AusGrind: Australian underground grindcore, punk, doom and DIY culture.
22Dec/09Off

The editors at Rolling Stone can kill themselves

Posted by Lachlan

Rolling Stone are the kings of printing irrelevant lists. While the publication was once a bastion of hard rock, drugs, counter-culture and, well, MUSIC, Rolling Stone has long since devolved into a hyper-capitalist shitheap, force-feeding its readers vapid pop culture trends and manufactured 'artists' who are little more than corporate sub-brands. To surmise, they have become the mouth-piece of the bloated and archaic mainstream music industry; a sickening orgy of money grabbing fads and sensationalist bullshit that is essentially totally irrelvant to the actual ART of music.

With their latest irrelvant list "100 Best Songs of the Decade" Rolling Stone has once more proven that the magazine Hunter S. Thompson once called home is long dead and buried.

Let us quickly sample their top 25 songs on the past 10 years:

1 | Gnarls Barkley — "Crazy"
2 | Jay-Z — "99 Problems"
3 | Beyoncé — "Crazy in Love"
4 | Outkast — "Hey Ya!"
5 | M.I.A. — "Paper Planes"
6 | The White Stripes — "Seven Nation Army"
7 | Yeah Yeah Yeahs — "Maps"
8 | Amy Winehouse — "Rehab"
9 | U2 — "Beautiful Day"
10 | Eminem — "Stan"
11 | MGMT — "Time to Pretend"
12 | Eminem — "Lose Yourself"
13 | 50 Cent — "In Da Club"
14 | Missy Elliott — "Get Ur Freak On"
15 | Johnny Cash — "Hurt"
16 | The Strokes — "Last Nite"
17 | Bob Dylan — "Mississippi"
18 | Kelly Clarkson — "Since U Been Gone"
19 | Kanye West — "Jesus Walks"
20 | Justin Timberlake — "Cry Me a River"
21 | OutKast — "B.O.B."
22 | Amerie — "1 Thing"
23 | Rihanna — "Umbrella"
24 | Radiohead — "Everything in Its Right Place"
25 | Missy Elliott — "Work It"

Yes you read correctly. This past decade of music has apparently been dominated by mindless pop R&B pap, simplistic garage indie rock and neutered gangsta-rap.

Here's a few quick stats:

- Outkast, Missy Eliott and Eminem all have 2 songs in the top 25 - in other words, in Rolling Stone's opinion those three 'artists' account for 24% of the top 25 songs of 2009. Right.

- 5 songs in the top 25 are spelt feature SMS lexicon ("In Da Club", "Get Ur Freak On", "Last Nite", "Since U Been Gone", "1 Thing").

- Jay-Z is a fag.

- Gnarls Barkley is an irritating fag.

- Bono is a preaching fag.

- Jack White is a talentless fag.

- Meg White may be the worst drum player on earth.

- 50 Cent got shot multiple times and is still a fag.

- Missy Elliott is more than likely a dude (a dude who is a fag).

- Kanye West is a meglomaniac AND a fag.

- Justin Timberlake wants to pretend he's Michael Jackson, which I guess makes him a pedophile AND a fag.

- All members of MGMT, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes are fags and represent a pathetic de-evolution of rock.

- Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash are certainly NOT fags.

Honestly I can't even be bothered writing anymore. Let it be suffice to say that Rolling Stone is a bloated capitalist shitheap and a stain on the music industry (well... essentially the entire mainstream music industry is the stain). I can only pray that this publication will fall hard in the very near future alongside all the archaic record labels who promote image-driven, vapid, mindless, Orwellian synthetic pop bile and then pretend to be confused when the value of their releases seem to be undermined.
Record Executive Jerk: "Hey guys! I've got a business problem for you to consider:
We release loads of lowest common denominator, overproduced, purposefully generic music driven by image rather than substance - and we mange to charge exhorbarent amounts of money for an album of which the physical pressing costs amount to less than $2 (how's a 15,000% mark-up sound?)!
We also like to stress the short life-cycle of our pop stars and their pop songs - so we can quickly create and crank out the next one for a quicker and quicker buck!
But things aren't all good in our world.... For some reason people are starting to DOWNLOAD our music - for FREE! They STEAL it! They are refusing to pay $30 for a perfectly good Lady Gaga album!"
A Person With A Brain: "So you purposely stress the disposable nature of your product to create quicker replacement lifecycles while continuing to invest more and more into brand marketing and image than the actual substance of the music - you greatly inflate production costs with multi-million dollar film clips and production work and then still attempt maintain a lucrative margin from inflated product retail prices?"
Record Executive Jerk: "Yeah!"
A Person With A Brain: "And you're surprised that people are now refusing to fork out for such a disposable product, who's value has been consistently and actively undermined and bastardised by the very business model upon your organisation promotes?"
Record Executive Jerk: "Yeah! I know; we'll sue the people who download for $40,000 per MP3 track!"
Can anyone else see what's wrong with this picture? Just please fucking die mainstream music industry. You a bloated hyper-capitalist fucks that have long side bastardised music into a pre-packaged commodity for 13 year old girls. Kill yourselves.
Go here if you are a sucker for punishment and want to read the full list:

Honestly I can't even be bothered writing anymore. Let it be suffice to say that Rolling Stone is a bloated capitalist shitheap and a stain on the music industry (well... essentially the entire mainstream music industry is the stain). I can only pray that this publication will fall hard in the very near future alongside all the archaic record labels who promote image-driven, vapid, mindless, Orwellian synthetic pop bile and then pretend to be confused when the value of their releases seem to be undermined.

