Good morning, y’all! Top of the news pile has Maura Johnston leaving Idolator, and Ron Charles, aka, the muscle at Book World, getting his space in the Style section, goddamit. (For those of you who are not ravenously digesting R.C.’s every tweet: He nearly lost his slot in Style due to the insane number of inches required to review Sarah Palin’s new Inuit romance novel, Pantsuits with Wolves.)

Strange ways to write a novel, Johnny Cash’s love for Native Americans, the many manifestations of Watchmen, the best songs of the decade, and more, after the jump.

Read More “Arts Morning Roundup: Ron Charles Prevails, Watchmen Sucks, Baseball Cards Are Expensive” »

Maura Johnston announced today that she’s leaving Idolator, the pop music blog she’s edited for over three years.

“Just wanted to let you know that today is my last day as editor of Idolator. The site will continue on, and I will continue to write about music, but we’ve decided to part ways,” Johnston wrote on the site this afternoon.

Her departure will no doubt come as a shock to readers, who are by now used to seeing Johnston all over the web, from commenting on Perez Hilton in the Guardian to talking about American Idol on NPR; opportunities that–in this writer’s opinion–directly correlate to the time she’s put into editing one of the best music blogs on the web.

Johnston’s goodbye post doesn’t say why she’s leaving. Washington City Paper attempted to extract an explanation via email, but Johnston would only say that she is “really excited to see what happens next… and to get some sleep.”

Morning, y’all! 1.) Jerry Fuchs, drummer in many, many bands, fell down a goddamn elevator shaft yesterday and died. His amazing drumming will be missed. 2.) Anybody watch the season finale of Mad Men? I have yet to watch a single episode of that show, but I hear last night was a doozie! Feel free to spoil shit in the comments, if you feel so inclined. The lunacy and brilliance of James “Mij” Cameron, 50 Cent’s scent, Malcolm X’s bisexuality, the highest paying job any deadhead could ever expect, and “The Top 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World,” after the jump.

Read More “Arts Morning Roundup: RIP Jerry Fuchs” »

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C., held an old-fashioned book burning last week (above is an AP video on the same).

Now, my people didn’t burn books when I was growing up, but my youth pastor did ask me to toss my copy of Pyromania, and my grandfather, an Episcopal priest, refused to allow books written by Carl Jung inside his house. Also, I once had to scribble an ode to masturbation on a slip of paper during mass and throw it into a cauldron of fire.

Based on these criteria, I feel qualified to offer the following FAQ for attending a book burning.

Read More “What is the Proper Etiquette for a Book Burning?” »

Hey y’all, welcome to the San Francisco Panorama Arts Desk roundup. Jingles, $20 newspapers, copyright treaties, comic books, singing gynecologists, Fotoweek drama, and Chuck Klosterman, after the jump.

Read More “It’s Finally Here: The Arts Desk Roundup” »

The only time a piece of music writing is better than the music being written about is when the music being written about sucks.

This is the case with electronica band Owl City, which makes soulless music. Pitchfork, perhaps in an effort to seem current or some shit, reviewed “Fireflies,” the title track from Owl City’s new album.

Did they review it because it falls under the auspices of experimental music, and yet made it on the radio, providing them with crossover justification? Did they review it because they know what we all know, that you feel less dirty and less derivative when you talk shit about a bad band than when you talk hearts-for-”i”s about a good band?

At least Ian Cohen gave it a “1.”

All I know is that Scott Plagenhoef told me there is an unofficial moratorium on writing about emo at his site. Well, I can see now that this makes total sense: ban good music based on its shitty genre and review shitty music based on its great genre.

Goddamit, Pitchfork, behave!

Tuesday marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Say Anything…, the 1989 teen-love movie directed by Cameron Crowe, and starring John Cusack, as well as the release of Say Anything, the fourth studio album by L.A. emo rockers Say Anything.

While the band’s publicist claims that the coinciding release of the two cultural artifacts is “total kismet” and was “not planned,” Say Anything (the movie), which chronicles the quest of one underachieving Lloyd Dobler (Cusack) to win the affections of the brainy Diane Court (Ione Skye), just happens to be the most emo movie ever.

Its 20th anniversary matching up with the release of the self-titled album by the band it inspired, well, that’s totally fucking kismet.

After the jump, John Cusack’s branch of the emo family tree explained.

Read More “Lloyd Dobler, Max Bemis and the Origins of Emo” »

Thereby further cementing his place in the annals of weirdness.

Someone should give Walken the treatment Chuck Klosterman gave Val Kilmer. By which I mean a nice thinky profile that makes you love him more than you already do.

This is the question Mike Conklin asks at L Magazine:

Right around the mid-80s, or 25 years ago, or the exact amount of time that needs to have passed since a band’s debut in order for them to be eligible for induction, when hair-metal came along and ruined everything, it simply became cooler for rock bands to exist below the radar of the mainstream. With the exceptions of a period of a few years in the early 90s, with Pearl Jam and Nirvana, and then again a decade later with the White Stripes and Radiohead, all the best rock bands have been, for lack of a better term, indie rock bands.

Are the Replacements going to be inducted? Sonic Youth? Husker Du? Joy Division? The Go Betweens? Pavement? Guided By Voices? If they’re not, it’s bullshit: for people who actually still really, truly care about rock and roll, these are the bands that have carried on in the tradition the Hall of Fame has always held dear. But if they are inducted, the Hall of Fame will surely lose the massive cultural appeal it so obviously strives for, considering barely any of those bands have sold as many copies of all their records put together as most current inductees have of even their least successful record.

While a good question on its face, a little historical digging says we can prolong answering this one for a while yet.

Read More “When Will the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Run Out Of Mainstream Acts to Induct?” »

This is surreal: Das Racist are sorta-kinda-but-not-really calling Sasha Frere-Jones a racist for saying what’s what about the death of rap.

Here’s Victor Vazquez, one half of Das Racist, taking SFJ to task:

SFJ is savvy enough to know that before pulling a “white man speaks authoritatively on black culture” move, he needs to first establish an acceptable precedent for his argument by locating it in the ideology of a credible black artist (in this case Nas’s 2006 album Hip Hop is Dead). But notice how SFJ then immediately undermines that credibility: while he could just say “Nas called it three years ago,” he instead claims that while Nas’s sentiment was correct, the proclamation was three years premature, as if to say “Nice try, Nas, but leave it to the professional (white, college-educated) music journalist to make sweeping statements about (black, ghetto-originated) music.”

That last line is hilarious, as both members of Das Racist went to Wesleyan University–not exactly a black or brown school.

But what would I know: I’m just another “(white) internet commenter,” who listens to too much white rap and can’t get it up when a post-colonial jerk-off session comes calling.