Why isn't music writing more like this?

"I honestly can't get over how much Husker Du used to SUCK TOTAL ASS OUT LOUD."

"When Johnny Rotten left the Clash way back in '78, he immediately moved on to a new project that he wanted to be entirely different from his former band, The Ramones - what he chose to go with was a non-punk, non-rock (or so they claimed) project called Public Image Ltd. They claimed to be a corporation and said that they were going to do films and stuff and conducted really rude interviews and basically acted like they knew it all. They even got lots of good press for their second album, the classic Metal Box/Second Edition dub-dance thingamajiggy. However, within a couple of years, the entire band had quit except Johnny, and the Creative Corporation (TM) degenerated into Johnny's vanity project -- just a catchy guitar-driven dance pop band. Some great tunes resulted, though Johnny certainly failed to achieve his initial goal of making rock music obsolete. But who gives a shit about his initial goal? If everyone stuck to their initial goal, bands wouldn't grow, develop and improve with each album, like Foreigner."

Reader Comments

nick@rainsnet.org
Johnny Rotten was in the Sex Pistols not the clash.

crazy_cat182@hotmail.com (Caitlin Craig)
oh my god, you freak!!!!!!!!! you think johnny rotten was in the fucking CLASH!??!!??!!!?!!! burn in hell dickwad, he was in the fucking SEX PISTOLS!!!!!!. you dont deserve to have a PiL website!!!!! i dont even know how blatantly WRONG the rest of the websit eis because im so utterly DISGUSTED, o and then "having left the legendary band CRASS????? BURN IN HELL MUTHERFUCKER

no one else really approaches him as far as trying to describe what music *sounds* like - when was the last time you read a review that even bothered to talk about, say, the guitar tone of a rock band? Or, much more importantly, a description of a song's melody that gave you any sense of what it was actualy like? ... I'm just trying to get a handle on why most music writing only gives you such vague ideas of what music sounds like

Seems pretty straightforward to me. But please start a stupid argument about it.

I appreciate the longing for these things, but I have to admit that my answer to these questions is "this morning." There may not be as many writers as you'd like who go after these things, but let's not act like there aren't plenty of folks out there who do.

(The "what does it sound like" question is especially at issue today, because it's assumed, what with the internet, that you can very easily go somewhere and get an audio sample -- you can hear the guitar tone for yourself. So writers do sometimes spend more of their word counts on those other questions: "what does it mean," "where does it fit," "but is it good", etc.)

nabisco, I think both aspects are quite important - what does it sound like, how does it operate musically, what musical language does it speak; and then how well does it succeed at speaking that language, what does it communicate to the listener, and where does it fit in in the larger cultural picture. Ignoring either side of the equation leads to badness, I think.

Sorry for not quoting then. Like I said, I think there are music writers who avoid talking about the music in concrete terms because they don't know how. I've also seen music writers try to assert their credentials and dismiss their lack of musical insight by talking about how much music they listen to.

Playing an instrument is a physical skill, and it's not really related to evaluating music. But the art of listening is a different animal, and it's something that many people have to put in time and effort in order to learn.

(Cliches, synesthesia, overly abstract metaphors, over-personal associations, all dangers here.)

xpost

Steve, I might be misreading you, but there are a million ways of talking about the concrete mechanics of music without having musical training, and without knowing the formal terminology for those mechanics. It's also quite possible for people to develop good listening skills without that formal background.

I'm not saying you have to go to a conservatory or read Walter Piston's Harmony in order to write well about music. I'm just saying that listening, despite the fact that we can all do it, is a skill, and a skill that can be developed (and should be, if you're going to write about music). Not everyone is as good at listening as everyone else.

I think there are examples of this done well. A review doesn't always have to talk about the music in detail. It can make significant larger and more general points regarding the critical perspective on the record in question as a cultural artifact. (I think Prindle, in fact, probably does this well sometimes.) This can surely be more interesting than "Song X is blah blah blah," of course.

Because while there are critics for whom that might be the case, I don't think it's a widespread problem; even with critics I don't like, I tend to believe they're listening okay. The bigger problem, I think, tends to come at that hard part where the fruits of one's listening have to get conveyed on the page. You can listen brilliantly, but if you can't communicate the results, you'll wind up with all the usual boiler-plate reviewing, pigeon-holing, classifying, comparing, and borrowed language.

