>John Borack miffed:
>You're wrong.

To paraphrase you: "But that's just your opinion, obviously."

>Of course, I'd be willing to bet that Eb is making this pronouncement without
>even having listened to many of the Audities list's faves, which throws any
>shred of credibility he may have right out the 'ol [sic] window.

No, I haven't heard all the bands on the 2002 list. Two-thirds or so? 
But I have read the breezy, happy-face descriptions of them. "Good 
melodies! Tight harmonies! Fun! Here's a list of bands they sound 
like, and the righteous covers they play onstage! Nice guys, too!" 
It's not hard to read between the lines. More facile, derivative 
fluff. Reading pop-ezine reviews, it becomes so clear that once 
you've named the classic band which a song sounds like, the battle is 
mostly won. This just isn't my mindset.

But, actually, I have...let's see...seven albums from the Audities 
top 50 (mostly found at the bottom of the list) in my permanent 
collection, and will add two or three more in the future. Of the 
rest, I heard and rejected a few discs in their entirety, skimmed and 
rejected others based on soundclips or CD-listening stations, and 
have rejected earlier albums by some other acts. As for the acts 
which I haven't heard, just reading the sugary names and song titles 
is usually enough. Also, as I've said before, I'm very unlikely to 
enjoy bands who can't attract any attention beyond the power-pop cult 
and/or bands confined to microlabels founded exclusively to pander to 
that cult.

>To me, a lot of the CoF list is ridiculously pretentious, hype-ridden,
>flavor-of-the-month, tragically hip crap.

"Ridiculously pretentious." But, of course. In the Audities world, 
anything with a sense of ambition or ego is immediately suspect. It's 
all about bland universality, the familiar comfort zone, personality 
fading into the background, subservience to the calculated craft of 
the song...la la la la. Whistle a happy tune. As for discriminating 
against a record just because it's trendy, that's no smarter than 
*favoring* a record just because it's trendy.

>That list wasn't any more "credible" than the Audities list---it
>was just different.

Mm-hmm. I've seen a few of your top-10 lists, too. It's pretty clear 
where you're coming from. Certainly in that CoF poll, yours is one of 
the four or five lists which is most noticeably blinkered to life 
outside the IPO realm. (Oddly enough, the other such lists also tend 
to come from familiar Audities names.)

This reminds me: I was in Amoeba Records last week, and one of the 
list's Top 5 Davids innocently said "Excuse me" to dig into the F 
section next to me. His face didn't register in my mind until after 
he and his oversized cowboy hat had moved on. Heh. Ships that pass in 
the night....

Stewart flexed s'more:
>Golly, but we're ALL so impressed with your constant "la la la, you all
>listen to shit" babble.  It makes us all take you and your opinions
>sooooooooo much more seriously!
>
>I'm gonna go sit in the corner and cry now because Big Bad Eric didn't like
>Consonant.  I'm crushed.  My soul is mortally wounded.  How ever will I
>survive the mortal pain? Oh, woe...

Jeez, Stewart. This swaggering, sarcastic-bully shtick really is 
tired. Junior-high stuff. Give me something I can use.