Lucinda Williams vs. Greil Marcus

Greil's wary of Lucinda because she thinks she's a folk superhero. Lucinda, however, is right.

yeah what's this about, i've read some of what he's said about her and it was surprisingly nasty, kinda moved beyond snark and into the personal.

It happens on occasion. He said rather nasty things about Anita Baker and the kinds of fans he thinks she draws.

I'm forever a Marcus fan, but his objects of scorn--or at least the degree of scorn--can sometimes be a mystery. He positively despised the Spin Doctors because of a lyric in "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong," something that, while I'm not defending it, seemed so tepid in the context of a pop song. I think his animus towards Williams and Baker are related...I couldn't stand Baker, either, so sometimes I'm with him.

anita baker? jeez

I think Anita Baker is ridiculous. Any time you hear somebody bringing back this kind of genteel, effete black music--the same number the Pointer Sisters pulled in the early '70s when they gave concerts with "Black Tie Recommended" printed on the tickets--it's an incident in class politics that has nothing to do with music.

http://www.amateursports365.com/Magazine/BlackEnough4.jpg

glad to see greil marcus policing the class distinctions among african americans

My interview. I'd been writing for less than a year--I was so nervous. (Interviewed Chuck for the same piece.) I laugh now, because with so many things I could have got him talking about, I can't believe I wasted time asking him what he thought about Anita Baker--may just as well have asked him about Doctor & the Medics.

I won't wade into his rationale, but I think he's absolutely right that Anita Baker's music is dreary (he uses other words).

I don't mind his opinion. It shocked me that a critic so attuned to nuance could have missed how the terms of his contempt underscored his privilege. Even in 1987 or whatever -- when he didn't review much black music, period -- it was tin-eared.

did he engage Nelson George's ideas at all?

his nastiest disses in one interview i read seemed to skew heavily female tbh

We didn't know what privilege was in 1987--we were too busy arguing about George Michael. (More seriously, he was one of the critics who made fun of Graceland along those lines, so I don't think that's something he was oblivious to.)

marcus does not always hate wisely: he recently did a huge, sprawling interview with simon reynolds, the comic highlight of which was this:

SR: You don't think much of The Ramones, right?

GM: No, fuck postmodernism!

I was delighted when I realized not too long ago that my university library still had mid eighties Artforums in bound volumes; spent a couple hours reading the columns he didn't include in In the Fascist Bathroom.

3) Lucinda Williams, “World Without Tears” (Lost Highway)

The first song, the modestly titled “Fruits of My Labors,” begins with a shimmering, subtle progression played on a Leslie guitar. Then comes a slurred, dragging, unbelievably affected voice to tell you how deeply its owner feels: so deeply barely a single word is actually formed. Every little touch — brushes on the snare, say — is mixed up high, to let you know how carefully everything has been done. There is irony in “American Dream”: Despite the title, the song is about how bad things (poverty, drug addiction — because of Vietnam — and black lung) take place in America. But the singer will press on. “Bay swee bay ‘f’s alla same,” Williams promises, “tay th’ glore en day ov’ the fame.” Not due til April, but why wait? It’s not getting any better.

i recently tracked down -- through ILL -- a huge bound copy of a magazine called 'politicks' that ran for about 12 issues in 1978. i was looking for walter karp articles -- virtually every issue has a piece by him -- but there were some great marcus pieces i'd never seen reprinted before, one on the deaths of chaplin and howard hawks and another equally terrific review of 'the battle of chile.'

I wish there was a collected dismissals of Lucinda Williams in one volume. Greil seems to relish the chance to put here down. Like this one:

Lucinda Williams, "Love That Mystic Hammering" (New York Times Book Review, June 13) "I sure don't pretend to be no intellectual," says the adored tribute-album contributor in her piece on Bob Dylan lyrics. Her father was a college professor, but she spent her childhood out by the barn eating dirt, which is why her own songs ring so true today.

TS: greil marcus mocking lucinda williams for being pretentious VS greil marcus condescending to anita baker wrt racial politics

His Voice "Real Life"s in the mid-'80s were my favourite writing by him ever. He was still listening closely to the radio, so he'd write about the Mekons and Eddie Money side-by-side. By the Artforum "Real Life"s, the Eddie Moneys of the world are mostly gone. He's certainly entitled to turn his attention elsewhere, we all do the same, but the column lost something for me.

