worst review for you

Also....
Has any slagging review ever made you more interested in getting a album?
Has any rave review totally turned you off of an album?

If so, is it because of knowing how wrong a certain reviewer had been in the past?

Melissa, great choice.

That was embarrassing and just plain bad!
*cringe*

That isn't even close to the worst review in the 'Fork's archives. We were going to do a feature of the 50 worst reviews but never got around to it.

This one's my favorite.

Save Ferris made it to an album???

wow, whether or not you like radiohead, that review was unbelievbable. are you sure mired isn't a comedy site like somethingawful?

It was one of the smartest Radiohead reviews I've ever read, easy.

"the pensive, grooveless world of brooding honkydom"

From the Mired restaurant guide:

'Eating white man's food is ignoring the existence of black man's food, and therefore, black people, completely. That’s not very nice as far as I’m concerned. When I encounter white food fans (and there are an alarming number of them), I can’t help but think that that’s part of the attraction: this is the food of unabashed, preppified Anglo–saxondom, something not-so-common in our Tex-Mex dominated and increasingly ethnic world.'

Music made by black artists
=
only music with soul
=
smart

(I know how wrong this is and I know hardly anything about Radiohead)

That Mired review of Radiohead is pretty fucking stupid. I have no reason to believe this guy actually listened to it more than once or can tell the difference between Kid A and any other Radiohead album. It reads like a litany of insults that had already been put upon Radiohead except with more swearing. Hell, Kid A has MORE groove than any previous Radiohead album. How could they miss that?

"More groove than previous Radiohead albums" really isn't saying very much, Anthony. (Though then again, admittedly, neither does "one of the smartest Radiohead reviews I've ever read, easy.") And where did the guy say that only music made by black artists is soulful? (Not that I really care about soulfullness.) Anyway, okay, okay, a lot of the race stuff in there isn't smart at all. (Neither is some of the "Tom Sawyer" stuff. And ELP's rhythm section sucked, too, when you get down to it--at least as far as I remember it.) But I disagree with Anthony; the guy writing this review seems to have listened a LOT closer to Radiohead than most people who've praised the band in print have. Or at least his words convey more of what they sound like.

these parts are smart (often completely fucking dead-on accuratte and it's about time, or at very least extremely entertaining) for sure:

>> There’s a track on Kid A, “How To Disappear Completely”, which is like Nick Drake singing on one of ELP’s acoustic numbers, but with Beatlesque string flourishes. There is absolutely nothing about listening to this music that makes me feel like I’m living in the 21st Century. Destiny’s Child sounds more modern to me than Radiohead.<

>>Kid A has recently been called, as the TV commercials morbidly announce, a “post-rock masterpiece”. What the fuck is that? I thought critics got that shit out of their systems when Pavement blew them wet indie farts throughout the early nineties. And if this is the stuff of which great pop is made, where’s the praise and ass kissing for Monster Magnet, or Rush for that matter? As prog goes, nothing Radiohead has done could even touch “Tom Sawyer”,<<

>>I don’t understand how something can be considered “post-rock artistry” when it ignores the existence of anything else going on in music other than itself.<<

>>In the early seventies groups like Pink Floyd, Yes, and ELP used many of the same devices seen some 30 years later on Kid A: freaky, repetitive ARP-like synths, dreamy reverb-soaked soundscapes, long, exploratory intros; all out of some Sherwood forest fantasy or something. But there’s a glaring difference between the aforementioned and our subject – Radiohead has no groove,<<

>>British rock once provided us with the fattest head bobbing beats, ever (Bonham, Moon, Bonham), yet its current torchbearer appears far too hip to present any song in the human-friendly 4/4 time signature.<

>Yeah, Thom Yorke has a nice voice - so the hell what? He’s an Oxford-choirboy pussy carrying on about bullshit, over bullshit.<

>>this is music of unabashed, preppified Anglo–saxondom, something not-so-common in our Hip-Hop dominated and increasingly ethnic world.<

I shuold really learn how to spell "accurate," however.

(Also, I doubt "our world" is any more "ethnic," whatever that means, than it's ever been. So yeah, the guy needs a good editor. But still.)

And I should also really learn how to spell "should." etc.

not to mention there are LOTS of black Radiohead fans

Mired was a great site. They took risks and were totally juvenile but when they hit they really hit.

