If you are Lester Bangs, with all of his talent and skill and breathtaking originality, you can break all of these rules with gleeful abandon and have your writing not only not suck, but have it be compelling and inspiring and wonderful.
If you are not Lester Bangs, when you break all of these rules your writing sucks.
Two points of comparison come to mind, for the sake of illumination. First, take the only real parallel for Bangs in modern American letters: Hunter S. Thompson.
When Thompson first began his career, his journalistic prose was riveting and radically different — it unfolded like a novel. It made huge and sometimes outlandish pronouncements. It was frequently distorted and abstracted (sometimes compellingly, sometimes hilariously) by the drugs in Thompson's system. And it was always, on some level or another, about Thompson himself as much as, or more than, his ostensible subject.
Very much like Bangs, that.
So radical and innovative was Thompson, in fact, that the journalistic world declared his approach to be "New Journalism." The idea was that all future journalism would be that way: eccentric, self-referencing (and self-effacing), unabashedly narcissistic, embellished, and subjective.
It didn't take.
Journalism experimented for a while — a painfully short while — and eventually, although Thompson remained a giant and there were an (extremely) few notable exceptions, settled back into largely what it had been before his arrival on the scene. The reason for this is that the practitioners of the journalistic trade attempted to pull off what Hunter S. Thompson actually did pull off...and discovered that Hunter S. Thompson was the only one who could make it work.
The other is the example I so often return to: the legendary and brilliant Florida talk-show host, Bob Lassiter.
Lassiter, a man whose cult is steadily growing, thanks to the airchecks collecting on the web and elsewhere, had the astonishing ability to tell deeply personal stories about himself, as well as launch into idiosyncratic and erratic rants, that could sometimes last up to three hours. He could ramble about Ronald Reagan and make it impossible for you to turn away, or tell you about every Christmas he lived through and make you weep.
However, when his monologue didn't last an entire show, and he would make ready to take phone calls, he was very clear about who wasn't invited. "You're not welcome to tell long, complicated stories about yourself and where you were the day that John F. Kennedy died," he said more than once. "It may be the most meaningful and poignant story in the world to you, but it ain't meaningful or poignant to anyone out there listening.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Glen Boyd
Let the games begin.
I think it goes without saying that you have written a very thought provoking article that is almost certain to open up a lengthy, perhaps even overdue, debate amongst our music scribes here.
SO bravo to you Micheal. Seriously, this is the sort of stuff I love diving into both as a writer, and as a guy who loves rock and roll journalism.
Which I guess brings me to my point:
What Bangs did for me was allow me to discover my own voice as a writer. He also cracked me up more often than not in the process of doing so. He made me realize that I don't necessarily have to follow the so-called "rules" to be a good writer. You said it yourself in your article, quoting E.B. White:
"Write in a way that comes easily and naturally to you."
Thats what Bangs taught me to do. For me, what I discovered fairly quickly was that meant breaking down records in a fairly geekish sort of manner --this is what comes naturally to me -- and maybe spinning some personal yarns along the way, that hopefully allow the reader to become more personally involved in an artist or a piece of music he might otherwise may not have ever given two shits about.
I could never recreate the sort of brilliance of Lester Bangs doing battle in Creem Magazine with Lou Reed for example. I'm neither funny enough (well, at least until I get a couple of beers down me), or confrontational enough (see last paranthetical commment).
But what Bangs did teach me was that simply being myself -- geeky as that person can be when it comes to music -- was not only okay, but could make for reading that might entertain someone while teaching them about something they didn't already know.
Once I found my own voice, I've found that the best writing is done when you make it read like you are talking directly to the reader.
Bangs taught me that.
I do agree that the flipside is the way some writers believe this grants license to verbally masturbate all over the page. Much as I love Bruce Springsteen for example, I've suffered through written accounts of guys parking themselves outside his boyhood house in some sort of bizarre pilgrimmage.
Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, I've read people who write about artists with such a transparent personal axe to grind, that it is simply laughable.
But thats what Bangs brought us, for better or for worse (mostly better in my opinion). So I guess I agree with you that like most creative breakthroughs, the "bad" will come with the "good" that comes from it.
