This inter­view with Cul­ture Pulp is a new favorite. [HT: Book­slut]

This will be my first and last SXSW Music Fes­ti­val. I was ini­tial­ly very excit­ed to cov­er the event for my day job, only to be denied press cre­den­tials. Our pitch was to cov­er the fes­ti­val as a trav­el­ogue with a cranky crit­ic — think Three Sheets with a some­what more sober Zane Lam­prey — but now we’re free to be much cranki­er since we won’t be able to access events that make this par­tic­u­lar pro­mo­tion­al orgy so spe­cial. Hav­ing said that, I’m still look­ing for­ward to doing stuff with lots of music crit­ic friends, whether it’s cov­er­ing one of Stere­ogum’s day par­ties or kvetch­ing on cam­era with Mau­ra and Jess from Idol­a­tor. This should be a very fun and fun­ny expe­ri­ence and I’ll be sure to let you know when and where you can see it!

Then again, should I have just lis­tened to Bob Lef­setz? When an orga­ni­za­tion like SXSW can’t work with one of the biggest por­tals on the inter­net, some­thing’s real­ly gone haywire.

I just sub­mit­ted this for con­sid­er­a­tion. If you haven’t already read the Deci­blog’s scathing, suc­cinct take­down of the mar­ket­ing plan for the Mars Volta’s new album, you should. The usb stick gim­mick gives the mid­dle fin­ger to the envi­ron­ment in ways I can­not com­pre­hend. Has the record indus­try not heard of email? Try meet­ing the con­sumer where they live. It’s cheaper!

If you’re into read­ing brainy music blogs that don’t get mired in jar­gon, you already miss Woe­bot tremen­dous­ly. I’m one of those people.

The past year saw the dis­ap­pear­ance of Sty­lus Mag­a­zine too, a webzine that got me back on my music-writer­ly feet after a mis­er­able audi­tion at Pitch­fork. Sty­lus was the Mon­tre­al Expos of music crit­i­cism; writ­ing there meant that your record reviews would be noticed by peo­ple who could pay and edi­tor Todd Burns did an amaz­ing job re-invent­ing the mag­a­zine as writ­ers came and went. A tremen­dous labor of love, Sty­lus pre­sent­ed an alter­na­tive to Pitch­fork when it mat­tered most, earn­ing a read­er­ship as can­tan­ker­ous as its con­trib­u­tors, and a lega­cy that lives on in the suc­cess of those who wrote there.

Thanks.

I’m find­ing that one of my excus­es for not writ­ing here more reg­u­lar­ly is that I’m real­ly tired of look­ing at the cur­rent incar­na­tion of Black­mail Is My Life. I’m real­ly psy­ched to update the links to all the new blogs I’m read­ing now that I’ve been intro­duced to a num­ber of great local food blogs via the Pover­ty Jet Set.

What I’m lis­ten­ing to right now:

• Bon Iver — For Emma, For­ev­er Ago. Com­plete­ly blown away by this album after being prac­ti­cal­ly choked to death on hype. It’s worth it.
• Black Moun­tain — In the Future. I reg­is­tered my ini­tial reac­tion over at the Scowl, and after lis­ten­ing again this morn­ing, still feel like Black Moun­tain squan­dered their chance to expand the Stones-meet-Krautrock vibe into some­thing excit­ing if not inter­est­ing, instead of min­ing this half-baked ‘met­al’ trope.

That’s the update for now. I should know more about the sta­tus of nu-BMIML this week. Thanks for stick­ing with me in the meantime!