A sampling (not comprehensive, possibly more to come, etc.) of critical responses to Out of the Vinyl Deeps, the new Ellen Willis anthology, interjected on occasion with a few thoughts from yours truly as one possible way of overcoming the perpetual writers block which has thus far prevented me from laying down my own actual thoughts on the thing: Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly: “Willis writes … Continue reading Meme of the Week: Ellen Willis (I)
“The question [Bruce] Sterling brings up here has nagged Bangs-the-original and Bangs-wannabes since the first rush wore off: It’s got a good beat and I can dance to it, but is it art?” – Ray Davis “Too many [Pitchfork writers] are Lester Bangs wannabes, though each has less than half of Bangs’ talent for being interesting while not actually talking about music.” – miguelsanchez “Though … Continue reading Meme of the Day: Lester Bangs Wannabes & Imitators
“Anyone unlucky enough not to have been aged between 14 and 30 during 1966-67 will never know the excitement of those years in popular culture.” – Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head (quoted here) □ □ □ □ □ □ “I thought, ‘If I don’t write this book, who is going to write this book?’ Who’s going to put something out there that puts the … Continue reading Meme of the Day: Trying to Forget Your Generation (Part 1)
“I had two kinds of letters that were very encouraging. The first kind of letter was from sixty-year-old housewives saying: ‘Jesus, you know, it really isn’t all that noise I thought it was. Thank you for introducing it to me, and Simon and Garfunkel and other pleasing things.’ And the letters from young people saying: ‘My God, I can’t believe it. I never thought anyone … Continue reading Meme of the Day: Readers – Who Needs ’em?
“By the mid-’80s, my rock-crit colleagues were most agog over bands like R.E.M. and U2, whom I could appreciate but never felt any passion for (after punk, I could never understand the continued appeal of the great-rock-band concept). Just around the time that Robert Christgau was announcing his sensible theory of ‘semi-popular’ music, I switched over to covering the TV industry, where ‘semi-popular’ got you … Continue reading Meme of the Day: We Gotta Get Out of This Place
Or is it? “I’m interested in how [music] makes me feel. If it was an early Who single, I’m interested in how that made me feel, and I a lot of other kids feel, or what about a Motown record made a lot of us dance at a particular time. But I’m more interested in how it does that musically, I think. That’s the underlying … Continue reading Meme of the Day: It’s All About the Music, Man…
RockCritics.com 