Questions for Jim DeRogatis

(he told lester bangs that he did in his early 80s teenage interview with LB).

(you said no phat jokes, not fat jokes!)

I'm with you, am, but what am I going to do? Not interview him?

[I would actually be interested in knowing the answer to this.]

i think that the answer to that one is pretty obvious ... just look at him!

http://www.suntimes.com/century/images/DEROGATIS.jpg

Will he be wirting for the new CREEM?

There are a lot of people on ILM who could wipe the floor with this guy as far as writing goes. He puts the ACK! in hack.

-- Kenan Hebert (edito...), November 6th, 2003.

Fat people are so defensive. Next you'll be claiming that you're not fat yourself.

I'm not sure I had either, but he's been surprisingly good at franchising himself since then, at least in Chicago. He's got a radio show, Sound Opinions, that pitts him against the Chicago Tribune music critic Siskel-and-Ebert style, and they air a TV version of it on PBS.

Next you'll be claiming that you're not fat yourself.

Very funny. Like DeRo himself, I've lost a lot of weight. I call it the "wake up at 4 in the morning 5 days a week and work your ass off in a restaurant and drink nothing but espresso" diet.

See? Pretty irrelevant, huh?

Marcus and Christgau may be twerps, but no one can deny that they can actually WRITE. I've yet to see any evidence that DeRogatis can. The Bangs bio is a lazily written snoozer if ever there was one. Every word is dead on the page, and the book conveys nothing - absolutely NOTHING - about what made Bangs at all interesting.

OK, I do have a question that you SHOULD ask him. It may seem relatively trivial, but I don't think it ultimately is, and it's bothered me for two years now. In the Bangs bio, Jim casually states that Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music' was released on Red Seal, RCA's classical imprint. SUCH A GLEAMING ERROR PROVES WHAT A LAZY RESEARCHER DEROGATIS IS. It also proves that Jim HAS HARDLY READ PERHAPS THE MOST NOTOTRIOUS AND FAMOUS LESTER BANGS PIECE EVER WRITTEN. Remind Jim how Lester rebuked Reed's dubious claim that RCA was insisting it go out on Red Seal; Lester famously quoted the former Red Seal A&R guy, who set the record straight by recounting that Reed came to HIM, played him his (what he thought was) unbearably shitty "torture music" and sent him away with a handful of classical albums, in hopes that he would "write better stuff next time". Lester paints a hilariously vivid portrait of "the wired weasel" taking his MMM tapes from office to office of this (then) world-dominant media conglomerate. Red Seal exec: "I could see that this guy wasn't too well connected with reality".

Now this piece isn't in an obscure issue of Creem missing from Jim's collection - it's all over the net and it's in 'Carburetor Dung'. Now I can forgive the Red Seal misnomer as a casual aside in another context, but in a Lester Bangs BIOGRAPHY? So Jim's a lazy researcher, point taken, but it leads to the obvious question - just how thoroughly has Jim read any of Lester Bangs' writings?

Here's the rub. DeRogatis seeks approval, dubiously "proving" "legitimacy" via tenuous (and, ultimately, spurious) connections, viz. "I was a fat schoolboy who interviewed Lester for an hour a couple of days before he kicked it. Ergo, he passed the torch to me, and being fired by RS (just like Lester was!) provides further evidence of ye olde unbroken lineage."

So what does this mean? First of all, it shows that DeRogatis is concerned with Jim DeRogatis first and foremost, and music or Lester Bangs or whatever his ostensible topic is at the given moment remains a distant second, if even that. Hence the lazy research, the lack of passion, the inability to achieve an ounce of empathy with any subject he touches. Secondly, he can most charitably be described as a "prosaic writer", though I'm personally convinced he's just a bad writer, period.

But then why do you think he has a Chicago Sun-Times column and a genuinely gifted and insightful writer ala Robin Carmody doesn't? Precisely because DeRogatis embodies all that is wrong with contemporary mass culture. Everything about Jim screams LAZY NARCISSITIC INADEQUACY: desperate to please those he seeks approval from, ingratiating himself and then APPROPRIATING his - HIS! - projected image of them (Bangs, Meltzer, etc.) and first to boast that he, Jim DeRo, is THEE legitimate heir to the throne, our one and only Modern Prince. That he certainly is, yet the joke's really on him. As always with the narcissistic personality, he objective reality doesn't exactly jibe with his distorted, inflated, delusional self-image. You can see it clearly, I can see it clearly, but Jim most assuredly cannot. He may not know it, but I know that his eidtors and sundry overlords at the Sun-Times certainly do. In this time and place, in this day and age, it's the cheerfully deluded, the (yes) scared narcissist (deep down he knows he doesn't measure up), the - what's that spell? - controlling personality who can easily be controlled - those are the ones who get where Jim is now.

