Madden 08's Got Gang-Tacklin', RIUSAB's Got Gang-Entryin' (Like Our Grrrrl Jenna)

We at RIUSAB like to strike whilst the iron is hot. Unfortunately, we're easily distracted by the ravings of indie musicians/crit-hating romantics (this blog not endorsed by Ryan Dombal - we got a 7.1 and we're coping just fine). Said distraction prevented us from providing our most important service to you, the Mighty E-Customer - doing some crit-hatin' of our own. Time was, Chris Richards used to be in some alphabet soup of a DC-area band - Ps 'n' Qs or something along those lines, only less English - although the RIUSAB staff was damaged in all the right unusual places by that one album of theirs, back when we went by the collective pseudonym of Colin McElligatt. Parts of the last sentence may be entirely false. Anyway, Chris Richards got a new gig some time ago. No, not super-cleverly-named solo outfit Ris Paul Ric ("Daft Young Cannibals" was a tasty wee number, though) - we're talking about his job as a music "critic" for some right-leaning tabloid in the area.

RIUSAB tolerated Richards' stilted, overreaching prose (full of phrases like "stilted, overreaching prose") for...months? minutes? Felt like a long time...we can't be bothered to keep track of these things. We reached our breaking point, though, when we read this concert review, reproduced in part (but unaltered) below:

"Didactic ditties 'Stop AIDS' and 'Do Your Best' escalated from tight, simmering verses into chaotic choruses, with Kuti convulsing along in polyrhythmic tantrums."

First of all, Chris, alliteration: always an agonizing and absolutely atrocious avenue for a critic to choose in crafting concert critiques. Second, horribly misapplying words like "polyrhythmic" just shows anyone with half a music background that you have no idea what you're talking about. Tantrums can't be polyrhythmic, only people and RIUSAB pieces can. Finally, the two things worse than didactic songs are didactic pieces of writing about songs and didactic pieces of writing about writing about songs.

Do us all a favor and stick to what you do best: writing (songs, ahem) about people who choose to prey on the lifeblood of their fellow humans.