ATTENTION ALL MYSPACE "FRIEND"-COLLECTOR BAND WHORES: TAKE YOUR "FRIENDBOT" PROGRAMS AND SHOVE 'EM UP YOUR CRASS IMPERSONAL ASSES.
~VOMIT MANIFESTO~
To whom it may nauseate:
This just in...Rock & Roll is still dead.
Actually, in reality (you know, like, um, TV), it's only dying, as per usual.
In this post-postmodern age, real Rock & Roll is so much ancient history. And the Rock Critic has been swept under the proverbial rug, in favor of the more politically-correct, major publishing deal-able, unit-shifter-friendly Music Critic. Frankly, that's fucked. And who are the notable "Music Critics" of today? Sasha Frere-Jones and Kelefa Sanneh are generally acknowledged (by the mainstream media, mind you) as their generation's best. In my humble opinion, these two "high-profile," "high-end," fine-dining doggie/douche bags serve no other practical purpose than to feed the smug, perpetually-bloated, bourgeois New Yorker/New York Times stereotype 'til it pukes. At best, their contributions to music criticism amount to a pair of pretentious (in the worst sense of the word) names. When Frere-Jones isn't bogged down playing "rock" star, and Sanneh's not busy pushing his pro-Ashlee Simpson, anti-"Rockism" schtick, I'll bet both choads are undying Pavement fans, continually longing for the sensitive-yet-smirking "College Rock" glory days of the late 1980s-early 90s. Where's your Malkmus now, pussies? That's right, a shitty solo album away from the Matador mailroom. Here's to imperfect noise for never after...
Honestly, there have been but a pancreasful of great rock critics since the term was first regurgitated and then promptly marketed as novelty puke. From Robert "Self-appointed Dean of American Rock Critics" Christgau to Jim "I Interviewed Bangs Before He Died and Parlayed It Into a Career" DeRogatis, the majority have been (has-beens) critical, alright - as in "Code Blue! Flat line..." And the corporate rags these "scribes" whore for are equally brain-dead. Rolling Stone and Spin are nothing more than the fuckin' flip side of the Time and Newsweek two-headed coin, and it's been that way for decades. It's enough to make one blow serious chunks.
MISSION STATEMENT: Rock criticism, like rock music, is a dying art form. Both have been comatose since Kurt Cobain was murdered and everybody (critics included, shamefully enough) rushed to judgment and looked the other way. Put succinctly, that sucks. And I'm bitter as fuck. But I'm not blaming anyone. I've allowed the world in general and the state of music in particular to render me cynical, anti-social, and filled with rage. Pathetic? Maybe. But there's one good thing about it: it keeps me from becoming complacent. And hopefully it'll afford you the same insight. With that in mind, you can take the tragically hair-cut, hipper-than-thou, Camden Joy Division [sic] posers (every last subjective one of 'em in a "rock" band, with myriad "side projects" abounding, natch) - the too-cool-for-school "underground" tools at Pitchfork and Arthur, for example - and shove 'em down your pie hole.
Me? I'm gonna give it to ya straight, like the Wolf Man going for your throat under a full moon. And no, you don't have to thank me, bitches. Just make amazing music while you've still got air in your fuckin' lungs and/or before George W. Bush gets all our asses churned into so much bile. It's frightening enough to consider that Iggy Pop and Kathie Lee Gifford long ago morphed into a single beast - the Iggiford - the creature from the cruise ship commercial lagoon. But most everyone's indifferent to it. So much so that when Paul "Waiting to be Forgotten" Westerberg starts pimping soundtracks for animated Hollywood kids' movies, nobody so much as goddamn blinks. The dream is over. And the nightmare won't end. It's time to wake the fuck up!
BORN: The same day the Lizard King was born and Darby Crash died.
DAMAGE: Back in the late 1970s and early 80s, my mother fucked Lester Bangs a few times, so to speak. She used to "half-joke" that I was their "little bastard of love." That's how I got bitten by the "rock crit" bug and wound up writing under various pseudonyms for numerous glossy bathroom readers, a bunch of America's "Alt Rock" magazines, and a shitload of "free weekly" litter box liners. That is, until I was fired for being "too objective." My comments about their corporate sponsors' interests didn't exactly help matters. So now I'm the night janitor (among other odd jobs) at a "major independent" record distributor, where I moonlight, literally, as Rock Vomit: World's Most-Wretched Rock Critic. Got a problem with that? Get fucked, and then get your own rock crit rocks off. The world needs fewer rock bands and more rock critics.
HOPE: I encourage you fuckers to write your take on the "rock" music around you. It's your right, especially given the fact that the shit is being pumped into your ears in grocery stores, elevators, doctors offices - everywhere, like a Negativland nightmare. Any consumer chump can be their own worst enemy. Why not be your own best rock critic?
GOAL #1: To inspire pure loathing in musicians, so that emotion might motivate them to think about the recorded material they are leaving for posterity.
GOAL #2: To put my graveyard shift to good use and unearth the zombified corpse of Rock & Roll, and, in the process, bury every last shit band going via my patented "ADD" reviews. As in, "THANKS FOR THE AD[D]!"
Analog Deficit Disorder
With rapidly advancing digital technology comes easy access to musical production. (And I use the term loosely.) There are simply too many bands, and a ga-jillion clone bands to boot. Thus it is my mission to send these McShitheads scurrying back to their little McJobs with their little McNuggets between their legs. Also, I'd like to remove the band Tortoise from the face of the earth. Everyone's got their pretensions, but come the fuck ON! In addition, would everyone please stop sucking Thurston Moore's hoary dick? I imagine even he's sick of it at this point. It's a good decade-and-a-half past fuckin' embarrassing. And let's not even broach his midget fluffer/ubiquitous scene whore, Jim O'Rourke. Goddammit.
GOAL #3: To get horizontal with Debbie Harry circa Parallel Lines, or any other fucking time.
GOAL #4: To find the mysterious and elusive phantom known only as the black Kathleen Hanna.
GOAL #5: To stop the media from fellating American Idol's cock long enough to finally investigate Kurt Cobain's death.
BOTTOM LINE: The putrid state of "Rock," "Post-Rock," "Post-Cereal-Serial-Killer-Rock," or "Post-Corporate-Apathy-Rock" (Corpathy, anyone?) - not to mention the monolithic oil slick that is the world at large - is such that it makes me want to projectile vomit a stream of consciousness. Jim Morrison hit the mark[s] a century ago, in 1969: "Rock is dead."
R. VOMIT MOTTO: "Don't make me puke in your mouth."