Hello dear readers. I’ve decided to unveil a new feature of RipFork. For you folks out there who can’t read so goods but enjoy pictures, this’ll totally fondle you. It’s called “Music Lice in Motion.” Here’s how it works.  I’ll take a video of a music critic and give my thoughts on his thoughts. Simple as that. But first I’m going to take really funny still frames and make homoerotic jokes:

Matt LeMay: No, SERIOUSLY. He was LITERALLY like this big.

Interviewer: Mmm…I bet you put your lips on it just like this.

Matt LeMay: It’s really starting to bug me how he won’t let the palm of my hand touch. It’s just fingertips and eye contact the whole time. I really want to show him I can use the palm.

Interviewer: I breathed on one once.

Interviewer: I like the site where the dongs are like this big around, and…oh what’s the name…Freaks of Cock, I think it is? Boy I’d like to wear one of those.

…

They might have CG-d the cocks in later, but those still frames are actually just from an interview of music critic Matt LeMay by interviewer Needs to Hit the Weight Room. Seriously dude, how you gonna lift a car off an accident victim with those pipe cleaners? Yeesh.

Anyway, I’m sure Matt LeMay is internationally recognized now, but seven years ago he was known for one thing and one thing only: giving the Liz Phair album that wasn’t Exile in Guyville the lowest rating in Pitchfork history. Not counting Ray Suzuki’s video of a chimp tasting his own urea, Matt LeMay’s 900-word review is one of only a few to ever hit bottom baseline. Yes indeed, this is the guy who rated an album adorned with a smoking hot woman spread eagle behind an electric guitar…a 0.0.

I could rattle on about how a career typist gave a musician that kind of donkey punch, but I’m going to move on. Liz Phair can take care of Liz Phair.

First, watch the interview.

…If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, just skip to 3:20.





And now that I’ve given my laughter a chance to subside, I can gleefully say wasn’t expecting definitive proof at least one of these fools actually SPEAKS as farty as he writes. What you saw was real. Really, he’s that dull in person. He really pushed that jargon past his lips. He really said, “There seems to be a fairly obvious corollary insofar as.” This Pitchfork writer is really as bad in conversation as he is on paper. It’s not just a writing disorder. Read some of these juicy morsels from Mr. Lemay’s robotic mouth:

“sort of rises to the top of the culture”

“music that requires a bit more of an investment to really parse.”

“bands that are maybe working within a more traditional paradigm”

Any of that junk could appear in a regular post on RipFork, culled from some sanctimonious written review. You’d think a guy who listens to music like brick layers lay brick would have something looser to say in person. By the way, how many times did you rehearse these mini lectures, Matt? Every other second, you’re staring up at the ceiling like you’re scared Pipecleaners is going to blacklist you for screwing up. Did you have to stop and refer to your script during one of the five cuts in a four-minute interview or were your answers just too tedious to keep in their entirety?

If RipFork readers need any further explanation of why I’m annoyed that bad writers have such a stranglehold on music, I suggest you watch the video again. If there’s any sign pointing to a man needing to get his nose out of his own crummy excuse for expression, it’s Matt LeMay’s performance in this video. Towards the end, he even fed me a perfect cut:

“and not to have to lay yourself prostrate before the idea of art”

Maybe I’m just a nitwit, but I reckon most people couldn’t have pulled something that curly out of their asses in conversation. Wow. Lying prostrate before the idea of art, huh? That’s funny. If nothing else, that’s exactly what you should have been doing, Mr. 0.0.

“I don’t know, it’s kind of sketchy, I think”

Tags: