This week's Petridish punchbag - but does he have a point?

Ryan Adams love is hell vs Rock and roll?

Record companies impose financial or artistic requirements.

How ironic.

how about fleetwood mac - tusk (we're gonna do it anyway) vs mirage (ok it didn't sell go back to the formula)? and mirage has noticeably not been given a deluxe expanded cd reissue.

Really, what is the point - he's not writing for The Wire is he?

(in response to dadaismus):

some would say "most improv artists." to quote steve lake in the wire of the mid-'80s - "so you recorded your new album in 45 minutes, Herr X. The Rolling Stones/Fleetwood Mac/Special AKA took two years to do theirs (implication: these guys care!)."

(remember this was the mid-'80s, when two years to record an album was still considered an abnormally long time, rather than the routine it now is)

(xpost)

Depends on the improv artist! Tho certainly it's an expensive business tryna keep up with the number of recordings they put out. (I almost said "churn" instead of "put", but realised that could be too pejorative).

some music best when done in vacuum. but much music is best when there is the conflict between artistic expression and functional constraint, the frisson along the border. how to make something, within these parameters. especially, music with social function

so, yea, i think he has a point

i wonder what petridish makes of the transatlantic chart-topping, multi-million selling album "kid a" by radiohead?

(oh yes, i remember, last year in his review of "hail to the thief" he printed lies about "kid a" not selling. old petridish certainly isn't someone who's going to be put off by boring, inconvenient "facts" if they don't happen to suit his non-theory)

That's three and rising.

sgt pepper would have sold more had it not been on an "experimental bent." they could have kept on putting out hard day's night soundalikes forever and made money out of it, just like the dave clark five or the monkees did.

there isn't going to be a bends II. it's not 1995 anymore. move on please or stay with your cast records.

Waiting for Petridis' 5* review of the remastered Odessa.

You bought Kid A's sales into the equation. I just don't agree with the implied stance that the commercial success of Kid A represents some sort of artistic vindication, especially given that ANYTHING released by Radiohead in 2000 would have sold millions.

"if [insert name of two-bit indie band here] want to get the entire London Symphony Orchestra on their record..."

Is what it should've said.

kid a is a great album and pisses over every other british rock record released so far this decade. if evolution had been down to people like you, we'd still be scratching out lines on the walls of caves.

worse than that, you sound like a BPI apologist. listen to me, they're not your friends. they'll come and take your pc away for any evidence of soulseek/kazaa infiltration, they'll even sue amazon because then they'll lose their cocaine pocket money which they call "profits." i would rather have "lots of fantastic records" than a pile of timid shit put out by acts scared that they'll have to repay their advance. look around you. keane, coldplay, snow patrol - fucking groups of mice. what's the point in defending crap like that?

spot-on. the thing is that there are successful bands that take risks - like radiohead (who i don't like) etc but they fit a VERY limited niche. they have strong fanbases who will move with them (regardless of how shit the record in question might be).... they're the people who are *allowed* to be a bit off-the-wall, likewise OutKast. every label has a couple, just to be able to say they're pushing innovative music (dizzee, wiley, jaxx etc don't count coz xl is a real exception to this idea). producers like timbaland work in a kind of inverse way to radiohead - they're making mainstream music that comes out sounding odd, as opposed to making self-cosciosly odd music that works in the mainstream. most major-label artists aren't allowed to do this, though.

timbaland hasn't made anything "odd" for at least two years.

oh i think he has, it's just his oddness has now become its own kind of orthodoxy. not saying he couldn't buck his ideas up a bit, but... in any case, i do think petridis is a wally and a bad writer, but at least re prince, he has a very salient point!

this is not in dispute at all. vanilla ice's career fell apart after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze soundtrack, too. i think we've hit on something here...

Music writers?

(just bring me more Flaming Lips and Ryan Adams why don't you)

Ha ha Marcello, I couldn't agree with you more... tho i do own a few Nurse With Wound albums and stand by those, mind you they are all pre-Current 93 and pre-Coil

of course, great records have been made both with and without inteference. there are records you can pick to support either side of the arguement, if you wish.

also, the argument can surely be made that all records are compromised the minute they leave the artists minds, having to deal with studios, producers, circumstance, engineers, sleeve designers, even yourself.

Isn't that the idea/concept being compromised? Music itself will always be an artefact, so the compromise/mediation (the act of bringing it into being) is part of its essence. This is a particularly compressed and interesting process to be disentangled when considering improvised music

and what about the unearthed original version that the artist originally wanted to put out and was forced to compromise over

but, anyway, i wasnt choosing one option over the other, i was interested in the record with a public life, and the record hidden away, the imprisoned child. of course, the latter may well be better, and the former might be better, perhaps there is a split between cultural relevance and personal relevance, as well as between either and authorial relevance (perhaps the cultural and personal blend though, and is difficult to distinguish).

i'm not sure i can separate the personal from the cultural, partly because it feels a little like playing music in a vaccuum, im not sure how to separate it out from life experience and the world around, and all the contextualism inherent

i think this comes back to the big song loved by millions against the original unreleased vision thing. that the song you heard originally, that made the impact will have been the popular one, and all that goes with it. and the unearthed treasure will be the one you hear later, the artistic relevance, how they wanted to hear it, not how you actually did hear it. the facsimile better than the blueprint

small point but doesn't the use of the world 'literally' there just seem completely dumb? (using 'literally' when you're giving an opinion about whether some music released was worthwhile or not)

"the worst thing is that he couldn't do a worse job of the job in question, even if he was trying to be worst at the job"

I mean since when is "duelling banjos" the same as "clashing egos" or something.

SINCE NOW.

as people have said,certain records can be used to argue for either side-one of my favourite albums,mwng by the super furry animals,was made by the band off their own bat and is a million times better than anything they did with the backing of their label...

obviously there are numerous counter examples as well,but i still think if anyone is going to have control over creative output,the creator is the least bad option,and certainly logically a better choice than most people...

i'd also suggest that the type of artists who make shit albums when left to their own devices are in general,shit,and that in general good artists will make good music when left alone...

Is there no end to this man's untrammelled masturbatory ego (by my count this is the third time we have had to endure his ugly mug on the cover) and despicably gleeful ignorance?

So he has had to listen to all October CD releases. Well guess what, Petridish, you're SUPPOSED to listen to ALL CD releases. It's your fucking JOB. You do it so that we, the readers, don't have to. If you can't take the pace go and work in a fishmonger's.

To paraphrase Petridish on Buggles, the decision to appoint this failed magazine editor and failed TV presenter as music editor of the Guardian suddenly seems symboilc of everything bad that people say about arts coverage in the broadsheets; he's wasteful, he's stupid, he has no interest in actual music.

They should sack him and give his job to Stelfox. Otherwise...well, Petridish, every time you write a stupidly egotistical piece of shit, we're going to give you a kicking on ILM. Deal?

