to live in a world where racism does not exist,...”
– bell hooks | Where We Stand: Class Matters
Fuck Yeah! Queer Music: Ugh. →
fyeahqueermusic
gaysagainstgaga:
So Taylor Swift is the latest superstar to team up with notorious homophobe union-busters TARGET.
Is it okay to say that her music is kind of one dimensional too, or will we get mobbed by angry poptimists?
(Also, so ridiculous that her song makes reference to “some indie record that’s cooler than mine” when her record is ON AN INDIE LABEL! The obvious...
Vocabulary
75% of the music industry is controlled by 3 companies: Universal, Sony-BMG, and Warner Bros. These are called “major labels”
The other 25% of music sales comes from independent labels (or self-released, meaning the artist themselves fulfills the role that a label would otherwise play.
The major labels have earned a reputation for screwing artists and consumers alike, and media...
Ugh.
So Taylor Swift is the latest superstar to team up with notorious homophobe union-busters TARGET.
Is it okay to say that her music is kind of one dimensional too, or will we get mobbed by angry poptimists?
(Also, so ridiculous that her song makes reference to “some indie record that’s cooler than mine” when her record is ON AN INDIE LABEL! The obvious implication is that...
Now is probably a good time to remind you that... →
Fuck a hypercapitalist spectacle.
Fuck a jingoistic pro-sports industrial complex.
January 2013
8 posts
EL ORÅCULO DEL SAN GENNARO: IDOLS →
sangennaro:
Why do intelligent people who consider themselves qualified to analyze art for others allow the richest performers with the widest audience (including a shitload of impressionable adolescents) a pass when it comes to demonstrating the least bit of awareness about the way power works & the way their loyal customers are effected by the ruling class? Many months ago Max Dunbar did...
A CARELESS MAN'S CAREFUL DAUGHTER: In only a few... →
it’s wonderful that we can celebrate these things that were once unfairly dismissed and move the conversation forward. and i agree with the main point of lindsay zoladz’ ordinary machines column from last month, which is that it’s wonderful that our collective willingness to take pop music seriously is resulting in a bunch of interesting new music that approaches pop in a way it’s never been...
"dear teenagers being bullied, dear musicians... →
barthel:
Here is a blog post in which Amanda Palmer compares herself to a bullied teen who committed suicide.
THE WORST!
Prose & Pop: So, I am as disappointed as anyone... →
ohrohin:
judyxberman:
… but here’s what bugs me about getting all scoldy about it: The blame shouldn’t fall solely on the shoulders of these two hugely talented young women. This isn’t an isolated incident. It’s happened too many times between female rappers. The bigger problem is the fucking Thunderdome mentality women in hip hop are forced to adopt because so much of the music press will...
story of my life: allweathermen: I’m sorry, but... →
gayboywithamohawk:
allweathermen:
I’m sorry, but seriously? We are still offended by the word faggot? Have we not come so far in this world to not let words hurt us anymore?
Don’t get me wrong, her definition of the word was preposterous. But I take a completely different take on the word faggot now. Get out…
I always seem to lose followers when I give my opinion, but here goes.
This is...
December 2012
20 posts
Because someone asked what we thought of...
…and his video “Same Love”.
Macklemore’s music is pretty squarely Not Our Thing but he speaks important things to his audience of mostly relatively privileged suburban white kids. I mean, better Macklemore than Mac Miller, amirite? Dude has worked hard and built his success in a respectable DIY way and seems to interact with the rest of the hiphop community in Seattle...
katherine st asaph: deadgirlfriends: “Even though... →
deadgirlfriends:
i guess maybe this is actually just a weird perception field glitch that has to do with the fact that i interact with the industry as someone who is making stuff and most of the people responding to or talking about the post i made are people who write about music […]
like, can the fact that people’s attitudes about particular types of music have been changing...
“Not that this was cool at any age, but if you are a decent way into your 20s and...”
– 8 Things That Are No Longer Cool In Your 20s | Thought Catalog (via afightforloveandglory)
OMG yes! Finally, something that I have been raging about has been put into eloquent speech. Thanks, ThoughtCatalog!
Gay people aren’t your pets!
(via jenifromthebloc)
See Bossypants for more on how not to...
katherine st asaph: deadgirlfriends: “Even though... →
24similarwebsites:
But I’m not quite sure what the objection here is, precisely.
The objection is pretty obvious, actually. DIY is a tangible and finite distinction. You can’t lean DIY, which is the phrase Zoladz uses in her original Pitchfork piece. That’s like leaning pregnant or leaning dead. You either DIY or you’re D-ing I With Someone Else. (Grimes is an artist who as far as I...
NY Conversation: Pop and the New Critical... →
nyconversation:
It’s all very well to talk about “anything you want being pop”, as Zoladz does shortly afterward with another quote, this one from Icona Pop’s Caroline Hjelt, but while, sure, anything can be pop, the reality of what actually is pop — the artists who inhabit our Top 40 charts in 2012 — is pretty depressing as far as individuality/self-expression/diversity go, unless you consider...
Can anyone explain this?
Why are folks like Elite Gymnastics dude routinely treated with such nastiness and condescension when they argue that there’s a substantive difference between major labels and most indie labels, and how art is made in those different contexts?
Why has a fair-minded explanation of the different industry models become taboo?
Why has poptimism taken such a meanspirited turn?
“When we’re open to pop being a potential space of freedom, rebellion, and...”
– Lindsay Zoladz, “This must be pop” (via semipoplife)
It seems like Lindsay is trying to reconcile “poptimism” with the “ability to say that vacuous and stupid stuff is stupid and vacuous” That’s a noble project (and lets be clear, we at Gays Against Gaga adore a whole...
THE RETURN OF CHRIS MASTHEIM
nicholaskrgovich:
Hi everyone!
Just finished blasting out a new Chris Mastheim EP. Six holiday favourites including Blue Christmas, Good King Wenceslas, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, A Holly Jolly Christmas and White Christmas. Download it here: http://nicholaskrgovich.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of-christmastime or http://www.mediafire.com/?npbsr55kb13n36p
Happy holidays 2 u all!...
“I’m not interested in individual hits. To me a catalogue of folk...”
– Moses Asch, Folkways Records, 1946.
Here's a question.
Why do queer dudes listen to so little music by queer dudes?
Queer dudes tell us what your favorite music by queer dudes is.
“I knew “Kiki” was by the Scissor Sisters, a band I really like, and I was...”
– Appropriation Without Credit via SPLICETODAY.com
h/t @kavitabee
(via glitterlion)
Never liked this band.
“Over the years playing in Fugazi, it had become increasingly clear to me the...”
– Ian MacKaye on All Things Considered. Today, MacKaye’s main project is his family — which is to say he’s in a band with his wife, Amy Farina. The Evens consists of MacKaye on baritone guitar and Farina on drums, singing in harmony and finding intensity in spareness. The duo has just released its...
November 2012
14 posts
seriously folks
why don’t we just depose all Gaga disciples from positions of leadership in queer orgs everywhere?
The high ground
Real talk: If your queer youth organization is having Gaga-themed parties, you sort of lose the ability to claim the moral high ground in terms of critiquing ageism, adultism, etc in the broader queer community.
You also lose the potential participation of a whole bunch of rad queer kids who find that shit mega-alienating. I don’t understand why this isn’t more obvious to queer...
