"all pop criticism is bad"

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Wading Into the Aural Tide: Pop and the Examined Life
by Stephen Metcalf

Sonata for Jukebox: Pop Music, Memory, and the Imagined Life, by Geoffrey O’Brien. Counterpoint, 328 pages, $27.50.

All pop criticism is bad. Like a boring dinner guest, it’s garrulous and name-dropping. Under the pretense of informing you, it glories in your ignorance. It reeks of junk-strewn garrets and a degrees in semiotics from Brown. Why is it all so bad? Rock ’n’ roll represents the final triumph of what Cynthia Ozick has called aural culture over literate culture...

And then, of course, the review goes on to celebrate O'Brien's book as the exception to the rule. Anyone want to explain to Stephen Metcalf why all literary criticism is bad? Is it the pretense of informing you while glorying in its own ignorance?

― spittle (spittle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 00:45 (twenty-two years ago)

(I'd love to know what Metcalf considers name-dropping and "glorying in your ignorance." Maybe all those reviews full of obscure references like Timbaland and the Neptunes? And hey, fess up all you Brown semioticians -- he's on to you.)

― spittle (spittle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 00:48 (twenty-two years ago)

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER CAN KISS MY FAGGOT ASS FOR DISSING ME.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 00:49 (twenty-two years ago)

No! Wait! I take that back! Metcalf got his old stomping grounds to PROVE ME WRONG. Motherfucker. I guess it's time to stick that fork into my aorta, like, right now.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:01 (twenty-two years ago)

We live in world in which late adopters reign unchallenged as our tastemakers.

It's nice to see Metcalf on the cutting edge of shockingly new ideas.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:02 (twenty-two years ago)

between Metcalf and that Slate guy it's like ILM strawman day!

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:14 (twenty-two years ago)

anyone fancy a saucer of milk?

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:17 (twenty-two years ago)

What the hell is that Slate article supposed to be about anyway?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:18 (twenty-two years ago)

why, it's about how more hip-hop should sound like Latyrx--you know, like that Lyrics Born record that came out last winter, five to ten years after everything on the compilation he reviewed did.

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:22 (twenty-two years ago)

"O'Brien . . . had the good fortune to grow up in a family of Salingeresque hams, surrounded by good musical taste, on an Upper West Side that had yet to price out the last of its seedy idiosyncrasy."

From the same writer who opens the piece by lambasting pop writers for being, uh, seedily idiosyncratic. Guess that all-important Upper West Side pedigree is what separates the right kind of "seedy idiosyncrasy" from that of, uh, everyone else's, right?

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:23 (twenty-two years ago)

(excuse me, four years after the compilation itself did)

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:25 (twenty-two years ago)

"Salingeresque"? God, what a total doink.

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Fuck the New York Observer!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:26 (twenty-two years ago)

I'd have to say that this is my most annoying review technique. The one where they start off with a purposely controversial, and usually unrelated topic and try to argue it and then go BUT WAIT. Ugh, it just irks me.

― David Allen (David Allen), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Or rather, fix "I'd have to say that this is my most annoying review technique" to "the review technique that annoys me the most." Y'know.

― David Allen (David Allen), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:27 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah, even as someone who relies on review devices to some degree or other that one sucks

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:27 (twenty-two years ago)

The Slate article is terrible, sure, but you can find much worse all over the net. What's really striking is that it's pretty damned subpar for something of Slate's stature -- you'd think with all that Microsoft moolah behind them they could at least pay a famous hack and get better results (or a more explicable kind of awful) instead utilizing their interactive designer, for pete's sake. It's as if their editors panicked and grabbed the nearest hep-seeming guy they could find who could also string some words together.

I still like Slate, though.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I read the Slate thing more as a sop to a designer who's probably been bugging someone or other there to write some music stuff forever and they finally figured, what the hell, bandwidth's cheap, maybe he won't hassle us about unpaid overtime if we let him do this.

― spittle (spittle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I still like Slate too, which is why that article is so jarring (also for the reasons you state)--after SFJ, this?!

xpost: spittle probably sadly otm

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 01:53 (twenty-two years ago)

but he's doing exactly what a good writer should do. taking an unfashionable position, getting people to talk and rant. SUCCESS

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 02:06 (twenty-two years ago)

But we're not even talking about his unfashionable position, we're like talking OVER it, wondering how the hell it all could've happened.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 02:09 (twenty-two years ago)

you know, i never did get that $50.

― strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 9 March 2004 02:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Slate's definitely making up for that lame article earlier in the week. Yay for Andy B.!

― hstencil, Friday, 12 March 2004 06:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Um, I wasn't too impressed by that article.

― Broheems (diamond), Friday, 12 March 2004 08:56 (twenty-two years ago)

jeez, broheems, way to be snotty towards an ILXor.

― hstencil, Friday, 12 March 2004 09:12 (twenty-two years ago)

He's an ILXor? I didn't know that. Then I am sorry if I offended, but I stand by the comment. I wasn't trying to just "be snotty" towards the author; I was just responding to your enthusiasm with my own opinion. Having a discussion, as it were. I just didn't think it was particularly well-written or insightful. But it's not, like, a big deal or anything. I certainly wasn't trying to start a fight or anything. I'm just bored and should probably go to bed.

― Broheems (diamond), Friday, 12 March 2004 09:29 (twenty-two years ago)

This has me scratching my head:

"Lennon shouts it out during the famous rooftop concert at the end of the documentary Let It Be. In an aural age, what once would have been lost to the Twickenham fog"

Is "Twickenham fog" some allusion I'm not getting because Twickenham is miles away from the Apple HQ in Saville Row.

― LondonLee (LondonLee), Friday, 12 March 2004 14:03 (twenty-two years ago)

That's such a bad beginning to an article, I mean seriously we all know when you have this giant bug up your ass which you want to remove and mash bloodily into whatever you're writing about, usually at the beginning followed by a hamfisted link into the next paragraph, yes I've done it, but DON'T DO IT!

― Ronan (Ronan), Friday, 12 March 2004 14:18 (twenty-two years ago)

From this site:

On January 2, 1969, The Beatles gathered together at Twickenham Film Studios for the first of three weeks of rehearsals...By the end of January, The Beatles left Twickenham and moved to their own, newly opened Apple Studios, where they were joined by Billy Preston...

Although Paul originally wanted a live concert out if this, what did happen was an 80-minute documentary of the group rehearsing at Twickenham Studios, then recording at Apple Studios, along with their famous live roof-top playing at the Apple office at No. 3 Saville Row in London. The result was Let It Be.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 12 March 2004 14:24 (twenty-two years ago)

good comment about 'produced an overwriter' - my editor and i were discussing my tendancy to overwrite. trying to step away from that HEY MA LOOKITME I'M DOING MUSIC JOURNALISM that alot of people step in to.

― griffin doome, Friday, 12 March 2004 14:27 (twenty-two years ago)

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