For 40 minutes or so, I am, as one or more members of the original Sister Sledge would put it, lost in music. So lost, in fact, that I neglect to pay attention to what my hairdresser is doing to the top of my head. It is only when I leave the salon and catch a glimpse of myself in a nearby shop window that I realise my vague instructions to "make it look a bit Franz Ferdinand" have been either ignored or misunderstood.

Aside from the odd request to have a haircut like a musical group rather than an individual within it (unless he meant the Archduke? In which case it was probably his failure to properly address the Archduke that confused the hairdressed), there is something unbearably tragic about a music critic going to get his haircut like the latest NME pets.

i don't think it's a critic's job to listen to EVERY cd released, to be fair.

Yesterday's *NEW* Daily Telegraph music section was much worse than The Guardian's.

The Petridish article, good god, Marcello's right - it's horrifying that the music editor of a national broadsheet is allowed to write a cover story which is essentially about how much he hates music.

Coming from you, Marcello, that's like Robert Kilroy Silk slagging off Tony Blair for having an exaggerated sense of his own importance.

wow! i can hear him quaking from here.

Hmm, Okay, I'll let him off then. But you listen to me Petridis: If you ever get your hair cut in the style of any of indie-rock's flavours of the month I'm coming looking for you!

How do you know what it is? Has he been bragging about how big his in-fact-not-very-big one is on ILX again? Or was that another sad, insecure, fucked-up tosser?

isn't being rude to people the whole point of this thread? Or are we only supposed to be rude about people whose jobs we are gut-achingly jealous of - in which case of course no-one should be rude to public sector jobsworthsmarcello.

I can confidently say that as a human being I could carry no greater potential burden of shame than to be Alexis Petridish. Nor do I want his job - I can't afford that big a drop in salary! - but I would like someone else in that job who could do the job better. For example, Dave Stelfox. As I have already said.

There is a trend towards jokiness in The Guardian which can grate, but I don't think it's Petridis's idea. For instance, the Clark County thing. There was some kind of editor or something on Newsnight the other day and he wasn't very serious, it was all about the electronic age equivalent of circulation. I suppose ferocious attacks on message boards are all part of the plan.

I am a bit jealous of Petridis, but I manage to combine this with quite liking him too. Also, I have been trying to get my hair to go a bit Franz Ferdinand. It's because they were both on Sinister and I am very loyal.

the problem with today's piece, however, is that it's utterly pointless and no writer could ever make it work. it bears no resemblance to anyone else's experience ever; it's not remotely informative; and it becomes very tedious very quickly. there are some lovely touches - i did laugh at the selfish cunt/nigella bit - but i gave up reading long before the end, because it was obviously going nowhere.

it's an idea that should never have been realised.

Hey you oughta get today's copy of the Grauniad! There are two full-page photos of him for your delectation!

The Grauniad is a terrible right-wing shitsheet but I still read it because it's the only thing Left in the shop.

petridis is a talented and funny writer; he is often sharp, incisive and entertaining, which is pretty much what one wants from a music critic.

he is *none* of the above!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/images/400/samueltweet_2.jpg

OTFM.

Gah! He's formulaic, smug and one of the laziest thinkers I've ever read.

you're not far wrong, actually.

as for his writing: well, i disagree. i don't like the pop-music *policy* at the guardian - i'd agree that it's lazy and doesn't look for anything new to cover - but as a writer ... like i say, i find him entertaining.

Basically, "OMG pop music is the innovative sound of now haven't you realised it yet forget indie Girls Aloud (Xenomania) and Rachel X are fantastic OMG". A piece of horribly outdated rhetoric.

DVD, the thing with Rachel is that via 2 excellent shaffel-pop singles, she does have the right to be included as much as GA - quality, not quantity in this case.

That's the great thing about pop, you never know who's going to be given the best stuff - I never had high hopes for Rachel at all before I heard her stuff, while Sophie Ellis-Bextor should be a lot better than she is.

basically, petridis is really close minded and limited and conservative, maybe thats what guardian readers want and like despite their pretensions to be otherwise.

You're not wrong. The really bad bit is when even after talking about how the first album sounded, we have the band suddenly "embracing pop" on this one. Why are pieces like this so often rendered nonsensical by the insistence on pretending that a band's new album represents much more of a departure from their previous work than it really is?

A lot of mainstream music coverage seems to be going this way, like the OMM, which has a lot of stuff about listening to music, buying music, being a music fan etc, but not actually much about the music itself.

EXACTLY

But Sam Wollaston just sneers condescendingly at everything, so I don't like his columns as much.

Many Grau writers seem to be very talented, witty people stuck writing about things they don't care about.

I'm not a fan.

who cares how long it took to construct? the end result is what matters. and yes, i agree with stelfox: to be able to condense anger into a packed nugget of hatred like that *and still be funny* is bordering on genius.

shame brooker stopped tvgohome too.

Emphatically not true. And don't ask me to cite examples because I really can't be arsed.

Dave you know I love you but I think you're being a bit OTT in this regard.

from looking around, nearly everyone is?

I could carry no greater potential burden of shame than to be Alexis Petridish. Nor do I want his job - I can't afford that big a drop in salary! - but I would like someone else in that job who could do the job better

to use your preferred choice of cliche, change the fucking record indeed - what sane person gives a shiny shite who writes the pop music column for the grauniad? if you don't like it just don't read the fucking thing instead of obsessing about it and whining like a beaten dog every Friday because you're egomaniacally convinced you could do it better.

that's well and truly spoiled my lunch.

me, yesterday

-- Petridish (petridis...), October 22nd, 2004.

Obviously you give a sufficiently shiny shite to contribute to this thread on an equally weekly basis.

So if you don't like my "whining" just don't read the fucking thing instead of obsessing about me and whining like a beaten dog every Friday because you're "egomaniacally" convinced you're better than me.

Checkmate.

Oh, rubbish.

-- Andrew Blood Thames (andrew.thame...), October 22nd, 2004.

Fortunately for me, it just has.

http://www.indyjones.it/tempiogal/short.jpg

Oh, rubbish.

Not that I'd be any wiser as to who you might be, but Pashmina's your real name?

Obviously you give a sufficiently shiny shite to contribute to this thread on an equally weekly basis.

????

er, no.

Having said all that, I can see why Marcello is unhappy, because he once reviewed 24 Hours of Throbbing Gristle and didn't go on about it, which puts it all into perspective.

The funny thing is, the Guardian music section is obvioulsy not intended for people who read other music magazines, yet they are probably the only people who don't skip right past it. The adverts are a clue to the target readership - 40 alternative acoustic classics of the 80s!!!!

It's for Jeremy Vine.

that's a changed consonant. not a lost one. it's very good, though.

I knew there was a reason I thought he was a patronising git with bad taste. Mixmag FFS.

I am not one who continually pounces on Petridis' articles and background. He has continually annoyed me on his perspective on dance, and this kind of explains to me why.

The record is a bit glutinous, though.

