John Mendelssohn, on the other hand, never tires of expressing his disdain for the Doors, while Jim DeRogatis and Lorraine Ali blasted the Doors in “Kill Your Idols”. No skin off my brain, as I’ve always a priori disliked The Band in the same way these folks dump the Doors. (Because I want my rock’n'roll to be about the SENSUAL NOW rather than dusty American-mythology seminars.) We all come up with different tastes, according to the aesthetic hoohah we’ve been through in school and society.

When you talk about Lester Bangs’s relationship with the Doors, make sure you quote his full sweet & sour epithet for Morrison, “Bozo Dionysus,” as Lester found those two visions of Jim simultaneous and inseparable, and thus he could simultaneously praise and ridicule the Doors’ music in his criticism. And I think he always believed in them, no matter the bozo quotient.

Thanks for posting the Kids In The Hall clip. I’d seen it on the tube years ago, and of course had laughed until the milk curdled over “your precious Creem Magazine!”, but then I’d forgotten it, until now. Still rings my cowbell.

Style Note, Scott: I’d thought at first that your use of “pretensiousness” might be a previously-unfamiliar-to-me Canadian spelling, but then I saw you have it as the standard “pretentiousness” elsewhere. Caution is advised, as if Christgau’s reading this, he could phone you and administer a Socratic every-word edit AT ANY TIME.

Like an actor out on loan,
Richard R.

Also, I should probably acknowledge Simon Reynolds here, one of the critics I can think of who digs the Doors, but – more related to my purpose here – also someone who years ago helped nudge me towards the realization that pretensiousness is not necessarily a pejorative.

“Would you see Meltzer then as recognizing the inappropriateness of even trying to bring what he does to the centre of the cultural mainstream, even though what he does is usually more culturally relevant or successful as art at that moment in history?”

I might replace “inappropriateness” with “futility” (the difference isn’t essential, probably, more just a matter of striking a more Meltzerian tone?), but it’s a great question. I don’t think this quote from *Aesthetics* is entirely relevant to this (I don’t think he’s addressing centre/margin here at all, which is what you’re suggesting), but they might semi-apply, at least in regards to “culturally relevant or successful as art.” To wit: “The whole analysis-of-music bit sort of calls for the use of a pack of words to tack onto a pack of sounds juxtaposed with another pack of words. Every creep who has ever bothered with that has to groove on how silly, in the good sense, the whole operation has to be. How do you talk about music, anyway, particularly when…” Rock itself is an environment, written words in such an environment are inadequate, or let’s say can only have minimal effect at best ON that environment — words are but one response to the rapid shifts taking place on all levels (why “dancing about architecture” is in fact entirely valid). Maybe? I’m grasping towards something here, not sure it all makes sense. (Sorry to not address the Powers stuff. Your comments have reminded me that I need to get a copy of her book.)

1) his annual Pazz & Jop statistical indexes are phenomenal: http://furia.com/pjs/index.html
2) ditto his recently uploaded Every Noise at Once map — a mindblower of genre-oriented data (imagine what the mighty Pete Frame could’ve done with this?): http://www.furia.com/misc/genremaps/engenremap.html

And if I remember correctly, Richard Goldstein found “Sgt. Pepper” overrated right from the start, which has always garnered him a lot of admiration from this The-Beatles-peaked-on-”Rubber-Soul” partisan.