>>not to mention there are LOTS of black Radiohead fans<<

Well, yeah, that occurred to me, too - Again, the playing of the race card is easily the worst part of the review. Yesterday, on a different thread, I posted the following:

"Judging from Pazz and Jop ballots (and this is really generalizing, I admit), hip hop critics tend to have HORRIBLE taste in rock music: If I remember right, in the past couple years, there were several scattered ballots with all hip-hop albums except for like, one token U2 or Radiohead or Coldplay or (especially) Fiona Apple album. Given the rhythmic ineptness of all four of those acts, I'm totally stumped. Though if I thought about it a lot, I bet I could come up with a theory. (And yeah, for Radiohead it's probably the "sonic" whatever of the production sound effects. Not that I give a shit.)"

So to assume that hip-hop fans and black people in general couldn't stomach Radiohead is just plain wrong; many love the band. But that still doesn't negate what the reviewer says about the band's *music*, and even about what said music's lack of black influence might mean to *certain listeners.* (I remember people on this board getting pissed off when Christgau wrote something similar about Radiohead's lack of black influence in his recent Radiohead essay in the Voice. But Bon was right. Radiohead's music DOES sound extremely white. And some people DO find such music safe in a time of hip-hop. And a lot of these people seem to like Britpop, which is right up there with alt-country and '90s indie rock as one of the most rhythmically rigid and timid-sounding musics of recent decades. But yeah, it's possible to overgeneralize such things. I don't necessarily even think "disco sucks" was a racist or homophobic movement, when you get down to it --and not just 'cause lotsa disco-sucksters like Thin Lizzy and Queen. And I like lotsa Scandinavian gothic metal, which is probably even whiter than Radiohead. And so was lots of L.A. hardcore, and so on.)

>>But Bon was right<<

And so was Bob. (Actually, I doubt Bon Scott ever voiced an opinion about Radiohead. But I do know that Angus Young told me once that he didn't understand Metallica because they sounded like an opera, and didn't have any blues in them. And besides, AC/DC were a disco band.)

"And where did the guy say that only music made by black artists is soulful?" For me, he certainly implied it in the paragraph with the notsosmart race stuff.

"There is absolutely nothing about listening to this music that makes me feel like I’m living in the 21st Century. Destiny’s Child sounds more modern to me than Radiohead." I don't need any reminders that I live in the 21st century. I do know that for four dollars, you can get me to listen to a Destiny's Child song....once.

"Radiohead has no groove" - newsflash....Radiohead ain't Bohannon. I know that and I ain't nevered really heard them.

"He’s an Oxford-choirboy pussy carrying on about bullshit, over bullshit." So is Lemmy. It's just he's a really bad Oxford-choirboy pussy.

"this is music of unabashed, preppified Anglo–saxondom, something not-so-common in our Hip-Hop dominated and increasingly ethnic world."
Read: "I prefer different poses."

I think that reading the Mired review of Radiohead has got me interested in listening to Radiohead. Does that make it a good review, chuck.

?

Interesting thing is that the closest Metallica got to conventional blues were the cover songs on Garage Inc., sorta (and even then it's more the afterecho via folks like Lynyrd, Seger, Nick Cave, etc., which opens up another can of worms right there).

It is at base a tangled issue but I think it's one where if you can draw the distinctions between fans and bands and methods of reception then there's many interesting cases to be made. Mr. Xgau was right I suppose but then it becomes less about the criticism and more how it's received and interpreted in Our Theoretically Great Country (and beyond -- well, actually that's a great question for you, Chuck; given the web and all these days who do you see your primary audience as? New York readers of the Voice or music fans worldwide?).

I've NEVER been good at guessing primary audiences, Ned. Honestly, don't think about it too much. I assume most of the people who care about Sound of the City or the listings section are in New York, I guess. Beyond that, it's a tossup; the website readership is almost definitely more outside of NYC, since here you can pick it up in the streets. (Though honeslty, I'm not sure I follow you about what this has to do with what Christgau wrote about Radiohead's r&b-less-ness.)

I mean, even Radiohead's "groove", when they have one, insamuch as they have one, seems stolen from Aryans -- namely, Can (who, okay, may well have had brown eyes and dark hair, I really don't remember. And I have a feeling they stole some of *their* groove from Miles.)

