Hey Rockist-Watchers! Stephen Holden Has A Little Something Something For You In Today's New York Times.

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On a Licoln Center American Songbook live thang with Laura Cantrell, Richard Buckner, & Laura Veirs:

"All three performers make the kind of rigorously personal, far-sighted music that the toxic pop mainstream keeps out of earshot."

"One reason such nourishing sounds float below the radar is that magnification into an arena-size sound would destroy them. Another darker reason may be that acknowledgment of real quality in a culture of mediocrity threatens the security of audiences conditioned to believe that bigger and coarser are better."

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:13 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know who these people are, but folkies suck hippo balls.

― Ferlin Husky (noodle vague), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:17 (twenty-one years ago)

My ears are too tainted by the culture of mediocrity to find anything resembling real quality in the music of richard bruckner.

― miccio (miccio), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:21 (twenty-one years ago)

I think I'll phrase it like that next time I want to avoid an argument

― miccio (miccio), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:21 (twenty-one years ago)

ILM = I Love Mediocrity. Hurray!

― Ferlin Husky (noodle vague), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:24 (twenty-one years ago)

and people wonder why kelefa goes on so.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:28 (twenty-one years ago)

buckner likes himself some drugs, he does.

― hstencil (hstencil), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:45 (twenty-one years ago)

So does Dubya. I think that killed the hipness quotient.

― Ferlin Husky (noodle vague), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:54 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm grateful for these kind of screeds. Gives me a terminology I can use to keep people from trying to convert me to their superior music: "what can I say? I think bigger and coarser is better."

― miccio (miccio), Saturday, 26 February 2005 15:06 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm just saying purism is difficult thing to maintain when you're whacked out on coke, but hey.

― hstencil (hstencil), Saturday, 26 February 2005 15:08 (twenty-one years ago)

two things i know about experimental horse
(and one of them is rather coarse)

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 26 February 2005 15:12 (twenty-one years ago)

"One reason such nourishing sounds float below the radar is that magnification into an arena-size sound would destroy them."

Hmm, I sort of agree with him ... no wait, he's talking about Richard Buckner.

― Hurting (Hurting), Saturday, 26 February 2005 15:24 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know who these people are, but folkies suck hippo balls.

Don't know the other two but Laura Veirs is v. good. Listen to "Icebound Streams".

― JoB (JoB), Saturday, 26 February 2005 15:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Say whatever you want about the review, but Laura Cantrell and Dick Buckner are both godhead.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Well maybe 'godhead' is a bit strong but I like them both quite a bit.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Laura Cantrell is a genius and a great wfmu dj.

― wordyrappington (wordyrappington), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:20 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, Laura Cantrell's just an unfortunate bystander of this idiot's pigeonholing.

of course, he's not the only one - check this interview with Laura:

http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/5474.html

the interviewer's clearly trying to get her to join forces with the anti-pop-country brigade, meanwhile Laura just keeps talking about how much CMT she watches.

― Josh Love (screamapillar), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:26 (twenty-one years ago)

by the by, William Swygart wrote a great piece on her last week (that's where I stole the link):

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=1489

― Josh Love (screamapillar), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:27 (twenty-one years ago)

One reason such nourishing sounds

Music and musicians as vitamins for the soul/intellect. Times reporters and contributors use it a couple times a month in the Sunday edition, too. It may be an editorial regulation.

― George Smith, Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:30 (twenty-one years ago)

low-carb high-fat NOW!!

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:32 (twenty-one years ago)

But but but Mark, were you not saying that poorly processed foods cause a bad feedback loop?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:34 (twenty-one years ago)

low-carb high-fat NOW!!

Or gristle-y filled-with-chemicals and inorganically grown death metal.

― George Smith, Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:36 (twenty-one years ago)

Dang mark s I thought you were gone forever. Did you just finish your book or something?

― Mark (MarkR), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:36 (twenty-one years ago)

my book is out in all territories!! (= my "if..." book)

but i had (have) family stuff also: ill parents etc

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 26 February 2005 16:38 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't have any opinions about any of those three, but reading the interview with Cantrell I noticed the interviewer name drop Jean-Luc Godard.

Just...whoah.

― Austin (Austin), Saturday, 26 February 2005 18:44 (twenty-one years ago)

from that interview: "Laura Cantrell, an elegant, jaw-droppingly sophisticated natural from Nashville"

I wish I was jaw-droppingly sophisticated.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:23 (twenty-one years ago)

i found it palled after a while scott

*barney-style belch*

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:25 (twenty-one years ago)

and every interview ever should feature this question from now on:

"Have they made a rod for a person such as your self’s back?"

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I can't think of a better example of an artist that didn't make novelty country tunes than Johnny Cash.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:35 (twenty-one years ago)

( my book is out in all territories!! (= my "if..." book)

hm, mark s's misspelled the title o'his own book, hm ;)

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:41 (twenty-one years ago)

'xactly! thank you.

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:44 (twenty-one years ago)

George Smith will appreciate this -- Stephen Holden wrote gushing liner notes for the one and only Granicus LP. That record is HUUUUUUUGE and coarse!

― Stormy Davis (diamond), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:48 (twenty-one years ago)

“In their profoundly visceral music and unpretentious lyrics, Granicus puts forward a musically cohesive, emotionally compelling vision of growing up wasted in America, searching desperately for, and occasionally glimpsing spiritual truth, in a climate foreshadowing Armageddon…“Paradise”, the album’s summary statement, dares to revivify the myth of rock music’s power to exorcise evil and become, in itself, an avenue towards political and spiritual salvation. Listening to Granicus, that power once again seems within grasp.”
-Stephen Holden (from the original album liner notes)

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:52 (twenty-one years ago)

marchin towards a world in which no noun shall be w/o its adjective, no verb its adverb!!

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:55 (twenty-one years ago)

starving, hysterical, naked, etc. etc.

― Hurting (Hurting), Saturday, 26 February 2005 19:56 (twenty-one years ago)

From Stephen Holden's 1974 review of Neil Young's On The Beach:

"In each song, by empathizing with the emotions of both predators and victims, Young has dared what no other major white rock artist (except John Lennon) has - to embrace, expose and perhaps help purge the collective paranoia and guilt of an insane society, acting it out without apology or explanation."

Um, hello, like Slade never did this??!!

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 26 February 2005 20:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Holden's been writing for the NY Times for it seems like decades, although I thought they just had him writing about theater and cabaret these days. His writing has always been painful to read. I thought I recall him going through a period where he only liked Barbra Streisand and Tony Bennett and others who embrace pre-rock and pre-r'n'b type genres.

― steve-k, Sunday, 27 February 2005 02:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Holden also writes movie reviews for the Times.

They suck hippo balls.

― ffirehorse, Sunday, 27 February 2005 02:26 (twenty-one years ago)

The reviews, that is.

― ffirehorse, Sunday, 27 February 2005 02:28 (twenty-one years ago)

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