Slothrop said: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?