who gives a fork
So before the last letter in the Pitchfork / White Stripes saga (see below) I mentioned that on Thursday, the day after the review ran and I wrote my first letter, they were running three not-so-cogent critical letters on the mailbag page, and not mine, which was weird but fine. Then on Friday, as usual, they had that weird "Tell us what your favorite X is!" feature in the mailbag. Then today, they ran my letter and a letter from some guy bitching about the critical letters from Thursday. I presume they chose to run those back-to-back because mine had the subject line "'You Suck! White Stripes Rock!' letter #3,381" which could look like I wrote it considerably after the fact, even though I did, in fact, write it the day the review ran, and meant it in a self-depricating, "Just another bitch" kind of way. Well, OK. But then there's this weird thing in the third slot:

A response from Brent DiCrescenzo.

People.
Are you nuts?
Brent DiCrescenzo is back in the game. Wow. I don't think any of you (I refer to all who wrote any sharp comments on Elephant's review) understands who he is. I'm afraid most of you don't even care for what Pitchfork is, you just consider it "another site with some music reviews"... Ugh.

Ok, to put it straight:
This man is a GOD. To see his name again at the front of the most amazing music site ever is a blessing. To read his interpretation of White Stripes music is a miracle. To know that you can still hope for more of his essays in the future is another miracle.

If you start any of these foolish discussions of him being a "good" or a "bad" critic once more, I'm going to kill. Watch out then and try exploring his genius someday. Take John Lennon's Imagine review for starters.

Thank you.

So is there some joke I'm not getting here? Did he have a life-threatening disease and we didn't realize it? And why is it in the third person if it's a response from Brent? Regardless, he responded to me that "I'll be reviewing more often for sure!" so it seems clear my comments did not wound him to the quick or anything, and it also seems weird to have that bit about not respecting Pitchfork when I say things like it's "a major force in the indie scene" and write its editors and writers reasonably lengthy letters--although, when you get right down to it, it kinda is just another site with some music reviews, so check yourself there, kids. I certainly didn't make any claims about Brent being a bad critic in general, just that it was a bad review, and that maybe the editorial decision to give the review to him was a questionable one. It also seems weird to complain about the debate when Brent said that, as of receiving my first letter, it was only the second criticism, and the "positive letters are far outweighing the negative." Hmm.

Anyway, I guess I'll e-mail Brent, but I am kinda cheezed off that they chose, as usual, to misrepresent the letter by putting it out-of-context and without the exchange that resulted from it, which I (heck) thought was pretty interesting. But maybe I just woke up grumpy on a Monday. With that assumption, I'm suspending the extremely grumpy rant I composed on the subway to work this morning in favor of this more moderate post, but maybe I'll bitch more later. I don't want to get all Dave Eggers on it, though.
posted by Mike B. at 10:34 AM 0 comments