It's more a random disconnected thought rather than a follow-on, Chuck, one of those things that just struck me out of the blue (hey, I couldn't begin to guess my audience via the various things I write for though in a couple of cases I have a better sense of it). But if there was a connection, it was wondering whether an audience overseas -- pick a country, pick a context, pick a locale -- would read Xgau's thoughts in a different way than a domestic one (or ones) reads issues of race vis-a-vis music or elsewhere -- maybe not, but one never knows? I'm not trying to insist that's the case, merely thinking out loud.

But that still doesn't negate what the reviewer says about the band's *music*, and even about what said music's lack of black influence might mean to *certain listeners.*
I don't know... I'm sure, Chuck, that I've met a hell of a lot more Radiohead fans than you. Sure, there are a few hip-hop-phobes among them, but that's a problem more endemic to indie fandom in general than Radiohead fandom specifically. Most of them that I know are quite heavily into many facets of so-called "black" music. They tend to be a bit more producer-focused (Timbaland, The Bomb Squad, The Neptunes, etc.) or underground-focused (The Roots, et al) when it comes to hip hop, but certainly that doesn't invalidate their enjoyment of the music. And certainly to be into Radiohead, one could not be opposed to jazz? The last 4 albums are drenched in it... Not to mention that the band themselves frequently cite Public Enemy and NWA and Missy Elliott and electro as inspirations for Kid A (and I'm sure that no one cares, but that certainly doesn't lend credence to the idea that Radiohead are cloistering themselves in a little white and grooveless world).

I think, Mel, the idea is that there's a complaint -- fairly generic and takes a lot of different forms, and I don't think Chuck is saying this here with his observations -- which runs like this: "If you're going to be influenced by it and say so, then we expect to hear more of it." But that's an insanely slippery slope on many levels, and we've beaten that argument to death plenty of times on this board alone. My own preferred counterexample is right here on the boards, namely good Mr. John D. o' them Mountain Goats, who is as thorough a hip-hop/black metal/commercial pop fanatic as you can find yet creates music that barely if ever suggests those approaches. I certainly don't find his work any less enjoyable for that reason, for me at least!

I like grooveless stuff. Lots, really. But I know it tends to be more intellectualized (or folkified) and "white," no matter the color of who makes it.

But that stuff tends to be further down my list of likes. If Radiohead is near the TOP of your list, then you have to deal with cherishing groovelessness. And you can't wave it away by saying "I'm sure some of their favorite records are funky."

And why would "cherishing groovelessness" be something one has to "deal" with? How does "groove" signify anything other than certain qualities of the rhythm and tempo? It's just music.

the radiohead review was a bit too by the numbers for me, I couldn't pick it out of a lineup

>And why would "cherishing groovelessness" be something one has to "deal" with?

Oh, fine -- let's just say "acknowledge -- with whatever implications or lack of them you so desire."

Now let's get on to the much more fascinating concept of where all this "jazz" is that supposedly soaks recent Radiohead. Specifics?

Now let's get on to the much more fascinating concept of where all this "jazz" is that supposedly soaks recent Radiohead. Specifics?
Life in a Glasshouse (Louis Armstrong pastiche, in particular of the performance of St. James Infirmary with Cab Calloway)
Pyramid Song (John/Alice Coltrane, see Ole and Universal Consciousness)
We Suck Young Blood (Charlie Mingus, see Freedom on The Complete Town Hall Concert)
Dollars & Cents (Alice Coltrane, see A Love Supreme)
Subterranean Homesick Alien, A Reminder (Miles Davis, see In a Silent Way)
The National Anthem (see Albert Ayler)

Now...not saying all those are ripoffs, just a bit obviously influenced by the artists/pieces mentioned. And whether you think they're successful ventures or not, they're quite obviously jazz-influenced.

taking that mired review seriously in any way = being blinded by radiohate

To point out that a contemporary rock group sounds influenced by classic rock isn't saying anything earth-shattering. (I'm sure Destiny's Child songs could be easily compared to classic R&B artists too). The electronic drone that runs all the way through HTDC (which is one of the most trad rock songs on the album - there's no fucking way he could make that "no sign I'm in the 21st century" comment about "Idioteque" or "Everything In Its Right Place") is the most obvious element that's not present in the Beatles or Drake or "Lucky Man". (Does Thom Yorke really sound like Nick Drake? I'm not even a big ND fan but I'd dare say that's a bit of a dismissal of ND's talents. Roger Hodgson maybe.) Making a Rush comparison might actually make sense with Hail to the Thief but Kid A was nothing like that -> it was more ambient/spacy/mood/soundscapey not bombastic and mathy. Besides which, "Tom Sawyer" is brilliant - that's not even an insult. Also weird is that he complains about Radiohead not sounding modern and then complains that they don't "have a groove", they don't conform to the most traditional 'essential' element of pop or rock -> obv this is partially what makes them more modern than the prog antecendents he cites. (Although at least "Idioteque" does have a great groove.)

