"I do have one tip for avoiding bad bands. For some reason, people who frequent literary circles tend to have particularly pedestrian tastes in music and a need to invest their latest boring discoveries with massive cultural significance. If you’re throwing a cocktail party, by all means invite the literati: They’re witty, they’re fun, and they sleep around, all of which are traits that music critics lack. But regarding music, writers don’t know what they’re talking about, they’re completely unaware of this, and nothing will convince them otherwise." Granting a handful of exceptions, in re: both lit and rockcrit folk, MB, I kiss you.

(Don't believe me? Check out the new issue of The Believer, which features a Q&A with Robert Pollard of the soon-to-be-departed-thank-fucking-god Guided by Voices by Matthew Derby, whose claims that this two-bit hustler of half-finished garbage is "crammed to the heart with song" whose "perfectly executed hooks" "rock, effortlessly"; who claims that a catalogue of ten thousand songs is somehow a mark of honor and not of extreme hackdom; and that GBV are "one of the all-time greatest rock acts in Western history." Good riddance to bad rubbish--except, of course, that Pollard will now concentrate on his--gag--solo career.)