In other words, I don't think things like borrowed language are necessarily a result of people not hearing well -- I think they're a result of people not finding the words to describe what they hear, and thus falling back on standards. (You can hear two guitar sounds in totally different ways, but not come up with any better word to describe either than "angular.") So I guess I think the hard part is the writing, not the listening.

The thing about synesthesia and poetics is that they tend to work only when both sides are familiar with the music. For instance, when someone on Slate wrote that Joey Santiago's guitar tone is like burnished brass, I felt like I knew exactly what was being said. Conversely (a random example from today's Pitchfork), Professor Murder's "bassdrops [are] like falling cinder blocks," but since I haven't heard Professor Murder, I have no clue what that means.

Then you'll really hate my new band Electric Tie Rack

Erm. 8.3 on Pfork today = hot cut-out bin action 2 yrs from now.

Agreed. There is no need to discuss the painfully obvious.

I think I've said something along those lines before: The rules are very different when you're writing for someone who hasn't heard the music and for someone who has. And the best writers can bridge this gap, but it ain't easy.

It surely can, but I feel that there's an ideal balance between what may as well be labelled the objective, the subjective, and the cultural, and a lot of my objections with reviews have to do with failing to get that balance right.

Nabisco, I understand what you're saying, but I still tend to think that not being able to communicate the results has more to do with not listening properly in the first place. I guess it's kind of a chicken or egg thing - do music writers use non-communicative cliches because they're incapable of being precise, or because they think that's all their readers will be able to understand? I mean, it's risky to talk in concrete musical terms - if you say "The song changes to 11/8 time in the bridge," or "It's full of tense augmented chords," you're either right or wrong. If you say "It's angular," it's a lot harder to raise an objection.

this always gets a little laugh out of me when writers resort to this technical analysis - not because they're incorrect, but because only a miniscule percentage of their reading audience is going to understand it. it makes me wonder why they bother.

x-post

One thing though, when I read a review I really get zero clue if I'd like the record or not. He's got bizarre tastes and rarely chooses the canon favorite as his favorite. (10/10 for "Hours" 7/10 for "Low" and "Heroes")

Another outstanding 28-minute opus from the Byrds. How did all them '60s rockers get away with recording such dinkyass albums anyway? For the record, all four of these first Byrds albums pretty much get 10s from me. They're all just fantastic - maybe one weak song on each one.

So this one. Well, more diversity and yet the same Byrdsisms just like the last album! Some odder three-part harmonies here of the sort you would later hear in Crosby Stills & Nash. A couple of country-tinged moments that foreshadow the future of the band. Also some clearer distinctions between what the different songwriters in the band were into (note: David Crosby was clearly into drugs and weak philosophy, as demonstrated in the hilariously lame metaphor tune "Mind Gardens").

This 'un has the final Byrds classic "So You Want To Be A Rock 'N' Roll Star," which you likely have heard by Unrest or Tom Petty, as well as "Everybody's Been Burned," which Sebadoh covered in the early '90s. Great great great original tunes on here ("Why" is kind of a rewrite of "I See You," but holy christ is it a phenomenal song - and "Renaissance Fair"? Jesus motherdick is that a harrowing little fishtent!), as well as yet another astonishingly gorgeous reworking of a Bob Dylan tune ("My Back Pages"). Honestly folks, has there ever been another band that can take somebody else's tune and instantly make it 500 times better?

I mean, besides Puff Daddy?

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the approach one takes is very different than the way one reviews the latest promo on the desk. It doesn't work for both things.

"I'm with God on this one."

I want more reviews to tell me what the band sounds like, but I realize how hard it is. I tried clicking around to some Brightblack Morning Light reviews online and I still don't really know what they sound like. I'm really hungry for some vegetarian food, though.

One thing that needs to stop: reviewers summarizing the entire career of the band, or mentioning things that happened four or five albums ago. I hate when I read a review of Spoon and for the millionth time and I hear about them (*gasp*) being dropped from Elektra. Same with the whole Wilco-dropped-from-label-released-record-on-Internet
-signed-to-new-label-shit-Tweedys-in-the-hospital crap. Or Fugazi Charges Five Dollars for Their Shows, here's a review of their new record, wow Ian was such a dick last show I saw them. For the most part, people are not learning this information for the first time when they read the reviews and it should just be cut.