Greil Marcus has a pavlovian negative reaction to Lucinda Williams (“As great an emotional fraud as Destiny’s Child — wins the prize over them as the most mannered singer in pop music because she’s been fooling people with it longer”)

He can certainly be a bit harsh sometimes. I recall one Sleater-Kinney writeup where he was absolutely brutal toward Carrie Brownstein, basically saying she couldn't carry Corin Tucker's musical jockstrap . And that was for a band he liked

ON Aimee Mann

"Up there with Lucinda Williams, but a much more obnoxious whiner than Alanis Morissette--I mean, there's a difference between making a horrible hit record based on an irritating emotion and basing your whole life on it. The sense of entitlement, of condescension, comes off of her in waves. Given that a whole movie was based on her wisdom, though--who can forget every character, dead or alive, mouthing along to, "Wise Up," I think, in Magnolia? And then, lo and behold, everybody did wise up. Gosh."

Time has proven Marcus right about Williams tbh

On her last single her singing was mannered and unbearable. I still love a couple of her albums.

I remember the Aimee Mann thing...I love the "Wise Up" sequence (in the minority, I know). I'm going to guess the song was tailored to the movie, not the other way around.

i'm not sure what's inherently fraudulent about LW tbh or at least moreso than others he may oft praise. critics are interesting *steeples fingers* sometimes.

in that chicken-egg argument, i'm not sure aimee mann is "at fault" in either case.

http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/2004/features/gamespotting/073004/gamespotting_790screen013.jpg

Fruits of My Labor was one of the songs on the mix I made for my wedding. It's one of the only *romantic* songs that I actually find romantic. Yet another reason for me to say: fuck greil marcus and his corny schtick.

Lucinda Williams, "Love That Mystic Hammering" (New York Times Book Review, June 13) "I sure don't pretend to be no intellectual," says the adored tribute-album contributor in her piece on Bob Dylan lyrics. Her father was a college professor, but she spent her childhood out by the barn eating dirt, which is why her own songs ring so true today.

i lol'd

He can certainly be a bit harsh sometimes. I recall one Sleater-Kinney writeup where he was absolutely brutal toward Carrie Brownstein, basically saying she couldn't carry Corin Tucker's musical jockstrap . And that was for a band he liked

Not only did he like them, he named them the Best Band In America when Time magazine came calling back in 2001.

I saw him speak at a museum a few years ago, and in the Q & A portion of his presentation, he mentioned his current faves were the New Pornographers. I don't really follow his writing anymore, so I wonder if he ever let it be known that "Dan Bejar can fuck right off then" or something equally clever.

tbf marcus was a huge corin tucker fan pre-sleater-kinney.

seems like if you take the terms of Marcus' argument seriously, there's an easy solution: Baker and Williams can just each perform each other's music: problem solved!*

*yes, this means I think he has a dumb-ass argument

the title track of "Essence" was where LW began to lose me: all that overheaded production and raunchy diction--most unintentionally comic song about fucking in music history?

What Marcus said about The Roches was ridiculous, something like they were this "local" act of interest solely to Greenwich Village, who never should have even gotten a record contract. (As if Greil Marcus is some kind of industry sharpie or something). Not like they had this incredibly lucrative career but they did end up with loyal fans who would fill venues around the country to watch them well into the next decade. He's just so hateful when he talks about almost anybody who is openly middle class without pretending to be the revolution.

On "Wise Up": the scene was tailored around he song. I heard her perform it live in 1996..

marcus is such a profoundly weird writer that i kind of don't blame ppl for being completely put off by him -- he pretty much quit paying attention to the vast majority of popular music after, like, 1991, and has since pursued his own oddball assortment of interests to the exclusion of anything else. when he has popped his head out to comment on something it's often felt ludicrous, like when he picked an eminem single and raved that it was as worldshaking (etc etc) as 'like a rolling stone,' though it appeared to be the first hip-hop single he'd even noticed since 'mind playing tricks on me.' his book on the doors, oddly, felt like his freshest work in years: a band he'd barely written about before, and a band almost no one has ever written about in an interesting way. but somehow he managed to listen to them with new ears and write about things in their music that no one else -- to my knowledge -- ever has.

a band almost no one has ever written about in an interesting way

I don't agree with this.