But he doesn't write like just another writer. The "all the CDs" piece didn't end up as a fun, quirky piece of gonzo diversion (and if it contained invention, you could do a little better than going to the barber). More's the shame.

For my money, the boredom and annoyance sets in with the So What Does This Tell Us About Music Today In These United Kingdoms? nonsense.

I suppose this is just how the Guardian works (columnist's friend gets married -> "Why Are We All Getting Married?"), but I do fear it closes doors for the readers, who assume the generalisations are informed rather than just implicit house style.

This week's Petridish punchbag - but does he have a point?

(I'm sorry if anyone has posted anything about this before but I couldn't see it, but then I've been on the cocktails.)

From his review of the new Four Tet album in today's Guardian:

His early releases attracted a strain of critical praise that could instil in the average reader a burning desire to get as far away from Four Tet's early releases as is (sic) physically possible - regrettable phrases like (sic) "turntablism" and "heavily influenced by free jazz" were bandied about with regularity. However, by the time of his third full-length album, 2003's Rounds, Hebden had honed his disparate influences into something that might appeal beyond subscribers to the Wire magazine and the kind of weblog-writing wonk who even as you read this is hastening to their laptop to type a pithy 300,000-word riposte, angrily explaining how a musical diet of turntablism and free jazz has made them the barrel of laughs they are today.

Before exploding into the kneejerk bloodletting and slaughter which Petridish's idiocy persistently demands, we should perhaps consider his position. We should remember that Petridish, as a Kapitalist servant, there to abet in the continued traduction of art into service industry, writes not out of love or enthusiasm, but out of fear. Fear for his job, fear of the bailiffs. He remembers only too well his successful stewardship of Select magazine, which ended in the latter's ignominious closure, and his aborted television presenting "career."

Therefore Petridish is obliged to "enthuse" over what the arbiters of State Pop (and its ghastly mirror, State Alternative), empowered by the favours-for-favours relationships with the various PR departments and agencies who are able to expedite the availability of acts for features and interviews - indeed there is one broadsheet popular music critic who I know to be contracted to write only about product from one specific PR agency - have deemed that the Guardian's readers should be made to like. Scared of another punk, another New Pop, happening to catch them off their guard and throw them out of work, the agents of State Pop have sealed up all ports of entry and continue to deploy Kapitalist propaganda in order to exclude anything or anyone who dares to express anything genuinely new or different.

Hence it is in the interests of these agents, and their puppet Petridish, to traduce free jazz (all that anarchy, if taken to its logical conclusion, might upset our Blairite sponsors and cause Polly Toynbee to cease contributing her Millbank-sponsored samizdats to the paper), turntablism (we don't want all these uppity coloureds getting ideas above their station; stick to ranting about bling so that we can control/shoot you, chaps), the Wire (for all the latter's faults, we don't want our docile 40-year-old Hornby-worshipping readers to discover by accident that it didn't all end in 1968/78/88/98, do we?) and, naturally, blogs - precisely because blogs provide the untrammelled freedom of thought, opinion and expression which Petridish despises because it is, above everything else, THE KIND OF STUFF HE WANTS TO WRITE as opposed to what he is compelled to write about.

His comment about "barrel of laughs" will cause readers to chuckle at the happy, carefree, smiling face which appears on his Guardian byline, or indeed in the plentiful photographs of himself which he selflessly contributes to the pages of the Friday Review and to GQ, all of which betray jolly gaiety in his welcoming and attractive facial expression(s).

So, instead of wishing extreme violence and premature, painful and protracted death on Petridish, as any sane person would, we rather should feel pity for this trapped rodent...painted into a corner only partially of his own making by the original Kapitalist sin, The Market.

I mean for fuck's sake, what state of affairs are we in when a music writer is using a big chunk of the tiny allotment given to him for his review to actually mock verbosity, as if small word counts were something to be celebrated. It's awful.

He should be ashamed of himself, that's pretty low, even if it does seem like the writing of a man who is feeling very defensive.

Would that Orson Welles were still alive to do an advert featuring the phrase: "weblog writing wonks" if anyone's heard him trying to get his tongue around "crumb crisp coating" on the Findus ad tapes.

And whenever did anyone talk about 4tet in relation to turntablism?

(Also: apologies for linking to this thread rather than whatever Guardian crap I meant to, seven posts up. I was drunk!)

He's shite, boring, has apalling taste and writes like an accountant. No to Tom Cox; give me the job instead - I could do with the money!
-- Dave Stelfox (destelfo...), May 11th, 2003.

this thread is entirely justified because alexis is a very very bad writer and wields way too much influence without the talent necessary to back it up. i do not want his job.
-- stelfox (...), October 22nd, 2004.

(via Holy Moly, who seem to hate him.)

I think a more interesting line to take would be that art seems to work best in a situation of optimal frustration, where one is restricted to some extent in some areas, but one finds freedom in other areas unacknowledged by one's paymasters, because they weren't looking in that direction. So the result is a piece of work that keeps the current rules of pop or fashion, while breaking some fairly major ones that no-one realised were rules at all until they were broken.

I appreciate that it's a piece of journalism and the idea is to launch a polemical rant, because that's fun and stirs things up, but ultimately it makes this article useless as a piece of genuine enquir

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1808612,00.html

The piece to which he refers:

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_blissout_archive.html#114962055324130149

- strangely denuded of Reynolds' final qualification. I wonder why?

The attendant irony of Petridish using the term "repellent little smart-arse" in his own review need not be underlined.

Still I suppose it is understandable to feel resentment towards someone who has just had a highly-acclaimed book published when you are a failed magazine editor and failed television presenter.

I do not agree at all with the practice of "wyatting" but in the case of Petridish's local pub I think we could make an exception!

Then again he did send 20,000 new readers my way after that GQ GA piece, so fair dos I guess...

There used to be a long piece on FT about jukebox etiquette and tricks which deserves reviving I guess.

it's almost as if they DON'T WANT people to read these blogs like they do!

(xpost)

Google, I'd guess...as Dom demonstrated on that other thread, if you google those names collectively mine is the first thing that comes up.

Fair enough, I've ranted about this Wyatting business myself on CoM, but AP just seems to have used it as yet another excuse for reprinting his anti-Difficult Music diatribe for the 48,672nd time.

For comparison purposes:
http://cookham.blogspot.com/2006_06_04_cookham_archive.html#114967444501474805

Like me playing "Cherry Red" by The Groundhogs on the jukebox in the Swimmer before realising it's about twice as loud (with five times as many guitar solos) as every other song on there

It was of course the equivalent of not throwing stones at this notice etc.

I don't like internet journalism/research in general. I think I read some "top editor" complaining about it one day, but I can't remember where. I suppose it will wear off.

I enjoy going into rural backwater pubs and putting on Listen The Snow Is Falling.

(x-post)

and i see from today's gruaniad that that useless toerag john l walters has finally knocked poor old john fordham off his perch

it's still a bit tough on everyone else in the place tho eh?