>just a bit obviously influenced by the artists/pieces mentioned. And whether you think they're successful ventures or not, they're quite obviously jazz-influenced.

Glad you can hear it.

I mean, that level of influence is, well, about the density of Interstellar Space.

And Melissa's right about the hip-hop, at least trip-hop, influences. The electronica/IDM influences are so obvious that it's not even worth pointing out that "ignores anything in music other than itself" is ridiculous.

um, how the fuck does "subterranean homesick alien" sound like anything on in a silent way? what cut on in a silent way is it 'seeped' in in particular?

this is ultimately very very strawmanish, even the defenses (and Melissa's are smart). I also think it's a category error to say the Mired review and Xgau's comment belong together--what Xgau wrote was that Yorke had no Africa in his singing, which I took to mean he sounded wholly European (as opposed to American, which retains some Africa and some European both) and was essentially a way of describing the characteristics of the guy's voice. the Mired review is full of baiting, and Xgau's wasn't.

that guy's also reviewing people's reactions to ok computer more than he's reviewing kid a.

>Also weird is that he complains about Radiohead not sounding modern and then complains that they don't "have a groove", they don't conform to the most traditional 'essential' element of pop or rock -> obv this is partially what makes them more modern than the prog antecendents he cites.

But, if you pull influences back far enough, you get into classical-conservatory. Fully pre-rock. Pop as practiced before Der Bingle. Now, classical-romanticism influences in Radiohead I can hear.

One thing that fascinates me, I have to say, is that critics (often around my age) who use prog as a reference point for pure evil (cf Brent diCrescenzo's Tool and Mars Volta reviews) always seem to have a really deep knowledge of it, like that goes far deeper than that of the average person exposed to FM radio or their parents' collections. I admit to actually liking a lot of prog but I don't think I've heard more than one acoustic ELP track.

Does this guy see more influences from African-American musics in Pavement?

Dock, are you really saying that the rhythmic basis of Kid A sounds more rooted in classical music than in that of anything more contemporary?

No.

I'm pretty sick of people using a supposed "lack of blackness" as a fault, especially when the person making the argument digs PLENTY of not-obviously-black-inspired music (for Chrissake, Chuck, are you or are you not a fan of Funk's Judas? Autobahn?). It's race-baiting, the same way Chuck sez that RHCP and RFTC's singers indulge in minstrel show lisping, but doesn't give a shit when Tim Armstrong puts on a fake schlobber to talk about "California Bab-e-lon."

Would somebody play "Idioteque" for Chuck so that he can shut up about a lack of obvious groove? No one has yet to explain to me why Radiohead's music so clearly cries out for some "blackness."

Cuz if Radiohead is desperately crying out for some, then there's a thousand other bands indulging in, ahem, "unabashed, preppified Anglo–saxondom" who need it even more.

Chuck, are their artists you would claim aren't white enough?

Anthony, where exactly did I say Radiohead aren't black "enough"? Show me. Fact is, I spent lots of space above EXPLAINING that I like music (i.e.: dark Scandinavian gothic metal, Kraut rock, LA hardcore) with even LESS African American influence than Radiohead. Read my fucking posts. (And the Chili Peppers turn black vocal styles into an embarrassing parody, into kitsch. Anthony Keidis believes that, to sound "soulful", you just have to LISP. I don't hear Armstrong doing that, at least not as blatantly, even during his fake Jamaican stuff.)

And I love Neil Young (who strikes me as pretty devoid of African American influence himself, too, despite the new album's John Lee Hooker riffs) a lot of the time, too.

I'll give on the "black enough" issue, but on which of Red Hot Chili Peppers recent ballads (which are probably their most "soulful" songs) do you hear him lisping at all? Armstrong on the other hand is flat-out indulging in accent aping, which is waaaaay easier to call blackface than anything the RHCP has done in ages. So is it only racist if you don't enjoy it?

I just have to assume you have no desire to make liberal Rancid fans squirm.

"soul to squeeze" is rhcp at their most soulful (so full it needs to be squeezed)

You know, just once I'd like to participate in one of these threads and not feel like I'm getting a little pat on the head.

