Hey, you guys, I don’t want to boast or anything…but Swan Fungus is now the #6 Google result for “Gail Simmons.” Hell, you don’t even have to use quotation marks. My authority on the subject of Gail Simmons (that is her tits, her boobs, her husband, and her work for Food & Wine Magazine and Top Chef) is so high, Google doesn’t even care how you search for her name; they are simply going to respond by referring queries to this website. I couldn’t think of a better website for Gail Simmons information. Can you believe that my website is recommended by Google above even Gail’s own Twitter account!? Speaking of which, I “tweeted” at her this afternoon. I’ll be sure to share the breaking news if she actually responds to me, but I won’t be able to state for certain if her massive tits somehow get in the way and cause a typographical error. Maybe she’s just not a good typist, you know? I mean, she went to McGill…
Today being Top Ten Friday, I should probably take a moment to point you towards the Top Ten list I penned for WFMU yesterday. I detail the 10 best records I bought at the WFMU Record Fair. Some asshole immediately commented that by including a recently released Mississippi Records compilation, my entire list was invalidated. Hey, it’s not my fault that the commenter — who is still probably jerking off to the thought of his zinger deep inside the impenetrable fortress he’s built in his parent’s basement — didn’t read the part about how any Mississippi release is cause for commotion. Also, I only bought ten records during my shopping spree at the fair, so I wasn’t going to fucking lie and make something up, nor was I going to write a “Top Nine” list simply because one of the albums I bought was recently released.
A couple weeks ago, the amazing folks at Hype Machine published a list of the Top 10 Music Blogs You Haven’t Heard (Or Read). Swan Fungus was included in this list. Not because I know two of the people involved with the website, but because I think they might actually respect me as a blogger! Of course, Swan Fungus did not receive any special attention (their list wasn’t ranked), so their readers are to assume that all ten of those websites are equal to each other. This could not be further from the truth. My blog is so much better than those other blogs, I can’t even begin to describe the ways in which it is better. Wait a minute — I know! I’ll create my own Top 10 list to work through my ideas!
The Top Ten Reasons Why Swan Fungus Is A Better Blog Than The Hype Machine’s Choices For
The Top 10 Music Blogs You Haven’t Heard (Or Read)
10. Armchair Spasm is a WordPress Dot Com blog – Come on, guy (or gal), you couldn’t figure out how to install the engine? Wait, let me guess: you’re not old enough to pay for Internet hosting fees on your own. I have an idea, let’s see how productive your blog entries are when you’re running your own .com and a masturbatory free WordPress account, plus all the other stupid little self-reflexive exercises in which I engage! That’ll prove your mettle as a blogger. Until then, you’re still bush league.
09. Awesome Tapes From Africa is probably run by a stupid Brooklyn hipster – What’s it going to be next month, Gnarly Indonesian Gamelan or Kickin’ It Kyrgyz Style? You hipsters are so quick to glop onto whatever is trendy in world music today. Just because a hipster-douche attracting band like Dengue Fever name-dropped some obscure Algerian Rai record doesn’t make it the best thing ever recorded on the face of the planet. Expand your horizons.
08. Berezzka is all Russian and shit – How am I supposed to appreciate or enjoy something I can’t even read? That’s like asking a newborn to get their geek-on about Baudelaire’s Les Paradis Artificiels. It’s not going to happen. Plus, that picture tied to the most recent blog entry looks like it was taken from an issue of VICE, which makes me wonder if the whole thing is a front. Nice try, VICE. You still suck!
07. Doklands isn’t just a Livejournal, it actively cribs music from Swan Fungus! – John Fahey, Machinefabriek, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Howlin’ Wolf, Magazine, and The Staples Singers? Sounds like one of my mix tapes…or all of my mix tapes! I kid, of course. This blog actually sends a lot of its visitors on to Swan Fungus for more music, so I appreciate and respect whoever is responsible for the page.
06. Funky16Corners Looks Like It Gives A Shit – Whenever people charge me with being an idiot or an asshole, I like to retort that I don’t give a shit. I run an ugly page that I designed myself, and it’s the most self-absorbed page on the Internet, at least according to an eMusic write-up I received a few years ago. That said, Funky16Corners looks like it actually gives a shit, and that pisses me off. It’s people who read blogs like this that I hate, because they click onto my site and they have to read a post about food or sex and they think, “This is a music blog?” No, asshole. It’s not. I’ll argue that this is not a music blog for as long as it takes, even if I keep being praised by music blogs for running an awesome music blog.
05. Such Loud Noise devotes 10% of it’s space to words and 90% to shitty art school-dropout graphics – Sometimes I click onto a blog because I want to read what the author has to say. I don’t click onto a blog because I want to see it’s title written in huge letters in the middle of the page, and have to tap the “scroll down” button every five seconds because only four lines of text fit on my screen at a time. What is this, a blog or self-promotion for your fledgling graphic design career? Hows about you get with the program and focus on the content instead of the presentation?
04. Undomondo sounds like the worst Internet start-up company ever – And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it looks way too professional to be a fun website. I won’t bother clicking around because it’s not going to teach me anything I don’t already know, and I don’t want to give the webmaster the satisfaction of having a lower bounce rate than I do. Instead, I’ll simply avert my eyes from the page, close it, and assume that this is another one of those websites that looks like CNN and contains just as little information.
03. Urban Flute Project probably pronounces it, “pappy-aye ma-shay” – I haven’t seen such a pretentious blog since the last time I clicked onto my own website. But whereas mine is a joyride through pompous, self-centered, not-so-secretly self-loathing hell, this other “project” (I don’t even want to call it a blog) describes itself as, “transforming space with sound.” There’s also something about weekly concerts featuring words by classical composers. Count me out! If I wanted to be around a bunch of fogged-glasses nerdfags, I’d go to the library. But then I’d run into you, so I guess I’ll have to go someplace else!
02. WFMU’s Beware of The Blog is (insert horrible insult here) – I can’t say anything bad about their website, as it would be a conflict of interest. I volunteer for them, I can’t just go around slagging on them whenever I please. The harshest thing I can say is that they get too much web traffic, and it makes me jealous. That’s why I try to sneak some links to my own page into my blog posts there. I want some of that sweet, juicy audience run-off.
01. All Other Websites Simply Are Not As Good As Mine – I dare you to find another web entrepreneur who can attract a loyal blog audience the size of mine with nothing really tying his website together but his completely lack of social mores and his love of all things me. I can write intelligently (and with so much wit!) about baseball, booze, food, music (popular and obscure), LOST, Gail Simmons’ amazing tits, world news…pretty much anything. All those other blogs focus on music. And those authors are not as smart as I am. I mean, I haven’t read a word any of them have written, but I’m sure of it. The truth is, music is just something I fall back on when I’ve temporarily run out of travel stories and uncouth remarks to share with you. I’m literally a one-man masthead. Let’s see all those other fuckers put in the effort I do while showcasing the same amount of natural ability. Is it any wonder I haven’t received a book offer yet? (Ha!)
That said, the above list is meant to be taken with a grain of salt. I’m very happy to have been selected among these other websites as a testament to the quality of “underground” blogs. All of those websites, as well as this one, are polar opposites to websites like Stereogum and Pitchfork, which churn out horribly mundane pap for an audience of insecure, socially-retarded zombies who cannot form opinions. We’re like Bill Murray in Stripes to their William Atherton in Die Hard 2. Those fuckers.