Petridis is a baffling bad/boring writer, wtf.

(xpost)

I was trying to remember why we pulled the pink floyd stunt (I think it was that album "pulse" that we selected in its entirety) I remember now that it was b/c there was a table full of braying tits in there, who were really getting on our nerves.

(Well, the Broken Doll's going back, innit.)

Let's have another go at linking:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1813820,00.html

I think Norman has the right idea but reading this rubbish in a mass circulation broadsheet week after week is like Chinese water torture so he needs to realise what it's like for us.

If he were writing for the Woking and District Chronicle (which is about his level) it wouldn't be so bad but it just illustrates the absolute CONTEMPT the Grauniad has for music (and for pretty well all of its readers).

I buy the guardian about twice a week now, I give it to my wife, who reads it and complains about all the lifestyle fluff contained therein. I suggested I stop buying it at all, but she said she enjoys complaining about it.

guardian in the '80's vs guardian now is s.th. which I occasionally think about, the kind of way of thinking that is seemed to, er, embody really has been shut out of mainstream media/kultur, it's depressing. I tried starting a thread about it on ile a couple of times, but couldn't make an argument that was coherent to me.

That said, I don't remember the guardian's music coverage ever being up to much. AP is a low point, his writing is terrible, and the character revealed by the styule of said writing is dislikeable. The only time I ever read him is when you link to one of his pieces, Marcello! I took a look at that one, and got about 1/2way through, I thought it was borderline incoherent as well as really boring.

i thought you were a woman!

However, Return to Cookie Mountain is largely a delight

If he had called it "delightfully large" it would have been better.

It is a bloody awful review, though, and seems to be born of bitterness.

Are we suggesting that Anthony Osbourne is not Anthony Osbourne?

Sure, EVERYTHING is created under constraints of some sort or another, and sometimes externally-imposed constraints act in the best interest of the poptones. But the opposite is equally true: sometimes catchy chunes comes from renegades who wanna run the whole show.

And regardless of what you think about THAT equation, all the hand-wringing about how, "Mudda could hobble rock and pop music for good," is just embarassing. There is no "threat" here -- nothing that warrants such moronic hyperbole.

Pop will still be pop regardless of what a musicians' union does or doesn't do. There will always be musicians/producers/whatever who want nothing more than to sate the world's appetite for ear candy. And there will always be organizations dedicated to profiting obscenely from the transaction.

there was some discussion of the TVOTR review in the TVOTR thread......

And the Jazz, World, Folk, Etc. section has shifetd to before the pop reviews. John Fordham's back though--take that Walters!

Why give it five stars, then?

Jesus Mary and fucking Joseph.

Time Out introduced a six-star system last year and six stars are only to be given (Editor's orders) to the once-in-a-blue-moon absolute bloody masterpiece. So far there have been about 20 million five-star reviews (tsk) and only one has had six stars, though admittedly this was part of a "this is either one star or six stars" ambiguous deal (I'm sure you can guess the album in question).

i think the five-star system is flawed for albums because i never actually know whether an album is worthy of 100% or not until i've lived with it for a bit, usually beyond deadlines and so on.

however it is GREAT for singles and i would hand five stars out like so much confetti every month and they would ALL BE DESERVING!

JL only gave Aerial three stars but later voted it as his album of the year.

So maybe that spells out the fundamental flaw in the turn-of-a-dime review system.

I'm all for albums not being reviewed until at least six months after they've been released, but as that would involve the collapse of capitalism I doubt such a system will ever come to pass.

(ooh, someone's feewing optimistic this mowning.)

There are records on which I've done complete turnarounds (e.g. 10,000 kHz Legend), so maybe two reviews - one at the time of release and one six months later?

I'm no stranger to overrating records myself; I still wince at the album to which I gave five stars in Uncut three years ago, calling it the year's best pop album, and it didn't even end up in my own end-of-year Top 50.

Everything's Just Wonderful, a bittersweet and honest tale of mixed-up modern life, scores the coup of rhyming weight loss with Kate Moss

Hmmm....

Ugly Duckling- Pass It On: "Save the weight loss, great for Kate Moss/ More potatoes and please pass the steak sauce"

Apathy- Ain't Nuthin' Nice: "You think your phatter than Apathy, but you way off/ You're soft, and you've done more weight loss than Kate Moss"

Rok One- Beat Up The Bouncer: "Man you look like Kate Moss/ Well lately I've been going through weight loss"

Chino XL- Watch Closer: "Tabloids like Mary Kate and Ashley weight loss/ You Kate Moss with the skinny flow Chino causin panic"

who writes this shit? embarrassing for everyone, especially the subs.

this review is uncredited, with good reason. i don't *think* it was petridis.

hasn't he been married for about eight years now?

this is my favourite line in the review.

My former manager used to tell me the story of how her best friend met Snoop in LA. Apparently she is slightly naive and thought "he was really nice and friendly, not scary at all, and he invited me and my sister back to his hotel room for cocktails, but we had an early flight the next day and couldn't go". Since when did being married preclude being a lothario?

Interesting that this album now comes out nine months after I received the promo. No pregnancy gags please.

Must admit I find the rolling Pick Of The Pops much more entertaining to do than the rolling Petridish one these days. Ah well, presumably he'll be back next week for some fresh cabbage.

...except for the mentioning of a Neptunes/Nelly Furtado collabo that doesn't exist.

Someone smash Worzel Gummidge's hands please before he can write any more of this crap.

Wrong

THIS IS EXACTLY THE RIGHT WAY TO LOOK AT OLD MUSIC!

(that was from the xtina review. nothing could unduce me to read john harris on captain beefheart.)

Even wronger

so this is why you don't think garage is dance music!

FEEL PERVADED YET, BITCHES?

http://resource.saltlight.org/_std/images/I0000028.gif

-- The Lex

So its not just indie rock Lex hates it's most rock or just wont read John Harris?

Like Franz Ferdinand!

i think what i like best about dirty is the way the dirtiness is so studied; all the things which would normally obscure brilliant melodies end up emphasising them.

Who is that article aimed at? What person would want to read it? People who like to be consoled in their ignorance?

The Dirty Boots/Genie in a Bottle mash is good.

That's like their most "indie" song!

But you don't like My Bloody Valentine, right?

Or do the Guardian think they're only giving their readers the kind of music writing they deserve? Are our ambitions really so fucking low in 2006?

I don't actually care about the Guardian music section dumbing down though, not really, no more than I care about the music reviews in the Independent or the Telegraph or any other publication I rarely read. It's not a public service.

Then again, I have just been looking at copies of First magazine for work purposes. So "dumbing down" is relative. Their '5 Minute Guide To The Middle East' (point four - "what's the deal with Israel and Palestine") is tragically hilarious.

have you visited ilxor.com?

No you bloody wouldn't because the Guardian has total contempt for its music section readers because it knows that its music section readers have total contempt for music.

