I got lambasted by Michael Fremer, LOL

[CJ Shearn]

Been a while since I've posted, but on Facebook I'm friends with Ken Micallef, the Stereophile, sometimes Downbeat writer who also is into vinyl.  He had made a post about the Verve subscription series, their attempt to follow Blue Note, Analogue Productions, etc.  I made what I thought was a well reasoned response about the series kind of not being for seasoned veterans, and more for like the Gen Z hipsters who occassionally get tired of records and sell their collections, for the audiophiles not really into jazz.  I saw Michael Fremer responded to my response.  I never laughed so hard in my life, knowing who he is, this isn't unexpected:

"Shizuka Shearn you are a total snob! Imagining who's the buyer of these titles?and yout "Gen Z hipster" crap? and even hallucinating the titles they'd buy and how long they would keep them? Seriously? And then "the audiophiles clueless about jazz" thing? You are clueless. And then you prattle on about your special SACDs and XRCDs??? hahaha."

 

My response:  (I'll leave out the choice language I used but told him to fuck off essentially) ""Michael Fremer Projection is a hell of a drug isn't it. I'm honored. You just made my night. I got dinged by Michael Fremer! You know the exact kind of audiophiles I'm talking about the ones who get into jazz but only the basic stuff, some go deeper but not all. You are one of the biggest snobs I've seen with your anti digital tirades. I don't do LP out of practicality because of my disability. LP sounds amazing on the right system. Wow. F*** off you self important (choice language I used)"

It was really hilarious and made my night last night. I got lambasted by Michael Fremer.  FWIW I know a lot more about vinyl than most people realize, having grown up with it. I've heard/played Liberty era/UA/close to original RVG deep groove Blue Note and Prestige pressings when I DJ'ed at WHRW FM in Binghamton in my teens, had a lot of original RVG CTI pressings growing up too.

Edited 23 hours ago by CJ Shearn

[JSngry]

Congratulations!

[Rabshakeh]

I mean, you've pretty much nailed Micallef's audience there. 

On his YT channel he used to occasionally have a guest spot with some guy who had a stall on a New York street (literally on the street). I always liked that guy a lot. A huge amount of enthusiasm and some excellent records. I think his name was Jimmy Vinyl or something. I forget. 

Micallef less so. He occasionally does those show off videos where he shows you his amazing collection but the actual videos he does are so primed for engagement and devoid of actual information that they make me queasy. 

Edited 18 hours ago by Rabshakeh

[clifford_thornton]

on another forum, we used to call the vinyl YT show-and-tell videos "buttlock videos." Forever clenched...

anyway, I steer well clear of them as I prefer my sphincter to remain loose.

[CJ Shearn]

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

I mean, you've pretty much nailed Micallef's audience there. 

On his YT channel he used to occasionally have a guest spot with some guy who had a stall on a New York street (literally on the street). I always liked that guy a lot. A huge amount of enthusiasm and some excellent records. I think his name was Jimmy Vinyl or something. I forget. 

Micallef less so. He occasionally does those show off videos where he shows you his amazing collection but the actual videos he does are so primed for engagement and devoid of actual information that they make me queasy. 

I'm actually starting my own YouTube channel next month, they'll be music interviews there but I'll mostly be doing interviews with people about life.  I think Fremer took offense because he knew I was calling his audience too... for example the sycophants over the Blue Note Review Lee Morgan box set, which I'm sure many of us would agree is not really necessary and not for us. The guy is so thin skinned a 78 year old cannot take criticism? It's like the only thing he's good at is talking about vinyl and derives his entire self worth on that. Micallef's interviews aren't great IMO, he's done one of the worst Lenny White interviews I ever seen, I did an incredible interview with Lenny years back. I've been on Jazz Bums' channel a few times but it's evident my knowledge is leagues above theirs musically, and it was a bit awkward.  Most of us here are leagues above any of those channels knowledge wise.

[Rabshakeh]

1 minute ago, CJ Shearn said:

I'm actually starting my own YouTube channel next month, they'll be music interviews there but I'll mostly be doing interviews with people about life.  I think Fremer took offense because he knew I was calling his audience too... for example the sycophants over the Blue Note Review Lee Morgan box set, which I'm sure many of us would agree is not really necessary and not for us. The guy is so thin skinned a 78 year old cannot take criticism? It's like the only thing he's good at is talking about vinyl and derives his entire self worth on that. Micallef's interviews aren't great IMO, he's done one of the worst Lenny White interviews I ever seen, I did an incredible interview with Lenny years back. I've been on Jazz Bums' channel a few times but it's evident my knowledge is leagues above theirs musically, and it was a bit awkward.  Most of us here are leagues above any of those channels knowledge wise.

One guy I quite like who is a Micallef acolyte is a Minnesota guy called the Jazz Shepherd. Seems like an off but decent guy. He has very deep knowledge of 50s and 60s jazz, but a ferocious hate for anything avant. There is the usual tedious engagement stuff, but his knowledge of his subject goes deep.