And the fact that he is capable of braying the loudest got him there.

the fat jokes are depressing partly because j.d. is such a laughably self-deluded and untalented writer and we could easily be spending our precious time making fun of that instead. they're also depressing because fat jokes are stupid and offensive.

da DeRogatis thread

DeRogatis as Derogatory

his mediocrity really is quite spectacular

Jim DeRogatis - C/D

that one ends poignantly, it should be locked as historical blahblahblah

jeri, you miss my point. I don't give a damn about Lester Bangs or Lou Reed, really. The fact remains that, when it came to all matters Lou Reed, L. Bangs was just the anal compulsive anorak you're talking about. And, as I stated, the MMM-Red Seal saga occupies a pivotal position in Bangs's famous piece on the subject. Now for Jim to get this entirely wrong in A LESTER BANGS BIOGRAPHY is a bit odd, eh?

I really don't know what's so difficult about understanding this.

I suppose I'd be equally irritated if, say, a James Joyce biography got certain characters names wrong or claimed that Ulysses was set in London.

I am beginning to understand why Courtney Love agreed to blurb his new book. This is a woman who says in every interview, in one unsubtle way or another, "I'm smart!" Often she says it outright. This is not something smart people do. She understands DeRogatis on a spiritual level. I asked him at one point about Courtney, and he gave me the answer I expected...

"It's a love-hate thing. She respects me as a journalist..." etc.

I asked: "Is it respect, or is a love-hate thing because you've given her some good ink and some bad ink?"

DeRo: "I don't know."

Well, if he hasn't thought much about that one, what else is he missing? That seems to me a fundamental thought about the musician-critic relationship. I don't know of a single band in the history of ever who has gotten a bad review and later said, "but I respect his journalism." This, apparently, has not occured to DeRo. I'm not accusing him of being dodgy, mind you. If there's any critic alive who hasn't considered that Courtney Love might be a touch mercenary, it's him.

He seems at least half aware of his contradictions, but -- and this is especially funny -- he thinks that makes him "Bangsian," a word he uses frequently and without an ounce of shame or self-reflection. I eventually found myself wanting to hate even the bands we both like. (Flaming Lips? Jeez... maybe Christgau's right about them!)

But that's not even the funny part. After a half hour of what I was sure would be the meat of my interview, I realized that my tape recorder had been on pause the whole time.

Fuck!

I didn't get a word of it. I didn't admit it, either. I went for another cup of coffee, and then came back and lamely tried to get him to sort-of repeat himself. ("Let's back up a second... you were talking about how you hate irony...") I got some more good stuff, but nowhere near what I wanted. My initial plan was to transcribe everything he said, and let that speak for itself. Now I'm in the position of either culling the few quotes I can remember or make out from the tape, or e-mailing him with further questions, or... the third option.

See, I question everything about him except for his honesty and integrity. Even his Blues Explosion article was a fair shake in its own way. He came to them with questions, and he got some answers, and though they were not the answers he wanted, at least he asked the questions. It would be terribly unfair of me to present myself as a friend (which I did) and then to write any of the vicious things I wrote above without so much as a verifiable quote to back them up. So the third option is to write him back and say, "I missed half of what you said. I have a lot more questions -- harder ones -- and I want you to answer for yourself." And then to go after him from a different angle, to really ask him hard questions, to question his values more than I did before (and I did, a little, but it's not on tape), and hope he'll see me again. He offered to, but I'm hesitant to ask.

I don't know. I disgree with him in almost every way, but I do kind of respect his conviction, and I'm sure that if I asked him harder questions, he wouldn't hate me for it. I mean, maybe not. Maybe if I leave out the word "sanctimonious" it'll be ok, because as we all know, that's a word best applied to Steve Albini.

