Disqus - Latest Comments for chrisburlingame

Re: Sound of the City - Maura Johnston - The Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 3: [White Person], [White Person Cutely/Seriously Performing Urban-Radio Hit]

Chris — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:31:10 -0000

I agree that this is a loathesome trend and I can't find any inner masochism to press play on the above clips, but what bothers me more are the prominent indie figures who think covering pop songs is funny, like Ben Gibbard giggling his way through "Complicated" or Jeff Tweedy singing Black Eyed Peas songs. Karmin is easy enough for me to ignore (though I may not say that if they're still on the bill of a local top 40 radio station's soon-to-be rescheduled Christmas show), but if Justin Vernon ever decides covering "Tik Tok" would be good for a laugh, my Twitter and Facebook feeds would explode.

Re: The Daily Weekly - Caleb Hannan - Trevor Neilson, Hollywood's King of Philanthropy, and the Bad Advice He Gives to Clients Like Ashton Kutcher

Chris — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:11:59 -0000

Am I missing something or has Trevor Neilson or Ashton Kutcher not yet addressed any of the charges the VV made? Best I can tell, Trevor is going all-in against the VV and trying to shut down a media organization instead of addressing what the VV is saying.

As much as I wasn't wild about the tone of the VV article and thought it was a bit dickish in tone, I thought it made a strong case that a bogus figure that gets floated around has some serious implications for making laws and policy. I think a discussion is warranted, for example, of why Linda Smith is getting taxpayer money knowing that her time in Congress was spent fighting any gay rights, pornography, Planned Parenthood, etc... She's thoroughly right wing and has an overt social conservative agenda. Why can't we talk about whether shelters for these at risk-teens are a better or worse use of taxpayer money than giving it to a right wing ideologue?

We don't accept flawed numbers being thrown around without some challenge in other fields, especially when they affect law, do we? Even under the guise of "one is too many". The 827/year figure the VV cites seems as low as the 100-300K/year seems inflated. The truth is somewhere in between, naturally, but I would bet that the Voice is probably closer to the truth.

I listened to the press conference with Mayor McGinn and Lt. Sano and they praised Backpage for being prompt and cooperative. It is terribly terrible and heartbreaking when anyone is trafficked, of course, but it sounds more like the VV is a valuable resource in fighting trafficking and hardly the owner and operator of "a digital brothel". I'm also sure that the VV would love to only advertise to adults (who are the vast, vast, vast majority of Backpage customers) and would be open to ways to make their system more thorough and root out children being trafficked. It's one of the responsibilities of living in an open society. Everyday, someone underage sneaks under the radar and buys beer at a supermarket, yet we don't demand that Safeway stop selling alcohol, we demand that they be more thorough in their process so that it doesn't happen again.

There are a lot of questions we don't know the answer to, but it sounds like Trevor and Ashton want to shut down anyone who challenges them rather than engage and refute the voices issues. Instead, Trevor has tweeted at advertisers to try to destroy a storied institution over an article that was critical of him instead of making his own case.

I thought that the point was to protect the children, not the childish.

Re: Sound of the City - Maura Johnston - A Brief List Of Female Singer-Songwriters Who Might Not Fit The "White Girl With Acoustic Guitar" Mold, But Who Certainly Shouldn't Be Ignored By Overly Strict '

Chris — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:30:32 -0000

I honestly have no idea how I'm supposed to take this xojane story. Many of the singer-songwriters that Emily romanticizes are still around and touring and putting out new music. Sarah McLachlan is playing some venues this summer, Paula Cole and Liz Phair are still making music and touring; Suzanne Vega put out an album last year (where she re-recorded many of her songs). At the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle (where I live), the summer concert series includes Joan Osbourne, Indigo Girls, kd lang and Aimee Mann. Tori Amos has a new album coming out at the end of September and Maura already mentioned PJ Harvey is still active.

You might not hear those artists on the radio all the time (but I bet Sarah McLachlan gets plenty of airtime on AAA radio), but I bet you'll still hear Florence and Adele and Brandi Carlile and Ingrid Michaelson and...

Re: http://stuckonrepeatblog.tumblr.com/post/388265323

Chris — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:55:47 -0000

I didn't expect these questions at all, but I'll do my best to answer them.

1. Sure. I love my life and think I'm quite lucky in many, many ways, but I also wish I spent a lot more time a lot less single. (This was the question that gave me the most pause as to how descriptively I wanted to answer it and if you want a further elaboration, feel free to ping me.)