Oh...Is that what I feel.

haven't listened to any recent red hot chili peppers ballads, anthony. i stopped assuming i'd give a shit years ago. but "thoul to thqueethe" definitely fits the bill. as do keidis's retarded rubber-lipped attempts at rapping -- frankly, the guy is one of the lamest singers in a major rock band, EVER. and yes, as far as rancid goes, if it doesn't annoy me, i don't ask myself "why is this annoying me so much?"... Why would I? And that's part of how criticism WORKS. i don't have a *checklist*, if that's what you're asking. and i since i don't really know too many rancid fans, *why* would i mind making them squirm? if you assume i don't want to, sorry, but it's a really stupid assumption. when i have minded making ANY fans of ANY music squirm? or any liberals? why would i care what rancid fans think?

p.s.) I also like POLKA quite a bit, btw. and polka isn't black at all, as far as i know (and in fact, evidence suggests that mexico stole its beat when polish people brought accordions to southern texas.) But polka has more propulsive dancebeats than radiohead (who i also ACKNOWLEDGED have some semblance a groove, now and then.)

"groove" != "propulsive dance beats"

And Keidis is a much CLUMSIER singer than Armstrong, too (unless he's vastly improved in the past couple years, which I seriously doubt.)

>>"groove" != "propulsive dance beats"<<

I never said that either, by the way.

On the other hand, to deny there's a connection between the two is kind of silly.

Dude, LOOK AT THE POST YOU MADE RIGHT BEFORE MINE.

no, dan. YOU look at it. and READ it this time, okay? Where exactly does it say "groove" and "propulsive dance beats" are one and the same?? If I'd said "elephants has more longer noses than warthogs (who i also ACKNOWLEDGED have some semblance of tusks, now and then"), would you think I was saying noses and tusks were the same, too?

(probably not -- at least I hope not -- though you might say I should give plural nouns plural verbs, and you'd be completely right.)

and maybe you'd also say the "more longer" suggests I should go home and go to bed, which I suppose I will right now. (Unless I don't.)

Main Entry: im·ply
Pronunciation: im-'plI
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): im·plied; im·ply·ing
Etymology: Middle English emplien, from Middle French emplier, from Latin implicare
Date: 14th century
1 obsolete : ENFOLD, ENTWINE
2 : to involve or indicate by inference, association, or necessary consequence rather than by direct statement
3 : to contain potentially
4 : to express indirectly
synonym see SUGGEST
usage see INFER

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 19 September 2003 01:06 (twenty-two years ago)

IOW, all the word games in the world will not shore up a tenuous argument (BELIEVE ME I KNOW).

chuck: tabbies are cats!
dan: but not all cats are tabbies!!!

Dan, the parenthetical "groove" aside was clearly answering Miccio's "Would somebody play 'Idioteque' for Chuck so that he can shut up about a lack of obvious groove?," okay?? It didn't "imply" a goddam thing, for crissakes. (Okay, now I'm REALLY going home.)

So...............

How 'bout that local sports team???

Get sum guts, man -- where's your nomination for that next shit review? Post now and hard!

Am I crazy or did Chuck spend most of the thread building up an argument based on the premise that Radiohead hardly ever grooves because their music is not black or dancy, then turn around and say he didn't? Oh fuck it, why am I even bothering? It's not like anyone wins a prize for winning an argument.

People award themselves that prize.

Geeez. My thread turns into a Radioheadathon. Are they that good/bad???

anthony: um, a more coherent (because less sleepy) answer to your somewhat valid rhcp vs rancid question might be as follows: i (maybe wrongly) tend to use the word "minstrely" as a pejorative, and yes, i'm more likely to apply pejoratives to stuff i don't like, because that's what pejoratives are for. i never said the chili peppers were racist. and i guess you're right, in a way -- tim armstrong (or eminem, or hall and oates, or toby keith, or elvis presley, or mick jagger) is a minstrel, too. fine! so i admit it: i LIKE some minstrel music. in fact, i like some minstrel music all the way back to the actually blackfaced al jolson and emmett miller and all those great 1929-33 post-jimmie rodgers types on columbia/legacy's *whiter shade of blue* and yazoo's *mister charlie's blues* compilations. like david wondrich says in his great new book *stomp and swerve*, maybe the best book i've ever read about the pre-history of rock'n'roll, white singers have been using African-rooted styles for decades, to add energy and wildness and rhythm to their music, often not despite but BECAUSE OF stupid racial stereotypes and misconceptions -- in other words, being dumb enough to believe that blacks have "natural rhythm" sometimes managed to make whites' music BETTER. which still happens. but i prefer the ones who, to me, seem less clumsy about it.