They could try to alleviate or eradicate that contempt by making their writing sufficiently interesting and engaging for their readers. You know - raising the standard rather than pandering to it.

Desmond Carrington probably knows more about Beefheart than any of that lot.

weird music = the musicians must all be on drugs

... what year are we in again?

xpost

I really don't think Harris thinks he's being edgy or radical.

What does the fact that he's a huge stoner have to do with anything?

The Lex = my hero, again.

xpost

I'm trying to think through that analogy w/action painting but I don't know much about it.

he did an 'hilarious' article last week about how difficult it is to wear a Miami Vice style white suit.

When will Dom get to do a lead review and then we can really lay into someone?

Complete with "an hilarious photo."

I await a superior Passantino response entitled I Wear A Scarf Absolutely Fucking Everywhere, Me.

PLEASE STOP HAVING YOUR FUCKING MIDLIFE CRISIS IN PUBLIC MAN, HAVE SOME DIGNITY.

Which would actually support the action painting analogy.

I do like Marcello's brave tirade against general audience publications.

this beefheart wasnt the greatest piece, but it's hardly shut-down negative. like the wiley one, it mediates the stifling weight of critical opinion, softens the monolithic status, and makes the reader feel a bit less self-conscious about having a go for themselves. is that so bad?

The fact that Harris thinks that a record sounding like that is a bad thing demonstrates how otm Marcello is in this instance.

as i say.

Oh come on, it treats the reader as though s/he thinks that the Stone Roses first album is the fount of all modern culture. And Harris probably shed crocodile tears when Peel died as well. He is a clown.

well... for the kind of readership he's addressing, that might not be way off-base.

it treats the reader like "hey so there's this guy, you can't even walk into hmv without tripping over a eulogy in his honour, i didnt really get it but i'll have another go, i'll ask some ppl's advice, hmm, yeah maybe there's something in it, i need some more time tho, like it does sound quite interesting but maybe you the reader will have better luck than i"

wot a bastard.

xpost

But would Pynchon or Joyce get that kind of treatment in the literary section?

uh, why do we want music writing to be like lit crit?

I mean, can you imagine him writing a piece like about say, The Fall?

I would argue that Beefheart is not such an obscure figure to a substantial number of Guardian readers, yes.

The article is all about the fencing off of possibilities

what more so than saying wonky noises are great because they just are? "engaging with a thinking intelligent person", hello

Harris really mis-reads 'Dachau Blues'. Or he doesn't explore why its so distasteful. xp = Kapranos and the bloke from the record and tape exchange and 'Spud' via the bloke of old popsters xtc.

Essentially its message is: don't bother with all that weird music that's so difficult to listen to, stick with what you know, i.e. what you liked when you were 21.

Essentially it says: pop's an inferior art form, i.e. Orwellian prole culture separation.

The same as 6 Music with its Freak Zone programme. The name says everything about their sneering attitude.

The doubtless antediluvian notion that all forms of music and art should be treated with a basic level of respect whether you like them or not.

If you're going to criticise, know your enemy (cf. Penman on Zappa).

If you can't get to grips with the basics of pop/rock history, in ALL its forms, then you have no business being a music critic anywhere other than the Woking and District Evening Chronicle, and give the job to people better qualified to do it.

"Wonky noises are great because they just are."

Even that would be an improvement.

= teh only legitimate query on this thread.

venga there's a lot of people reading the paper, in 2006, that arent you. i don't know what else to say really.

yes, sneering at 21 year olds 'unqualified' to discuss lord beefheart doesnt count obv.

yes, these two longish critiques of similar musicians who worked together and have a similar 'profile' in rock-and-pop culture by prominent british music journalists and which are much taken up with 'difficulty' are completely diff.

Quite possibly, yes. Jonathan Franzen wrote a great piece about struggling to come to grips with William Gaddis and by acknowledging the struggle no doubt encouraged more readers to give Gaddis a try. Of all the canonical masterpieces, TMR is the hardest for most people to get into. Guardian affiliations aside, I really don't see why offering an entertaining way into a challenging record is treating readers with contempt. Surely the message is the exact opposite of "don't bother with the weird stuff". It's saying DO bother - it's ultimately worth it. (And the Penman piece is completely different - he sets out to bury Zappa, which he does brilliantly, not to understand him. The fact that Zappa and Beefheart were contemporaries is neither here nor there) As for accusing the Freak Zone of "sneering" shortly before telling someone to "learn to read" with typical bullying condescension…

It wouldn't be, if the article were actually entertaining, as opposed to being patronising and intelligence-insulting, as Gummidge's piece was.

I didn't see any music writers having problems with TMR or other "difficult" records in the Guardian of 30 years ago, when its circulation was five or six times what it is today.

i am surprised by both assertions here. i was under the impression that yer '70s broadsheets had minimal pop-and-rock music coverage. 'circulation' is a bit of a myth, i think. did the graun really sell 5x-6x more?

well he already *does* understand zappa, which is how he's able to bury him. the two pieces deal with similar themes in rockwrite and music culture... partly cos zappa and beefheart are similar dudes... who were contemporaries.

If you can't get to grips with the basics of pop/rock history, in ALL its forms, then you have no business being a music critic anywhere other than the Woking and District Evening Chronicle, and give the job to people better qualified to do it.

this is really silly though.

I prefer "Fearless" to "Burlesque", as later period Family goes, but it's not a bad album and certainly Roger Chapman is in good f.... oops!

Why is it silly? Music writers are supposed to have expertise and knowledge. Why should anyone be employed who doesn't know the basics? What's the point of reading them if they don't? They're supposed to be professionals. It's like going to a trainee GP who thinks that eustachian tube dysfunction means there's a problem on the Underground.

Zappa and Beefheart were childhood friends who worked on-and-off but they are not that similar musically. Sure, both used the blues, as did many people making music then.

I agree with alot of this. Though it strikes me that "reaching for some nebulous middle ground" is the constant failure of broadsheet newspapers though? I mean, such a failure that pointing it out, while inevitably tempting with music criticism in the broadsheets, is a bit facile.

I mean the reality is when you pick up the Guardian or other broadsheets you read alot of stuff where the journalist is just clutching at straws, or desperately subsuming whatever any identity of their own because "nebulous middle ground" is what is expected and demanded.

I've been writing quite a bit of stuff lately and mostly what puts you off is finding yourself descending into "nebulous middle ground" on subjects you actually have opinions about.

The fact is you can't have a paper full of news coverage which attempts to be balanced and independent, and then an arts section which is fervently radical and interesting and avant garde. It just doesn't work, for some reason when people read things they go into "tell me" mode.

Perhaps it's just a simple matter of clearing out all the jaded old 45-year-old timeservers and getting some new blood in there, with at least a bit of enthusiasm.

It has to be better than this perpetual "DIFFICULT MUSIC: KEEP OUT" Customs notice.

