Happy
2010!
—————-
By Beppe Colli
Jan. 1, 2010
Year after year, I’m more and more convinced that
nothing is more harmful to my piece of mind than the uncontrolled proliferation
of all those lists featuring the "Best Whatever of the year" that
pop up practically everywhere. A phenomenon that’s really hateful for being
as predictable as it’s inevitable, just like the changing of the seasons.
The origins of this bizarre social custom are not a mystery any more, not
since the day scholars of all things remote unanimously agreed that only
folks from a land perennially immersed in a thick fog, tired of spending
their time transmitting the legends of the Loch Ness monster by word of
mouth, could consider writing lists as a source of amusement and, later,
as a field where they could prove their worth. It would be easy to think
I’m painting this problem as being a lot more serious than it really is.
But now that this peculiar type of English disease has invaded a large
part of the Western World, revealing itself as being perfectly fit to reproduce
itself even in a land once thought to be unfavourable, i.e., the United
States, the time has come to ask ourselves this question: Why?
I seem to recall this
sequence: Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Sounds; Smash Hits; The Face;
Q; Uncut, Mojo; The Word. Sure, the object doesn’t stay the same, as readers
can easily see even from a quick examination of these couples: Who is best
– Beatles or Stones? Page or Blackmore? Pistols or Clash? Oasis or Blur?
Winehouse or Allen? One has to notice that even those magazines whose real
forte is splitting hairs (a good for instance being The Wire), as soon
as they become victims of the "list disease" start considering
splitting hairs just as a starting point of a travelogue whose natural
limit can be consider as being nonexistent.
I would not be happy
for readers to consider me as being in opposition to lists just for the
sake of it. Quite the contrary, I think that knowing how many copies the
most talked-about albums, movies, and books sold to be quite useful – even
if I suspect that nowadays the thing a Top Ten list resembles the most
is something like The first five causes of death in the western world (which
is a list worth knowing about for sure, just maybe not during the Holiday
Season). It would be different if large newspapers such as the Guardian,
The New York Times, or La Repubblica ran lists such as The Ten Best albums,
books, and movies you missed this year; but one could say, there must be
a reason why they missed them, since it’s not that people are physically
banned from watching, say, Lorna’s Silence, or from buying online a movie
that didn’t really have a theatrical release, such as, say, Wendy & Lucy.
The "list" that
for quite a long time I considered to be representative of the cultural
framework of the United States was the survey that for a long time was
helmed by US critic Robert Christgau for the Village Voice, whose intended
goal was to determine the "critical consensus" of a given year.
A notion that today can be said to be debatable (and whose contemporary
feasibility is quite problematic indeed, and not only for financial reasons:
How many critics today listen to the same albums?) but that’s more similar
to a list such as Five Piano Jazz Albums bearing the influence of Paul
Hindemith (in alphabetical order) than to ones like My favourite tracks
at 4.34 pm or This Year’s Best Ten Albums According to Us, one for each
big advertiser of our magazine. Then there are those lists like the ones
appearing in US monthly Down Beat that attempt (the impossible task) to
combine quality and money (in such a tiny, miserable market as the one
revolving around jazz, one’s ranking in a poll can have serious monetary
implications when it comes to concerts, and especially so if the promoter
receives public funding, or is a public entity itself, particularly in
Europe).
My surfing the Web had
never been as dangerous as last December: in fact, I had completely forgotten
that this was the last year of a decade, a fact made more serious by my
lack of familiarity with the word Noughties (and the fact that at first
I mistook this word for Naughties didn’t help). So, there was no escape,
from Noughties Icons to The Best Ten Films Of The Noughties.
My favourite pastime during the Holiday Season is surfing the Web to
see how much (or how little) attention was granted to those albums that
to me sound as being the most interesting and original (which doesn’t necessarily
translate in their being the most successful artistically) of the year.
While doing a Google I happened to find two Italian reviews that quite
resembled each another. Since by the look of it it didn’t appear as being
the case of one writer copying the other, I looked for the English press
release of said record, and I found that the text looked like the source
of both reviews.
