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A Healthy Overdose Of Twee
Writing About Good Music Is Hard
Brooklyn Music Lovers Want Their Art Pure

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irishbreakfast
05/17/09

In reply to A Healthy Overdose Of Twee
Quit waffling on twee: it's never good. It means sugary, overly-precious, diabetic-coma inducing crap that is in bad taste. Think of the bedroom decorations of a 7 year old Paris Hilton, or one of those Christmas-in-July stores you were dragged into by some horrid relative at some time in your poor brutalized childhood. That's twee. You may now continue, but this little vid ain't twee, and don't go there again. Who keeps letting the children out to blog on the weekends?
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skahammer
05/17/09

@irishbreakfast: But what's more twee than being ostentatiously anti-twee, huh?

Also known as the I'm-Not-a-Hipster paradox.
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Awesome X
05/17/09

@irishbreakfast: What's the word for pompous, overly critical, eye-roll inducing comments that are just bad form?
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irishbreakfast
05/17/09

@Awesome X: "entertaining"? and to skahammer: "ostentatiously anti-twee" is my new motto, thanks!
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Awesome X
05/17/09

@irishbreakfast: Douche'.
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El Matardillo
05/17/09

In reply to A Healthy Overdose Of Twee
Something tells me that cartoon is the future of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
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Dickdogfood
05/17/09

@El Matardillo: Yes, but which is Bill and which is Hillary?
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WretchedGnu
05/17/09

In reply to A Healthy Overdose Of Twee
In the Ware cosmology, that head is actually a cat's, not a mouse's.
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Foster Kamer
05/17/09

@WretchedGnu: Mousehead, cathead, shrunkenhead. Tomato, tomoto, potato.
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WretchedGnu
05/17/09

In reply to A Healthy Overdose Of Twee
Aside from Lynda Barry and Ruben Bolling, Chris Ware is the god of a comic book culture that is otherwise pretty shallow.
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Banjo-Sea Kitten
05/17/09

@WretchedGnu:

re: Lynda Barry. If you can catch her on her speaking tour she is a delight. Smart, funny, and interesting. Saw her last summer and she signed copies of her new book What It Is. Awesome book too.
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WretchedGnu
05/17/09

@Banjo-Sea Kitten: That book is the one thing I haven't seen yet. I used to live in Evanston where she might still live. Got my own signed picture of Marlys playing basketball for some reason.
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Carol Gardens
05/17/09

@WretchedGnu: I could never hate on Chris Ware. Although I enjoy (not quite the word) the equally bleak Rusty Brown and Jimmy Corrigan stories more than Quimby escapades. PS: I would add Dan Clowes to your list.
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Banjo-Sea Kitten
05/17/09

@WretchedGnu: "...Marlys playing basketball..."? Heck yeah!
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Perhaps Not
05/17/09

@Carol Gardens: Oh, there are a dozen or so wonderful comics people out there. Charles Burns, Alison Bechdel, David Mazzucchelli, Seth, Scott McCloud, Kyle Baker, Joe Sacco, and Bryan Lee O'Malley, to name a very few. Even some of the ultra-mainstream sci-fi and fantasy stuff is pretty good - has anyone tried Transmetropolitan or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?
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saintjim
05/17/09

In reply to A Healthy Overdose Of Twee
I'm not sure what words I would use to describe that cartoon. But I am sure that "twee" wouldn't be one of them.
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Helman
05/17/09

@saintjim: "horribly sad"?
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limber
05/18/09

@saintjim: On the one hand, I am relieved that it's a mouse and a CAThead, for reasons I can't quite puzzle out.

On the other... Is this more or less alarming than Tom and Jerry? I almost prefer my cartoon animals trying to murder each other, when presented with this unexpected alternative.

And lastly, the music is unexpectedly catchy.
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BadUncle
03/16/09

In reply to Writing About Good Music Is Hard
During my visit to Tucson, we took a trip to buy produce of integrity at a Whole Foods supermarket overlooking the city.... The cacti outside reminded me of the often thorny music Case admires and composes.

