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Christopher R. Weingarten, up all night

The Last Critic Standing, Hype Machine hater and Crumbler bête noire is lovingly profiled in the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review. As ever, the crumbling infrastructure of for-profit music criticism weighs heavily upon Weingarten. He has nothing but contempt for music fans who avoid the witticisms that spring from his pen each day in favor of simply downloading new music and seeing for themselves whether it’s any good.

“I could spend the whole night trying to find the right words to say something, and they just want information,” Weingarten seethes.

Reading that, I wondered how many nights Weingarten spent crafting the following piece of critical insight:

“Susan Boyle/I Dreamed A Dream: Fuck you, 2009. #2.5.”

Hard to believe that the going rate for criticism is on the decline, what with gems like this all up in our tweets.

Best of luck to Mr. Weingarten. Can’t wait to find out what else he hates.

8 notes Comments
2 years ago

Crumbler remixed with LCD Soundsystem

As if we did not have enough reasons to love the Hype Machine! Today I learned that the fine folks over at Hypem ended their May podcast by mashing up Crumbler’s Christopher R. Weingarten Parody rant with the Holy Ghost remix of LCD Soundsystem’s “Drunk Girls.” “We’re going to take you out this week to the dual strains of this wicked Holy Ghost remix of Drunk Girls and blogger Casey Newton,” hostess Abbey Braden says at 55:40, in the most surreal sentence I have ever heard in my life.

Incidentally, thanks to everyone who listened to and reblogged the original rant. At just under a thousand plays, it’s easily the most-played audio track ever posted to Crumbler. Now go follow Zoya and Anthony and Hypem and marvel at all the great stuff they’re bringing to the Web.

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3 years ago

Weingarten rant

by Casey Newton
from Casey Newton's Album

“Christopher R. Weingarten Parody Rant,” Crumbler. So just as he did last year, “Last Rock Critic Standing” Christopher R. Weingarten took the stage of some Twitter conference to talk about how bad things are bad and back in his day and why won’t somebody do something about all the problems?

My first instinct was to calmly rebut him, but as Weingarten would say, FUCK CALM REBUTTALS. This won’t make much sense to you if you haven’t watched Weingarten’s rant, but even if you haven’t it will still be fun for you to hear me say:

“The Hype Machine is a search engine to find free MP3s. FUCK THEM.”

And

What’s important is that we write a thousand blips a year, 140 characters at a time, designed not to educate a public about a record but as sphinx-like riddles to be decoded by graduate students at the University of Who Gives a Fuck.

And

I crush so hard on Robert Christgau’s Consumer Guide there are paper cuts on my dick.

(download )

37 notes Comments
3 years ago