2. Being too skinny is a big, big turn-off. I don't think either skinny or curvy is "my type" one way or the other (you can't really say "she's skinny/curvy, she's definitely Chris' type"), but the percentage of women I see and find attractive is quite high and more often than not, they're curvy.

3. I have lots of friends that are quite lovely and I do tend to believe attraction is involuntary, but I usually try to avoid developing crushes on them because I want people to remain my friends and that hadn't worked out so well during high school.

Re: Wait, what?

Chris — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:55:04 -0000

Apparently Carly Simon is now saying that the song is not about David Geffen.

Re: Someday I will write about why Lil' Wayne's "Rebirth" is pretty good.

Chris — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:59:26 -0000

I would buy that book AND copies for my friends for Christmas.

Re: Chillwave, y'all.

Chris — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:51:07 -0000

I'm still kind of afraid to ask someone to explain the difference between chillwave and glo-fi to me.

Re: http://chainofknives.tumblr.com/post/370772291

Chris — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:38:21 -0000

I couldn't buy your plane ticket, Paul, but I'd happily buy you drinks at the show! I'll be there for sure.

Re: Thinking Out Loud About Taylor Swift Hatred

Chris — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:58:16 -0000

If I had known anyone would reblog this, let alone read it, I would have been a little more articulate instead of dashing off something after a couple of drinks and before going to bed.

I live in a city with a big indie rock presence and a lot of people in the same cliques I'm a part of are really evangelical about it, so sometimes I'll see people have status updates on Facebook that say something like "[X] really wants to punch Lady Gaga in the face" and there'll invariably be a dozen people "liking" that comment.

I think "You Belong with Me" is a great song and I don't care if anyone else likes it or not, but the only point I wanted to make was that if Taylor Swift is someone you hate, it's more your problem than hers.

Then again, I treat every day like it's "Nice to Popstars Day".

Re: http://stuckonrepeatblog.tumblr.com/post/366457825

Chris — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:00:31 -0000

I loved that line too!

I did wonder about that one-size-fits-all strategy at big boxes too. It kind of reminds me of that post on Idolator about there were tons of Carrie Underwood CDs at Target somewhere in the Northeast (probably not where a big chunk of her fan base is located).

Re: http://chainofknives.tumblr.com/post/359789514

Chris — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:09:20 -0000

8.2 is definitely in the "Best New Music" range considering that the Surfer Blood album was an 8.2 BNM (also strangely, the second most-read review on P4k), as well as Atlas Sound and that Five Years of Hyperdub comp from October, which you mentioned above.

I try not to complain about Pitchfork, but this does seem arbitrary - why is it not BNM if it's exactly as good as Atlas Sound's album?

Re: Stuck on Repeat

Chris — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:05:49 -0000

Thanks Lucas!

I do think genres are mostly meaningless (and I think saying pop is short for popular is even more meaningless - Metallica sells a lot more records than, say, Annie, but I don't think that makes Metallica "pop" all of a sudden.)

Ha! We already know that I have the iPod of someone's 12 year old niece, so we made need to ask these other forty people (as far as I know, all are over twelve!).

Re: Chain of Knives

Chris — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:40:15 -0000

I think it looks great. Thanks Michaela.

I'm going to try to post more stuff here when I can and be a better member of the community.

Re: Contra is short for contrarian

Chris — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 04:12:32 -0000

That certainly didn't hurt, although I'm not sure how big of a player Amazon is in the online market (I think iTunes still has the lion's share of online sales). I wish I had the data to tell where it's coming from, but alas, I don't think it's publicly available.

I bought the Rihanna record for $3.99 the day it was released, so Amazon does do that for some big albums, somewhat often. I'm sure it is to bring up their "units sold" totals.

Re: Chain of Knives

Chris — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:01:08 -0000

Oh dear. I got through three comments before I had to hit the back button.

I thought that people who knew nothing about pop except that it sucks were the people that made me the angriest until I encountered the comments on Slate to Jody Rosen's DORF piece (and the ones in the CNN post). Lord.

Re: Stuck on Repeat

Chris — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 02:17:44 -0000

My guess is she was being serious. Admittedly, I was pretty selective with the quote I used but it did reflect the whole piece.