[JSngry]

4 minutes ago, CJ Shearn said:

The guy is so thin skinned a 78 year old cannot take criticism?

78 is old, and old people can be crankier than younger people sometimes 

[Rabshakeh]

Also, the internet frieth the head. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Fremer's panties are still in a bunch over all of the rave reviews of MoFi vinyl cuts that he gave, usually with some sort of "analog is king" vibe, only to find out that nearly all of them were cut using high resolution digital files. His credibility is shot so it shouldn't be unexpected that he's going to lash out when questioned after that fiasco.

[Rabshakeh]

14 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Fremer's panties are still in a bunch over all of the rave reviews of MoFi vinyl cuts that he gave, usually with some sort of "analog is king" vibe, only to find out that nearly all of them were cut using high resolution digital files. His credibility is shot so it shouldn't be unexpected that he's going to lash out when questioned after that fiasco.

Ha!

[JSngry]

Who is this guy anyway? Looking him up on Wicki, I can't say that I've seen where he's ever written anything about music by itself, it's always attached to audiophillia (or vice-versa). So...why should I care?

[CJ Shearn]

25 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Fremer's panties are still in a bunch over all of the rave reviews of MoFi vinyl cuts that he gave, usually with some sort of "analog is king" vibe, only to find out that nearly all of them were cut using high resolution digital files. His credibility is shot so it shouldn't be unexpected that he's going to lash out when questioned after that fiasco.

Yeah, he was shitting on me for liking SACD and XRCD... typical.  Bet he hasn't heard those last Blue Note XRCD's anyway.

46 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

One guy I quite like who is a Micallef acolyte is a Minnesota guy called the Jazz Shepherd. Seems like an off but decent guy. He has very deep knowledge of 50s and 60s jazz, but a ferocious hate for anything avant. There is the usual tedious engagement stuff, but his knowledge of his subject goes deep.

He knows a lot but I can't stand him with a passion.  His views that all jazz is about suffering is a bit much, or that hard bop is angry, and that cats on hard bop sessions came into the dates discussing news, politics... no, a lot of times they just came to play.  He has a post Wynton type of ideology I don't dig.  I doubt he listens to jazz made today. His Jimmy Smith series was great but I was getting into it with him over his blanket dismissal of most of JOS' Verve period.  Also a huge component of Jimmy Smith was his drawbar settings over the years, which are easy to hear and spot once you know what they are, which he neglected to get into.  I always detail Jimmy's 3 major periods of changing his organ sound.  His dismissal of audiophiles is wild too.

7 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Who is this guy anyway? Looking him up on Wicki, I can't say that I've seen where he's ever written anything about music by itself, it's always attached to audiophillia (or vice-versa). So...why should I care?

He doesn't write about music, that's the thing... he writes about equipment.  He once described Philly Joe Jones' drums on Cool Struttin as woody.  I think he meant the sound of the stick on the drum head or referring to Philly Joe's stick shots.

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, CJ Shearn said:

He knows a lot but I can't stand him with a passion.  His views that all jazz is about suffering is a bit much, or that hard bop is angry, and that cats on hard bop sessions came into the dates discussing news, politics... no, a lot of times they just came to play.  He has a post Wynton type of ideology I don't dig.  I doubt he listens to jazz made today. His Jimmy Smith series was great but I was getting into it with him over his blanket dismissal of most of JOS' Verve period.  Also a huge component of Jimmy Smith was his drawbar settings over the years, which are easy to hear and spot once you know what they are, which he neglected to get into.  I always detail Jimmy's 3 major periods of changing his organ sound.  His dismissal of audiophiles is wild too.

All of this is fair and the political stuff is particularly daft but he knows his stuff for his period at least. I like how he pushes records on Bethlehem and Mode and other labels that are completely unfashionable in the wider internet. 

[CJ Shearn]

4 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

All of this is fair and the political stuff is particularly daft but he knows his stuff for his period at least. I like how he pushes records on Bethlehem and Mode and other labels that are completely unfashionable in the wider internet. 

That is a positive at least.

[JSngry]

Bethlehem & especially Mode were some of the sufferingless labels of their time, so...disconnect, maybe? Or maybe he doesn't really have a point, just an agenda?

[Rabshakeh]

4 hours ago, JSngry said:

Bethlehem & especially Mode were some of the sufferingless labels of their time, so...disconnect, maybe? Or maybe he doesn't really have a point, just an agenda?

Yeah. But it's not a clever agenda. He likes to stress how fiery hard bop was and how political it was, presumably because he thinks that grows engagement (and he probably believes it and hears it). But he clearly loves bop, cool and the rest. So there's a disconnect between his general overview sections and his specific discussions of records. What appeals to me about him is just how different he is to the rest of the people discussed on this thread. He's not a 78 year old hi fi obsessive from New York. He's some guy in an American football shirt in a tiny suburb of some small mid western town. And he doesn't just do Blue Note stuff every day. It is all second hand stuff too. No reissue wankfests. 

Sorry. Enough about this guy, who I rarely watch anyway these days. I don't want to derail the thread. Those YouTube hi fi guys are the pits.