Busted!
The Feds got Al Capone on tax evasion charges rather than the more horrendous crimes he committed. In similar fashion, rock critic Sasha Frere-Jones was nabbed for running up a tab at a strip club rather than alleged Rock Crimes, as documented here (for gross exaggeration of research) and played out at least one other time in the Halls of Rock, possibly back in our days as a YahooGroup, when I believe I actually had a couple of e-mails back and forth with the critic over whatever instance of shoddy criticism it was that we flagged.
According to a person with knowledge of the situation, Frere-Jones recently filed a $5,000 expense report for a venue that the paper discovered was actually a strip club.
Asked to explain, Frere-Jones said he was writing an article about a rapper. But according to the insider, the rapper’s representatives told the paper that no interview had taken place.
In addition, a source close to the situation said that Frere-Jones had accepted a luxury trip sponsored by Dom Pérignon to The Joshua Tree National Park in April — a freebie that is considered a no-no by most mainstream news organizations.
I know, I know…taste is taste and to each his own and whatnot, but I always thought that guy wasted a lot of word and pseudo-social criticism on a fraction of musical content. Funny, to me, that he tried blaming the strip club tab on a rapper.
I guess incoherent poptimist scribbling isn’t itself actually a crime.