Then again, I’m certainly no writer, and English is a foreign language for me, so most days I rein in my ambitions and leave the blog in more capable hands.I’ve already said a million times how much my Nana has influenced my life as a woman but I’m not sure if I’ve ever shared that I had to BEG her to take this picture!! □She was a woman determined to have her OWN career as a nurse at Harlem Hospital in 1952 the year her first son was born (my father). I always felt the Eels would be worth a profile. Blur’s definitely in the pipeline, but I’d also like to talk about someone I’m slightly more ambivalent about. I did once write a week on this band called Tocotronic, who started out as lo-fi grunge-pop sloganeers and eventually became the intellectual elder statesmen of German indie-rock. If you could profile one musician, who would it be? I was too young to catch the band at the peak of their activity, so now I’m taking everything I can get. Discovering their back catalog was a revelation for me they just seemed to give me everything I never knew I wanted from music-from sugary pop rushes to fuzzed-out art-rock noise. If flying to other countries to see band members’ side and solo projects counts as being a superfan, then yeah… I’m definitely slightly beyond critical reasoning with Blur. Or even Radiohead, who I had been pretty sure didn’t need to have any more words devoted to them. Liz Phair week was a highlight in that regard, also David Bowie in the 1990s, or Blink 182. I really enjoy the weeks that challenge the popular narrative but also have a bit of a personal twist. What’s been your favorite music week so far? It definitely isn’t intentional, but it might very well be that that’s a formative era for many of today’s music writers. It seems like there are a lot of ’90s artists in the roster: Weezer, Hole, REM. I’m not explicitly against a more unfavorable take, but I just don’t want to contribute to the ocean of needless negativity. That line’s pretty blurry, isn’t it? I guess you could call it a fan’s attempt at critical appreciation … most perspectives are generally positive but not blindly or fawningly so. Is the writing criticism? Fandom? Or something else entirely? It’s definitely as much about the people listening to music and their relationship to it as it’s about the music itself. I think it’s really important to have that variety of perspectives, even if just to realize that belittling someone for enjoying any sort of music is the stupidest thing. It’s a mix of professional writers, college professors, and just kids with Tumblrs who are passionate about music. In the age of Spotify and YouTube, I don’t really need to explain to anybody what a song sounds like-but detailing why I like it, and where it sits in the wider web, seemed like something worth sharing. That gave me the idea to create a collaborative space that would allow for an in-depth, personal discussion of any kind of music, not just the latest mp3s. I sort of fell into the music critic crowd on Tumblr, where people kept discussing the evolving nature of music blogs and lamenting shortening buzz cycles and impersonal listicles. Why start a blog devoted to longform music criticism? We chatted with Jasnoch about music blogging, fandom, and why he thinks there’s still a place for long reads. The musicians span the gamut (ABBA, Fugazi, Lil Wayne), and yet the writing is nearly always thoughtful, colorful, and reverent. But there’s also room for long-form, in-depth criticism of music outside the hype cycle. And so, each week for the past year, 27-year-old German MBA student Hendrik Jasnoch has handed over the keys to his blog- One Week // One Band-and invited music critics and fans to delve into the catalog of a single artist. If there’s one thing that most music blogs have in common, it’s the pursuit of the new: the latest fad, the hot new single, Kanye’s most recent outfit. This story was produced by Tumblr Storyboard, Tumblr’s in-house editorial arm.
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