Music criticism
in a mercenary world
—————-
By Beppe Colli
June 16, 2006
It was about one month ago that
I received the news of another music magazine going belly-up: this time
it was US monthly Circus. I really don’t know whether this name will
sound familiar to my readers (of whatever nationality). For this writer
the name Circus is above all synonymous with a time when – with the
exception of those three or four more "European-like" Italian
cities – finding a newspaper or magazine written in English language
at the newsstand was a very uncommon event. Though my knowledge of the
language was at the time more an hypothesis than an asset, I immediately
bought that mysterious object whose cover announced an interview with
Jim Morrison, who at the time was about to go to court (the stars of
the issue being Grand Funk Railroad). A lot of time passed (years!)
before another issue of Circus arrived: this time the main attraction
were The Jefferson Airplane, who had just released the album Long John
Silver. (Wish I still had those mags… The Jim Morrison interview is
still in my archives. On the back of the last page of the interview
there is a Janis Joplin obituary written by a name that would became
familiar to me in just a few years: Patti Smith.)
Just
by coincidence, a complete profile of Circus magazine had appeared one
month earlier on Rockcritics.com. The highly reliable Steven Ward had
explored the world of Circus, interviewing quite a few writers who for
the most part had done their best work elsewhere but who had spent their
formative years at the magazine. So it was thanks to the Ward article
that I learned that – alongside Rolling Stone magazine – Circus was
the oldest US music magazine still in operation: established in 1966
as Hullabaloo, it had gotten its definitive name in 1968. Maybe the
magazine was not really prestigious (hence the scarce amount of attention
paid by the media to its demise?), but if I have to judge from its late
70s covers it doesn’t appear as that much different from the post Lester
Bangs Creem. While in the 80s there were quite a few covers on "hair
metal".
On the other side of the pond,
United Kingdom mourns the death of Smash Hits, 28. A from-the-inside
portrait of the "glorious weekly" (five pages, lotsa pictures)
can be found in the April issue of the UK monthly The Word: the piece
is by Mark Ellen, who for a time was Smash Hits’ editor. By sheer coincidence,
the cover story is about Pet Shop Boys (as it’s widely known, Neil Tennant
was a writer at Smash Hits). It goes without saying that when it’s time
to mourn the disappearance of something "national" United
Kingdom is second to none; so, to quote Mark Ellen, "The story
of the death of the title tore right across the media, partly because
the media is now run by the generation that grew up with it. David and
I – and many others – were bombarded with invitations from newspapers,
radio and television to contribute to a national day of mourning, acres
of nostalgia compiled by people who could still quote great chunks of
its hyperventilating prose and recite photo captions from 1985. It even
made the six o’clock news.". It goes without saying that the fact
of having lived those times will colour one’s perception. But – while
perfectly aware of this – Mark Ellen’s article offers a different perspective.
It’s
funny to notice that a lot of UK music papers that have ceased operations
in the last few years – Sounds, Melody Maker, Smash Hits – were all
weeklies. Funny how all the UK music papers that today appear to be
in the black are monthlies (this in a country that – in so differently
from the USA – had appeared to be not interested in the least in the
very idea of a monthly): Q, Mojo, Uncut, The Word. The first being the
oldest (twenty years old?), the second being maybe its "evolution"
(about fifteen years old), the third being the real surprise story,
while the last is the most recent of all (a bit more than three years
old). It’s obviously possible to trace a parallel between the predominance
of "visual music" and the developing of conditions that are
favourable to the life of a music monthly "for adults". We
could also mention the fact that offering a "free CD" appears
to have become an "indispensable feature" of any music magazine
(for a long time Mojo considered offering a "free CD" like
something that was to be done only on an occasional basis, while The
Word, whose editor at the time was Paul Du Noyer, had presented the
absence of the "free CD" as a distinguishing feature of the
new mag). We could also speculate about how a monthly can nowadays act
as a "(relatively) solid moment" in the increasingly accelerated
flow of facts that the Web can make it possible for us to see as an
endless line of dots.
To say that the relationship between
the press and "rock" music (here an intuitive notion will
have to do) has changed a lot in the last forty years is to affirm something
that’s for the most part self-evident. If rock is today one of the (co)defining
traits of western culture, it’s only logical that newspapers and general
interest magazines will pay it a lot of attention. It’s also quite common
to see the names of music critics who used to write for the "specialized
press" writing more and more for the "normal" press,
for obvious reasons of job security and retribution. But this is a situation
that appears to be undergoing a dramatic change, as I’ll try to sketch
below.
(Short
interlude # 1. Poor Billy Preston is no more. Newspapers and agencies
all write: "The only keyboard player to have played with both The
Beatles and The Rolling Stones". Given the times, it’s unfair to
expect more, even if I still dream of a future when news about style
and peculiarities will be a feature in a musician’s obituary".
