A nicely detailed profile of Meltzer by Mitch Meyers (originally from Magnet – circa 2000?), with lots of dish re: Christgau, Marsh, Marcus, et al. Note: you’ll be asked to “agree” to enter the blog because of possible adult material, but it’s Relatively Safe for Work, far as I can tell (there are a couple semi-nudes on the sidebar).
Archive for the ‘Archival’ Category
Richard Meltzer in Magnet
Posted by s woods on April 30, 2013
Posted in Archival, Richard Meltzer | 6 Comments »
Cure for Depression
Posted by s woods on April 20, 2013
Most of my life I’ve had to go to the record shop at least once a week. Record-buying is my only cure for depression, and I can’t imagine that I’ll ever be happy with cassettes. There’s no thrill like the old thrill of cleaning the deck of last week’s consumption, putting on this week’s style.
Record-shopping is a surprisingly sociable activity. Propping up the counter (and I’m talking about small shops, provincial shops, special shops, record shops, not the audio hypermarkets) are disc jockeys, cultists, collectors, knowalls, obsessives, the unemployed. They watch with amused contempt the ‘ordinary’ buyers, the parents with a scruffy request list for their children, the routine rock fans, the desperate 12-year olds trying to collect all punk’s 1976 hits now. The record shop is where gigs and clubs and music are publicly discussed and placed, where changing tastes are first mocked and marked. British pop culture has always been dependent on this sort of active consumption, and on the constant entrepreneurial move from the organization of record-selling to the organizataion of record-making (think, most recently, of Rough Trade or Graduate or Small Wonder).
- Simon Frith, “A-Blinga-A-Blanga, A-Bippity Bop I’m Going Down to the Record Shop,” 1982, back when Every Day Was Record Store Day and there was no need to formalize the concept (collected in Music For Pleasure)
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Obscure Music Magazine of the Day: Black Music
Posted by s woods on April 1, 2013
Possibly not obscure at all in the UK. I used to own a book version of this, which I sadly lost in one move or another.
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Moral inadequacy
Posted by s woods on March 14, 2013
He’s a case study in the moral inadequacy of authenticity.
- Christgau on David Peel’s 1972 album, The Pope Smokes Dope. Classic one-liner, positively Wildean in scope, though I leave it up to you to determine if he’s referring to Peel or to the Pope.
Posted in Archival, Quotes, Xgau | 1 Comment »
There is little
Posted by s woods on March 11, 2013
Critical language has for the most part been borrowed from other fields — few writers have been able to shake their liberal arts educations. The few new terms (tight, together, heavy) are vague and undiscriminating. A rock erudition has been established, and writers talk casually of ‘influences’ and ‘development,’ but it is all very distant. There are more reviewers, whose main function is commercial, than critics whose concerns are truly aesthetic. There is little rock criticism; change the names and it could be jazz or movies or art. And the bitch is that without other precedents, this bad writing is setting the precedents, and one more clean slate in the planet’s history is getting fucked up beyond all recognition.
- Michael Lydon, review of Paul Williams’s Outlaw Blues in Rolling Stone, April 19, 1969
Gee, if this doesn’t make you feel misty-eyed for the “golden age” of rock criticism, I don’t know what will.
Posted in Archival, Paul Williams, Quotes, Rolling Stone | 1 Comment »
The Priests of RockThink
Posted by s woods on March 10, 2013
It has always been hard for the priests of RockThink to deal with punk in any manner other than ideological; this is why the Sex Pistols go down in history as somehow more valuable than the Buzzcocks.) An almost unlistenable triple LP dedicated to a communist revolutionary government (The Clash’s Sandinista!) means more to those who write the histories than an unspeakably gorgeous #1 pop song like [the Bee Gees'] ‘Too Much Heaven.’
- Brian Doherty, Death Before Disco, Reason Magazine, 2003
[For the record, I'll take Sandinista! over "Too Much Heaven," but the point is nevertheless well-taken.]
Posted in Archival, Pop Musik, Punk | 5 Comments »
The last gasp of true Top 40
Posted by s woods on March 10, 2013
There was one brief and somewhat tarnished moment during my adolescence — somewhere around 1966-1967 — in which I couldn’t distinguish between the inherent value of the Velvet Underground versus the Monkees or Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention and Paul Revere & the Raiders. That confession is not alarming in view of my age (13 going on 14), but consider the circumstances and suspend revisionism. The late Sixties were the last gasp of true Top 40 radio: At one point in the summer of 1966, for instance, Lee Dorsey’s soulful “Working in a Coalmine” was wedged in on the charts with the Sandpipers’ sappy “Guantanamera” and ? & the Mysterians’ still-vibrant “96 Tears.” A similar week in 1967 saw the innocence of the Turtles’ “Happy Together” and the sheer exuberance of Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels shadowed by the call to arms of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” Those were the days when 16 magazine was selling over one million copies a month to teenage girls just like me.
