Posted 9:01 AM by Robert

O, Mickey, I Love It When You Get All Nasty And Snarly Like That!

Mickey Kaus is on a chew! Or, rather, Mickey's out to chew Nic Harcourt a new one:

Nic Harcourt? To Rob Walker's 760 words in January [the New York Times] now added Jaime Wolf's 4,271--this for a man with barely enough on-air personality to sustain a prepositional phrase. Like the L.A. Times, Harcourt's KCRW empire of the "semipopular" is a Southern California institution that seems terrific to gullible East Coasters who don't have to live with it every day. Harcourt's scared to rock. His interviews are painful and formulaic. He doesn't provide "a subtle connective tissue, contextualizing the listening experience byond just a handful of songs." He puts you to sleep. He's a menace to highway safety. ... I was going to call Harcourt's dreary parade of breathy, self-absorbed, suffocating pop "yuppie shopping music," except that if stores actually played Harcourt's synapse-numbing choices the economy would grind to a halt! ... Three consistent motifs of L.A. stand-up comedy are plastic surgery, traffic, and how lame KCRW's music is. ... Yes, Harcourt "was the first in America to play Norah Jones." I like Norah Jones. But do you want to listen to the kind of DJ who'd be the first to play Norah Jones? I don't think so.

That's just great, Mickey! I've never even listened to Nic Harcourt. But now I'm so stoked I want to jump up, run out to my car, and tune into Nic Harcourt ... just so I can say I was so bored I immediately turned him off!

KCRW? Wait a minute! KCRW is an NPR affiliate, right? Doesn't that mean it's median listener age is probably something like 48 (the NPR median)? But do you want to listen to the kind of DJ who's got a median listener age of 48? I don't think so - at least if it's not classical music!