Spare us from produce without integrity. Lying, thieving vegetables remind me of the wilted, flacid, rotten state of municipal government in Tucson.
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Kois
03/16/09

In reply to Writing About Good Music Is Hard
Yeah, why aren't we allowed to write about something that we wish was more popular in an attempt to help make it more popular?
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fileunder
03/16/09

In reply to Writing About Good Music Is Hard
I must be getting fucking old, because as a former MAGNET subscriber ('92-95?), I'd much rather read well-thought out-but-maybe-kinda pandery-y pieces in the New Yorker or in the Times Magazine today.

Awkward, yeah maybe.

But then I read a pieceabout Bishop Allen in last week's Times and think things aren't so bad.
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Botswana Meat Commission FC
03/16/09

In reply to Writing About Good Music Is Hard
You forgot "must be written by a horrible rockist."
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DavidWatts
03/16/09

In reply to Writing About Good Music Is Hard
It's like there are conventions for constructing long-form profiles!! I bet your documentary films or business person profiles would be wholly, magically, devoid of their own conventions!

(also, yeah, as pointed out above, the Nico Case record was #3 in the country last week)
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Dickdogfood
03/16/09

@DavidWatts: Point #1: too true, too true.

Point #2: well, yeah, but in an industry as deflated as music is now, it sorta doesn't mean quite as much as it would've, say, ten years ago.
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Dickdogfood
03/16/09

In reply to Writing About Good Music Is Hard
Magazine profiles of musicians IN GENERAL are typically cringe-inducing, often for exactly the reasons you describe. (Pop stars like Britney or Beyoncé also get cringe-inducing profiles, but for very different reasons, obv. Puffiness, usually.) Since such writers tend to approach their readership as still not entirely sold on the importance or interestingness of pop music, they try very very very hard to connect even the most sui generis musicians to larger issues the readership might already recognize as relevant, esp. things like industry or technology. NYTM's stories on Beck and Moby are spectacular examples of this. (Though yeah, I know the NYTM arguably may not count as a "mass-market consumer magazine" per se.)
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Dickdogfood
03/16/09

@Dickdogfood: nb: I haven't read any of these pieces. And the Mountain Goats are completely and totally awesome.
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Sproing
03/16/09

@Dickdogfood: Leaning close to my little record player on the floor ... so this is what the volume knob's for!
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Iron Gossett Jr.
03/16/09

In reply to Writing About Good Music Is Hard
I'm completely confused...

"None of them feel compelled to do the things that actually famous musicians did in order to get famous, like create an appealing persona and deliver it to a fascinated reporter."

Isn't that what I just finished reading?

I'm gonna have some coffee, take the dog for a walk and read this thing again but it seems to me that Mr. Cook is just a little pissed off that HIS beloved musicians didn't choose the right publication to advertise in.

Sorry man, I know it's tough but I was bummed too when I realized I wasn't the only 7th grader in the country who had discovered The Smiths.
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jrhys
03/16/09

@RealTomatoKetchup: You called it. Also, meat is murder.
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Sulky Girl
03/16/09

@jrhys: Yeah. Writing about writing about music is like dancing about dancing about architecture.
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SidAndFinancy
03/16/09

In reply to Writing About Good Music Is Hard
I used the Stradivarius method to learn to ride a motorcycle.
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gawkimo
03/16/09

In reply to Writing About Good Music Is Hard
tomorrow's legions of aaa adult contemporary (white) music listeners must love these artists.
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Dickdogfood
03/16/09

@gawkimo: Dude, said people probably think Feist is too outsy-outsy for them.
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skahammer
03/16/09

In reply to Writing About Good Music Is Hard
I believe "the scale at which New York usually operates" -- whatever that is -- was sold in December to property developers from Dubai who were trying on a dare to max out the last credit line ever given in the history of the world.

It's now crated up in a warehouse in the Canary Islands, rusting. Beneath 200,000 Watchmen DVDs that will never be sold.
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