I really hope the PSU library gets that new DeRo book cuz I'm dying to read it.

although maybe he'll happen upon this thread first anyhow.

hi jim.

eep.

Soooo seconded.

Ay, no shame in tha game, baby.

(x-post)

yeah i'd imagine...

I now subscribe to the Sound Opinions podcast, and hear it every week. DeRo is nuts, no question.

I still want to interview him again. I have a list of questions.

"Why are you nuts?"

Oh my god is this podcast awful.

In what sense is it awful?

My Dinner With Dero, Part II

yes plz

DeRogatis and Kot have this sort of chummy "we-know-what-we're-talking-about-and-what's-cool-and-our-listeners-don't" repartee, they talk with incredible superficiality about the records they're reviewing, and they both have these high squeaky voices which are too similar and don't work very well on radio or podcast. I've been trying to listen to an interview they're doing with David Thomas of Pere Ubu, and the questions are so mind-numbingly dull that I can't help but cringe. Now, Thomas is a notoriously difficult interview subject who reflexively rejects the conventional wisdom about himself and his music on virtually every point, but they don't even try to engage him on that level. Instead, they just regurgitate the same stupid questions he's been asked a thousand times, allow him to do his rejection shtick, and then lick his ass about how brilliant it all is.

I generally disagree with DeRogatis's opinions on music, since I think his entire aesthetic is pretty much fake Bangs homage; I almost get the sense that he derives his opinion about any given song by asking himself "what would Lester think of this?" I don't know anything about Kot. But man, they could at least try to challenge themselves, their guests, or their listeners a little bit. They could try provide some information that goes just *slightly* beyond the surface of what they're talking about.

re:Kot: Is this the part where Greg Kot flies the rockist flag?

So lemme get this straight. You set up an interview with someone you can't stand, listened to him talk for hours, didn't interrupt even once to say what you actually thought to his face then turned around and trashed him on ILX -- for 4 years? Forget journalism, that's just cowardly, dude.

In what sense is it awful?

-- nathalie, Saturday, 4 August 2007 15:19 (6 hours ago) Link

it's awful in exactly the way J said. But what J said, while otm 60% of the time, is still off the money 40% of the time. Sometimes they're right. It's the public radio crapshoot. Terry Gross is also insanely annoying 60% of the time, but I keep listening.

I'm v v glad the Sound Opinions TV show is dead, tho.

I almost get the sense that he derives his opinion about any given song by asking himself "what would Lester think of this?"

you would almost be exactly right.

I don't know anything about Kot.

He's not bad, but he's not good, either. And he lets Jim use him as a punching bag, even when he knows what he's talking about and Jim does not. I don't even mean opinion... sometimes Jim is just RONG and Kot never steps in to correct him. I'd like him a lot more if he did.

dero and kot both rep for mastodon. I mean, how evil can they be if they both love the new Mastodon record?

kot's a good writer and a good dude writing for a certain, chicago tribune-reading audience

Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis, who first received the infamous R. Kelly kinky child sex tape in the mail, was ordered to testify at the trial. But he refused to show! He's claiming some sort of journalistic privilege to protect his sources, which may or may not actually exist in the eyes of the law. Now the judge is deciding whether to issue a warrant for the reporter's arrest. He could be the Judy Miller of the sex tape circuit!

The whole reason DeRogatis was called in the first place is that the defense team is "interested in what DeRogatis may have done with the tape between the time he received it in early 2002 and when he gave it to police."

As long as he didn't spend that time digitally inserting images of R. Kelly having sex with a minor into it, I don't see how it really matters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_custody

warrants for jim derogatis

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/kelly.jim.derogatis.2.739428.html

Billy Corgan, bounty hunter.

DeRogatis was supposed to be in court this morning Or Else: anyone know if he was?

Defense is apparently suggesting that he showed someone ("Sparkle"!) a copy of the tape after the point where it was turned over to police and is involved in elaborate video-doctoring extortion scheme, etc., which is dumb, but, like ... if he kept a copy of the tape on file somewhere, he becomes a technical-sense possessor of child pornography and all. The guy is in kind of a crappy position! Don't know enough about law to know the chances he'll be compelled to actually testify, though.

http://chicagoist.com/2008/06/04/dero_doesnt_hav.php

Dude's all over the news:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/04/rkelly.trial/index.html