5 thoughts on “Picture of the Day: French Rock Critic”
Scott — Just discovered your renewal of the rockcritics.com site this afternoon, and I’m glad to see it. We’ve got to do *something* to ameliorate rock criticism’s colony collapse, after all. Like Andrew Hamlin, I’d be glad to make a financial contribution to keep things going, but if you don’t need that right now, I’ll see about contributing rockcrit-survivor comments instead.
Really love the photo of that stack of Francophone rock books above, including the definitive capsule description of Lester we’ve been searching for all along: “megatonnique rock critic” — Yes!! But do you have any idea whether this Bangs-heavy library was photographed in Quebec, or in the Old Country?
Richard, your comments are worth more than gold around here, truthfully (don’t tell Ron Paul, though–he may want a piece of the action here as well).
I assumed the photo is Old Country, but it isn’t specified in the source. I recall seeing that terrific “megatonnique rock critic” book elsewhere some time ago, and for some reason I think it was clearly a France and not a Quebec thing, but I could be wrong. I myself am partly bilingual, speaking the King’s English and what I can understand of Marshall McLuhan, but beyond that… not much help!
That’s from France for sure. There are very few Quebec-made rock books – the market’s just too small. Even local pop history is severely under-documented – most books are either lightweight celebrity profiles or focus almost exclusively on lyrics.
RockCritics.com 
Scott — Just discovered your renewal of the rockcritics.com site this afternoon, and I’m glad to see it. We’ve got to do *something* to ameliorate rock criticism’s colony collapse, after all. Like Andrew Hamlin, I’d be glad to make a financial contribution to keep things going, but if you don’t need that right now, I’ll see about contributing rockcrit-survivor comments instead.
Really love the photo of that stack of Francophone rock books above, including the definitive capsule description of Lester we’ve been searching for all along: “megatonnique rock critic” — Yes!! But do you have any idea whether this Bangs-heavy library was photographed in Quebec, or in the Old Country?
Richard, your comments are worth more than gold around here, truthfully (don’t tell Ron Paul, though–he may want a piece of the action here as well).
I assumed the photo is Old Country, but it isn’t specified in the source. I recall seeing that terrific “megatonnique rock critic” book elsewhere some time ago, and for some reason I think it was clearly a France and not a Quebec thing, but I could be wrong. I myself am partly bilingual, speaking the King’s English and what I can understand of Marshall McLuhan, but beyond that… not much help!
That’s from France for sure. There are very few Quebec-made rock books – the market’s just too small. Even local pop history is severely under-documented – most books are either lightweight celebrity profiles or focus almost exclusively on lyrics.
Found the “white whale” if you’re interested: http://www.amazon.fr/Rock-critics-Collectif/dp/2359490168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382659242&sr=8-1&keywords=%22rock+critics%22
thanks for this, Dave. Wish I could read the thing!