I don't read as much about music as I used to , though right now I'm reading that 'Bass Culture' book about reggae & Jamaica...I guess I use the Net as the main source for reading about music. Except for maybe 'the wire', all the magazines and fanzines in print are fucken useless, the last 'cool' one I bought, something Everett True published was so horrible I burnt it! And the dance (dunce?) mags, well Straight No Chaser still beleives acid-jazz can save the world..
But in my day I was a BIG reader of rock press, and I generally gravitate to writers who have good TASTE in music rather than some sorta political agenda, and can traslate the SENSATION or FEEL or ATTITUDE of the music and put it into a wider musical and maybe social rather than political context...IDEAS can really work too, something the Rolling Stone/Spin fucksticks generally lack in spades, and with music writing, and attitude it well part of the parcel. Some of my fave rock 'writers' include:
CLINTON WALKER - I bought his book INNER CITY SOUNDs in the 80s when I was discovering Aussie indigenoius underground music as a teen. He was pretty much the tastemaker for cutting edge music here in Australia. Shame he turned into a boring fucking cocksucker who really digs Brazillian cha-cha music or something and still think Aussie underground music never got past Nick Cave his smack-bum-chum from before the war (try listening to all those Bad Seeds records now and how DATED they sound, fuckface!)
BYRON COLEY - pretty much the first American rock 'writer' I got into. Just his wild abstracted flow, bad attitudes, drug-fucked free perspective and vivid descritptives of the 'sounds'/'headspaces' of the music he describe. And the fact that he always went for anti-sounds.
LESTER BANGS - I guess paved the way. And the whole US punk thing he championed, and of course his ability to appreciate really mainstream musics and the most out there stuff, and still find the similar energies in both.
CHRIS STIGLIANO - the guy's a fucken mental-case and a bay. But his belief in 'rockism' and music that has 'the Velvets art, the MC5's Blare and the Sex Pistols attitude' or something along those lines never ceases to amaze nor quit, even when you think the well is truly dry. No that a FEAT in anyone's terms.
SIMON REYNOLDS - simply because when I useta read MM and NME (though I was a MM PURIST), Reynolds simply had the best, most open minded tastes, when all the other fuckheads would go on about how 'single of the week' drek would save the world until the next dole-cheque. And he has a nack with coming up with new terms for genres.
NICK TOSCHES and RICHARD MELTZER - Tosches is prolly the most 'writerly' of the 'noiseboys'. I love how his bitter-junkie-Latin righteousness always tries to make grand gestures/tragedies out of everything. It's compelling and righteous. Meltzer's suburban-bum attitude and craziness while difficult to read, often lurches into areas of accidental brilliance - like his observations of Patti Smith's tits and his legendary shit-caning of Bruce Springsteen when 'born in the usa' was out. But Meltzers 'attitude' far superceeds his actual writing.
PHILIP BROPHY - though he's not a rock writer per-se, anything he writes is fucking brilliant and informative, and you always seem to learn something, which ultimately, is what a person of the letters should do.
But in my day I was a BIG reader of rock press, and I generally gravitate to writers who have good TASTE in music rather than some sorta political agenda, and can traslate the SENSATION or FEEL or ATTITUDE of the music and put it into a wider musical and maybe social rather than political context...IDEAS can really work too, something the Rolling Stone/Spin fucksticks generally lack in spades, and with music writing, and attitude it well part of the parcel. Some of my fave rock 'writers' include:
CLINTON WALKER - I bought his book INNER CITY SOUNDs in the 80s when I was discovering Aussie indigenoius underground music as a teen. He was pretty much the tastemaker for cutting edge music here in Australia. Shame he turned into a boring fucking cocksucker who really digs Brazillian cha-cha music or something and still think Aussie underground music never got past Nick Cave his smack-bum-chum from before the war (try listening to all those Bad Seeds records now and how DATED they sound, fuckface!)
BYRON COLEY - pretty much the first American rock 'writer' I got into. Just his wild abstracted flow, bad attitudes, drug-fucked free perspective and vivid descritptives of the 'sounds'/'headspaces' of the music he describe. And the fact that he always went for anti-sounds.
LESTER BANGS - I guess paved the way. And the whole US punk thing he championed, and of course his ability to appreciate really mainstream musics and the most out there stuff, and still find the similar energies in both.
CHRIS STIGLIANO - the guy's a fucken mental-case and a bay. But his belief in 'rockism' and music that has 'the Velvets art, the MC5's Blare and the Sex Pistols attitude' or something along those lines never ceases to amaze nor quit, even when you think the well is truly dry. No that a FEAT in anyone's terms.
SIMON REYNOLDS - simply because when I useta read MM and NME (though I was a MM PURIST), Reynolds simply had the best, most open minded tastes, when all the other fuckheads would go on about how 'single of the week' drek would save the world until the next dole-cheque. And he has a nack with coming up with new terms for genres.
NICK TOSCHES and RICHARD MELTZER - Tosches is prolly the most 'writerly' of the 'noiseboys'. I love how his bitter-junkie-Latin righteousness always tries to make grand gestures/tragedies out of everything. It's compelling and righteous. Meltzer's suburban-bum attitude and craziness while difficult to read, often lurches into areas of accidental brilliance - like his observations of Patti Smith's tits and his legendary shit-caning of Bruce Springsteen when 'born in the usa' was out. But Meltzers 'attitude' far superceeds his actual writing.
PHILIP BROPHY - though he's not a rock writer per-se, anything he writes is fucking brilliant and informative, and you always seem to learn something, which ultimately, is what a person of the letters should do.
