Bathetic! Unctuous!!
A guy I know often accuses me of being unendingly positive in my reviews. ...which of course totally misses the point. And the point is? Well, for the moment I'll just say that it's more than giving a thumbs up (or down) to a recording. First, a little background. Like most teenagers, I got the music bug in high school. This was the late 70's. Everybody had the bug. The new Blue Oyster Cult record came out...everybody got it. We drew the band logos on our book covers. Over and over again. This stuff was important. It went far beyond just buying records for me. I started cultivating my inner music nerd around the same time. Any rock publication I could get my hands on I would ingest. Cover-to-cover. Sometimes twice. Crawdaddy and (later) Kerrang, music articles in Time, Newsweek, People Magazine, the local paper. Anything....but especially Creem and Rolling Stone. They were my bibles. I had a collage on the back of my bedroom door. The usual stuff. Photos of rock stars, band logos, Farrah Fawcett, etc. The collage had a border around it made of the little albums covers clipped from the record reviews in Rolling Stone. I tell ya, there was a lotta paste and paper on that door. And I spend a lotta time starin' at it. Yep, I was a rock nerd. Remember the night of the keg party in the movie Dazed And Confused? I would have been in the station wagon with the nerdy redhead and her geeky cohorts. No doubt. One of the things that really stuck with me about my early love affair with music was the absolute sense of joy & wonder upon discovering something new and delicious. The first Van Halen record comes to mind. It was almost like winning the lottery. This cool...thing...it just drops into your lap. It makes your life better and asks nothing of you in return. As far as writing reviews goes, it's something that to me, a sixteen year old kid, looked like a glamorous job. If you couldn't actually be a rock star, this seemed like the next best thing. Heck, some writers truly seemed like rock stars (Lester Bangs for sure). The job also (to me) looked impossible. I was no writer back then. I knew it. After college I easily managed to avoid the only-listen-to-what-I-liked-in-high-school-or-maybe-college thing. Yep, the fever was strong. I also got interested in record review anthologies (just in case I missed something, I suppose)...and the first one I bought was The New Rolling Stone Record Guide. While the book exposed me yet again to tons of music (feeding that never-ending musical bloodlust) it also drove home the fact that some writers can be just plain nasty. This is something that's always bugged me. I'm not talking about saying, for example, that the latest Lou Reed album is sub par. No, that might actually be useful (or at least interesting) information. The nasty review is the one that basically says "I Hate This Band...I've always hated This Band...their fans Suck...and, by the way, their latest record sucks too". Wow. So impressive. Here's an example from the afore-mentioned Rolling Stone Guide. It's a short 'review' of all of Jonathan Edwards records, each of which gets the dreaded 'black box' rating.
The most unctuously dumb of all the hippie singer/songwriters. His hit, "Sunshine" (on a now-deleted Atco LP), sells what he usually does - peace and bliss in the country, contempt for anyone who's not following along. It's the best of a truly miserable body of work.…
Article comments
26 - Tom Johnson
Temple: "scarcasm" - sarcasm so searing, so true, that it leaves a scar.
27 - Particleman
Agreed, Mark. A review that says "this cd sucks, every song on it sucks, all of this artist's releases suck" says nothing about the artist. It says the writer is unable to form and develop an argument. If a writer does not like a cd, there should be a rationale behind that dislike, even something as simple as "it's just not my style." If that's the case, the reader knows how to gauage the writer's reaction.
And yes, I too would be one of the geeky music-nerds in the station wagon...
28 - Taloran
"joy & wonder upon discovering something new and delicious." I'm going through that right now, as I scour MP3.com for Flamenco guitarists. I've always been filled with awe by Paco De Lucia and Ottmar Liebert, and I knew a guy in college who could do some amazing Flamenco stuff, but it never really grabbed my attention until I noticed that there were no Flamenco guitarists in the RS top 100 poll (not surprising, but that's a different argument).
So I've recently discovered a tasty new flavor!
29 - Christopher Rose
You're just too nice, Mark. For there really is music that absolutely stinks and undermines almost every decent musical and cultural idea known to humanity. Such work deserves to be ripped apart!
30 - Mark Saleski
good, then you go right ahead and waste your time writing about it. i've got better things to do.
31 - Christopher Rose
You sure seem a little testy for someone who likes to be positive. Chill out, dude!
32 - Mark Saleski
christopher, it's just a smidge past 6 am here, i am about as chill as i ever get. i guess i should have added the little smiley face after that last comment...but my fingers haven't really woken up yet.
the funny thing about your comment, is that you like some of the music that a lot of people do think is absolute crap, Christina Aguilera being one of them. i don't agree, but you what i mean?
geezuz, i need coffee...
33 - Christopher Rose
Hi Mark, good morning to you. As an ageing rocker, I'm more used to going to bed at 6am than getting up at that time!
Before I was a Rock fan, indeed before there was Rock, I was a Mod and the Mods loved Soul Music, the whole Motown/Atlantic/Stax deal of course, plus stuff as diverse as The Drifters, The Platters and so on. Dress codes were of vital importance and wearing the wrong brands was desperately uncool, as were things like your scooter had to be a Lambretta, not the much laughed at Vespas. We actually believed that we hated Teddy Boys & Hells Angels and had more than one serious ruck with them back in the day.
You probably know that The Who were a Mod band before they turned into the Rockers so many of us so rightly loved. In Britain, many Mods, including me, morphed into Rockers and then Hippies as the times changed, although I also spent one summer as a Skinhead, which taught me to understand and love Ska and Reggae.
Even in later years and during the Punk revolution that saved music from the bloated, pretentious muso crap that it was at the time, I've never stopped loving all those other strands of music.
I'd agree that Christina's early work was undistinguished but "Stripped" and "Back To Basics" are brilliant works of pop art and if some people don't get that, I would most respectfully suggest it calls into question their claims to be music fans, as opposed to fans of music of a certain limited tradition and lineage only...
34 - Mark Saleski
well see, we can agree on Christina but as much as i totally dig tunes like "Ain't No Other Man", i am absolutely certain that there are a bunch of people out there (including some of my friends) who just can't stand anything that she does...and i really don't see that as any sort of deficiency on their part. the music just doesn't do it for them.
ok, more coffee...
35 - Pico
Does this mean you won't be reviewing Kenny G's Duotones? I was especially looking forward to seeing you cover that one. ;&)
All kidding aside, I agree with your philosophy. I just don't see the point in writing about something you have little or no interest to begin with. If it's a style or an artist whom you like and were disappointed in a particular release, that's one thing. But to bash a record of a style of music you don't like to begin with serves little value to readers who do like that style, IMO.
36 - Dave Nalle
Does this mean you won't be reviewing Kenny G's Duotones? I was especially looking forward to seeing you cover that one.
It would fit right in with his professed love of Chuck Mangione and Van Halen.
What always amazes me about music is how so many songs can sound so different and still be utter crap.
Maybe it's time for me to start reviewing music again as a counterbalance to Mark's world of sunshine and light.
Dave
37 - Christopher Rose
To the best of my admittedly incomplete knowledge, there are no good musicians called Kenny! Who killed Kenny? lol
38 - Pico
Let's see, among the "Kenny's" of whose music I like. There's:
Kenny Barron
Kenny Garnett
Kenny Neal
Kenny Burrell
Kenny Drew
Kenny "Klook" Clarke
Kenny Wheeler
Kenny Dorham
Kenny Drew, Sr & Jr
Kenny Werner
...and if I got friendly enough with Ken Vandermark, I could probably include him, too.