I'm pretty sick of people using a supposed "lack of blackness" as a fault

(which I'm not saying you are, Chuck)

'Cause is the problem not being being black enough, or not pretending to be, or not pretending well enough to be, or ...?

(which I think you touch on above)

I claim to pride myself on being an elitist. No, more: I claim to pride myself on being the sort of person who would claim to pride themselves on being an elitist, which I think makes me a meta-elitist. I'd skip a step and simply claim to be a meta-elitist, but then I'd have to explain that to people, and the last thing a dedicated meta-elitist wants to spend their meta-valuable time doing is explaining meta-elitism to meta-peons. Actually, maybe that's backwards: a real meta-elitist might like nothing better than condescendingly explaining their meta-superiority all the time. So perhaps that's the first sign that I'm misrepresenting myself. But I've recently had two indications that are much less convoluted.
The first was that Other Music closed and it really didn't bother me. Other Music is a well-established New York record store that some time ago opened a branch in Harvard Square, somehow purging the grease and pepperoni smell from a space previously occupied by an egregiously awful pizzeria. I don't know exactly when they appeared, but my financial records claim I made my first purchase there on 28 November 2000, and I doubt they'd been open for more than a couple weeks. For an elitist, and an obsessive music elitist in particular, Other Music was basically wish-fulfillment. "A store totally filled with music I've never heard of", my friend David described it as, after wandering in for a few minutes while waiting for me to meet him in front of it. I'd heard of most of it. I'd heard most of it. But I knew what he meant. Newbury Comics, the default source for alternative music in Boston, sells everything. They have the Gerbils and the Microphones, but they also have Britney and Korn. Other Music didn't have Britney or Korn. I can't remember ever seeing a major-label disc in their bins, even by a once-indie artist. I think they carried even Matador and Merge only with misgivings, and only because there's a grade of record-store clerk you simply cannot attract if you cannot provide in-store copies of every Yo La Tengo record. They had several strengths (each genre, naturally, segregated and assigned a cute name), but I spent most of my time in the rock section ("In"), which was effectively a compact census of the American Indie scene, with extremely judicious imported exceptions. They prepared little descriptive cards for many of the key new releases, and often confused my schedule by selling things before they were scheduled to go on sale. Their prices were fine, they were happy to answer questions, and they were only playing music that made me violently angry about every sixth visit, compared to about every third visit for Newbury Comics and three out of four for anywhere else. According to my accounts, I spent about a hundred dollars a month at Other Music for the first nine months of its tenure.
But there, already, is a problem with either Other Music or with me. I'm not going to tell you exactly how much money I spent at Newbury Comics during that period, but it was a lot more than a hundred dollars a month. Other Music seemed like a record store assembled specifically for me, and I seemed like their dream customer, but the dollars supported neither idea. I didn't buy anything there in August, despite going in every Tuesday. In September I spent about forty dollars, in October twenty. November, nothing. December, $13.94. January nothing. February, a $55.61 splurge. It wasn't enough; one day in March, without so much as a closing sale for warning, they were suddenly gone, leaving nothing but dust swirls, a cryptic note on the door, and, I swear, the smell of rancid marinara sauce already beginning to reassert itself. The last time I'd been there, I'd set off the alarms as I came in. "You always set those off", an affably tattooed man commented as I handed him my bag. "It's your competition alarm", I suggested. He looked blank. "Newbury Comics stuff", I explained, pointing at the bag. He snorted, tersely. "I don't think they're our competition." But I came in with a bag full of Newbury Comics CDs, and I left Other Music without buying any Other Music CDs, and four days later Newbury Comics was still open and bustling and Other Music was history. If they couldn't get somebody as predisposed as me to switch allegiances, how could they ever hope to survive?
But the more I thought about it, the less sure I was that I was the kind of buyer they hoped to live on, after all. Other Music carried tons of things that Newbury Comics doesn't, but they were rarely the things I wanted to buy. I turn around and scan my shelves, tonight, and am hard-pressed to point to anything I definitely must have bought at Other Music. In my rapidly-morphing revisionist mental image of their premises, the pop inventory consists of the complete works of the Fall, one Notwist EP, and two thousand crappy Elephant 6 records somebody made in an hour after eating a psychoactive mushroom omelet and watching Yellow Submarine on a black-and-white TV. The truth is, I wasn't alternative enough for Other Music. They didn't carry major-label records, but if I didn't realize that was the theme I might easily have concluded that their line was drawn at bands who aren't afraid to try to be good. I hate Pavement and the Apples in Stereo and Badly Drawn Boy, and if you took out those bands, and all the bands who sound like them, and all the side projects of the side projects, you would have been left with me standing in front of a long row of nearly-empty bins, with a few Belle and Sebastian singles at one end, some Low records in the middle, and a beleaguered copy of Awful Mess Mystery at the other. Other Music was the wish-fulfillment record store for the person I thought, when I was fifteen, I was going to grow up to be. The me I am now prefers more ambition and sparkle. If I'd told them my favorite bands are Roxette, Runrig and Tori Amos, they'd never have let me in the store. If I'd realized that sooner, I'd have stopped going before they closed. I buy imported Alanis Morissette singles and spent my ride home from work today listening to Candlemass talk about what great guys Motörhead are; I don't deserve a record store any better than Newbury Comics. And now I don't have one.