- Margaret Moser, The Singer Not the Song, 1999
Posted in Archival, Pop Musik, Zines | 4 Comments »
Bangs Audio II (now with transcript)
Posted by s woods on March 8, 2013
What a few minutes on Google will learn you: I mentioned in a recent post that I wasn’t sure who Sue Matthews was, or what publication (or radio station) her 1980 interview with Bangs was conducted for. Turns out this information has been available online for a few years now, at the website, Cousin Creep, which also includes a transcript of the interview. Which was conducted, btw, for ABC, Radio Australia. (Not, as I embarrassingly assumed, for an English publication; sorry, terrible with any accent which isn’t Southwestern Ontario-flavoured.)
In 2009, Sue Mathews contacted me and informed me the cassette copy I had was the only surviving copy. In recalling the interview, Mathews mentioned: “Lester was a great person to meet, by the way, just as you’d imagine from his writing. A very generous and thoughtful interviewee, with no ego at all. I ran into him in the post office in Chelsea (NY) a year or so later, and we had a coffee nearby – he was that kind of guy”.
And now, remixers — start your engines!
Posted in Archival, Interviews, Lester | Leave a Comment »
Critical Collage: Rush vs. the Critics
Posted by s woods on March 5, 2013
A by no means comprehensive or conclusive survey of a Canadian power trio who once upon a time (much less so now) got under the skins of more rock critics than any other rock or pop artist going.
- – - - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
- Creem, June 1981
“For the record, those three are drummer Neil Peart, who writes all the band’s lyrics and takes fewer solos than might be expected; guitarist Alex Lifeson, whose mile-a-minute buzzing is more numbing than exciting; and bassist, keyboardist and singer Geddy Lee, whose amazingly high-pitched wailing often sounds like Mr. Bill singing heavy metal. If only Mr. Sluggo had been on hand to give these guys a couple good whacks…”
- Steve Pond, review of Rush live in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone, 1980
Geddy Lee’s high-register vocal style has always been a signature of the band – and sometimes a focal point for criticism, especially during the early years of Rush’s career when Lee’s vocals were high-pitched, with a strong likeness to other singers like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. A review in the New York Times opined that Lee’s voice ‘suggests a munchkin giving a sermon.’ Although his voice has softened over the years, it is often described as a ‘wail.’ His instrumental abilities, on the other hand, are rarely criticized.
- Wikipedia entry on Rush
- Mark Coleman and Ernesto Lechner, The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, 2004
Posted in Archival, Canada, Chuck Eddy, Classic Music Mag Covers, Creem, Critical Collage, Dear Ed., History of Rock Criticism, Links, PDFs and Scans, Quotes, Rockism, Rolling Stone | 3 Comments »
Obscure Music Magazine of the Day: Scene
Posted by s woods on March 1, 2013
Scene, May 1, 1976, from Ireland. I should dedicate this to my four-year-old daughter, who loves various Beatles songs, but, after watching a bunch of clips of the group on YouTube, has developed an almost bizarre antipathy to Paul McCartney. Her reason? “That guy is difficult.” (Also: he “looks like a girl.”)
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Obscure Music Magazine of the Day: It
Posted by s woods on February 23, 2013
It, April 1972
It, March 1972
It Magazine, via Lettie Music. (Probably not a music magazine per se, but certainly one with a musical/visual aesthetic — a precursor to post-punk? — at least judging from these.)
Posted in Archival, Obscure Music Magazine of the Day | 3 Comments »
Obscure Music Magazine(s) of the Day: Roxy-related
Posted by s woods on February 21, 2013
Popswop (say what?), April 74; Look-in, October ’74; Beat Instrumental, November ’72
Posted in Archival, Obscure Music Magazine of the Day, RoxyMania! | Leave a Comment »
Obscure Music Magazine of the Day: New Music
Posted by s woods on February 19, 2013
New Music, April 1, 1972
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The Name Game
Posted by s woods on February 19, 2013
The important thing about Musician magazine is that it is named Musician magazine. It is not named Music magazine. It is not named Sociology magazine. It is not named Popular Culture, Politics and Anything Else the Editor Likes magazine. And it is certainly not named Critical Theory magazine. Why? Because musicians are interesting and everything else is boring. Well, okay. Music is intensely interesting when listened to. When written about, it is boring. Try it sometime.