"Condescending sense that not only is chart pop contemptible" - Re: the Guardian, this contention is nonsense. I don't know a single writer who thinks that.

Can't he keep that to himself then?

It means the prospective music writer having to listen to, absorb, and come to intimate terms with thousands of records. Just as doctors have to study intensely for over a decade. That's the point. They're supposed to be an authority. They do the hard slog so that the reader doesn't have to. And as we all know, the school of "don't bother with this awful music that's so hard to listen to" writing is the royal road to popularity, since it's pandering to the lowest element of the writer's readership when the writer should be striving to stimulate the highest.

There are literary critics who own up to never having finished Moby Dick or Don Quixote. Does that disqualify them from criticism?

Strictly speaking, yes, if such critics exist; examples please.

FWIW at this stage I kind of agree with Marcello and others, there's not alot of excuse for descending into that "oh this is a bit weird unlike me" journalistic tone. John Harris has to make a living though I suppose.

The crucial thing here is that people who have never liked really avant garde or non-mainstream music as their main course will never be able to percieve it with the persecution complex of those who have!

As for JH having to make a living - well, I'll let someone else supply the Godwin's Law punchline for a change...

what is interesting is the problems newspapers seem to have, in approaching culture, when they seem to handle sport much better

A good and resourceful music writer would find ways of bringing non-mainstream music into the fold, rather than confining them to the equivalent of servants' quarters. It just seems that most broadsheet writers/editors simply can't be bothered to make the effort - much easier to toss off 250 words about stunning return to form, hahah Kid A, etc.

I would of course be more than happy to take on the Stone Roses assignment...

...

It means the prospective music writer having to listen to, absorb, and come to intimate terms with thousands of records. Just as doctors have to study intensely for over a decade. That's the point. They're supposed to be an authority. They do the hard slog so that the reader doesn't have to.

which is it, marcello?

haha, well.

i don't think this whole whether-you-know-your-stuff thing is important, as long as you don't pretend you do if you don't. marcello defines it as It means the prospective music writer having to listen to, absorb, and come to intimate terms with thousands of records - i agree here. and you to have absorb a variety of modes of listening, crucially - you have to know you can't judge all records on the same grounds. there is no point reviewing a lil kim album as if it's a scott walker album, or vice versa, even though both have many many merits.

BUT i would contend that it's not necessary to listen to a specific thousands-of-records canon, and in fact that the music writers who haven't trudged through the endless reams of dead-white-men who comprise the rock canon will probably have fresher perspectives and voices on current music.

i like writers who are able to talk extensively about a band's influences in an intelligent way which goes beyond the dull "X is the new Y" or "X ripped off Y" - personally i think frances may morgan is unrivalled at doing this right now. but you also need writers who can approach music as pure sound, stripped of all that baggage. neither is intrinsically better, both can be done v well and v badly.

the capn beefheart argument is funny because it seems that those arguing that "yeah, harris was right to write sceptically about it" see beefheart not as experimental, avant-garde, non-mainstream music, but as deeply entrenched in the canon as dylan or someone. and i agree with them that it is always important to publish dissent from the canon.

but then marcello clearly doesn't see beefheart like that - he sees him as a figure already on the outside, being further marginalised. and again, i agree that kneejerk "ew difficult music" rants are pretty repulsive.

i still have no intention of reading the article though, i have never listened to beefheart and i think harris is an appalling writer who makes me angry. but it was interesting to read the discussion.

BUT i bet most rock journalists out there have never listened particularly closely to any aaliyah album, or a britney album, let alone know that much about the various house and techno releases which constitute most of my listening time.

i would never read someone who was *only* a specialist; but practically speaking, everybody is to some extent.

I would agree there's a lot of "pretending to know stuff" going on in music writing at the moment.

I don't think you can have a proper perspective on current music, fresh or otherwise, if you don't have a full knowledge of the history which led to it. Sure, you can analyse it as pure sound - and good luck to you if you try - but then that begs another question of a "pure" world of music where there is something intrinsically magical about the production of notes or beats in a specific or random order. I think there may be; but there's an overlap with human input, and therefore human history, which can't be overlooked.

It's like improvising - it doesn't necessarily depend on how well you know your instrument, but the better you know it the quicker and easier it is to produce a response to what else is going on in your vicinity.

I agree FMM's very good at doing that kind of thing; the Guardian would be a much better read were she the music editor. I thought her Drift review in particular very skilfully avoided all the traps into which nearly all of the broadsheets fell.

Fervently agree with Henry about the lack of decent dance music/hip hop writers in print (and yet there are so many online - why is this?).

But, if you're writing for a NEWSPAPER, it's a given that you're going to be of the/some people, and wandering around in red headgear blinkered to 80% of what's going on is just going to make a) you look like a twat and b) your readers alternately dumb or angry.

(xp)

The thing is, there's not a deficit of hip-hop writers per se on broadsheets, there's just a massive deficit of non-dreadful hip-hop writers.

well, you do up to a point allow it; but my real point is that most music hacks are specialists in... rock music! and that's as boring as any other specialism.

i'm coming from movie crit, where no-one has seen everything and sure as shit isn't expected to; most mainstream wrtiers are 'specialists' in hollywood narrative sound cinema.

as i said i think both perspectives are necessary, ideally any given publication would be a mix of them. in some ways i feel as though requiring this "full knowledge" is completely unreasonable though. 1) where is anyone going to find the time, 2) listening to music should never be a chore - but if keeping up with current releases can already seem like it how much more so will trawling through vast histories of the stuff, 3) i do think that one of the most important things which sets pop music apart from other arts is the ease with which it divorces itself from its history, the way it's inherently transient, and while the historical perspective can be very illuminating i do feel that emphasising it too much misses, in many ways, the point.

i know of a fair few writers with a pretty good hip hop background working in the mainstream press, and they always complain about their efforts being stymied by editors and so on. i don't think there are even any knowledgeable r&b writers in the hip hop press though!

I would if they were writing on their specialist area and I wanted to know a bit more about it

Why would there? They're only tangentially related genres, and most British rap writers probably got into rap as a teenager thinking it was something "dangerous". If a great British R&B writer does turn up, they'll come from the Pop press not the rap one.

.. and so do a lot of Beefheart fans! And, indeed, so did Captain Beefheart!

Find the time? It's the writer's bloody job! Also, unfortunately listening to music has by definition to be a chore for the writer, since it's their job to do all the wheat/chaff business.

The transience or otherwise of pop music is a separate issue. But why would I, as a reader, be expected to trust a writer who clearly didn't know their stuff and covered it up with "well it's all pop innit" giggles, or worse, recycled the press release?

Then again, isn't calling pop transient actually an insult to the millions whose lives it has soundtracked?

-- My Mind's Not Made of Gravel (dadaismu...), August 9th, 2006.

depends, it can get a bit aspy.

the pop press (which currently consists entirely of That Site) hates r&b though, whereas the hip hop press at least acknowledges it and puts people like the milian on magazine covers.

