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It was nice to open up a story on CMJ in the New York Times and see a picture of Ponytail’s singer, Molly Siegel, smiling from up on stage, eyes closed, head tilted into the lights. It just looked cool. And nice to see the band make the Times. They are truly the best live band in the Baltimore or D.C.
You can check the story/photo here complete with condescending headline “This Is The Music Of The Blogs.”
Yeah. Let’s talk about that headline for just a second.
Before you get all pissed off. Pareles writes love letter of a first graph:
Sometime in the mid-2000s, the words indie-rock and blog became inseparable. The two were made for each other. Both are the province of self-starters, innovators, collectors, early adopters, volunteers and cranks. Blogs are marvelously efficient at making music known, if not necessarily profitable to musicians; they’re likely to provide free MP3s promoting the bands they tout. Both blogs and indie-rock are part of the “long tail,” the countless choices beyond blockbusters that are now infinitely more visible thanks to the Internet. And both are proud to be clever and self-conscious.
Nothing in there hasn’t been said, felt, heard before. But why is the MSM still obsessed with blogs?