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Music

How I judge music

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Pitchfork’s internal editing system lets me see my past review scores all in one place. Since I don’t review stuff very often for them, I was a little surprised to see the numbers all in one place like that. It turns out I’m a high grader. Or rather, when I write about things I know [...]

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Michael Jackson, regular guy

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The “not of this world” talk around Michael Jackson makes me run the other way, toward finding things that prove he was of this world. Not sure what that impulse is. Certainly it wasn’t all tabloid created– he spent a lot of time thinking about and creating a persona that was untouchable, unrelatable. Whatever we [...]

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What’s going on in Austin?

Three years ago, which was about five months into my “professional” music writing career, I personally put a manila folder of clips into Rob Tannenbaum’s inter-office mailbox at Blender. A few days later he emailed me some nice comments, and also a little critique:
You’re writing within the biosphere of your enthusiasms and subjects; the reviews [...]

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Anoop Desai can be as nasty as he wants to be

Yesterday I skipped having drinks out with Mark to watch the Wildcard episode of American Idol. We have a DVR, which I’ve used to postpone the Grammys, the Superbowl, and the Presidential debates, but I’m so obsessed with the show right now that I have to see it as close to live as possible.
This has [...]

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Progress report — elastica

Once every six months I try to look up what’s going on with the former members of Elastica, one of my favorite bands. Some members are married (to each other, so that means two, I guess). One became a born-again Christian. But frontwoman Justine Frischmann sort of disappeared. She did live with M.I.A. in London [...]

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