(though you are right about hip hop writers, and have hit on a big reason why the disdain for r&b among pop people infuriates me so much)

well, yes, if more people could get paid a living wage to do this all day, sure, but that is not the case for most freelance/aspiring music journalists!

there's nothing wrong with transience, it's not a put-down. what i mean is that one's emotional attachment to the best pop, by the nature of how it's consumed, will be less marriage, more fling - intense "this song is my best friend" feelings for a few months, before filing it to the back of the memory (usually because something new has come along) until you revisit it in a flood of reminiscence a few years later.

1) no-one has done this.
2) the two people i can think of immediately who seem to have heard, like, everything -- ie who make that knowledge plain in their writing -- are probably tim finney and marcello, and i don't think there's even that much overlap in what they listen to!!

well, yes, if more people could get paid a living wage to do this all day, sure, but that is not the case for most freelance/aspiring music journalists!

Is that why we get the standard of print writing we do now; is it all well-heeled middle-class folk who can afford to write for pin money?

One editor called it "Camilla Syndrome": the only people writing for magazines as staff writers under the age of 25 these days are those who could afford to come straight out of university and do a year's unpaid internship until the magazine acquised.

in itself the most ironic document ever.

The Beefheart thing reminds me of Greil Marcus Rolling Stone piece on the Clash (1978? 79?). They're praising the Captain & GM has to explain to his American readers who CB is. He was certainly common currency among UK hipsters at he time.

-- Marcello Carlin (marcellocarli...), August 9th, 2006.

i repeat my 'O RLY?' from upthread.

Funnily enough I heard a Glen Daly track when I was in Scotland. I was in a store in Dundee which was playing some song about Dundee by Daly. I remember because they had copies of the CD in a little "now playing" stand.

Seriously though, I don't think it's a case of having heard everything so much as choosing one's assignments carefully. I usually don't really like writing about pieces of music if I feel like I can't "frame" it with context.

But not every context is relevant - one can choose one's frame in order to play to one's skills. The questions Lex is asking and answering w/r/t R&B will not necessarily be enhanced by him having been exposed to a comprehensive survey of all music that has been given the name "R&B" throughout the 20th century - mostly because he's not pretending to engage in diachronic criticism.

you forget p*nk s, who has not only heard everything, but also knows everything.

Yeah I agree with the point behind the assertion!

I was thinking the other day that the amount of music I've heard all up has expanded dramatically since, say, 2001, but I don't think this has made my writing better. I think I "hear" more in music now than I did then (in terms of historical-contextual sonic detail that can be churned into copy) but the copy itself hasn't actually improved.

cos i can't imagine how music writers in ye '80s did it.

Not to the same extent, certainly not with dance music - but i also get a lot of CDs free to review, and that helps, along with the slightly dangerous spending sprees.

But exposure to ILM and its predecessors has been a much bigger factor than physical exposure to a wide range of music I think. Learning how to think about the music you listen to can give your music-crit voice a level of authority that can misrepresent the amount you've actually heard.

I wonder whether older boardmembers would say the same about their particular golden age of music crit.

I'm not bothered about covering the waterfront. I cover my waterfront and that for me is sufficient. But this isn't a competition...this is about writers who are paid sums of money to write things about which they have imperfect knowledge, or criticise things without the necessary critical tools.

Therefore it doesn't bother me to read Brian Sewell slagging off modern art because (a) he can pinpoint his reasoning with accuracy and considerable historical and stylistic foreknowledge; (b) he is not a kneejerk all-modern-art-is-crap-haha merchant. He knows his stuff, so even if I don't agree with him, I respect his views and am prepared to listen to them.

The same certainly cannot be said of Gummidge or Petridish.

I come across them at Exeter. Random library conversation, "I write about music", "OH REALLY, I was thinking about doing that for a bit before I get a proper job in the city." Makes my fucking skin crawl.

Not sure about this, I've written about music for the Guardian but I've never had any kind of journalistic staff job and I've only been freelancing for about six months. Likewise Sophie Heawood who's doing a lot of the lead reviews, I've never met her but she's pretty obviously at an early stage of her career.

The music criticism versus literary criticism thing: leaving this Jon Harris piece aside, the point is that Film & Music nearly every week gives the lead review to whatever is going to sell best that week whether it be Will Young or the Kaiser Chiefs. Imagine if the Saturday Review did this: Dan Brown and James Patterson and JK Rowling and Jordan getting more space than everyone else put together, every week. The reason they don't do this is that literature is accorded the kind of intellectual depth that means that some people are allowed to be better at appreciating it than others, so what is most popular isn't necessarily best/most interesting. But pop music isn't allowed this status - it's depthless and homogenous, there's nothing to understand or analyse, and popularity is all that matters. That's the attitude behind broadsheet music coverage and I find it infuriating.

no no lex, there must be LOTS of this! lots and lots! the day when scott walker and the old/dead rock guard gets reviewed in the same way as a lil kim album will be a day worth celebrating.

We've had this argument before, Thatcherkids think one way and the rest of us think the other.

But if we're still talking about the Guardian (which I realise is a bit parochial), they must give the lead film review to a foreign or independent film at least 50% of the time. (That's my guess anyway.) So more populist than the literary pages, but still not nearly so populist as the music pages. And this notion of 'greatest cultural currency' is difficult - for 1% of people the new John Updike novel is a huge event, for 99% it's nothing, so does it have cultural currency or not? And aren't newspapers themselves partly responsible for doling out cultural currency anyway?

1. our readers are stupid and won't attend to anything except "what has the greatest cultural currency that week" = what's been most hyped and had most PR money ploughed into it that week.

2. "specialist writing Wire blah blah" = non-mainstream music should know its place and keep it.

The Guardian of the Ghetto.

fixed.

the guardian is sold everywhere.

you can buy non-mainstream music online so that problem doesn't exist.

but ur living in fantasy-land if you think that the guardian giving lead review space to wire faves will up-end the music industry and with it popular taste.

The impression that the Guardian covers nothing BUT mainstream releases is plain wrong. Even the lead slot has featured Four Tet, TV on the Radio, Nuggets, Plan B etc, hardly big sellers with enormous PR budgets. The Knife, Junior Boys and The Drift have all received rave reviews and there was a page on Ariel Pink recently - doesn't that count as flagging up more obscure releases? I agree with Louis - the paper has a duty to introduce people to new music and, however imperfectly, that's what it tries to do. Some people here have created an absurd straw-man Guardian that prints nothing but James Blunt reviews and jokes about Captain Beefheart.

