Similarly, Rolling Stone asked him, a couple of years ago, to write a review of Steve Earle's album in which he covers the songs of Townes Van Zandt. He turned it down as he is not a fan of either artist, he said.
“I think he (Earle) is a terrible singer.... I never really got Townes Van Zandt."
Instead of alt-country Eddy would much prefer to listen to Korean pop music, he said. Korean pop has the same elements as Western pop music but is more fun and enjoyable, he said.
Let me leave you with three excerpts from the book:
Eddy on Arrested Development: "Between their horseshoes and hairdos and old men in rocking chairs, Arrested Development come off sillier than Right Said Fred without even trying. They could be like some mad scientist's parody of a foolproof Pazz & Jop winner — Like, what do you get when you cross Tracy Chapman with De La Soul? Chrysalis could've just mailed out press photos and they'd still have a guaranteed top five slot. They're the ultimate Sunday School band. All their hits sound like Bible parables. If I'd been raised Protestant instead of Catholic, I might have even taken them seriously."
Summing up changes in music: “The Flaming Lips, whom I'm pretty sure I was the first writer ever to profile for a national publication, got more and more famous as they became more and more boring. Radiohead became the universally acclaimed Most Important Rock Band On The Planet for reasons that never made much sense to me. Acid and techno irrevocably changed music around the Western world, except in the United States, yet dropped off my radar after I chronicled them in January 1989. The Interweb altered how artists promoted themselves and how kids learned about new bands and so on....”
And, lastly, positive comments from him on his current state, geographical and otherwise: “Only once – for a couple years in the early '90s, when I was in my early 30s, an age when rock critics in general often start dogpaddling until they sink or swim again – did I feel like I was treading water. And now, alive for a half century, somehow weathering increasingly bleak and unlikely to recover rock-writing doldrums wherein fewer and fewer paying publications have any interest in publishing criticism that isn't phoned in, I can honestly say that I'm as excited about listening to music as I've ever been. Austin is an amazing mythical land of awesome $1 vinyl bins and garage sales and record conventions, and now that CDs are speedily approaching their historical end zone and college students who've only ever downloaded MP3s are suddenly all buying used turntables again, piling up on old vinyl somehow doesn't feel so anachronistic anymore... All of which is to say the wheel keeps turning, and where it stops nobody knows.”
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