Favourite rock writers - and why?

[John Doe]

I just don't get that at all. Tthe whole point of the article seems to be the transition from that tone ('this seems to be just stupid stuff that weird people listen to to pretend to be clever') to actually getting at least a glimpse of what's going on and why there's more to it than that. It's a ploy - admittedly not a particularly subtle one - to get people who aren't dyed in the wool Beefheart fans to read about music that to them doesn't make any sense. It's only real sin is in assuming that the readers are a bit suspicious of that sort of music and trying to alleviate those suspicions, but given that it's a sunday suplement, that's probably true for at least some of them.

But don't you find the whole tone (and approach) of the piece to be nauseatingly patronising? I can't imagine, say, in the Guardian's Saturday Review a lit critic taking a similar approach with another land-mark, but 'difficult' work (I dunno: Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, say, or Faulkner's Abssalom Absalom etc). You know that: oh look, I know it's a terribly long work, and, yes, it doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever but once I started talking to my post-mod lit crit mates I saw that, actually, it wasn't so bad, and, I must admit the writing in the third secotion on London druing the Blitz had some resonance for me... etc etc etc. I mean, it just wouldn't happen: that Review section just does not talk down to its readership like that - why should the music section do the same?

One plus, I guess, is that's good to see that Beefheart is getting written about again - but seeing as the piece links in to the release of his remastered albums (and I'm quite excited about that) I would have thought an intelligent and informed appraisal of the man, his music and his achievements would have been a more appropriate, and fitting, tribute to one of the greatest post-war musical artists. They wouldn't do the same with say, a painter, a writer, a film-maker who was about to undergo a retrospecitive - so why should they do it with music?

 

[Rambler]

But don't you find the whole tone (and approach) of the piece to be nauseatingly patronising? I can't imagine, say, in the Guardian's Saturday Review a lit critic taking a similar approach with another land-mark, but 'difficult' work

That's exactly it. You'll never find a broadsheet film critic writing a piece on 'We all know that art house cinema is poncey wank that places to half empty cinemas and no one we know cares about, but anyway, I spent last weekend with a stack of Dogme DVDs, and you know what, it's not all that bad...' But music somehow remains a victim of this sort of approach. What made me laugh about the Beefheart thing is that most of the arguments being deployed (and the headline - Mission: Unlistenable) were very similar to those used by serious new music critics in the 60s, who used to title their columns things like 'The Contemporary Problem' or 'The Lunatic Fringe', the irony being that not only is Harris's rhetoric 30-40 years old, but so is the music he's writing about. The (old) shock of the old.

 

[IdleRich]

John Harris is simply terrible. I look forward to his column every week and email the choicest bits to a fellow "fan" for his delectation. At least he managed to get through the Beefheart piece without mentioning Paul Weller (I think).
Most of the sports writing (by which I mean football if I'm honest) in the broadsheets is terrible. Every single writer makes wrong prediction after wrong prediction for which they never have to apologise - they also change their opinions so quickly and unreasonably that it's simply not worth remembering them from one day to the next. The Guardian is a particular sinner in this - or maybe I just notice it most here because I read it the most.

 

[Rambler]

Do you ever read Daniel Finkelstein in the Saturday Times? Unlike all other football writers his column is tied to a statistical model that he uses to predict games (with an accuracy that consistently beats the bookies at least), and also to debunk most of the common cliches of football writing and 'analysis'. I can't comment on the validity of his science, but at least he's bothering to use some.

 

[Lichen]

I'm thinking when I read the Beefheart piece: the tone is a little snide but the intention (and outcome) is fine. Trout Mask Replica is an obtuse, awkawrd record, the journalist looks past its canonical status talks to its fans and draws the reasonable conclusion that Sothrop quotes above.


Why all the bile. It beats stcking TMR in a top ten list and cranking out the usual spiel:


Rilly crazy record, rilly infliuential, Captain Beefheart is like a proper artist and stuff

 

[soundslike1981]

I can't really answer this--I mean, they do just write about other people's records.

 

[Slothrop]

That's exactly it. You'll never find a broadsheet film critic writing a piece on 'We all know that art house cinema is poncey wank that places to half empty cinemas and no one we know cares about, but anyway, I spent last weekend with a stack of Dogme DVDs, and you know what, it's not all that bad...'

I kind of take your point - it seems to be the case generally, come to think of it, that knowing a lot about films, books and so forth is considered to be a sign of being an intelligent and cultured person, whereas knowing a lot about any sort of music is either a bit teenage or a bit geeky or both, and the pitching of broadsheet coverage tends to reflect that. But modulo that assumption, I don't think they're too bad - their main failure seems to be trying to engage with dance music entirely through album artists and thereby missing the point in a big way.

But seeing as the assumption probably is, to some extent, true, I'm not too unhappy to see them do what they currently do (actually, I have to confess that by 'they' I mean the only broadsheet music stuff I've read lately - the IoS album reviews, the friday and saturday Grauniads and the dreaded OMM) and try to broaden peoples' horizons a bit rather than turn into a section that Dissensians would love but everyone else would bin.