Sure, something like "the only keyboard player to have played with
both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones" is too good not to be
mentioned, plus it saves the writer the effort of having to think about
something to say. But is it true? Let’s see whether we remember the
name of another great keyboard player, Nicky Hopkins. He played a lot
with The Stones, right? Now, who plays the electric piano on The Beatles’
Revolution? Which is not just one of their tracks, but one of the most
famous – and discussed! – songs written by Lennon, and the B side of
the megaseller single Hey Jude.
Here we’ll have to assume the
eternal dispute about whether "rock" is really "other"
from the rest (in the many meanings we can give to both "rock"
and "other") for granted. (A very interesting approach to
the notion of "cult musician", and the relationship that passes
between a "cult musician" and the "mainstream",
is the one argued by Greil Marcus in his famous essay on Randy Newman
that appears in his book Mystery Train.) Today the problem is made more
complex (but, in a way, also simpler) by the circumstance that "rock"
– always potentially "inclusive", on its own terms – is today
"potentially inclusive" on a world scale. This entails that
while the famous musicians of yesterday did a lot of interviews (and,
given the chance, also appeared on TV), their modern counterparts do
only what gives them the maximum exposure. (I’m sure that the difference
between "I’m gonna call Keith tomorrow" and today’s interviews,
where questions have to
be written out beforehand and submitted for approval to the artist’s
manager, record company and what have you, the final text being checked
for revision by the aforementioned entities, it’s not too hard to understand.)
So we have to say goodbye to those different "types" of interviews
(when interviews were different both in topics and degree of complexity).
We have also to say goodbye to the possibility of carrying the "Musician
approach" to today, i.e. having people like Thom Yorke or John
Frusciante on the cover, and inside the magazine artists such as The
Ganelin Trio or R. Stevie Moore. (An interesting read is the interview
with Matt Resnicoff by Steven Ward titled A Musician‘s Musician –
Interview With a Former Music Critic, which can be found on Rockcritics.com.)
Whether
or not we accept the notion of "rock" being "different
from the rest", the notion of it being "different" has
always been a necessary part of its identity; hence, those heated arguments
when famous rock songs were being sold to be used in commercials – an
argument that would make no sense outside that very framework. But it’s
a very different notion of being "different" that’s practiced
by today’s hiphop (where it begins, and where "pop" begins,
it’s a matter that’s obviously open to interpretation). As antecedents,
we could mention the immaculate "stage uniforms" of famous
vocal groups from the 60s such as The Temptations and The Four Tops,
or the elegant dresses of The Supremes (we should also recall Sly &
The Family Stone, and the change in the notion of "sartorial elegance"
that they provoked). Absolutely not to be forgotten is the "extra-long"
fur coat worn by a radiant Wilson Pickett in his prime. But the one
that’s in front of our very eyes is not a change of scale: it’s everything
that can be bought and sold that becomes now an integral part of someone’s
identity, from wines and liquors to shoes and all that can be worn,
from jewels to watches, from motorbikes to cars (also vibrators: "right
now I don’t have a beau, so X and Y keep me good company, and Y is so practical that I always keep it in my
purse").
(Short
interlude # 2. Here’s a little quiz, obviously reserved to those who
are familiar with the album in question: What’s the name of the song
that’s quoted at the start of the piano solo by Greg Phillinganes –
starting from 1′ 50" – on the cover of Ruby Baby that appears on
the album The Nightfly by Donald Fagen? There are no prizes to be won,
it’s just for the sheer hell of it.)
Now is the time to talk about
a topic that’s so tacky that it gets to be mentioned quite rarely, but
I really have to: money. Let’s take the amount of money that one gets
– under the table – to do one hour of absolutely unskilled work such
as cleaning floors in the geographical area where I live: six euros,
which more or less amounts to US $7. Assuming the average time required
to do justice to a CD to be five hours (three listening sessions, plus
two hours to write the review) we arrive at the minimum amount of money
as proper compensation: 30 euros, i.e. about US $35.
Now,
what’s the amount of money one gets to write a review for an "established"
magazine (a notion that I’m aware can change quite radically) in the
real world? A few years ago the then-new US magazine Blender was said
to pay US $100 per review (theirs are for the most part quite short,
but their reviewers are often quite well-known). On the other hand,
some sources that declare of having seen the spreadsheets that appeared
by mistake on the website of Pitchfork magazine – said to be the one
and only Web-only magazine whose revenues can be said to be "remarkable"
– talk of a compensation of US $20 per review. (It has to be said that
Pitchfork has defined those figures as old, and so not current anymore.)
It’s a widely known fact, however, that most CD reviews are written
for free, with the sole possession of the reviewed CD as their compensation
(hence the joke about the fact that as soon as reviewers will start
receiving files instead of (re)sellable goods, the castle will come
tumbling down). There are many different situations, and one doesn’t
have to necessarily assume that it’s the largest corporations that pay
the best! On the contrary, it appears that, in some cases, music or
movie reviews are to be written as a "side job" that the company
demands, with little or no compensation.
