Seattle's "Only" Newspaper

This letter to the editor appeared in The Stranger last week and made my day:

A BECK-RELATED BET

It's been a few weeks since you guys at The Stranger have given me any good ammunition to fire back at you. I mean, I could have gone off on the queer issue for rolling years of fighting for equal rights into a giant rainbow-colored cliché, henceforth marginalizing and degrading a serious issue into the journalistic equivalent of a plastic feather boa, but why bother? This week's issue, however, gave me everything I needed to write you a truly heartfelt and hateful letter.

Michaelangelo Matos's review of Modern Guilt, Beck's latest release, is indicative of everything I hate about The Stranger [Album Reviews, July 10]. I just got and listened to Modern Guilt the night before I read the review. The album not only is fantastic, but it's easily the best release of 2008 so far (yes, it's better than LP3 by Ratatat, which is really good.) Modern Guilt is the best thing Beck's done since Midnite Vultures, and that's saying a lot since the three albums between them are all damn good. But Mikey didn't see it that way. Nope, he's still comparing Beck's efforts to Mellow Gold and has written Beck off because he's moved on. Dude, Mellow Gold was released 14 years ago. In case you haven't noticed, the world is a different fucking place than it was then. But that's pretty much the thing about The Stranger, isn't it? You guys all really love reveling in the early '90s when Seattle was the hottest thing around. You might as well rename your paper I Wish Kurt Cobain Was Still Alive or Wasn't Grunge Great?

The part that really bothers me is that the reason Modern Guilt got panned has nothing to do with the album itself. It's obvious by the review that Mike already wrote it off before even listening to it. Then when he got around to the chore of it, he didn't hear the music at all; all he heard was minuscule shit like the compression on the drums. Mike didn't like Modern Guilt because it was Beck and he doesn't like Beck because he's a big name. I'd bet a thousand dollars that if the same album had been released by some 22-year-old Ritalin babies with bad beards and a stupid band name like Arms Made of Legs, Mike and all the rest of you would be drooling all over it.

But the true irony doesn't lie in the obvious notion that The Stranger's basis for what makes good music isn't the music at all, but whether or not the band's aesthetic jives with the current scene. No, it's that while Mike Matos is dissing Beck for not doing the same thing he did in 1994, the whole rest of the staff is coming in their ugly hipster pants over Sub-we-haven't-released-a-good-record-in-15-years-Pop's 20th (25th? 22nd? Some random-ass number?) anniversary party. Wow. You guys are so quick to tear down anything truly and legitimately successful while at the same time hoisting the banner of mediocrity so high that it's all the kids-who-don't-know-any-better can see.

Between Eric Grandy waving his dick around town while (I'm assuming) riding the "it's hip to be gay!" bandwagon, Megan Seling virtually begging to be gang-fucked by all the worst bands in Seattle, and William Steven Humpfrey (or whateverthefuck his name is) masturbating to his own reflection, it's a wonder your staff has any time at all to maintain all the lowest- common-denominator bullshit that keeps Seattle from ever actually being a world-class city. You're all a bunch of no-talent yuppie hacks.

Finneas Maxwell