They are mediocre a lot of the time I'll admit, but they don't really deserve quite this amount of bile...

 

[Ned]

I kind of take your point - it seems to be the case generally, come to think of it, that knowing a lot about films, books and so forth is considered to be a sign of being an intelligent and cultured person, whereas knowing a lot about any sort of music is either a bit teenage or a bit geeky or both

Totally agree that this is the attitude behind broadsheet music coverage - anyone have any thoughts on why it is? I suppose it's partly self-fulfilling - if people are told that Arctic Monkeys is the best thing in pop music, then obviously they're going to see pop music as a medium which they can safely be complacent about. It is true (as someone above was saying) that people on Dissensus have to remember that not everyone listens to Japanese noise while doing the washing up, but equally it would be nice if broadsheet music coverage acknowledge that there was anyone who did so. It's a horrible thought that a mention of non-classical experimental music in the Guardian is 90% of the time going to be in an Alexis Petridis review being mocked as an example of pretension.

It's weird though, because Dissensus types must buy 10 or 20 or 30 times as many albums per year as the general public - in a way we're ideal consumers - so surely it's in the interests of the record companies to make people more like us, and therefore to promote music in a way which demands more than superficial engagement? Maybe that's just thought to be impractical.

 

[Buick6]

the vv critics are like the fifth derivative of simon reynolds, all cultural ephemera and undercooked telelologies with nothing underneath the formulized structure. the film critics do the same with j hoberman (another fine critic with too many epigones trailing behind for his own good) except they're writiing about hou hsaio hsien or ron howard rather than some execrable pitchforkindie or m.i.a. or whatever so it's even more shit.

the number of good (meta)pop critics is necessarily small, outside the usual coterie of sites everyone here probably visits anyway.

On the money there brother! Hoberman is a fucking legend, and every shitty VV crit copies his densely compacted style too!

It's funny the VV 'critics' group all remind me of Carson from Queer Eye he's quite an excellent rock/film/lit/culture crit too ya know?

 

[Tim F]

I always wonder which writers in particular you're referring to when you make that criticism Buick - "Village Voice writers" encompasses a lot of different kinds of writers - Chuck Eddy, Robert Christgau, Frank Kogan, Nick Sylvester, Simon Reynolds, Amy Phillips, Sterling Clover to name just a few... I'm not sure if there's really much overlap b/w a lot of them. Some do the hyper-referential cultural magpie thing, some do straight autobiographical storytelling, some mix the two in a way that ends up being something else again (Kogan obv). I wonder which strand it is you're particularly alienated by.

 

[Buick6]

I always wonder which writers in particular you're referring to when you make that criticism Buick - "Village Voice writers" encompasses a lot of different kinds of writers - Chuck Eddy, Robert Christgau, Frank Kogan, Nick Sylvester, Simon Reynolds, Amy Phillips, Sterling Clover to name just a few... I'm not sure if there's really much overlap b/w a lot of them. Some do the hyper-referential cultural magpie thing, some do straight autobiographical storytelling, some mix the two in a way that ends up being something else again (Kogan obv). I wonder which strand it is you're particularly alienated by.

Except for Reynolds, I don't even consider the Village Voice's music coverage. And don't start me with Christgau, they guy personifies the Yiddish word potz , which for you non-speakers means: a 'cock'.

 

[Slothrop]

Totally agree that this is the attitude behind broadsheet music coverage - anyone have any thoughts on why it is?

I don't think it's exclusive to broadsheet coverage, to be honest - it seems like broadsheet coverage is more shaped by the general attitude than vice versa - in fact, I'd guess that a lot of the writers kind of resent the fact that society considers them a bit odd for still going to rock gigs in toilet venues at age thirty.

I think part of it comes down to the fact that in our society - probably in most societies - having a calm and intellectual response to things is considered more mature (and hence more normal and socially acceptable for someone over the age of twenty) than having a visceral and physical response. So stroking your beard at an art gallery or a film festival is a more acceptable pastime than going mental and dancing like a crazed gibbon to gabber. And thus more adults (and thus more broadsheet readers) are likely to do the former than the latter, and thus broadsheet culture sections are better off assuming that their readers are literature or film buffs than that they're knowledgeable about (say) dance music. And that if they are interested in music, they're likely to want either proper songwriting or sophisticated small room dance that they can appreciate in a restrained way.

I don't know why listening to 'difficult' pop music (modern classical seems to be seen as rather more of an acceptable intellectual pursuit) is considered less normal than watching arthouse films or liking modern art, though. (I think it is, although now I think about it, I'm not entirely sure...) Possibly because although it's 'difficult' it's not an approved intellectual activity because it's pop and therefore not Art.

 

[Tim F]

"Except for Reynolds, I don't even consider the Village Voice's music coverage. And don't start me with Christgau, they guy personifies the Yiddish word potz , which for you non-speakers means: a 'cock'."

Seriously though Buick, you complain about VV often enough, I'd be interested to see some names here (Christgau is too much of an institution to count here - and his Consumer Guide style makes him too easy to hate).