The longer and shorter of it

Per "The long and short of it", here's Exhibit A.

"Hendrix's, Clapton's, Bonham's, and even Van Halen's solos go beyond the masturbatory level."

Boy, Jimi really stretched it out on Axis: Bold As Love. Just thirteen songs in 38:49. If he'd added another eleven seconds of that ubiquitous wanking, his songs would average a whole three minutes apiece. (And "even Van Halen"!)

"And as for bands like Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, and Stereolab, critics tend to be divided between those who hear something profound and personal in their sprawling, instrumental-passage-heavy records, and those who can't get past the heavy aroma of pretension."

Wow. Instrumental passages. How pretentious of people to make music without singing for a little while. God forbid.

"Isn't Donald Fagen just taking us on a journey inside his head, which happens to be filled with complicated horn charts and lounge-lizard misogyny? Even if his head's in a different place from yours, couldn't you grow to appreciate what comes out of it for what it is?"

Oh no! They're doing something complicated! This cannot stand! Everyone should sound like the Ramones, or else they're making music wrong!

"J. Mascis soloed for what felt like an eternity in every song, which completely bored me. And though I'm a Sonic Youth fan, I have a low tolerance for its noisy self-indulgence."

There's that word again, "self-indulgence", dropped by a rock critic. Do people use that word anywhere else but rock critic circles? ("You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.")

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Stop me here, or else I'll have to rebut this absurd piece in the SFWeekly. Suffice to say, the author could have written it in any year, with different band names. And how does she figure that David Byrne isn't "gutsy", but Sufjan Stevens is somehow engaged in the quest for rebellion?