Sufyawn Strikes Again. This Time I Strike Back
Alternate title: SufYawn and Amazon piss off Sean.
Amazon sends me more recommendations THAT I DON’T LIKE. I wish they offered me a thumbs down button, or a cd-in-the-microwave button.
So I really don’t like Soofyawn. I won’t go into that all over again, suffice to say that anonymous attorneys disagree with my taste but there’s little room for debate in subjective matters such as these. Enough with the words. To action!
I Strike Back: I illegally downloaded his entire illinoise album off bittorrent and then deleted it. Then I did it again. And again. This wanton theft and destruction felt so good that I decided to follow the “three or more, use a for” (that’s programmer speak) rule and made a script that downloaded illinoise and deleted it for me. Automagically. Set it and forget it, so to speak.
Now, I figure for every illegal download the label is losing about $10. At this rate, I have cost Sufjan Stevens’ record label close to five thousand dollars.
Next Step: I’ll write a virus that spreads via MySpace. Once it infects a system, it proceeds to repeatedly download illegal copies of illinoise and delete them all. I’m going to completely bankrupt his label, which is what they deserve for signing such crap.
You’re killing me here!
Adam Rice
8 Dec 05 at 4:37 pm
why don’t you write some code that writes sufyawn songs whilst simultaneous errasing them and sell it to his Lable???
ramdung
8 Dec 05 at 4:57 pm
next comes the jeff tweedy recommendation.
brent
8 Dec 05 at 5:40 pm
Dude. I see that stupid white album with the egg on it every time I get email from itunes (from which I have ceased to purchase, btw). I saw that I’m Trying to Break Your Heart documentary and I think I’m starting to get debilitating migranes just from watching it. Heavy Metal Drummer. That’s their ONLY good song. I like that one, but the all his others just rub me the wrong way.
This guy sums up my Wilco feelings best:
banksean
8 Dec 05 at 5:48 pm
its like when my friends (or were they) told me i would love sebadoh. i didn’t, i don’t, i won’t.
brent
8 Dec 05 at 7:04 pm
Yeah, well Amazon is obviously not my friend (or is it).
banksean
8 Dec 05 at 7:11 pm
list of crap bands everyone likes that actually suck.
1)sebadoh
2)GBV
3)Queens of the Stone Age
4)Mogwai
5)And you will know them by the trail of music they’ve bastardized
6)Spoon
7)Wilco
8)Low
9)Postal Service
10)Death Crap for Cooties
the thoughts and opinions listed above are not necessarily that of Banksean or anyone who has posted to this thread (including the author).
ramdung does own and actively listens to most of these bands- this in no way means that he believes there worth spending the moullah on. Ramdung hates music and only listens to satisfy his machocistic tendencies.
ramdung
9 Dec 05 at 7:31 am
SooofSean:
I can think of two easy fixes.
1. Amazon has a function that allows you to tell it whether you already have an album or not. Telling Amazon that you already have Illinois will stop the recommendation, though it might lead Amazon to recommend Seven Swans or Michigan instead.
2. Amazon allows you to rate albums. If you give Illinois a zero star rating, you will probably never see a Sufjan album pitched to you again.
This is an opportunity to respond to your final question to Alejandro. It may be that your most strongly expressed views invite disagreement because they tend to be particularly vulnerable. In general, positions gravitating towards absolutes (e.g., killing is never justified, love is the paramount virtue, etc.) have difficulties with counterfactuals.
With respect to Sufjan, I agree with you of course that subjective taste is difficult to debate. But in this case I wonder if the hype has distorted the music for you? I personally believe that Sufjan should have received the current flood of acclaim for Michigan, and not for Illinois (which is a much less consistent album). But I have a hard seeing how you can think that Illinois is a total dud.
I am currently listening to Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. I purchased it on the strength of Stankonia. Now I wish that I can have my $15 back. Grammies apparently don’t mean shit.
I have Twin Cinema sitting in its wrapper unopened. I am reluctant to open it because I know that I will like it and want to save something “good” for when I need it. Is that strange?
Akeem Timm Madu
10 Dec 05 at 10:41 am
Point conceeded re: my tendency to argue absolute extremes. They’re just simpler to reason about and I’m mentally lazy. Black and white are easier to compare than the infinite shades of gray between them. I usually make these arguments in jest though.
My real point in this post isn’t so much that Sufjan sucks but that A) as you say, critical acclaim (or grammies) do not mean shit, B) suggestions to buy things are still annoying to customers even when you use sooper-dooper advanced AI to generate them and c) downloading music doesn’t actually hurt record labels. To say it that plainly isn’t fun to write. I can only assume it isn’t fun to read. The sufjan sucks argument is there just to get your attention.
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below did suck, and I hope you can get your $15 back. Try illegally downloading something else from their label.
Twin Cinema is good and so are the reviews, so I don’t always disagree with everything the critics say. In the interest of full disclosure, I did download Twin Cinema off bittorrent, loved it, then bought a copy once it was released.
I think that’s a good strategy actually. Download a new album illegally first, and if it doesn’t suck then buy a copy. That way you can “punish” the label for putting out stuff that you don’t like, and reward them when they put out stuff that you do like.
Rather than looking at album sales they can look at download-to-purchase ratios to see if they’re doing something wrong. Low album sales can result from lots of things, like lack of promotion. Now if they get lots of downloads then promotion is working and people want to check out the album. If the downloads aren’t accompanied by a proportional bump in sales then it’s obvious that the kids are hearing it, but they ain’t liking it. The promotions work but the band still sucks.
banksean
10 Dec 05 at 11:49 am
i am currently listening to the new Soft Boy album ‘Half Retarded’. i say album because i am old and miss records. i don’t know if the reviews are good but i dig it. ‘All Season Calender’ is a cool song. anyway, to elevate the debate here i will say, UP WITH THE BANKSEAN, DOWN WITH THE POOFYAWN!!!
brent
10 Dec 05 at 11:13 pm
That grooved vinyl contains ancient wisdom which must be preserved in case of electromagnetic pulse attack by aliens or staged invasions by the illuminated elite. You sir are the guardian of all that rocks. Keep these records safe and- Wait, did you say The Soft Boys new album? wtf dude? I think you’re just making shit up now.
banksean
11 Dec 05 at 8:30 am
Soft Boy not ‘Soft Boys’. only one boy that is soft.
brent
11 Dec 05 at 7:19 pm
Banksean, thanks for the props.
Buster
Buster Langs
7 Jan 06 at 12:32 am