And the winner of today’s “Dude, get the fuck over yourself” award goes to Creative Loafing music writer Wade Tatangelo for posting this apparent warning to fans of “mediocre indie rock” to, you know, stay the fuck away from him when he’s out with his friends at a bar. Specifically, if you like Interpol or Hot Hot Heat, Wade does not want to talk to your ass. You better believe that Wade has spent fucking hours debating the finer points of how Carlos D.’s bass-playing style either is or isn’t derivative of Peter Hook, Mike Watt and Jah Wobble, and goddammit, he is just not going to get into it one more time with some snotty young Jedi apprentice who still has the shrink wrap on his light saber. You better believe Wade knows indie rock. Wade was at the first fucking Rites of Spring show. He actually got sweat on by Guy Picciotto and to this day he carries that sweat around in a vial on a chain around his neck. O.G., dude.

If only that were true. You may recall that Wade’s had his share of troubles covering the local music scene. I don’t want to get too far into that, as most of them were dealt with in this shit storm a few months back (the comments by John G there are the most spot on), but I think it would be safe to say that at this point he’s pretty effectively alienated himself from the local indie scene.

That being said, the question then becomes how do you consider yourself able to cover music locally when you’ve lost the respect and trust of people in the scene? You’d think that he’d be on his best behavior after all that, but now we have this? This totally throwaway post where he’s got to drag out the “music geek” or the hipster/indie straw kid to make himself look like some kind of an embattled celebrity?

I get it dude; people get tired. I won’t even deny that people probably bother the guy all the time and want to talk shop, but it’s one thing to privately gripe about some of the occupational hazards, it’s totally another to post about it like you’re proud of it. Are you that burnt out, dude? You’re supposed to live and breathe music. People end up writing about music because it’s almost a compulsion. They do it for free. Getting paid is almost like a side benefit reserved for people who are extremely good at it.

I mean, sure we’ve given Reax some shit for maybe overhyping some bands here and there, but say whatever you want about Rabinowitz, it’s obvious that the dude sincerely cares about music. So much so that when he knows he maybe doesn’t have the contextual understanding necessary to give a band justice when covering them, he delegates the story to someone who does.

Ultimately, this whole thing just kind of saddens me. I don’t want to see a dude who I have to believe still loves music have to take all this shit on himself. So, here’s an idea; get some help or something. Get someone else to cover the local scene. Get someone else to handle it when you’re feeling frustrated because you really just don’t get where a band like Red Room Cinema is coming from and have no idea how to evaluate and contextualize them properly. Either that or do some research. It’s not like people are just born knowing the difference between post-rock and shoegaze. Oh yeah, and maybe next time just share a few words with the snotty indie rock kid, you might learn something.