I like Prindle because he writes from a I am A Music FAN POV and not from a Record Clerk/I Am Here To Educate You About Music From Behind The Record Counter POV.

Steve - techno does this all the time. In like, every song almost. What starts out as just a noise becomes, through repetition, a strange little melody. And in black metal they do the reverse - they play notes but there's no discernable melody! (Or is it death metal, I always get them confused.)

I think Steve's right here, if a noise has a tone then it's matching some note, even if it's a microtonal one. If a pattern of noise doesn't have a tone then it's probably a rhythm and not a melody... though I guess for fun we could post some Pan*Sonic or LeftHandedDecision and ask Steve what key it's in...

And forgive me if this is too elitist, but I think a music critic should know what a measure is.

-- Steve Go1dberg (steve.schne...), August 2nd, 2006.

Steve in not-getting-sarcasm non-shockah

Here's an old chestnut (where I'm snarking out on Ned + Dan... sorry guys!):

Should music writing have a knowledge of musicality? Is ILM representative of music fandom in general?

So like to be guitary about it: I don't think it's a huge crime to refer to things that aren't fretted notes or obvious 12th/7th-fret harmonics as not-quite-"notes."

As for "1979," I think I prefer it to "What's Going On" and don't think it's a ripoff. But I value that MP is able to find an interesting connection/similarity that wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise. And he explains the difference between the two and why he thinks the earlier one is better in specific but non-technical musical terms. He doesn't just say that it sucks because it's a ripoff.

Obviously, to be precise, pretty much any sound other than white noise has some kind of pitch component and can probably be called a "note."

Well, a musical note can just be a rhythm. Like in a drum part. They technical term would be "an indefinitely pitched instrument," like a snare drum or a bongo. They have pitch, but you couldn't notate the pitch. But you could notate the rhythm. In any case, I think it was a bad choice of words.

there's enough of a spectrum there that you can't draw any entirely clear line between rhythm and melody

I think you mean you can't draw a clear line between pitch and noise. Rhythm and pitch are independent.

reading this:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0631,beghtol,73999,22.html

makes me want to never ever write about music again. but not in a good way. i think he's a "musician". sorry if he's yer best friend. on the other hand, what the fuck do i care if he's your best friend. i don't even know you.

I mean both, actually -- you can't clearly distinguish between a distortion-noise and a pitch, and as a result, in this sort of case, you can't always clearly distinguish between a primarily rhythmic part and a melody line.

What's funny is that he refers to them as "harmonics," like he knows what harmonics are in guitar terms. This makes me assume they must not be straight harmonics, or he wouldn't be quite so jazzed about them -- I mean, anyone who's ever heard Van Halen is more than familiar with the idea of a melody played in harmonics.

[xpost otm]

-- jaymc (jmcunnin...), August 3rd, 2006.

Hah. I like stuff too. We should hang out more often.

I also have quoted this to friends and strangers.

(Doesn't like this review at all, turns it in anyway because of utter loathing for readers).

I'll do it if you buy me enough beer.

I read that somewhere.

http://www.guitarnoise.com/article.php?id=44

an article that talks a bit about guitar harmonics, the ones used in the song are around the 3rd, 4th frets

The harmonics on the 12th fret are one octave above the open string.
The harmonics on the 7th and 19th frets are one octave and one fifth above the open string.
The harmonics on the 5th fret are two octaves above the open string.
The harmonics on the 4th, 9th and 16th frets are two octave and one major third above the open string.
The harmonic on the 3rd fret - and actually it is halfway between the third and fourth frets, not on the fret at all - are two octaves and one fifth above the open string.

xpost.

That's right; you can get a major triad out of the harmonics between the fifth and third frets.

Try playing that third-fret harmonic on the 6th string and compare it to G# played on the first string. It's not the same pitch. The seventh harmonic is of course furthest away.

Octaves are pure in equal temperament. That's why you can check your intonation by comparing the 12 fret harmonic to the fretted note.