“I’ve never for a second regretted pulling away from being a Professional Music Critic almost immediately after feeling burned/burned out. There were folks willing to support my writing –and they were and are still probably great, it’s not you it’s me etc. — but I can just so clearly see where that path could have gone, and it scares me. A few folks in the … Continue reading Down and Out
“And so I took a break. I put ‘music writing’ in a little box and stuffed it up in a cabinet in the back store-room of my brain and I left it there. It’s still there, and that feels right. To be clear: I am not stopping writing. I’m not sure that would be possible, or even advisable, for me to do. And I’m not … Continue reading Stuffing it in a Box
“When it comes to Pitchfork and scoring, I would say that you would be shocked by just how democratic the rating process is. Without giving much away (because I don’t think that’s fair to Pitchfork), it goes something like this: In general, a record is discussed by the writers and generally, through that, the site arrives at a score consensus. Then reviews are assigned or … Continue reading Finding the Perfect Fit
The thing about rock music, in all of the forms that I’ve worshipped, is that it’s not about thinking. You have your cerebral performers, but rock music is about the body: the corporeal sensations of fucking, moving, imbibing, ejecting. It is not about the caverns of the mind. And those caverns are where Bach spent his lifetime chasing the intricacies of forms, twisting the ideas … Continue reading “The thing about rock music…”
“To the fiercest Clash fans, rockers till death, ‘The Magnificent Dance,’ with its tipsy percussion and Chic bass humming ‘bumm bumm (pause) tn-m mana-ma” for a groove — aided by ABSOLUTELY NO LYRICS — may have been The Magnificent Sellout. But not to me. I licked up its irregularly splattered percussion, I let its bass flickers use my body to write on the floor. This … Continue reading The Magnificent Dance
Are we too aware of everyone else to understand music anymore? Are we too embarrassed? – via Teenage Art – For some reason, these feel like good, relevant questions to me. Continue reading Getting Mighty Crowded
… in dealing with new things there is a question that precedes that of good or bad. I refer to the question, ‘What is it?’ — the question of identity. To answer this question in such a way as to distinguish between a real novelty and fake one is itself an evaluation, perhaps the primary one for criticism in this revolutionary epoch when art, ideas, … Continue reading Good vs. Bad vs. What
Was reading Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, a second run-through, for college, and whenever I picked up the book I’d put the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” on the record player, over and over, my sound of Quentin Compson trying to break out but turning in on himself in loathing. My point is that here are a couple of the many ways into hard rock, if someone wants … Continue reading Painting red doors black
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. Continue reading Moral inadequacy
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 … Continue reading There is little