This is going to be a most interesting debate I think Micheal.
I don't agree with all you said here. But thank Bangs, at least in part when it comes to rock journalism, for the comfort you felt in expressing it.
-Glen
2 - Christopher Rose
Most of the time I agree with you, Michael, but this time you just sound like somebody's parent complaining about the kids.
The example you quote re Ben Folds five is particularly apt. It makes perfect sense and I'm sure the opinionated blogger you quote has long since paid out the five dollars.
PS: Your mum fibbed!
3 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Nice Piece...
I can definitely appreciate Mr. West's p.o.v. and I think becoming mediocre happens in every career/job. But, I love writing reviews about music that I love. I wouldn't want to waste my time trying to be reflective about an album (Metal or not) that I wouldn't spend my hard earned money on. I like to try an infuse my experience & my ear as a musician...
Still, Michael wrote a great article and maybe it's something that goes against the grain but I give him credit though I forsee alot more explanation occuring in the comments section.
4 - Mark Saleski
hmmm.......hmmmm....
uhm, i have writing to do. i'll be back.
5 - Michael J. West
Bravo to YOU, Glen! You get it. You understand the influence that a good writer is SUPPOSED to have: to inspire you to find your own way. I think that you are particularly adept at that - primarily because you understand to keep the focus on the music, not yourself.
However, I can't agree that Bangs' influence has been mostly for the better. The number of bad writers it has spawned vastly outweighs the number of good ones. It is directly responsible for the most pretentious, wanky, pseudo-literate, and critically useless writing on the face of the Earth. In other words, it is directly responsible for Pitchfork.
The current belief that rock reviews are supposed to be entertaining and quirky - even if it means subtracting from their focus on the music - is not, in my opinion, a good development.
6 - Michael J. West
You are to be congratulated, Chris, for your innovative, simultaneous employment of both the appeal to ridicule and guilt by association fallacies!
The example you quote re Ben Folds five is particularly apt. It makes perfect sense and I'm sure the opinionated blogger you quote has long since paid out the five dollars.
I'm glad that it makes perfect sense to you. (Follow the link and perhaps you'll get your five dollars out of it, maybe even converted to Euros!) Of course you ignore the rest of the opinionated blogger's complaint: "Other than amusing himself with his hilarious little snark puns and masturbatory inside jokes, this entire paragraph tells me nothing about the music of Ben Folds, and whether or not I might like it."
The fact that it makes sense to you does not make my example a good piece of music criticism. It's not.
7 - Mark Saleski
i dunno michael, i would be willing to bet that most of the people writing for pitchfork have never even heard of Bangs.
to me that, that quote above isn't good not because there's too much of the writer in it but because it's not addressing the music itself. this is almost always a flaw in writing that's snarky for snark's sake.
8 - Christopher Rose
I thought one of the key points about the Bangsian school of writing was to eschew the overly pretentious type of rock writing that was pre-dominant pre- say 1976. The type of stuff that was swept away with all the boring old dinosaur muso stuff that was so stifling things before the much needed Punk revolution put some life back into music.
Then factor into that the development of blogs, social networks and even our own dear Blogcritics and the increased focus on a more democratic and greater plurality of expression that all that implies and I find myself even more dismayed...
Music is the most immediate and passionate of all the art forms and to try to depersonalise that experience and write about it in the way you seem to be saying is better seems to me to entirely miss the point of this awesome art.
Sure, part of a writer's art is to inspire and even guide but to attempt to proscribe and limit the ways of going about that seems unhelpful and overly controlling to me.
9 - Michael J. West
Mark, I find that Bangs (along with Thompson) gets name-checked on Pitchfork more often than anybody except Thom Yorke.
You're right about what makes the Pitchfork quote bad - it doesn't address the music, it's just jerking off. That's another legacy of Bangs, though. He made sweeping pronouncements about the artists, too, sometimes without directly discussing the music - but when he did it, it was so insightful, and surprisingly descriptive of what you would find if you put the rcord on the turntable, that it worked. I've not yet found anyone else who can do it.