This
could appear to be quite bizarre: whereas once, given the scarcity of
available sources, attention was a given, today the single feature that
should make all the difference for our choices should be quality. (A
good example being Seeing and Nothingness, the excellent article by J. Hoberman
about The Vision That Changed Cinema,
the homage to Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, which appeared
in The Village Voice, June 6th, 2006.) But reality is a different matter.
Whole libraries have been written
about the various kinds of relationships that can link a work of art,
critics and audience (at the stage where literacy is limited) and the
cultural industry, a work of art, the critics and the audience (at a
stage where literacy is quite common). The prevailing impression today
is that the prevailing dynamics have been subjected to a process of
acceleration. Which is quite apparent in cinema, where the number of
movies that are distributed without being first shown to critics gets
larger every year. (Here we have to take for granted the awareness that
dozens of articles about big budget movies start appearing as soon as
the ink on the contracts is dry.) And more and more we see workers used
in a "factotum"
position, contributing to more than one paper of the same conglomerate,
in various guises. But if from a giant conglomerate we cannot reasonably
expect nothing more than pure commercialism, we can still count on the
tiny, independent magazines, right?
Well,
it depends. It’s a complex matter. As already written above, the almost
complete disappearance of the "intelligent interview with a famous
name" has forced the tiny magazines into the difficult position
of having to practice a perennial trendism, where it’s only those names
that are (at that moment!) not famous yet that can be featured in their
pages. On paper, we have the obvious alternative: quality journalism,
rich with high quality criticism. Here it’s usually said that the real
problem is the low intelligence of the average reader. But the first
problem is really the money: who could reasonably keep a high level
of quality in their writings if all their work has to be done in their
"spare time"? It goes without saying that there are still
many more obstacles, the first being the notorious rapacity on the part
of tiny labels, tiny advertisers and tiny distributors who when compared
to the size of the tiny magazines do not appear to be so tiny anymore.
(Let’s recall for a moment that old, sad blues song which goes: "the
phone lines may be busy/but when that o’devil calls/the phone always
rings".) Quite often the tiny magazine tries to divert one’s attention
by pointing out the fact that big mags are involved in big crimes –
here I remember (from memory) Charles M. Young, who about twenty years
ago said something like "as if selling out for less could be considered
to be more ethical" (if I remember correctly, the topic at the
time being a beer sponsorship for US group Long Riders). What seems
to be expected is that the fact of the advertisers running away from
the tiny circulation magazines will show a picture of horrible agony.
A good example of how easily things
can go horribly wrong even in the presence of favourable conditions
is the way the press has dealt with Scott Walker’s recently released
new CD, The Drift. First, I’d really like to know why no critical retrospective
on this "great recluse" has appeared in the eleven years that
have elapsed since the release of his previous album, Tilt, and why
the present rediscovery coincides with the release of his new album
(this question may sound quite strange, so demonstrating that we have
really introjected the mercenary way of thinking). The trend to dissolve
the music inside the "character" is widely known, so the fact
that the published profiles have for the most part chosen to deal with
the "bizarre" side of things was to be expected. A quick look
at the reviews that appear at Metacritic confirmed my worst fears: a
lot of writers mention the by now famous "pork" used as a
percussion instrument, but we don’t get to know what other instruments
are used on the album (except for a generic "strings"). The
fact that quite a few reviews resemble each other a lot is also quite
worrying.
There’s
a nice, tiny interview with Scott Walker by
Graham Reid that appeared last month on Rock’s Backpages. Some good
points are made, which ideally I would have liked to see discussed at
greater length. Talking about his attitude towards demos, Walker says:
"No. I’ve never made a demo. If you think about it, you couldn’t
make a demo of my last two records. How would you start?" Well,
here we have half an interview. The other half could use this sentence
by Reid as its starting point: "In popular culture it is very much
"we want and we want it now" whereas in art music people will
take the time because they expect that they would have to take time".
I don’t spend my days surfing
the Web, so I don’t really know how representative of the general state
of things is the trend I’ve seen on the part of a few musicians, i.e.
their having a page on MySpace (there could easily be more places like
this, of which I know nothing about). At first, this appeared to me
as being quite paradoxical: I think that nowadays it’s possible for
practically any artist to find a friendly kind of mag in the infinity
of the Web. The "direct line to the fans" is OK, not sure
whether those fans – being… well, fans – are really the right people
when it comes to challenging an artist’s certitudes. But opening a page
on MySpace sounds a lot better than following the example of some Italian
musicians who with each passing day behave more and more like those
windshield cleaners who fry one’s nerves while one is waiting for the
light to change.
© Beppe Colli 2006
CloudsandClocks.net | June 16, 2006
