Shut Up, Dude: This Week’s Best Comments

Before this comment section gets taken over by Imagine Dragons jokes, let me just say I'm glad the blockade in Nagorno-Karabagh is finally getting some media attention. It's gone on for months, and it's truly an atrocity; I know people who live there, including family members of some of my students here in Yerevan, and they've been deprived of basic essentials like food, medicine, and gasoline. Many are just trying to survive by eating the vegetables they can grow in their own gardens. Azerbaijan's goal, of course, is ethnic cleasing of the region, which is why the International Criminal Court's first prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo described it as an act of "genocide" in his recent report.

It's been horrifying to watch this human rights catastrophe happen in slow motion over the past few months, and it's also pretty horrifying that major international news outlets have barely covered it.

It'd be one thing if he was just on the album and didn't say anything like this. If the verse was good enough that it could stand outside of this context, then I could understand her reasoning. But it's literal hate speech, and the fact that she was defending his inclusion so hard when he brought his anti-Semitism into the text itself is so, so disappointing.

And I'm also a little confused at publications like Pitchfork being willing to write off the verse's inclusion as just a point about "messiness." They would not be saying that about other musicians, or even other rappers.

If you're going to include it on the album, and you think it's antisemetic, it's incumbent upon you to help listeners understand why you included it in your art.

I have half a heart to write a more thoughtful and reasoned response to Noname’s actions throughout this brouhaha. I really want to like her and gave her a chance. But, as a Jew, all I have to say in the meantime is fuck outta here with this shit

And Flying Up The Modern Rock Charts On Its Way To Peaking at No.11… it’s Dead Milkmen with the ultimate punk rock love song, “Punk Rock Girl”; not just a love song but a two and a half and a bit minute guide to the punk rock culture of Philadelphia circa 1988.

So many references! So educational! Such a rich text! Where do we start?

We start with a walk to Zipperhead, a punk rock clothing store, now called Crash!Bang!Boom! You can buy a Dead Milkmen T-shirt there for $25, and they offer free shipping for orders over $100. I’m not sure how anyone outside of Philly was supposed to get this reference.

I’m also not sure how widespread awareness and/or fandom of Minnie Pearl was… the queen of country-comedy apparently? She wore a hat with a price tag on it? Was Minnie Pearl really a thing? "Punk Rock Girl" mentions her... TWICE!! Is Minnie Pearl someone punks worship? Was this the birth of the whole 90s kids liking things ironically thing? I need to know!!!

Now I used to think that the whole “California Dreaming” bit was just trolling, and Dead Milkman and Punk Rock Girl were making a big deal out of not being able to tell the difference between The Beach Boys and The Mamas and The Papas - or just not caring - because screw you boomer hippies! But apparently The Beach Boys did record a cover of “California Dreaming” in 1986, so you win this one Dead Milkman. Maybe this song is based on fact after all!!

But probably not, since I’ve checked up on the daughters of possible-candidates for Vice President, depending on whether we are going by who was V-P when the song was written and recorded (probably 1988) or when it was a hit (early 1989), calculations made all the more complicated by the fact that 1988 was an Election Year. And I am sad to report that the likelihood of either Corrine Quayle or Dorothy Bush being the inspiration for “Punk Rock Girl” are in the negatives.

Full disclosure: I don’t know Mojo Nixon, and despite my love for this song, I have never bothered to look him up. He is however going to have a Modern Rock Track hit later this virtual year, with a song called… oh good grief, really?... so my musical knowledge will receive some FIXINNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!

Fudge banana swirl just seems to be a delicious rhyme.

“Punk Rock Girl” is a 9.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZyaK3jo4Sl4

my "not antisemitic" tee shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by the shirt

"unfollow and support all the other amazing rappers putting out dope music"

Agreed.

Mr. Both Sides.

If your name is on the track as the lead artist, you're responsible for what's in it. This is not hard. I have every reason in the world to suspect now that Noname is a closet anti-Semite and just doesn't have the guts to own her shit, the same way that plenty of "I'm just asking hard questions" right-wing politicians and pundits don't want to come out and admit that they're white supremacists.

This all serves as a reminder that human beings are remarkably shitty at understanding the suffering of people outside their own group, which is why the classical Marxist view of the superior perspective of the oppressed is straight up false. Grievance blinds as much as it enlightens.

You’ll be dressed like this?

Looking forward to the Stereogum article about GingerBeard getting nailed in the balls by a box of Fudge Rounds while performing a show.