Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The End of and Era

OK, so my first blog that I didn't actually have to force because I'm fired up about this. My favorite internet blogger/music critc/curmudgeon (in other words, the only person I read on a regular basis), David Thorpe a.k.a. Dr. David Thorpe is, for reasons unknown, hanging up his spikes. A brief history:

I discovered his columns a few years back when he was Dr. David Thorpe, writing for the geek website
Something Awful
. A friend of mine who works in the music business (and knows far more about music than I could ever hope to (and I'm a pretty big music snob) sent me a link to one of series of columns, Your Band Sucks, and I was hooked. It came out every two weeks, and it was the most anticipated event on the internet for me to read one of his new columns. His Field Guide to North American Hipsters Vol. I, Readers Respond, and Vol. II are required reading, and his three part series "How to Fake It" Vol. I, Reader Advice (,maybe the best of the bunch, actually), and Vol. II are instant classics.

If you have any interest in music at all, you owe it to yourself to read these blogs. I cannot recommend anything written on the internet more highly.

When not writing specialty columns such as these, he'd pick a random sacred music cow to excoriate, and it was hilarious. Even if you liked said band.

A few times he invited readers to send in their demo tapes and CD's so he could rate them. None fared too well as you might expect. His annual year-end awards, "The World's Greatest Dad Awards" (so-named because "there needed to be pre-existing images bearing the name of the award so that I wouldn’t have to do any actual work.", were a roundup of anyone who had somehow been overlooked during the year or who he hadn't quite laid into enough. Sounds spiteful, and it was. But it was oh, so true and oh so funny.

So a little over a year ago, Dr. Thorpe announced he would be reducing the frequency of his columns as he had taken a job writing for Boston's The Weekly Dig. Great, I thought, I can pick it up in hard copy when I'm walking around town. So the columns on SA became less and less frequent until they stopped altogether about a year ago. Problem is, the archetypal music curmudgeon, lost his edge when he dropped the "Dr." title from his name. The columns (now called The Burn Unit) came out weekly now (Wednesdays), but were shorter, and just weren't as good.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, this week he announces that he's dying. Well, he's not REALLY dying, but has either decided to or been asked to terminate his column from The Dig. As far as I know I am the only one who ever wrote a comment on any of his blogs which indicates either general reader apathy for the paper (possible...this is the poor man's Boston Phoenix), or more probably, he didn't strike the same chord as he did at SA.

Either way, he left no forwarding address, so to speak, and I have no idea if he plans to write again, or if so, where he will re-appear. This, I have to say, is a dark day indeed for the internet.

So tip a 40 for Dr. David Thorpe, and lets hope he rises again and pops up somewhere else soon.

1 comment:

DJDiva said...

You showed me his site a while ago and I thought it was hilarious. It's really too bad he's decided to stop doing it. How to Fake It Vol. I and II are good, if overrated ;)