Don’t worry, I’m going. This isn’t about that. This is about the "New York Times" slamming the band once again.

I’ve got to tell you, if these insipid holier-than-thou insider New York freaks continue to beat up on the band I’m going to switch sides, I’m going to pledge fealty to Chris Martin forevermore!

What kind of fucked up world do we live in where besuited execs in the music business still believe the mainstream media counts? Most newspapers are a shadow of their former selves, and TV hasn’t put music up close and center since the eighties, when MTV ruled. Music has always lived outside the system. It’s just that fat cats like Tommy Mottola used the system to boost their bottom lines in the nineties and those in power still think this works!

What’s worse, some artists are still looking for this mainstream media acceptance. Forgetting that today’s vaunted Led Zeppelin was abhorred by critics in its day, critics who readers can’t even remember the name of, never mind those who didn’t subscribe to "Rolling Stone" but filled the stadiums the foursome inhabited.

If the writers in the "New York Times" could play music, and fuck Chris Martin OR Gwyneth Paltrow, they’d make that deal instantly. They’d be sucking up instead of decrying.

The critic is the guy in the loge with a notebook, a pen and a flashlight. Writing down what was played, not concerned with the emotion, but the facts. And music was never about the facts. Music is about passion. It’s about investing in a band and going to see them live. If you’re not interested, WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

My list is opt-in. If you don’t want to read me, don’t. I’m not gonna jam my shit down your throat if you hate me. What difference does it make if you hate me? We live in a country of 300 million, a world of BILLIONS! Spend your time invested in something you like. Who in the hell would waste time listening to what they hate? I don’t spin New Kids On The Block records. Nor the musings of Paris Hilton. But Paris Hilton doesn’t need me. She got paid by Warner Brothers. She’s got young girls all over the world looking to her for fashion tips. Does Paris Hilton complain that she’s not respected? No, she just cashes the check.

That’s what I want you to do, cash the check.

Don’t worry what Jon Pareles has to say. Unless you’re an old fart act, your audience is not reading the newspaper, paying attention to the mainstream media. It’s direct to the Web for music maniacs, for all the news they want, targeted just to them, INSTANTLY!

Hell, we’re living in the Internet age. Why don’t I just Google the bio of the writer of this inane "New York Times" article, Virginia Heffernan.

Turns out she went to Harvard… God, do I expect any graduate from that school to approve of Chris Martin’s lyrics? They slaved in high school, they took all those AP classes, they hung with the best and the brightest and this dork from England is getting all the thunder, all the money, marrying a movie star? That’s THEIR role.

And if you don’t believe me, you don’t know the Ivy League elite.

And it’s not like Ms. Heffernan isn’t trying to make it in popular culture herself. In 2005 she published a comic novel, "The Underminer", which she wrote with Mike Albo. Not my world, but if it was so fucking good, so fucking successful, I’d have read about it in my endless surfings of the popular culture zeitgeist.

You’ve got to not only ask yourself where these people are coming from, but whether anybody pays attention to them.

The housewife who loves Coldplay, home with the kids all day, obviously isn’t on the Ivy League career track, she’s more about family values than cold-hearted ambition. She can’t listen to music that makes her feel good?

And Coldplay has to be castigated because it tries to do something new and different with MySpace?

You just can’t win with these people.

Which is why you’ve got to ignore them.

Chris & company? When this tour is done, go back into the studio and cut a classic piano-based Coldplay album. Hell, if you’ve got enough time, do it while you’re on the road. The cognoscenti will bitch that you haven’t stretched your oeuvre, that you’re not saving the world, like Bono, that you’re not as good as their vaunted Patti Smith and Lou Reed. But you reach more people than Patti and Lou. Maybe because you feature good voices and hooky changes. You’re supposed to apologize for this, for being successful? Did Led Zeppelin APOLOGIZE?

It’s a new era. Only care about your fan base. Stay out of the gossip wars.

And know that if the "New York Times" counted, all those indie records they review every week would sell. And they don’t.

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