pixies

I’ve always pipe-dreamed about making some foray into freelance music writing, but I usually bring myself quickly back to reality by reminding myself that good music writing is damn difficult. I’m rarely satisfied with any of the writing I do here to begin with, and that’s already about music that stands out to me. So I worry that if I had to churn out something about music I was indifferent to, simply because I was getting paid to do it, the end product would be dismal.

I really hope the same reasons were at play for some of the bad writing I’m about to “showcase” – a rather bitchy thing to do, I know, but what are blogs for if not for occasionally venting the impotent fury that would bemuse and bore everyone else around you?

From Juice magazine, I’m not sure which edition (I photographed the offending text and threw away the rest), Pavan Shamdasani reviews a Pixies tribute album. Here’s the full text of the review:

“This is odd. There’s a considerable chance that you’ve never heard of The Pixies. They were never a mainstream band, and most of their popularity appeared years after their break-up, when Kurt Cobain admitted to ripping off their stop/start dynamics. So to put out a tribute album for a band that has no casualties, was never that celebrated and was still touring up till last year is a strange occurrence. And even stranger are the cover choices – a male emo singer extolling the pleasures of a big, black cock on “Gigantic”? A clubby remix of lovesick stalker-ballad “Hey”? A Mogwai noisefest on “Gouge Away”? A psychedelic journey through muffled vocals and drunken horns in “Where Is My Mind?” OK, maybe the last one makes sense, but still, this is by and large a terribly incompetent compilation that pays little tribute to what made The Pixies so special.”

• There’s a considerable chance that you’ve never heard of The Pixies. Way to start off a review, dude – with a big dose of condescension for your readers!
• …most of their popularity appeared… Popularity does not “appear” fully formed from Zeus’s head, it is “gained” or “garnered”.
• So to put out a tribute album for a band that has no casualties, was never that celebrated and was still touring up till last year is a strange occurrence. Where do I even begin? 1) Ferry disasters have casualties. Bands do not. 2) A huge number of tribute albums are made for people who are live and kicking. Google this if you need proof. 3) It is either misleading or ignorant to describe a band who broke up acrimoniously in 1993 and didn’t reform until 2004 as “still touring up till last year”. 4) The act of putting out an album cannot be described as a strange “occurrence”. It may be a strange “move” or an odd “decision”, but it is not an “occurrence”.
• And even stranger are the cover choices – a male emo singer extolling the pleasures of a big, black cock on “Gigantic”? Because male emo singers aren’t allowed to enjoy big black cocks, clearly.
• A clubby remix of lovesick stalker-ballad “Hey”? A Mogwai noisefest on “Gouge Away”? A psychedelic journey through muffled vocals and drunken horns in “Where Is My Mind?” OK, maybe the last one makes sense, but still, this is by and large a terribly incompetent compilation that pays little tribute to what made The Pixies so special. What’s so self-evidently wrong with any of the cover choices described? Why do they pay little tribute to what made The Pixies so special? And given that the writer starts off the review by assuming most of his readers don’t even know the band, how on earth are they now supposed to understand this conclusion if he doesn’t throw them any frickin’ bone machines?