Marcello, it's you that seems obsessed with calling Guardian readers stupid, and equating music taste with intelligence, not me. You translate nothing but your own prejudices.

how did the guardian approach punk?

this all seems to be boiling down to the unsupportable argument that captain beefheart demands respect.

it seems kind of self-evident that the 'biggest' record out in any given week gets the lead review - it's certainly not mutually exclusive with non-mainstream stuff getting covered - but the way in which most broadsheets engage with these 'biggest' records is, most of the time, less than thrilling. there's a lot of tiptoeing round how bad much of mainstream indie is - eg every time the stereophonics release an album it's the lead, and you can TELL that petridish et al loathe it, but for some reason they don't go all out and give it the kicking it deserves, and end up giving it two stars or whatever. and whenever it's a pop release, xtina and so on, it's just snark snark snark.

this is virtually self-evident. if you are a critic, you cannot unquestioningly respect *anything*.

Miller - evidence for "self-evident." I never said "unquestioningly."

aren't all the best critics incorrigible precocious cunts tho? (much like the people they write about a lot of the time)

simon reynolds (who carlin now hates as well, quelle surprise) seems like a nice guy. paul morley, while taking himself too seriously, seems quite nice. this idea that 'haha i can be an arsehole cos well... im such a great music writer' is pretty archaic.

Surely, Marcello, the music writers of your youth had listened to a greater percentage of the pop and rock that was out there because there was a hell of a lot less of it? 'important' (ugh) or otherwise.

I haven't read the TMR piece in question - is it the rock-canon equivalent of a piece where someone's trying to read, e.g., Ulysses and failing? The rock canon itself is an active attempt to treat popular music as literature, isn't it, which hasn't succeeded in gaining popular music the same sort of widespread cultural respect that literature has, and feels to me like a bit of an uneasy grafting, and is just as problematic a canon as the literary canon. Why on earth should we treat popular music the way FR Leavis treated literature? It appeals to different senses, it functions in different ways: I think it's easier to dislike a record which is canonically 'great' than to dislike a book that is canonically 'great', simply because records are easier to find not to your taste. Why, then, should someone have to pay their dues of shoving down things not to their taste before they're allowed to talk about what they actually like and care about? When listening to records becomes duty there is no love in it, and if there's no love there you shouldn't be writing about it.

The circular, dog returning to it's own sick aspects of this thread always cheer me up. I wish Petridis would return to writing the lead review so we could call for him to leave again.

pop music doesn't *need* the kind of (actually really flaky) cultural 'strength' of old novels (which translates into ossfied and irrelevant school and university courses -- ie NOT what leavis wanted at all).

(i like early leavis. i doubt he'd read everything.)

Why, then, should someone have to pay their dues of shoving down things not to their taste before they're allowed to talk about what they actually like and care about?

Because it is their fucking job.
Why should I be expected to pay £15 for a CD on the basis of a recommendation by an ignoramus?
See my comments above on Brian Sewell, and this time read them.

listening to records doesn't on the whole make you wise.

i don't want to read stuff by people who've learnt the rock canon by rote like it's maths homework or something (none of the people referenced upthread who are good at this sort of writing see it as a duty afaik - it's something they happen to have done, and have been able to do). i flatly disagree with the notion that it makes your writing better or more 'wise'.

i want more writing from people who have NEVER HEARD OF THE BEATLES and DO NOT CARE ABOUT THEM.

OMG, Lex.

let's get more musicians to write about music!

unless it's about white guys with guitars.

i do usually enjoy reading what musicians have to say though. some can be idiots (usually those who make bad music) but i'll pay attention to what diamanda galás says waaay over most actual critics.

ha, the only name which springs to mind is tim finney! there'll be better r&b criticism in any given tim post on ilx than in any actual publication. kicking_k at plan b is good on r&b as well, though it's not his speciality.

most hip hop writing is astonishingly bad.

And good, authentic music writing depends at least as much on the communcation of our appreciations as our understandings. I'd rather read a great writer's discussion of a piece of music he/she has a real relationship with but knows nothing about, than a mediocre writer's impeccable accurate dissection of the historical details and ostensible canonical significance.

Finally, the Beefheart piece is well-written, interesting and comes across as authentic. I've had a similar relationship with Trout Mask Replica over the years, and while it took me only a handful of listenings to get the gist, I'll never see it as anything more than "music for other people." I love Clear Spot, Safe as Milk and Shiny Beast, but I suspect that the Zappa cult has foisted Trout Mask Replica on the canon. It's almost as off-putting as The Master's own work...

No offense intended...

"Nowhere you do state exactly what a "genuine appreciation of music" depends on, presumably because you realise that appreciation cannot walk separately from knowledge."

A genuine appreciation of music is simply that (tautology alert) -- a deep and true sense of emotional connection with it. I often listen to a hundred new songs a day. I don't genuinely appreciate most of them. In one ear and out the other. But every once in a while, something pokes its head up and speaks to me.

Now, of course it's impossible to separate what I know from what I feel, but I'd still argue that my deep, emotional, almost instinctive responses to music (which I view as my "true" appreciation of it) are not much enhanced by my superficial knowledge of the music's actual cultural circumstances. To the contrary: that kind of superficial knowledge often seems to occlude my underlying feelings about it.

***

[re: the idea that perceived value can affect our impression that something is "good."]

"Once again 'probably.' It either does or it doesn't."

I say "probably" because I don't claim that my proposal applies equally to all people or circumstances. But I think most of us have, at one time or another, attempted to appreciate music we don't immediately respond to. We do it because the music is interesting in some secondary sense. Or because other people seem to value it. Whatever the reason... Sometimes such forced appreciation even pays dividends.

I'd never have come to my present appreciation of Sonic Youth if I hadn't listened to Evol repeatedly in the months after its release. At first I didn't like it. In fact I hated it. But it seemed unusual, and represented some zenith of "cool" in my adolescent imagination. So, I listened to it over and over again, until it worked its way into me, and altered me, so that I could finally begin to enjoy it. By the end of the year, it was my favorite record. Thus my initial false appreciation of it (based on perceived coolness) eventually gave way to genuine appreciation.

***

"Music isn't jewelry."

Of course music isn't jewlery. But the psychological mechanisms we use to attach value to things can be meaningfully compared, even if the things themselves are quite different from one another.

***

"What do you mean by 'authentic'?"

Not compromised by self-consciousness.

***

"How can you have a 'real relationship' with something you 'know nothing about'?"

First time I heard the "Ode to Joy," I was about 10 years old. I knew absolutely nothing about classical music, music in general, Beethoven or the piece itself. But it remains one of the most profound musical experiences of my brief/long life.

Even if I had never learned anything else about music or the piece, even if it remained an enigma in every way, my relationship with that piece of music would remain more real (i.e.: weighted with meaning, association and emotion) than almost any other musical relationship in my life.

***

"You're happy with cultural apartheid then.
Heinz baby food spoon-feeding.
That's what's wrong."

I don't even know what to make of that.

hip hop -
andrew emery
james mcnally
richard watson

r&b
jeff lorez
hattie collins
elle j small
this girl called linda who used to write for touch but i cant remember her surname
jacqueline springer used to be great
davina morris

soul -
bob kilbourn
charles waring