- Charles M. Young, “15 Years of Musician: Why We Write About What We Write About” (Musician, August 1991)
(For the record, I would happily buy a magazine called Popular Culture, Politics and Anything Else the Editor Likes, which describes pretty much every great magazine ever, though not Musician, which was also once in a while a great magazine.)
Posted in Archival, Musicians, Quotes | Leave a Comment »
Obscure Music Magazine of the Day: Flip
Posted by s woods on February 15, 2013
Welcome to this world that we live in. Normal people going for a spin.
Posted in Archival, Obscure Music Magazine of the Day | 1 Comment »
Obscure Music Magazine of the Day: Back Beat
Posted by s woods on February 14, 2013
Ad for Back Beat, 1972 (?), not a full-fledged ‘zine, but a supplement that came with High Fidelity. A lot of the usual suspects in here, but the name that jumps out at me is Dave Hickey, the (ahem) “Lester Bangs of art criticism” who has often alluded to his days in rock writing, the evidence of which I’ve never actually seen (but which I can now confirm truly did exist).
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Obscure Music Magazine of the Day: Zoo World
Posted by s woods on February 12, 2013
Not that obscure, really. I know my brother had a copy or two, and Richard Meltzer mentioned it (somewhat mockingly) in my interview with him. But it’s more or less forgotten, and I’ve no idea if it was any good or not. (My guess is that, like a lot of ‘zines from the period, it had some decent contributers but a limited budget and/or no clear aesthetic differentiation from the big kids on the block — Creem, Rolling Stone, Circus, and Crawdaddy. But who am I to say?)
Posted in Archival, Obscure Music Magazine of the Day | 3 Comments »
Outside Looking In
Posted by s woods on February 12, 2013
There’s no one to tell the adults in the language of the adults what’s happening. The only writer who comes close is Ralph Gleason in the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s been in the territory long enough so that he never says ‘pop culture.’ You won’t find any maps to that land in The New York Review of Books or Kenyon Review or Partisan Review. (Well, Leslie Fiedler has acted as a guide partway for the readers of PR… But he’s telling it from a distance. And so am I. Besides, nobody can go that route for you. You have to listen for yourself. Dig for yourself. Dig yourself.)
- Nat Hentoff, “Something’s Happening and You Don’t Know What It Is, Do You, Mr. Jones,” Evergreen Review, 1966 (reprinted in The Age of Rock, Jonathan Eisen, ed.)
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Someone With a True Grasp of the Reality
Posted by s woods on February 12, 2013
Many thanks for Ralph Gleason’s review of Albert Goldman’s Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce… I didn’t know Lenny Bruce… but I am acquainted with Albert Goldman and his ambition to stake out a monopoly position for himself in a culture of which he is no more a part than I am; and I have been hoping that someone with a true grasp of the reality would judge the book for what it was worth, which Ralph indeed did.
- Joseph Heller, letter to Rolling Stone, August 1974
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The New Sensibility
Posted by s woods on February 12, 2013
Because the new sensibility demands less ‘content’ in art, and is more open to the pleasures of ‘form’ and style, it is also less snobbish, less moralistic — in that it does not demand that pleasure in art necessarily be associated with edification. If art is understood as a form of discipline of the feelings and a programming of sensations, then the feeling (or sensation) given off by a Rauschenberg painting might be like that of a song by the Supremes. The brio and elegance of Budd Boetticher’s The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond or the singing style of Dionne Warwick can be appreciated as a complex and pleasurable event. They are experienced without condescension.
- Susan Sontag, “One Culture and the New Sensibility,” 1965
[I've been under the impression for a long time that Sontag mentioning the Supremes and Dionne Warwick was a Big Deal. To this McLuhan/Aesthetics of Rock fan, it all seems a bit so-what to me, but perhaps in context, in 1965 -- inside the halls of academia? -- assigning value to the Supremes did signal some kind of line being crossed. I don't know. I've also heard that Sontag later shrugged off whatever affinities she once expressed for pop, though I've never seen the evidence of such.]
Robert Rauschenberg, “Signs” (1970)
Posted in Archival, Quotes | 2 Comments »