Re: Stuck on Repeat

Chris — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:35:53 -0000

I think we both might have spoken too soon on The Flaming Lips and covers. Have you seen this yet? Yikes!

I do love that Hot Chip cover, esp. getting Peter Gabriel to sing the lines that mention him! Thanks!

Re: Stuck on Repeat

Chris — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:20:38 -0000

I meant to narrowly define "acoustic singer-songwriter" because I agree with your point. I really did like what The Flaming Lips did with "Can't Get You Out of My Head" and there's a version from Coldplay at Glastonbury that is pretty spectacular.

I'm not anti-cover at all. I'm trying to get an interview with someone from Nouvelle Vague, a French cover band who interprets songs as bossa nova pop numbers and I generally do like when someone has something interesting to say with a particular song. I'm just saying "look at how stupid the lyrics are to this song that a bunch of dumb people like" has already been said before, and it wasn't funny then.

I don't think I'm really anti-indie rock at all, especially considering that I've been very complimentary to Phoenix, Metric and Vampire Weekend very recently in my writing. I am jaded by how the hype machine works.

But yes, Zooey is quite de-lovely by any stretch of the imagination and damn Gibbard for ruining the fantasy! :^)

Re: What makes a song the best of the decade?

Chris — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:47:59 -0000

I love "Hey Ya!" and think it goes 7/7 in the above criteria and that song was EVERYWHERE a few years ago!

Re: No. 10, Ray Guns are Not Just the Future, The Bird and the Bee

Chris — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:55:16 -0000

I've really enjoyed your advent calendar! (I've been reading it on my phone so I didn't realize it was also a Tumblr blog).

I decided this was the best way to go because I can explain why I like each album and not have it be a list of things and to try to avoid a referendum on my taste. Plus, it's forcing me to update this thing every day for over a week.

Re: Chain of Knives

Chris — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:13:32 -0000

I'm sort of glad that this piece, however flawed it is (and it is, deeply) at least acknowledged that she had a career before the Kanye incident. She was the best-selling artist of 2008 and spent nine of the first eleven weeks of 2009 at number one on the Billboard 200 (no one else has spent more than 2 weeks at number one, although Susan Boyle might get a third week next week).

It is driving me nuts that music writers are writing their end of year analysis and they think that because they hadn't heard of her before the VMAs, she must not have existed.

Re: Chain of Knives

Chris — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:47:15 -0000

I think "Right Hand Hi" is my favorite song on the album but I really like the album quite a bit overall.

In light of the Little Boots/La Roux thread from the other day, I'll just say that I interviewed Kid Sister about a month and half ago and she was very, very sweet.

Re: Chain of Knives

Chris — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:14:51 -0000

I really like Spoon but experimental is never a word that ever jumped out at me. I think they're pretty conventional (guitar, vocals, bass, drums) but what really stands out to me are the basslines, which seem a little funkier than you'd find in an "indie rock" band in 2009.

Anyway...I like Vampire Weekend (including "Horchata") and Spoon.

Re: Chain of Knives

Chris — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:23:50 -0000

That's definitely true, Lucas. No Depression of all things should be able to be No Depression (although maybe if they would have broadened their scope, they'd still be in print - kidding!) and maybe NPR's DORF coverage is a good thing (where else would you hear about DORF)?

I liked Rosen's first piece because I happened to agree with its thesis (and I really, really liked the first half or so of it for that same reason) and thought it forced a reconsideration of values that a lot of people I know hold dear. Still, though, when I read it I thought "yeah, I agree, but so?" If you like "indie rock" you should continue to enjoy Fleet Foxes or Grizzly Bear or Dirty Projectors or Animal Collective or whoever and you're not going to be persuaded when someone comes along and says "I know you love 'My Girls' but have you heard the new Britney single?"

Re: Chain of Knives

Chris — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:44:33 -0000

I think La Roux seems to be doing a little better in the US - they're about to begin their 3rd US tour shortly (although the first LB album isn't even available in the US yet) and "Bulletproof" hit number one on the Billboard Dance/Club charts in September.

I don't really care about the public personas of pop stars (mostly because I couldn't enjoy Britney with a clear conscience if I did) but I get what you're saying. It does seem unfortunate that she'd begin with embracing an underdog image and then forgetting all about it once she acheived a relative amount of fame. A lot of people already think pop stars are vapid fame whores, it's not necessary or helpful for anyone to reinforce that belief.