New Forbes Music Blog

I've been very under the radar the last few days, in recovery mode. Yes, I had a (fairly mild) heart attack a couple of weeks ago and it will take a while to get my energy back. But I just ran into one thing that was so 'stimulating' that I have to write about it. Forbes has a new music blog. Forbes, magazine of millionaires, billionaires and lists of millionaires and billionaires. These folks should be, if anyone is, the patrons of the serious music of our time. Let's have a look at that blog to see what it reveals. Hello to Michele Catalano who has a thin resumé as a writer. She's not just out of high school as she has a son--she just writes as if she were. Here's the blog. Here is an extended quote; please hold on to something in case you lose your balance:

I write about music because I write about life. The two things are intrinsically meshed with each other and I hope it will be evident in each piece I write that my relationship with music is a very personal one. I welcome you into this part of my world, into the space where I hope I can share my sacred relationship with music and all the musical things I believe with you.
What do I believe?
I believe Queens of the Stone Age are the best rock band around. I believe in 80s west coast punk. I believe 80s east coast hardcore is better than 80s east coast straight edge, but not by much. I believe Incubus was a better band before Make Yourself, that John Darnielle is the greatest storyteller in music and that people just don’t understand My Chemical Romance. I believe in remembering my roots and dragging out my Who, Doors and Zeppelin albums every once in a while. I believe in old, scratchy vinyl and the passion of a cassette mix tape. I believe music critics should be more honest which is why I will tell you how much I love boy bands and pop music. I believe that everyone has a skeleton in their musical closet that looks like Korn and they should let that closet door hang open once in while. I believe “Mmmbop” is the single greatest pop song ever made.

This kind of stuff is ok, sure. It's what used to appear in the teen-pop mags like RAVE or TOP-BOYS or Creem or Teen-Beat or Crawdaddy and hundreds of others. It was all about the cool of naming the new names who were cool because they were new. The quote above, by the way, goes on for much longer than you would think in exactly the same vein. For the life of me all I can visualize is Michele, writhing around on her bed, listening to her iPod on shuffle, giggling and touching herself. That's the kind of activity that produces this kind of prose.

Now Forbes is a magazine presumably read by business people, the affluent or would-be affluent, movers and possibly shakers. My question is, what could these people possibly derive from reading one sentence of this half-baked recitation of names with whom they associate no known musical sound?

I've been a musician for over forty years and except for the Who, Doors and Zeppelin, have heard of not one single one of these names. Wait, I think I heard the name Korn once. Now presumably all these names are deliciously meaningful to the right demographic which has got to be fourteen year old girls, of whom ol' Michele Catalano is trying her best to be a facsimile. But why, in the name of all that's holy, would any reader of Forbes have the slightest interest in any of this? Why!?!

Does an editor need to be fired somewhere? Or, shudder, is it the case that this is the music suitable to the attention of the wealthy and powerful? If that's the case then that would go some way towards explaining why the world's economy is going down the crapper. If the people who read Forbes are spending their time reading that "Mmmbop" is the single greatest pop song ever made, then we are in most desperate need of a new aristocracy. STAT!

The leaders of the economic system of the world are listening to: "Mmmbop"?