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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I went into this article expecting a review of the music in the collection and its influence on stateside Brit-music lovers--you know, as described in the teaser. Instead, I found an op-ed piece that basically brands an entire genre with an incendiary charge.
If the musicians are racist, and their music is inherently racist, I guess the audience is racist, too--Reynolds suggests as much with his comments about magazine-reader behavior.
As a small-town teen in the 80s in northeast England, I listened to the rap songs that made the Top 40. But Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines," while great to dance to, didn't resonate with me the way The Smith's "Panic" did. To quote that song, it said "nothing to me about my life." Does that make me racist?
The dangerous thing about claims of racism is that they're difficult to disprove; any evidence to the contrary can seem weak or insufficient. It's the same (though obviously much worse) as someone suggesting, say, that certain music journalists are pretentious gits. How does one prove one's innocence?
I assume Reynold's book about hip-hop discusses the socio-political meaning behind the lack of British Indie influence on the genre. Only seems fair.
So call us when West Coast bands stop being influenced by the Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, etc. Last time I checked, there was a reason that those bands were in the canon.
It's kind of adorable that he's trying to have an opinion about music--like a kitty cat with his little head tilted, batting at the moving objects on a television screen.
Anyway, we don't want to distract him from his real dayjob: trolling the Broadsheet threads with MRA talking points.
Seriously, you cannot tell me Nirvana was an insignificant musical blip, unworthy of mention compared to the New York Dolls.
How about Heart? They are still vastly underrated. No, not their 80's junk, but their early stuff.
The Doors anyone? CCR? Santana? Pearl Jam? peh! Weak, marginal west coast fluff? That is what NY music critics to this day would have you believe.
And BSH (before Sammy Hagar) Van Halen was groundbreaking for their time. There is a reason VH is one of the top selling artists of all time-- yet you hear snot nosed asthmatic scrawny black jeans wearing NY writers constantly disparaging VH, probably because the band had never played CBGBs.
How many records has Lou Reed sold on the other hand? two, three thousand?
Sure, selling records is not the be all, end all. Talented artists I have liked that sold relatively few records have included The Mavericks/Raul Malo, Low Fidelity Allstars and Lone Justice (sure, sniff at them, why don't you).
When NY music writers DO focus on the West Coast, they tend to write about degenerate, small change novelty acts like the Donnas.
You are right. I am not an 'expert' on music. I know what I like to listen to, I know some or much of it is sniffed at by know-it-all writers called 'Nigel' who eat and breathe obscure crap bands 24/7/365. But so what? Who said music should be masochistic, like memorizing baseball statistics?
All this overanalysis of music and lionization of certain bands misses the BIG PICTURE. As Louis Black, founder of South by South West, put it recently, in the seventies, when he was a music snob, he listened to a bunch of fringe artists, but for some reason despised Led Zeppelin. Well, as he got older, he realized he was not seeing the forest for the trees, missing the fact that Robert Plant had an incredible voice and delivery.
This is how little I think of most music writers-- what with their unnatural cultic fixation on the same tired marginal acts. You can just hear the drone. The same damn list of saints iterated over and over and over, everyone has had it engrained in their skull by now how 'significant' all these stupid-artists-nobody-really-listens-to are supposed to be.
Husker Du
the Replacements
Wilco
Elvis Costello
Radiohead
Bob Dylan-- yechhh
Rufus Wainwright
Yeh, I'm naive, like a kitten.
I am glad to be a musical simpleton, who likes stupid dunderhead acts like Simple Minds, Oasis, Alison Krauss/Union Station, Nickel Creek, Smashing Pumpkins, Sarah McLachlan, Foo Fighters, Arcade Fire and U2. All of them, every damn one to the last, a fraction of the talent of a damned Wilco.
loved Husker Du. And the New York Dolls.
What an adorable list of bands that a bunch of straw music critics say are supposedly in complete opposition! East Coast vs. West Coast--the great non existent critical turf war!
Now kitty, stop hissing and scratching the curtains, and be sure to pee in the litter box.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