Chris, when you say "part of a writer's art is to inspire and even guide," you are speaking in general terms of what writers, as a whole, indistinct body, do. The critic is a particular brand of writer.
To guide is the critic's ENTIRE purpose. His/her job is to appraise somebody else's art in such a fashion that he/she convinces the audience of whether or not that art is worthy of perusal.
Depersonalizing it is important precisely because music is by far the most subjective form of art forms. My experience of the music on a personal, emotional level is almost surely going to 100% different from yours, so how is hearing about my emotional experience of it supposed to help you decide whether or not to listen to it?
There's a writer named Andy Wilson who's written a book about the German band Faust, and his discussion of the music is filled with his tying it to the memories he has of where and when he listened to it and derived certain experiences from it. Or, what images it conjured in his head. Good for him, but it doesn't do shit for the music, and it's not interesting or relatable in terms of himself - and I didn't want to read about himself anyway. I wanted to read about Faust.
10 - Mark Saleski
Every time the word "I" or "me" appears in a critique, in any context, the critique is thereby that much weaker.
and here i obviously have to disagree. honestly, i didn't even know that there were any rules.
and without getting into a direct defense of my writing, i never really set out to emulate Lester. it's more that i write like i speak, and sort of cobble together in words pretty much exactly what i would say if having a discussion with somebody about a particular album.
i suppose there's this whole notion of how a critic is supposed to function in society...and i don't give a hoot about it. there's music out there that i like and it's my desire ('desire' isn't quite right. need is closer) to let everybody know about it.
11 - Michael J. West
Mark, please don't think that I'm attacking your writing. I enjoy it tremendously.
But yeah, there are rules, just as there are rules for any particular type of writing. Criticism is a serious craft, and just like all serious crafts there are ways to do it right and ways to do it wrong.
But Mark - PLEASE don't take this the wrong way - I'm not sure it's fair to call you a critic in the traditional sense. You're more like what Glen Boyd describes himself as: a music raconteur, who wants to express the joy he receives from the music he loves.
12 - Mark Saleski
oh i didn't think you were attacking at all...just wanted to pitch for my viewpoint.
13 - Mr. Bonkers
As the editor of seven national magazines over the past 21 years, I was highly amused by the Pitchfork excerpt. I have some theories as to what it meant but I won't waste any more of anybody's time with it. Suffice it to say, I wouldn't let it get through. I think all would-be music critics should hang the following quote of their wall from iconoclast Frank Zappa, "Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read."
14 - Mr. Bonkers
. . . quote "on" their wall. Don't you hate typos?
15 - Christopher Rose
We'll just have to agree to disagree, Michael. I am entirely opposed to your view of the role and approach of a music writer.
I can't imagine what flight of ego would lead any music lover or critic to imagine that they have the right to lead anybody anywhere, nor by what criteria they would imagine that they knew better.
Michael, I'm far more interested in what and how the music made you feel than some arbitrary set of ideas about what makes good or bad music.
16 - Michael J. West
Michael, I'm far more interested in what and how the music made you feel than some arbitrary set of ideas about what makes good or bad music.
And I like to know more about the music than the reviewer. Yup, I guess "agree to disagree" is the best course of action.
17 - Marc H.
Michael,
I wrote the Ben Folds review you cite here two and a half years ago. I'd been writing for Pitchfork only a few months and might not even have been getting paid yet. Believe me, I'm sure you can find much worse examples of my writing from that era if you try! But the commenter above is correct that all of my references should've made sense to the intended audience. (Besides, it's not hard to Google "OTM" if you don't know what it stands for.)
If the strongest supporting example you can find is from spring 2005, what does that say about your argument?
Gonzo journalists like Lester Bangs and Hunter S. Thompson inspired tons of terrible writing. The Velvet Underground inspired plenty of terrible bands. They were highly inspirational figures. In the age of blogs, there are bound to be many more terrible Lester Bangs-style writers... but I hope we'll come across a few writers with great voices in their own right, too. Not all writing needs to be impersonal, especially when you're doing it for free (or for peanuts).
Best,
Marc
18 - Marc H.
Wait, actually "OTM" apparently IS hard to Google nowadays, sorry. It means "on the money" or "on the mark" and was common Internet music-geek slang at the time.