And Other Music's particular biases weren't the only ones around which you could have organized a selective record store, but I think the suggested conclusion is still probably true. My musical tastes aren't all that esoteric. No, that's not quite the right way to say it. I like a lot of music that would qualify as esoteric under most definitions, but I like enough patently non-esoteric music for us to theorize that esotericism and my tastes aren't strongly correlated. Yes, I hate the vast majority of what's popular at any given time, but it's my guess that I hate the same vast majority of what's unpopular, it's just much harder to get those numbers. With movies and books I feel fairly confident that the things I like will necessarily have limited audiences, and vice versa. With music, I don't know. I happen to hate Britney and Christina and the Backstreet Boys and NSync, but I wouldn't be that surprised if I turn out to adore the next one. I like IQ and Pallas, but I also like Rush and Yes. I like Melissa Ferrick, but also Melissa Etheridge. Lucinda Williams and Shania Twain, the Lucksmiths and the Knack, the Faint and Orgy. My tastes follow no pattern, at least not along these dimensions, and if you follow me in these journeys, I hope it's not under any illusion that I'm negotiating a fire swamp, with peril awaiting any misstep. My random paths are, at best, the finest drunkard's walk a sober person can manage.
And if we needed a second sign that I'm a shoddy excuse for a musical elitist, I love the new Goo Goo Dolls album. I don't mean that I like it in some sort of ironic way, or that I'm supporting them because I saw them play in Buffalo bowling alleys before they had a record deal, or that I've descried some philosophical depth in their lyrics that the average mall lurker would never parse. I like their hits, I like their album tracks. I'm pretty sure I like them for exactly the same visceral, shallow reasons they're popular. They write the pop-song equivalents of that over-affectionate red children's-book sheep-dog the size of a house. They have no qualms about stuffing each measure of their music with the context's most obvious, overblown and swooningly sentimental pop hook. They sound like a cross between the Replacements, Del Amitri, Bon Jovi and Extreme. I wouldn't necessarily say that I like them better than Hypocrisy or Mecca Normal or Aube, but I like them plenty.
And if you hate them on principle, or in practice, I can't really argue. You may get these feelings from something else. I think the squawky guitar sound on "Big Machine" is as magnificent a rock production accomplishment as anything on Boston, but Tullycraft and the Reputation make guitar noises just as cool with much less ado. "Think About Me" sounds to me like the boisterous youth Del Amitri never had, but maybe you'll whip yourself into a rage cataloguing all the Replacements riffs it steals. I love the soaring chorus rising out of the muted acoustic jangle of "Here Is Gone", but you can certainly see it coming a hundred miles away, so maybe by the time we get to it you'll be tired of life in its shadow. I love the raspy, Buffalo Tom-ish mannerisms of bassist Robby Takac's "You Never Know", but maybe for you he's half the Goo Goo Dolls' George Huntley and half a mutant Bryan Adams. I forgive the lumbering verses of "What a Scene" when the chorus surges in, but maybe for you it won't be enough. "Up, Up, Up" bulges like the Connells after a year of mind-numbing weight training, and I can readily imagine that disgusting you as much as I think I'd hate seeing Cameron Diaz and Nicholas Cage remake Surviving Desire. You could get more sophisticated lyrics than "It's Over"'s out of a Babelfish translation of a Portuguese hospital bill. Surely the plinky quasi-mandolin on "Sympathy" fools nobody. "What Do You Need?" is about as menacing as a second-evolution Pokémon that runs on Pudding Energy. You can put off hating "Smash" until later, because I suspect you're going to have daily chances to resent it all summer. The fragile textures in the background of "Truth Is a Whisper" may not change your mind, nor the thwacking snare in the foreground, and I'm not saying either should.
But if it's worth 3:13 to you to have a fleeting chance to fall in love with these big, dumb, happy songs the way I have, then get one of your music-ignorant friends with taste as bad as mine to play track 11 for you, and make them lend you the lyrics while you listen. I don't think this one is going to be a single, so you can't be totally sick of it yet. It's shaped pretty much like the others, but they must have finished it late in the recording session, because it hasn't been airbrushed and re-distressed anywhere near as assiduously as the others, and clatters along on not much more than chugging rhythm guitar, a few spiraling lead hooks, gruff bass, square drums and hoarse singing. "Mama just called and said she's tucked away", goes the chorus, which is a little odd but hardly the first rock song about Mom. Except read it closer. The "she" in that sentence isn't Mom, and the mother is the girl's, not the singer's. "Well I saw you once, / Then I blew it for the next ten thousand days". Ten thousand days is more than twenty-seven years, and Takac is old enough for that to mean the girl was eleven when he fell in love with her, back when eleven meant something. The girl I fell in love with when I was eleven was a burned-out mess by eighteen, but I wonder what's become of her in the seventeen years since. I don't think I ever met her mother, so my phone isn't going to ring and tell me. Takac doesn't have any startling insights into the subject, either, if indeed he even knows he's writing about the subject I say he is. If she's curled up in the corner of a room she should have moved out of years ago, "she's extra sad today" probably doesn't do her mental state justice, and a short, bouncy rock song is probably not going to change her life. But this is the universe's fault, not the Goo Goo Dolls'. In a better world, a song is enough, and nobody is ever truly out of reach.