A personal memoir. A long time ago I received
a few re-releases of old albums by a UK group, together with a press release
of such an high quality that it exited my admiration. You can imagine my
surprise when, a couple of months later, I read an "in-depth article"
about those same re-releases that revealed to be nothing more than a translation
of what I had received. The episode came back to me about two months ago,
when I happened to read, in the guise of an article, what was just a translation
of a press release about some old, glorious live tracks being re-released
that totally by chance I had read just a few days before while accessing
Steve Hoffman’s Forum.
The question concerning reviews that for
the most part derive from a press release has always been of much interest
to me, but one that I had not much of an idea about, since in order to
make a reliable opinion about this one has to compare a large quantity
of items: reviews, and press releases; and while it’s obvious that in order
to read reviews getting some magazines is all it takes, when it comes to
press releases things are not so simple.
But things have changed. For reasons of
economy, many albums (most of them being jazz albums, though this is by
no means only confined to jazz albums) don’t have liner notes, or accompanying
papers, anymore, many labels and distributors preferring to have the material
on their Website, for writers and readers to freely access. Even in cases
when the piece of paper is still sent alongside the promotional copy, it
doesn’t say more than what’s already available online. So statistics are
getting interesting. (A knowledge of featured musicians’ past achievements
resembling an encyclopedia coupled with an immaturity of judgment or a "walking
in the dark" when it comes to describing the music are a dead giveaway
that something is really, really wrong.)
I’m really sorry when it comes to the disappearance
of the liner notes, which besides being a source of income for jazz critics
made it possible for fans to access a qualified opinion (and a source of
information). What I find peculiar is not that it’s the record company’s
opinion that gets transmitted, but that it’s passed to readers as it were
the writer’s opinion. And of course, with word counts getting more and
more severe every day, there’s no real space to feature a "critical"
part.
This is not a "moral" judgment
(even if I’m aware that my position implies a moral judgment), so arguing
along the tried-and-tested lines of "it’s always been this way" would
be a waste of time. It can be said that the proliferation of releases,
and the multiplication of the "press" organs, including the Web,
coupled with the use of an unqualified workforce paid little money makes
it impossible for a single work to receive the amount of quality time it
needs to be reviewed in the right way. So, in a way, having an article
at one’s disposal that one can copy at will appears to be the only available
solution. This must be done under wraps, however, like a cheat getting
his cards when no one is looking, at least until a degree of honest objectivity
is seen as an indispensable ingredient of any review.
Readers who want to follow a parallel route
to this topic are advised to read Chapter IV of a very fine book by Richard
Sennett titled The Corrosion Of Character. This chapter deals with the
way bakers in a Boston bakery saw their role, and much more, change in
a quarter of a century.
A different way to think about this (but
one that doesn’t prohibit reading Sennett’s book) is to read a lot of old
reviews. My favourite site is Rock’s BackPages (one has to pay/subscribe),
and I warmly suggest readers consult the archives of The New York Times
(some things are free, others are not), and also the Rolling Stone archives
(Wikipedia being a useful source of information directing to many interesting
reviews).
Contrary to the point of view of those
who argue that there’s a different opinion for each man, it’s quite easy
to see what makes a critic differs from a moron, and it’s not a matter
of thinking alike. Just consider Paul Nelson’s review of Coney Island Baby
by Lou Reed (having originally appeared in Rolling Stone, the review is
now featured in the booklet of the recently re-released edition of said
album – this time sounding really horrible!), and the one written by Greil
Marcus about Lodger by David Bowie (also from Rolling Stone magazine).
It’s immediately apparent that both critics dealt with the problem at hand
making use of their interpretative skills, with the end result (i.e., the
reviews) being coherent and, so, understandable, while adopting their own
highly individual point of view. And it’s precisely their being understandable
and coherent that makes it possible for us to disagree with their point
of view.
In my opinion, the cultural framework chosen
by Marcus is definitely not the best when it comes to the interpretation
of a work like Lodger. Which doesn’t make his review of no use for us –
quite the contrary, in fact! Nowadays, the real danger is the rapid increase
of reviews deriving from the same Press Release, however cleverly disguised
their origin: well beyond the "love for sale" argument, it’s
the sameness of the reviews when it comes to matters of interpretation
that’s the real point. ‘Cause it’s the proliferation of different points
of view – of the clear, logical, coherent variety – that is the first precondition
of any public discourse.
© Beppe Colli 2010
CloudsandClocks.net | Jan. 1, 2010
