philip sherburne

I'm beginning to worry that I failed somewhat in my recent column: my primary purpose wasn't to moan about how bad the music is--it was, in contrary, an (admittedly somewhat tossed-off) analysis of the fact that moaning, increasingly, seems to be the dominant mode of discourse. (That I may occasionally fall into bouts of moaning myself, I think, only underscores the ubiquity, and the pull, of the tendency.)

In any case, I felt slightly vindicated when I read Adbusters' moan-alithic screed against hipsters, short on argument and long on spleen. ("The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning." So is Adbusters saying that the PBR brand actually had "meaning" when it was still a working-class thing?)

Now, Momus has weighed in with a critique. Skip the 24 pages of comments on Adbusters and read this instead.

(Thanks to Simon Reynolds--who ties the topic into the phenomenon of global "creatives," a recent discussion stemming in part from my "minimal/malaise" column--for the link.)