mr.snrub why is that the worst review for you? it's just a guy going on and on about record stores and the goo goo dolls. it's not THAT bad.is it from a blog?

that's from The War Against Silence, isn't it?

but he never once mentions big country. tho, he does mention tori. must be.

and he mentions Roxette and Runrig ... it must be TWAS, surely?

that book Chuck mentions about pre-jazz pop is fucking amazing, he's totally right.

haha I never said Chuck shouldn't like "minstrel" music (I'd probably love that book too). I just was calling him on using the term pejoratively for bands he doesn't like when his fave groups do it even more (I didn't even bring up Steve "I got anth in my panth, leth danth!" Whiteman).

plus calling RHCP dorky is like calling Rancid Clash wanna-be's. It comes from the band's genuine, unpretentious enthusiasm.

music critic in use of rhetoric shocka!

keep the revelations coming anthony.

i don't really see anything *that* wrong with that TWAS review. but even if it was total shit all Glenn's sins would be more than forgiven for his review of Life Without Buildings, my favourite piece of music writing ever.

glenn mcd is sorta like the tweepop he spends so much time reviewing -- mostly a slog but every now and then striking everything just right (and a different every now and then for different people)

[disclosure: he reviewed, er, my record and my jaw couldn't be lifted off the floor for weeks]

sterling otm

That TWAS review isn't bad at all.

(rolls eyes)

the only thing wrong with that review is the suggestion that the Goo Goo Dolls might not be better than Mecca Normal, because almost every band is better than Mecca Normal.

That is not true.

thanks for proving it beyond a shadow of a doubt, there, sundar

Your in-depth critique merited no less.

(Seriously: What's there to prove? I thought they put on a really good show when I saw them a year or two ago. The guitarist produced some really interesting textures and the singer has a very powerful and distinctive voice with a lot of dynamics. Their first record is inconsistent and I ended up selling it but it still had some great songs - esp "I Walk Alone" - and they've done some really pretty and some really intense things otherwise, though I don't own any other records. And I'm not someone who's even normally a big fan of lo-fi or singer-songwriter aesthetics.)

oh do learn how to take a joke sometime, will you? (the guitarist's "interesting" and no more, the singer is annoying annoying annoying)

Aw, I like Jean and David, they're good folk.

I wish the goodness of their folk translated to their music more. but I'm not trying to get into a fight w/Sundar--we agree on the merit of the review. aw, hugz!