I thought it was genuinely surprising he tackled the Doors--I had thought he didn't care much for them outside their debut. Alledgedly Marcus kept Richard Meltzer out of Stranded because, "He'd only pick a Doors album."

lol "Robert" Meltzer:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/l-a-woman-19710527

meltzer is not my idea of someone who writes about anything in an interesting way but i fully accept that i'm in the minority on that one.

xgau was an early fan of Wainwright.

besides Rufus is a tit man

so was i, but if i made a crack like that i wouldn't expect someone to mount the daniel tosh defense on my behalf

the first two sentences of the Aimee Mann review are pretty inexcusable, but the rest has her absofuckinglootly dead to rights. in the category of "dullest safe artist who your friends who don't care much about music play at parties" she is some kind of all-time winner.....or maybe my sense of her ubiquity comes from living a decade around and in Boston?

xgau never sounds dorkier than when he talks about sex

it's like if buddy love still had the nutty professor's vocabulary

a guy on livejournal did the most amazing aimee mann takedown years ago, man i wish i could remember that

I'm on the list for her show tomorrow. I'll ask her to talk shit about Marcus for a nominal fee.

nom that fee

Enough to pre-game?

Oh, and she had no idea who he is. Your move, Marcus.

i once asked corin tucker if she had ever read marcus. she said she hadn't.

Found a cheap used copy of this yesterday, something I've been looking for for a while:

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1348821854m/2166730.jpg

I always remembered the back-of-the-book poll on the best American films between 1968-77 (the book came out in '79, hence the odd time frame). Here's Marcus's list:

1. The Godfather, Part II
2. The Godfather
3. Thieves Like Us
4. The Man Who Would Be King
5. Across 110th Street
6. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
7. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
8. Spend It All
9. Mean Streets
10. Chinatown

Mostly standard stuff, but #5, 6, and 8 are offbeat. I had to look up Spend It All--it's a Les Blank documentary on Cajun country.

(One anachronistic note from the poll. Twenty-one people voted--mostly well-known American critics, plus Truffaut--and Paul Mazursky's Blume in Love received four votes. It's almost completely forgotten today.)

did he include any comments on any of them? two altmans is interesting considering how much he hated 'nashville.'

marcus talks about 'across 110th street' in his sly stone chapter in mystery train -- have always meant to track it down.

a while back i checked out a big bound volume of a late '70s magazine called 'politicks' through ILL. it featured a couple of excellent articles by marcus i've never seen anywhere else -- a review of 'the battle of chile,' and a moving piece on the deaths of charlie chaplin and howard hawks that managed to slip in a hilariously OTT attack on 'close encounters.'

No, no commentary. That was also my reaction to his list when I first saw it, the disconnect between the two Altmans and how much he's criticized Nashville. I watched 110th Street because of his list a number of years ago; remember it as being pretty good, and loved it when the title song turned up in Jackie Brown. Here's a clip from Spend It All:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLp5fhmD2Uc

I can see where a film like that might make a major impression on him if he was in the midst of writing Mystery Train.

McCabe and Mrs Miller and Thieves Like Us nothing much like Nashville so not much contradiction there IMO.

110th St is a very good movie. Not in my top ten for the decade but not an embarrassing choice at all.

They are very different, it's true--you could put MASH, The Long Goodbye, California Split, and Nashville on one side of the ledger, and McCabe and Thieves Like Us (much more elliptical and atmospheric) on the other. But he's so negative about Nashville, almost like he thinks Altman's a con artist (if I'm remembering correctly), that I thought it might be hard for him to look past that with any Altman film. Apparently not.

Yeah but M&M and TLU came first so I guess he only thought Altman a con artist post-1975. Before that he was a genius hah.

Would be innerested in hearing his reasons for hating Nashville (though I think I can guess).

The piece to track down would seem to be "Ragtime and Nashville: Failure-of-America Fad," Village Voice (August 4, 1975). Not sure if I've ever read that, but elsewhere he's written about how much he despises the music in Nashville, and what he perceives to be the film's condescension.

across 110th is streaming on netflix, keep meaning to actually watch it, can't read the title w/o that song popping in my head. i know alot of ppl who love altman but hate nashville cuz they think the movie's portrayal of country music is smug and clueless.

lol xpost

With Lucinda Williams, it's her patronization. With EMF, it's just that they're really annoying.

the nashville/ragtime piece is collected in 'the dustbin of history.' pretty much agree with him on nashville, like lots of other altman tho.

That's where I would have read it then--I'll look at that tonight. I mentioned on another thread that I finally bought a vinyl copy of the soundtrack this past weekend.

