Prejudice: The best laxative when it comes to crapping on bands

Lindsay Anne Arnold is a former intern for The Village Voice and is currently studying communications at NYU. Idolator had her thumb through the music section and wipe her ass with it, which I'm not saying is a bad idea, exactly. I don't think it's news to anyone that The Village Voice has gone pretty far downhill in recent years, and I'm not contesting that it's probably a den of iniquity filled with former music directors from college radio stations, but here's what I have an issue with:

Michael D. Ayers wrote about a band called Parts and Labor who play "art-jam-noise." I like jam bands, so I downloaded some of this stuff. It sounded like a sheep taking a dump with a Green Day album playing underneath it! Maybe the sheep pooping part is the "art" part, I dunno. Like one time, back in Baltimore, the music editor told me, "art in music is like pornography--you know it when you get a hard-on." That's when I asked to be moved down to the IT offices.

What blows about this part is it's a classic fallacy in several parts. First, it's begging the question. You're nominally evaluating VV's music section to see if it's any good, but you've already decided it's no good. So as proof that it's no good, you're simply positing that the bands the critics are writing about are no good. Now, obviously, there's no yardstick for measuring creative virtue, but do you really think she gave an open-minded listen to Parts & Labor?

I mean, the hypocrisy is staggering if you really look into it. By quoting Ayers, she sets up an expectation--and a false one at that, because the quote is completely removed from the original context of the article. She then complains that the band didn't sound like what she wanted and then makes a simple-minded simile in an attempt at humor. Sheep! Green Day! Poo!

When you break it down, this is really nothing more than someone saying a publication is crap because they have a writer who likes a band that isn't good. And why aren't they good? Because aside from how they sound, they were inaccurately described by a crap writer for a crap publication.

Call me crazy: I happen to like Parts & Labor. I'm sorry Ms. Arnold had such a rough time at The Village Voice--it sounds like a terrible place, really, but does a hard-working and inventive band have to get splattered with shit because of it?