Dan DeLuca’s MP3 Problem, Or, What The F Is A “Ceee Deee,” Brah?
It cannot be easy being the last rock critic standing at the Inquirer: All your mail is still addressed to Tom Moon, it’s a coin toss whether even your loved ones will still read the pieces you file (they read Stereogum now), and heaven help you getting over that firewall if, say, a publicist sends you an mp3 link. But that doesn’t mean you can’t even try to act like you wanna, as Mike Skinner once said, push things forward. What are we going on about? Well, for the second year running (maybe more), Inky music critic Dan DeLuca has published his list piece wondering what the official (or un-official) song of Summer ’08 will be. (Duh, it’s obviously Air France’s “Collapsing At Your Doorstep.”) But our gripe this year isn’t even so much about the lazy listology employed here; although, if we’re calling it like we see it, dude could have focused on two or three tracks instead of the rote tokenism brought on by considering 21 tracks including, I shit you not, “Ur So Gay” by Katy Perry. No, rather, it’s the effort DeLuca wants you to make in the service of this really neat way cool list he made, maaaan:
The 21 picks assembled here – on a playlist that can be burned onto one CD – are contenders for the songs of summer ’08, tunes that may worm their way into your consciousness, if they haven’t made it there already.
Wait, what? You want me to scour the Internet OR pay $21 bucks to download all these off iTunes, THEN burn ‘em to a CD so I can then know what the fuck you’re banging on about to meet your word count? Clearly, this is some kind of dream sent to me by God to re-affirm my choice in quitting the RockWrite game in 2003. But the problem isn’t entirely DeLuca’s: Let’s say he wanted to just point you to his blog where you can listen to the tracks. No can do: Inky editorial policy makes it so that the dude can’t post mp3s — not even as streams or song samples — thereby making him The World’s Most Brokedick MP3 Blogger: An mp3 blogger who cannot post mp3s. Just YouTube videos. But still, there’s gotta be a way around it all. And that CD shit? Cute. So listen, we’d try to help ya out, but if you think we’re rocking The Hold Steady on the Philebrity Muxtape, you gotta be kidding me. Get your own, sneak the link on your blog somewhere, and be done with it. Show a little ambition already — if recent reports are anything to go by, you’re gonna be looking for a job soon enough.
Inky: You Can Get It On Cassette Now