6) Lucinda Williams, "Angels Laid Him Away," on "Avalon Blues -- A Tribute to the Music of Mississippi John Hurt" (Vanguard)

More proof that Williams has taken the fawning reviews of her "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" to heart, and is now ready to bestow her genius on anyone dead enough to keep quiet about it. Too bad Joe Meek isn't around to deal with this.

earlier in the column for those not versed on the history:

3) John McCready, "Room at the Top," Mojo (May)

The story of Joe Meek, the UK's first real independent record producer. The Tornadoes' 1962 "Telstar," which alone among period pop songs playing in the "Les Années Pop" show at the Pompidou Centre in Paris this spring came across as a match for the best of the pop art on the walls, was his biggest hit; he killed himself in 1967 after shotgunning his landlady to death. McCready on Meek's work with songwriter Geoff Goddard: "Like Joe, Goddard was an amateur spiritualist with a Buddy Holly obsession. Goddard's interests pushed them to attempts at contacting dead stars -- Al Jolson, Mario Lanza, and even Buddy. The sessions prompted Geoff to pen Mike Berry's 'Tribute to Buddy Holly.' Joe and Geoff decided to call up Buddy and see if he thought the record would be a hit. His reply? 'SEE YOU IN THE CHARTS.'"

I see this and the other thread revive have to do with her releasing her memoirs. Safe money that Marcus will be all over that when it comes out. (Like many, I find his contempt weird.)

He's always been over-the-top and ludicrously vicious about anything he doesn't like, putting it across in the most insulting way possible. He's not alone in this but he's probably the worst about it among rock writers of his stature.

I figure the only reason this guy doesn’t get called out with more frequency for being a misogynistic creep is his stature and tenure. He’s been grandfathered in, like those rock icons who slept with underage fans. Similar to Christgau, who at least has a bit more self-awareness though I don’t sense he’s too apologetic either.

I'm in accord with his sometimes over-the-top/vicious tendencies, but not with the idea that he's a misogynist (or creep). There's a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Just for starters, he once--the most over-the-top thing he's ever written, I'd say--he once wrote that he was fine with the news that Chris Barron (Spin Doctors) had been diagnosed with throat cancer. I couldn't believe that. His over-the-topness is not focused on females by any means.

The single-mindedness of his objects of scorn are what I find weird--he grabs on and (almost) never lets go. (Polar opposite: Rob Sheffield. I always found with Rob that he almost felt guilty about hating certain songs and was relieved when he found something by the same artist that he liked.)

he's a misogynist creep like xgau but with a way more boring boomer taste in music and gross personalised fixations while xgau just sort of sprays it everywhere. this generation of rock critics is fucking garbage and it's such a relief that they're on the way out (RIP greg tate and ellen willis though)

Thoughtful, as always.

I mean I kinda think a male critic joking (“joking”) he wishes Joe meek were around the murder a female artist for the crime of a poorly performed cover song (his opinion) is at a minimum creepy. Evidence to the contrary is proof of little, christgau didn’t call every female rock band sluts either but that maybe didn’t make the runaways feel any better.

it's such a relief that they're on the way out

to be replaced by AI-generated content and know-nothing scab horseshit like the recent Shorter memorial, no doubt

I was chastised the other day for taking some tweet about the Sight & Sound poll literally--just internet hyperbole, you know. So: that's okay today, but not with any of these guys?

I dunno about that argument. But I think if that was a one-off comment about LW by GM, it would be weird enough. But tied in with his decades-long obsession with her, it’s something more.

More or less starts here:

Pretend you have a ballot for the 2022 edition of Sight & Sound's top 10 movies of all time list

Anyway, we'll have to agree to disagree here. I like your posts a lot, Omar, and you're not someone I want to argue with.

It’s all good, clem - but I do reserve the right to revive it if he reviews her memoir by wishing she’d take a time machine directly to the lower decks of the titanic.

Like I said initially, I'm guessing he'll devour the book in one sitting so he can devour it.

Wonder how he found the spin doctors' cover of "have you ever seen the rain?"

He was driving and had to pull over so he could destroy his car radio, IIRC.

Gave him a lump in his throat

I interpreted the comment that Joe Meek would "deal with this" by communicating with the spirit of Mississippi John Hurt, as he did with Buddy Holly, who would back Greil's opinion of Lucinda's cover version.

That does seem the more likely read.

https://i.gifer.com/3COd.gif