Record Executive Jerk: "Hey guys! I've got a business problem for you to consider:

We release loads of lowest common denominator, overproduced, purposefully generic music driven by image rather than substance - and we manage to charge exhorbarent amounts of money for an album of which the physical pressing costs amount to less than $2 (how's a 15,000% mark-up sound?)!

We also like to stress the short life-cycle of our pop stars and their pop songs - so we can quickly create and crank out the next one for a quicker and quicker buck!

But things aren't all good in our world.... For some reason people are starting to DOWNLOAD our music - for FREE! They STEAL it! They are refusing to pay $30 for a perfectly good Lady Gaga album!"

A Person With A Brain: "So you purposely stress the disposable nature of your product to create quicker replacement lifecycles while continuing to invest more and more into brand marketing and image than the actual substance of the music - you greatly inflate production costs with multi-million dollar film clips and production work and then still attempt maintain a lucrative margin from inflated product retail prices?"

Record Executive Jerk: "Yeah!"

A Person With A Brain: "And you're surprised that people are now refusing to fork out for such a disposable product, who's value has been consistently and actively undermined and bastardised by the very business model upon your organisation promotes?

Perhaps now is the time to re-consider your business model - especially in light of new technologies like the internet which is re-defining consumer choice and empowerment and creating entirely new distribution models which are far sleeker and low-cost?"

Record Executive Jerk: "Nahhhhh...... I know; we'll sue the people who download for $40,000 per MP3 track!"

Can anyone else see what's wrong with this picture? Just please fucking die mainstream music industry. You a bloated hyper-capitalist fucks that have long side bastardised music into a pre-packaged commodity for 13 year old girls. Kill yourselves.

Go here if you are a sucker for punishment and want to read the full list:  Rolling Stone's Top 100 Songs of the Decade.

29Oct/08Off

Who the fuck is Gabrielle Cilmi and what has she done to deserve 6 ARIA awards?

Posted by Lachlan

Who the fuck is Gabrielle Cilmi and what has she done to deserve 6 ARIA awards?

To be honest I’m not even sure when the ARIAs were, but I do know I’m pretty pissed off that some 16 year old pop-tart named Gabrielle Cilmi picked up 6 awards. I have never heard this girls name before, and yet she picks up 6 awards as Australia’s most prestigious (… well in theory) music awards?

This chick apparently won Breakthrough Album and Breakthrough Single of the Year, Single of the Year, Best Female Artist, Best Pop Release and Highest Selling Single. Not bad for some fucking auto tuned pop harlot, who in all likeliness doesn’t even write any of her goddamn songs. Wow, she sings like Amy Winehouse, quickly, give that girl 6 industry awards! Can anyone even name her fucking single or album without looking it up?

See and this is what infuriates me. Did little Gabrielle write the lyrics to her song? No she didn’t, a professional song writer did. Did little Gabrielle write the music to her songs? No, a composer did. Did she play the music? No, expensive session musicians did. All she had to fucking do was sing another mindless little ditty in the style of the day then leave it to this huge corpo-whore giant Warner Bros to spent millions engineering her album to perfection while compressing the fucking shit out of it. Does she sound anything like that live? Of course she fucking doesn’t.

Of course, the ARIAs have never, ever been credible. The ARIAs represent an obscene farce and a cruel smear on the Australian music industry. Industry awards are meant to be about recognition from peers; about earning the respect and admiration from key credible figures – not a Top 40 popularity content cum rape party. I can honestly never remember that someone deserving won an ARIA. In fact I don’t think that has ever happened. It has always been a major record label circle jerk, lacking even the slightest chance of lube let alone a reach around for the violently raped music listening public.

This is why the Australian music industry is such a piece of shit. The smaller pub venues won’t put on bands; so just how the fuck are we meant to cultivate and develop talent that can hold the attention of the larger commercial venues? Labels wont sign anyone but safe little pop whore princesses or derivative electro indie pieces of shit. Radio will rarely play anything from independent artists (aside from Triple J but that’s long become a caricature of itself – music exists outside of terrible Australian hip hop, indie and electro, okay?).

Basically we have no grass roots support from the government, from venues or from labels. Then at the highest level of ‘music awards’ are so fucking pathetic that I would rather accept an award compose entirely out of my own vomit and fecal matter, and to be honest that would probably be more credible in the eyes of most other musicians.

What is so frustrating is that this total absence of commercialism in our grass roots music scene has created a breeding ground for a range of talented and unique bands that have no choice but to create music out of their own innate desire – because they sure as fuck aren’t going to get recognized or paid for all the effort they pour into it. Meanwhile these amazing bands go unrecognized and we put some little skank on a pedestal as the pinnacle of Australian music and culture for the world to see. It makes me sick.

Obviously I’m ranting about what we’ve all known for ages. All I’m saying is the best thing that could happen is that terrorists unleash some form of flesh eating virus into the air ducts of the pompous farce that is the ARIAs, then unleash swarms of rabid dogs to tear the flesh, silicone and heavily caked make-up from the delicate bones from these soulless, passionless industry fuckheads.

Fuck the ARIAs.