Reading Rock Criticism is Like Watching Flies Fornicate

Ah, the hipsters of New York in the 2000's. During the 2000's Bands like Animal Collective, Black Dice, Ariel Pink, got no shortage of press from publications like the Onion, Vice, Village Voice. I remember very well hearing people in Brooklyn saying The Burnside Project selling well in Japan, Battles are selling well, Oneida is doing this and that. I recall late 2005 Ariel Pink got a big press surge. The actual numbers of sales tell a very different story. The metal band Nightwish from Finland who started in 1996-1997 or so, I've seen the figure given for the sales as being 7 million records sold. Another gothic metal band, H.I.M from Finland sold not quite as well as Nightwish, but sold well over 2 million copies. H.I.M had been successful in Europe in the late 90's but it was during the early to mid 2000's that they really broke into a U.S. audience. Lacuna Coil, a gothic metal band from Italy of the same period. I've seen the stat around that they sold 2 million records or so. That was all late 2000's. A few New York area indie bands like the Strokes and Interpol sold very well and crossed over into mainstream audiences. By comparison though, Nightwish, H.I.M, and Lacuna Coil obliterated virtually every Brooklyn band sales wise, as most of those bands even with label deals remained club bands. At the time I knew many of the same people as Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls, who seemed to be selling well, but after the Dresden Dolls broke up, the drummer Brian ended up playing with Black Tape for a Blue Girl, who, I was once told by a former Black Tape member, never sold more then a few thousand copies an album at the peak of their popularity. Publications like Vice were out of touch, press is not reflective of actual sales, and people in bands are very often full of it. That's at the height of the rise of bands like The Strokes, Interpol and the White Stripes that I'm talking about. Those numbers are somewhat surprising but not shocking really. Those band scenes in New York in the 2000's what a nightmare that was. Say what you will about Las Vegas, but moving there saved me from that garbage. Shows, labels, 'zines gigs-all that nonsense. What I should have said at the time was "you're being annihilated sales wise by a metal band from Finland", but I only had some vague inkling at the time that that was the case. Every single band, I could have just said the same thing. "You're being annihilated sales wise by a metal band from Finland." I regret the damage I could have done but didn't. That would have been amazing to have set up an interview with Animal Collective and the first question and only question of the interview is "how does it feel to know that you're being annihilated sales wise by a metal band from Finland?". That would have been great because reading rock reviews is generally like watching flies fornicate for hours. For the most part, I actually hate writing about bands.Insulting Psychic TV is pretty fun. There's a documentary about Charles Manson called Charles Manson Superstar where the interviewer asks Charles Manson what he thinks of feminism and he says "Oh, I'm a very beautiful woman". An individual upon hearing this might think A.Charles Manson is a genius subtle articulating something somehow secretly profound b. Charles Manson really is a woman or c. Charles Manson is insane. If you think a. or b. you are a big Psychic TV fan. A couple of the music reviews I've done, in particular about metal, have done well so I've continued posting on the topic. Michael Savage has 8-10 million listeners and he's banned form entering the U.K- to me that's big. Abuse of Power is actually a pretty sweat book. Human Centipede 2, banned in the U.K., released after 32 cuts, A Serbian Film, banned in a few countries, The Bunny Game, banned in the U.K. recently, unlikely to ever be released there- those are big. Some band that plays in small spaces in New York who like to put little pins on their jackets- that I don't see as being big or interesting. The press in New York during the 2000's wouldn't shut up about exactly that- bands that put little pins on their jackets that played little spaces in New York. 2003 or so Rick Moody wrote an entire essay about the Magnetic Fields and he had a major press deal and a movie made of one of his books only a few years before. To me that's insanity. I'm not one of these people that sits around and reads those little 33 and a 1/3 books that are a whole book about an indie rock album. The Finnish metal, it is what it is, but I'd take Nightwish over Williamsburg bands.