[CREEM, Aug. 1973]
Archive for January, 2008
Scott’s Bookshelf, Part 3
Posted by s woods on January 29, 2008
20. Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story (Nick Tosches) – The number of music bios I own is relatively small (I’m guessing they account for, at most, 20% of my music books), the number I’ve read even smaller, and the number I’ve loved barely constitute a blip in my reading history, but this is the exception even among the exceptions (of which there are a few). As someone who came to the subject of Jerry Lee rather blindly — aside from knowing the obvious hits — and without an overwhelming amount of interest in learning more, I found Tosches’ telling of the story entirely absorbing, even haunting. Particularly in his channeling of Lewis’s voice, a risky device that resonated long after I put the thing down. “It was 1975. It might just as well have been 1965. He took a drink and beheld himself in the mirror. There were lines on his face that he had never seen before. He looked for the eyes of the hawk, but saw only his own, pink and milky from the wages of unclean succor. The hair, though, the hair — the hair was yet of majesty.”
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Old Letters #5
Posted by s woods on January 29, 2008
[Smash Hits, August 1981]
Posted in Dear Ed. | Leave a Comment »
Old Letters #4
Posted by s woods on January 29, 2008
[CREEM, Dec. 1973]
Posted in Dear Ed. | 1 Comment »
Question of the Week: Were You Ever…
Posted by A.C. Rhodes on January 28, 2008
disappointed by someone in journalism whom you admired? Did you find any resolution later, or did you find yourself holding a grudge?
Posted in Question of the Week | 7 Comments »
Old Letters #3
Posted by s woods on January 27, 2008
[Trouser Press, April 1982]
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Tom Ewing on “The Test of Time”
Posted by s woods on January 27, 2008
Tom Ewing’s latest Pitchfork column, which employs an old Dave Marsh Smiths vs. Lionel Richie dichotomy as a launch pad, contains a lot to chew on, examining as it does the dubious critical fallback position of “20 years from now, people will still be listening to this [i.e., this record that I'm praising] whereas few or no one will still be listening to that [i.e., this record that someone else is praising but which you yourself don't care for].” I bet there’s not a rock critic on the planet who hasn’t written from this vantage point at some time or other, but even to call this position “dubious” is rather charitable. As Ewing points out, it’s a position that can’t really be argued with (unless, perhaps, your name is Mork).
Myself, I fear that I have too often relied on the opposite tack, which Ewing mentions only briefly:
“What strikes me is that the test of time card is played to win internal arguments as much as external ones. It’s often the justifier for something being top of a list, not fourth, or it turns up ruefully acknowledged when talking about a pleasure-perceived evanescent: I’m sure I won’t be listening to this next year but… Posterity here is a cop in the listener’s head.”
Posted in Blabbin', Dave Marsh | 5 Comments »
Old Letters #2
Posted by s woods on January 27, 2008
[Esquire, 1971?]
Posted in Dear Ed. | Leave a Comment »
Old Letters #1
Posted by s woods on January 26, 2008
[New York Rocker, Feb 1982)
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Call for Submissions: Best Music Writing Series
Posted by s woods on January 26, 2008
Daphne Carr sends a shout out for submissions for the next in the Da Capo Best Music Writing series. See full details here…
Posted in Job Ops | Leave a Comment »
Writers Wanted for Beatles Book
Posted by s woods on January 26, 2008
Sean Egen writes:
Hello,
I may soon be editing an anthology of writing about the Beatles.
Have you had published any articles on the Beatles or related subjects (e.g., post-Beatle activities of former Beatles)? If so, I would be interested in seeing them with a view to publishing them. The subject can be anything to do with the Fab Four: their music, their films, their cultural importance, their image, their history, etc. though I’m not too interested in their private lives except where it impacts on their art. I’m particularly interested in ‘first-hand anecdote’: articles with input from people who dealt directly with The Beatles. I’m also perfectly happy to consider Beatles-debunking articles and articles skeptical of their achievements.
As well as published journalism, extracts from books — whether in print or out of print — are welcome. So are verbatim interview transcriptions with Beatles or Beatle-associates/relatives/friends/lovers (interviews can be published or unpublished).
Articles can be of any vintage and any length, although extremely short pieces wouldn’t be too useful for my purposes.
