Chris Ott vs. The Decemberists
In which we learn that 1) when someone writes a snarky piece about a band, it looks kind of bad (for the band) when the lead singer's girlfriend shows up in the comments and savages the writer, and 2) it looks even worse (for everyone, probably) when the writer takes four paragraphs to snipe back at her. And that's even before the readership really starts to weigh in.

It starts when Chris Ott writes a piece for the Village Voice in which he takes the Decemberists -- and specifically frontman Colin Meloy -- to task for, well, being pretentious, in a word.

Of course, Ott takes several paragraphs of varying readability to say this. Then the comments (oldest at the bottom of the page, so scroll all the way down to read the fun from the start) get rolling, and the second comment comes from Carson Ellis, Colin Meloy's girlfriend: "Why is this review so spiteful and weirdly personal? You're lucky nobody wants to write a piece about you and the inferiority complex/unrequited romantic obsessions/high school ass-kickings/unrealized dreams that undoubtedly led you, presumably a music fan, to make a career writing bitterly hateful music reviews."

And they're off! Ott and Ellis fire a few more salvos at each other; fans shoot off at Ott; non-fans give an old-fashioned "right on!"; fans and non-fans get into it ... it finally culminates in a lengthy comment from kingpidge that starts off with the pithy statement "Chris Ott is killing music."

Ahh, indie music fandom. Don't ever change, you egomaniacal wanky little bastards.

(Full disclosure: I love the Decemberists, but even as a fan, I do admit that they can get pretty damn precious sometimes.)