Just picked up Alex Petridis's review of the Wiley Album in the Guardian. I shouldn't read the papers, it's not good for me. Mr Petridis has decided that in his really lightweight (read: "nothing in the way of tantalising data or interesting thoughts") review of the record it'd be fun to have a go at the Bloggers:
"Instead it's fanbase is comically polarised. At one extreme, it's sonic experimentation has attracted the kind of people who run music Blogs in which records are referred to as "texts" and lengthy essays are posted on such burning issues as the differentiation between Humean and Kantian views of motivation in the lyrics of Bonnie Prince Billy. At the other extreme, it is favoured by inner city teens who appear to communicate in an impenetrable mix of street slang and patois. "Gial like me can be flossin' of dis rite 'ere." offers one participant in a chatroom discussion about Grime" Another informs us that Wiley in "Nang standard no doubt", well of course he is."
And he goes on:
"You can only wonder what the conversation would be like if grime's two groups of fan's met up. There is such a gulf between the Bloggers and the the gials who can be flossin on dis rite ere, where mainstream acceptance lies."
Jesus wept! I dunno which cartoon-thumbnail-of-a-group would be more likely to torch Petridis's bicycle after reading this. Speaking from the perspective of the blogs I'd like to say of the Bloggers I've hung out with, who Mr Petridis is IMPLICITLY REFERRING to, that they're all open minded people. They've got messy fascinating lives, they're the sort of people who "get stuck right in there" be it at street level or otherwise.
One of the main reasons why the Bloggers have engaged with Garage is that the mainstream press (as represented here by Mr Petridis) is so hidebound and conservative that it has to wait for a major label release before it can justify picking up pen. It might surprise Mr Petridis that the connections between these two circuits which he takes such glee in opposing is infinitely closer than the one the mainstream will ever enjoy with Garage. Socially, structurally and politically.
Posted by Woebot at April 23, 2004 02:17 PMOn the nail.
Nice bit of stereotyping all round for the Guardian's readership.
Mind you, we don't have to read the Guardian's music section any more anyway do we? We can get intelligent and idiosyncratic music coverage in lots of other places these days... including blogs...
Posted by: john eden at April 23, 2004 02:26 PMnot quite sure why this is provoking so much ire in many quarters, the guardian has always been poor in its arts coverage, there seems to be a level of surprise still shown when they cover anything which i don't really get. i'm not sure it has ever really been different.
that said, it has always been a disappointment to me, as a socialist, the way the arts are covered by the 'leftist' press, though an argument could be made that the harder lefts total dismissal of arts as an important issue, is even worse than the wooly/liberal bourgeois press's unengaged and conservative take (the main point of course being an inability to engage successfully with proletarian culture in any way, without recontextualizing through an ironic/detached filter, which is seemingly the M.O over the last 5 or 6 years, and probably earlier than that)
i think the interesting thing about petridis's piece (and earlier ones also) is the implicit inference that educated people and working class people are entirely separate categories
Posted by: gareth at April 23, 2004 03:09 PMto Gareth
I don't see what there isn't to be annoyed about....
Posted by: Matt Woebot at April 23, 2004 03:45 PM"You can only wonder what the conversation would be like if grime's two groups of fan's met up. There is such a gulf between the Bloggers and the the gials who can be flossin on dis rite ere, where mainstream acceptance lies."
Those pesky proletarians, huh?
Posted by: Digusted Of Tunbridge Wells at April 23, 2004 04:18 PMhe's an odd one - ex editor of mixmag who made it a mission to tell everyone dance music is dead .
he seems to spend alot of his time belittling audiences rather than writing about music.
his comment about admiring diszzie rascal from a safe distance as it's a disturbing uncommercial racket shows where he stands overall - its always a shame when proffesional journalists don't engage with the music but fill in major label a and r response sheets instead -
to mms
it's reassuring to know he'll be reading this.
Posted by: Matt Woebot at April 23, 2004 08:12 PMbig feature on grime in next months omm so i've been told - featuring alot of the main names btw.
Posted by: mms at April 23, 2004 08:15 PMI read that piece today and instantly thought of woebot.
Personally I think this pedrisis character writes in some fantasty land where he thinks he needs to school the readership in cutting edge music. My dad who reads the guardian and along with most of the white people on the 38 bus every day pretty much couldn't care less. I know as they always leave their g2's behind. :)
Anyway...That piece he wrote on 'art rock' made me just want to walk 3 doors down to the guardian office and stab him in his ears with a broken cd of franz ferdinand. Think they're good now mutha...
oh ps. Nice to meet you the other day matt. :)
Posted by: sermad at April 24, 2004 12:56 AM>stab him in his ears with a broken cd of franz ferdinand
crikey sermad, that sounds like it'd be really sore! for the record woebot is not suggesting people take the law into their own hands over this one. besides with marcello on the loose mr petridis has quite enough in hand.
im amazed how well acquainted people are with this bloke's writing. this will be the second thing by him ive read, the first a (fairly) harmless one about kids listening to stadium rock house on wigan pier. yunnuh i mean him no harm, just astonishing that he wishes to take issue with the media pondlife of the blogs. how insecure does that make him look?
but as the big man at blissblog points out, the really embarassing thing is the picture he paints of "the other lot." im just defending the blogs because i'm perhaps too wary of sounding patronising and erecting a defense for them. a defense which simon quite rightly undertakes.
Posted by: Matt Woebot at April 24, 2004 07:18 AM"You can only wonder what the conversation would be like if grime's two groups of fans ever met up"
Surely /every/ innovative musical form in the past 50 years has been "impossible conversation" in this sense - eg jungle := ragga * techno
Posted by: bat020 at April 24, 2004 03:21 PMwoo woo bat! nice surprise to find you here - what you listening to these days? whatever happened to Roo? (lost to funky house?)
Posted by: Paul at April 24, 2004 08:22 PMto Paul
Cut the backchat SciFi! We're protesting!
;-)
Posted by: Matt Woebot at April 24, 2004 08:58 PM