19 - Michael J. West
There's one point you make that doesn't hold up, Marc:
If the strongest supporting example you can find is from spring 2005, what does that say about your argument?
It says that my argument was valid 23 years after Bangs' death. It's a very small leap to suggest that it would still be valid 25 years after his death.
Other than that, fair enough, Marc. I'm certainly not sure my reviews from spring 2005 would represent me very well.
A good point about blogs, too - the REAL "new journalism." They're still enough in their infancy that it's hard to know what will happen once we're really able to separate the wheat from the chaff...but the blogosphere certainly is uniquely suited to nurturing and introducing new voices.
20 - Michael J. West
I should also, in fairness, point out that I'm a jazz critic, not a rock critic. I'm sure that that colors my perception - jazz and rock are two very different musics, and thus require two very different criticisms. There are phrases and writing styles that are appropriate in jazz reviews that wouldn't be appropriate in rock reviews (and vice versa).
21 - Ray Ellis
Interesting piece, Michael. Interesting, but severely flawed.
Criticism, and particularly music criticism, is not a science. It's subjective, and as such, is not bound to any one set of "rules." The creation of music, regardless of genre, implicitly makes that clear. Music is an organic entity, constantly shifting and evolving. Its lifeforce depends on breaking cherished rules so the entity may flourish.
Writing about music (or anything else, for that matter) is no different. Any writer "worth his salt" is keenly aware of the rules, and knows instinctively when and how to break them for maximum impact. Yeah, there are a lot of people out there who read a review or two by Bangs or Marsh or Christgau, and go gleefully imitate them. Those people are not writers, and never will be.
It's this notion that there are certain rules of criticism to which we must adhere that sticks in my craw. Music critics are generally hated, particularly those who come off as a voice from on high. And when a critic approaches it in that regard, he'll be dismissed as a blowhard elitist.
That's not to say the writer should pander to the audience. If something is great, then say so, but make it clear that it's great because you think so, and this is why. And if it blows, you approach it the same way. It's impossible to separate your personal prejudices and experiences from the piece you're reviewing. The audience already has their mind made up. It's the critic's job to either agree, or tell them they're wrong.
I let the subject dictate my approach. If it's going to impact my point, I'm going to use personal pronouns, draw on my own experience and let the reader decide whether I'm full of shit. That doesn't diminish my criticism-- if anything, it gives the reader an opportunity to bond with me, for better or worse.
We could debate forever the virtues of personalizing a review, but that's not my purpose here. I will, however, go on record as saying, "the first rule is there are no rules."
22 - Kory Lanphear
Great article, Michael! Bangs' influence and the widespread propensity for imitation thereof cannot be overstated.
23 - Jon Sobel
The audience already has their mind made up. It's the critic's job to either agree, or tell them they're wrong.
True in some situations, but not true as a generalization. I write a lot about fairly obscure indie acts. My purpose, almost exclusively, is to inform readers whether, in my opinion, they're worth checking out. And in fact, the same is true when I review a Doors or Janis Joplin reissue - although fans already know the music, I might help them decide whether this particular reissue is worth spending their money on.
I have no interest in telling people who are into, say, Mariah Carey, that they're "wrong." What would be the point?
On the flip side, let's not forget that we have in our ranks a writer who goes very much his own way - I speak of the Duke de Mondo, of course - surrounding his criticism with huge gobs of entertaining personal stuff. Like Bangs, a unique and original voice, able to "break the rules well."
24 - Ray Ellis
Excellent point, Jon--and I couldn't agree more.
I review a lot of obscure stuff, too--Ego Plum comes to mind--and like most of the writers here, I think we act as a consumer guide as much as anything else. My point is the last thing the reader cares about is our music geek "knowledge"--it puts them off instantly. They just want to know if they personally will like it.
25 - Christopher Rose
Michael, re your #16, you can't separate the two like that; without the listener, the music has no effect, so obviously how it makes you feel is vital. The trick is understanding both the music and the reviewer with some emotional intelligence. That's just as true for Jazz as it is for rock or any other genre for that matter.