Red Mosquito

Fuck yeah it did.

Brett wrote:I have no interest in any of the reunion/anniversary stuff, but I still think the original ten-song album is some of the finest material put out by members of either camp. It surprises me a bit to see the amount of lukewarm opinions here.

Absolutely. Was also Cornell's most impressive album vocally, IMO, but I could see why he's not everyone's cup of tea

tragabigzanda wrote:

Simple Torture wrote:I hate the term "think piece"--it's an essay, which is a perfectly fine and respected form of writing. I'm going to go write a think piece on how much I hate the term.

A good essay has a point. It states that point clearly in the beginning, then supports that point throughout.
A think piece is naval-gazy, and doesn't have one single, clear point.

That's how I differentiate them, anyway.

And I'm not opposed to think pieces. I used to visit Grantland regularly, and I've even had a couple of my own published.

But I hate Pitchfork, always have. I think it's some of the worst music writing I've ever read. I've even written them angry letters (which of course are not published because they offer no outlet for reader interaction). Pitchfork will routinely deride some artist or style of music -- they've not been too kind to Pearl Jam and Soundgarden -- so a think piece on TOTD strikes me as particularly hollow.

"Pitchfork" the organization doesn't write reviews, though -- individuals do. The fact that previous employees of the magazine have partaken of low-hanging fruit in the form of snobby PJ reviews (and they have) shouldn't mean that every article the magazine publishes going forward should be doomed to reiterate that opinion, especially when discussing entirely different eras of the band's work.

There have been a few Pitchfork writers over the years that I've really liked -- Nitsuh Abebe and Lindsay Zoladz come to mind, though they've both written plenty of pieces elsewhere by now. In general I would agree that both their reviews and longer-form works are...not poorly written, per se, but perhaps lacking insight. They seem to publish a lot of articles that read through well enough but don't necessarily betray a lot of expertise, and rarely leave you with anything further to think about. The Temple of the Dog piece basically just reiterated the first 30 minutes of "PJ20"; I kept waiting for the phrase "rose from the ashes of..." but it never came. These days I find Pitchfork most useful as a news source, or a place to pick up names of artists to check out.

The latest iteration of Christgau's Consumer Guide has been pretty lousy too, in my opinion. Historically he has been excellent at packing pinpoint perfect insights into very concise reviews -- he could say more in a sentence or an aside than many writers could in an entire piece. I haven't taken that from his writing for a few years now.

Holy shit balls.

http://i.imgur.com/e2cKNMI.jpg

that's awesome!

I put in for LA today. Large part of me didn't want to spend $200 on tickets but at 30% odds I figured why not.

I won

Congrats I felt same way but glad I'm going now

Revelator wrote:It's about fucking time is all I gotta say.

And the best part about all of this a proper release of the Angel On Fire demo. Quite possibly one of my fav songs ever.

I had never heard this song, so I went to YouTube to give it a listen. I gotta say, that is a pretty damned impressive track. I can see why it was left off the record in terms of it not really fitting with the rest of the songs, but certainly not because of the quality of the song itself (the writing, not production). It sounds like a Gossard/Cornell joint but at the same time, it doesn't. Hard to explain.

Any way, thanks for the unintentional recommendation.

Strat wrote:

Revelator wrote:It's about fucking time is all I gotta say.

And the best part about all of this a proper release of the Angel On Fire demo. Quite possibly one of my fav songs ever.

I cant believe i havent heard that before. Wonderful.

I just replied to him basically saying the same thing. Just when you think you've heard it all from these cats...

$215?!?!? You guys are on crack.

LoathedVermin72 wrote:$215?!?!? You guys are on crack.

Man, just think of all the better things someone could do with $215.

What are Yeezys going for these days, LV?

Kevin Davis wrote:What are Yeezys going for these days, LV?

lol

I like the record okay, but the idea of a TOTD reunion seems way less special since Cameron has been playing with these guys for almost 20 years now. So for me this seems almost like paying twice the cost of a normal PJ show to see them with a different singer (whom I love, but whom I also just heard play these songs acoustic two weeks ago) playing songs I like half as much. That's wack.

I got my TOTD fill at pj20. Though seeing these musicians in a small intimate theater where the sound is wonderful - is right up my alley.


But I'm not going

Isn't the ticket cost similar to the PJ tour?

CopperTom wrote:Isn't the ticket cost similar to the PJ tour?

Yup, at least fan club ticket wise.

I didn't realize $215 was the per pair price. That's less insane, but still more than I'd shell.

Kevin Davis wrote:I didn't realize $215 was the per pair price. That's less insane, but still more than I'd shell.

Ah.

Yeah, that's more reasonable. I didn't realize that either.