Sizing Up Sloppyworld

Not sure whose mistake it was, so I'll go ahead and blame the writer-it's TRANSONA Five, not 'TRANSOMA'! Typical.

Yes, that was my goof. Rachel is correct, it should be Transona Five. I apologize for the mistake.

This is such a great article! I wish I had written it myself. Oh wait, I did. Six months ago.

And great job not mentioning the show before it happened, btw. I'm guessing we'll have to wait for a TransoNa Five cover band to form before the band gets any decent press in this pathetic publication for aging hipsters and perverts.

Whats next? An article about The Party? Or DIY Denton? Oh wait, this paper was six months to a year late on those as well.

It is great to know that the Observer takes us so seriously though.

The worst thing, besides the borderline plagiarism, is the serious hopeful tone of the article. Of course it's hard to take an article seriously when you fuck up a legendary band's name in the first paragraph and then continue to do. It's funny when heartfelt backfires!

Jesus Christ, will you people back the fuck up offa Jesse and get a life? The guy accidentally types an "m" instead of an "n" and now he's fuckin' Public Enemy #1? Honestly, it's probably not a good idea for either one of you - WSJR or the Observer- to be writing about or publicizing Sloppyworld until John Freeman gets all of his ducks in a row. Still, you wanna take your territorial pissing public, even if it means putting Freeman in a precarious position with code compliance officials and his landlord. Sloppyworld could probably exist for years as an underground venue if it were a strictly word-of-mouth endeavor, but a) you had to claim Freeman's story as your own, and b) you felt the need to leverage the Observer's public profile and Jesse's article to try and validate your own fuckin' blog. Look, I'm actually one of the half dozen or so people who actually read WSJR and find it occasionally amusing, but when you stoop to this petty bullshit - pushing Sloppyworld that much closer to either getting busted or shut down by the landlord just so you can look cool- then you lose whatever credibility you ever had with me. Look, if you don't like the Observer, then go start a newspaper of your own. A blog is not a newspaper. You're hiding behind a screen name. Jesse actually signs his real name when he writes something. Until you are willing to actually stand behind your opinions, your opinions mean absolutely nothing to anyone but yourselves.

hey MC Liles,

Chill the fuck out. For starters, and for the record, I didn't accuse Jesse of plagiarism, I just noted that we had published a similar story six months ago. And I didn't say that the story was "my own" or that I had an exclusive right to tell it, I was just pointing out the similarity. Frankly, the Observer's former music editor never had a problem with trying to write negative stories about us in the past, so I don't see what the problem is.

And second, how in the world do either of these stories OR my comment cause problems for Sloppyworld? We worked with John on our story and he was happy to tell it and have it posted, just as I'm sure he was with this story. If Sloppyworld thought it was a problem, they would have told us not to publish, and we would have agreed out of our interest in the venue succeeding. It's not as if John was telling us to keep it underground and we tricked him or something. We were trying to do something good, not bad, and frankly, your accusation that we don't give a shit about the venue and are in it for our own glory is completely off base to the point of being funny.

John was open about everything with me as well, and seemed glad for the coverage. I didn't get into all the minutia of the code issues with him, but I think that as long as he's not selling beer or food at his "private parties" and doesn't have neighbors complaining, he should be OK till he gets in compliance.