Please e-mail them to me as a Word file or a text file, stating where and when the article was originally published. Obviously, I can’t promise to print it, but everything will be given serious consideration. If you don’t hear back from me, it’s because I have decided not to use it. If I do want to use it, I will get back to you to discuss terms.
Please also at the same time let me know what the copyright situation is with regard to the article(s). Will I need to obtain permission from the magazine that first printed it or did you retain re-use rights? No problem if the former, but I need to know for legal and practical reasons. It would also be helpful if you could let me know if in the case of you not retaining re-use rights whether you had an arrangement with the relevant magazine whereby you would receive a cut of the proceeds from any resale they managed to engineer.
Posted in Job Ops | Leave a Comment »
Former Creemster Bangs On About This, That, the Other Thing
Posted by s woods on January 24, 2008
Final installment of Bill Holdship’s Creem history/memoir/book review here, at Metro Times. A much deeper dig than the first installment into the story, the in-fighting, the book, etc.
A few disagreements along the way, the most major one being in regards to this:
“Of course, revisionism has been going on for a long time now. In 2000, music critic Simon Reynolds took potshots at Bangs (and me) on his blog, writing that he’d read Bangs’ stuff in CREEM just recently, and while a lot of it was very good, a great deal of it wasn’t all that. But Reynolds obviously couldn’t read it in full context. So that’s sort of like me saying ‘I listened to Elvis in the ’80s,’ or ‘I listened to the Sex Pistols in the ’00s, and I just don’t know what all the outrage was about.’ Take it from someone who was there reading him at the time: Lester Bangs was great, even if it’s harder these days to accept, as Greil Marcus once put it, ‘that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews.’”
Posted in Creem, Dave Marsh | 15 Comments »
Scott’s Bookshelf, Part 2
Posted by s woods on January 24, 2008
11. The Dark Stuff (Nick Kent) – Read a few chapters of this (Brian Wilson, Stones, G N’ R, I think), perused the others, have never felt a pressing need to pull it off the shelf again. I know how highly regarded Kent is (especially in the UK), and based on the little I’ve read I can neither confirm or dispute the many claims made for him, but the terrain he covers in this book is, at least for me, one of the least interesting stories in pop music — that of the wasted, self-destructing rock star (I say this as someone who has pretty much revered Keith Richards forever, even while simultaneously considering him one of rock’s ultimate self-parodies). There’s no doubt more to the writing here than that, but it’s just not a subject that greatly compels me, in the same way that I almost never actually enjoy watching junkie movies (even skillfully directed junkie movies). Another barrier: the whole journalist-as-rock-star thing. Witness Morrisey’s blurb: “I could tell you stories about Nick Kent that would uncurl the hair in your Afro.” Thing is, I don’t have an Afro.
Posted in Greil Marcus, Scott's Bookshelf | 1 Comment »
Question of the Week: How Bad Is…
Posted by A.C. Rhodes on January 21, 2008
or was, office politics and how have you dealt with it? Since it’s been somewhat of a theme here lately, it could be interesting to explore.
Use aliases if you don’t feel like facing ghosts of the past, present or future – or if you’re just plain squeamish like many will undoubtedly be (including us, perhaps).
Posted in Question of the Week | 1 Comment »
Scott’s Bookshelf, Part 1
Posted by s woods on January 21, 2008
In which I present snapshots of my music bookshelves, accompanied by a few quick thoughts about each title (and I do mean quick — no plans, really, to “review” these). I’ll try and do one of these segments every few days, covering between half a dozen and a dozen books each time out. I’m numbering them mainly for my own amusement and because I really have no idea how many music books I actually own; more than the average person but less than many other rock critics, I suspect. (This idea is inspired in part by this ILM thread.)
1. Beck: Lord Only Knows (Steven Hamer) – This has a $1.99 price tag still on it, so obviously I bought it in a cutout bin somewhere (the sticker also says “Price City” and I confess I don’t even know where or what that is). I’m sure I purchased this for my wife, Jackie, who’s a bigger Beck fan than I am, but somehow it still ended up with my books (a few of her music books are on my shelves, not that that was a pre-condition for marriage or anything). This book has a few nice pictures, but that’s about it far as I can tell.
Posted in Scott's Bookshelf | 2 Comments »