Stonedranger (whoever you are), I'm chill. No worries. But help me understand something. The apparent justification for the existence of your blog is to turn open-minded people on to valid creative projects (musicians, bands, artists, venues and galleries) which manage to exist under the mainstream radar. Right? So what happens after that? You help to create a larger awareness for your favorite indie/DIY artistic endeavors, and then, if you've done what you set out to do, these projects by proxy become part of the mainstream you so thoroughly despise. Correct? Or, is there some other motivation for the implicitly promotional angle of your presentation? I'll give you guys props for having an infinite awareness of subversive culture, but what, exactly, is your motivation for promoting them to a larger potential audience if having that audience means destroying whatever indie street cred an artist may have had by existing under the radar? And is that really what any of us wants for a place like Sloppyworld? For John Freeman to legally generate enough revenue to make SW a self-supporting and cost-effective endeavor, it will certainly take regularly bringing in a much larger audience than the one which exists merely of regular WSJR and/or Dallas Observer music section readers. At what point will you flip and accuse Freeman of selling out? You have to understand that when you write, "I wrote the same article six months ago...", it looks like you're already beginning the process of "owning" the process of establishing- and eventually, destroying - the credibility of Freeman's venue once the necessary larger audience eventually discovers and then ruins it. So set me straight. Which side are you on? Will you still support Sloppyworld when Freeman is forced to book the kinds of bands or DJs who will actually generate enough revenue to turn a profit? Or, will you dismiss his DIY commitment to the venue as invalid once he starts to make a little money off of the artistically-challenged Uptown crowd?

Liles, it's not just that he typed an 'm' instead of an 'n' (several times BTW). He didn't know their name, and he was at the fucking show! That's just pathetic and sloppy writing. And apparently since, along with you, he is one of the 'half dozen or so people' who reads weshotjr (do a quick search for his articles and you'll find that he's swiped many of his subjects from weshotjr), he should've paid attention to the many times weshotjr mentioned the Transona Five show and maybe he could have done a little research on them as some writers might do and find out the correct spelling of their name. Instead, he wasted all of his energy trying to write something important and just ended up looking foolish. I don't want to speak for stonedranger but the fact that the same thing has been covered by his blog isn't what really offends him. It's Jesse's complete lack of originality and understanding of his subjects that is more bothersome. I mean, the guy wrote an impassioned article about fucking Sorta. How can he comprehend anything remotely cool?

Again with the territorial pissing. Josh, I think Jesse can be forgiven for misspelling a band's name when they haven't released a record in almost ten years. They might have been cool before Y2K, but "legendary"? Come on. They released two seven-inch singles, two EPs and one album before they disbanded. I'm sure they were interesting within the context of whatever was happening back in the late 90's, but are they relevant now? Please. Your assertion that Jesse Hughey (or any other writer) lifts their story ideas from WSJR is laughable - just another vacuous effort to claim the empty title of Arbiter of Taste. (This afternoon, I was very curious to see if WSJR had ever written about James Hall, Pleasure Club, The Spores, Pedestrian, Scro11, The Radishes or LA Riots, but I guess their website was down. James Hall has released five albums and played DFW at least a dozen times - you'd think he would have shown up on the WSJR radar by now. And you guys really need to check out Scro11 and the Radishes - Earl Harvin plays drums on both records. Blair Sinta, also from Denton, is the drummer for Pedestrian. But I digress...) Oh, and I happen to like Sorta. Does that me uncool too? God, I hope so. I mean, I know gimmicky shit like Ghosthustler is all the rage these days (or is that Ghostland Observatory?), so I'll do my best to keep up with all of your favorite GarageBand "bands". In the meantime, give Jesse a break and spare us the insinuation that WSJR is the ONLY place to go to get the real story on anything...

Pissing match aside, how great is it that something like SloppyWorld even has a chance at existing in the dead zone that is Dallas? Freeman is one of the funniest guys I've ever met, and he has impeccable musical taste - I'm not sure that is a recipe for successful club owning but I'll be rooting for him.

Props to John for giving the Argo its due. In its heyday the place was absolutely wild ass and open to basically anything. My favorite memory was of a show that didn't happen - the silver dracula John Cale refusing to get out of his bus because his manager demanded all the $$ up front (or some such nonsense). Robe and the boys were all 23-26 yrs old and just making it up. When "techno" was "faggy" and "anti-indie" Rob and the guys welcomed it against their own personal tastes. I also notice that the Argo gets little recognition in the history of the Rock Lottery, but whatever...

Godspeed John. I'll never forget "Mediterranean Houseboy".