― Hyman E. Savanarola, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
"Great writer" would be a boring outcome for Meltzer, since he held the promise of being so much more. Earlier in this thread I'm claiming that he tops Dewey and Wittgenstein and everyone else as a 20th century intellectual. And I claim in my Whore review that he's recently been letting his ideas about music molder - choosing to say not-so-smart things that are wrong simply because he can say them powerfully. (This probably in the long run makes him a worse writer, too, but that's a somewhat different issue.)
― Frank Kogan, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
First...Frank...you mention that his ideas about music have sort of faded. I came to Meltzer because I thought he was a great writer. He made me laugh. He made me think specifically about my pre-conceptions about 'proper' writing and also criticism. He put (and yeah I know first person writing ain't nuttin new) the self into his criticisms and to me that was so important and it gave his work so much more meaning and honesty. BUT I've never considered him just a music writer...in fact I could care less about half of the musicians he writes about (similarly...Nick Tosches could write a cookbook and I'd read it because I love the power and force of his language). You seem to be pigeonholing him still as a music writer when he's a Writer and has always been. I'm not even sure he was writing about music to begin with (but hey...I was 2 years old in 1969 so I'm coming at his work from a different context).
Intellectual value in his nastiness? I dunno but for me his treatment of his parents, for example, made me re-think (after I laffed my ass off) the way we act towards the family structure. Most of us treat it with a certain amount of respect and don't cross certain lines....to me there is this social war (as u call it) just in little things like "Things I learned from an asshole named Dad"
On the other hand....the nastiness towards Christgau don't make much sense to me and seems of little social value...BUT in a way this is also what I like about his work....There's no hiearchy or division: this is LITERATURE. This is CRITICISM. This is my GROCERY list. It's all mixed in together. And that in itself is a form of social criticism or 'war'.
Didn't Foucault say something about that in Death of the Author?
Ok...my automatic comments.
― Chris Robinson, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Sterling Clover, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I don't know if this is the right place for this, but here's a live music preview I recently wrote for the Regina Prairie Dog, that's not only a big-time copping of what RM does in the Reader, but it actually stars RM and it's not even made up--though I've been known to do that.
Stompin' Tom and the Writer by Emmet Matheson When last I spoke with Richard Meltzer, rock crit's anti-hero, author of some really great books like, THE AESTHETICS OF ROCK, A WHORE JUST LIKE THE REST, and HOLES: A BOOK NOT ENTIRELY ABOUT GOLF, he asked me about Stompin' Tom Connors. It seems that while Meltzer-who now lives in Portland, Oregon, where he writes mostly about getting older-lived in New York during the early 70s, he made frequent trips to nearby Montreal just to see Dr Stompin' Tom (in 1996, Connors received an honourary Doctorate of Laws from St. Thomas University in Fredricton, New Brunswick). "We thought he was the wildest thing going," Meltzer remembered fondly. "Is he still active?" I was pleased to him that Stompin' Tom was not only still active, but that he's been enjoying quite the renaissance of late. Meltzer was intrigued to hear that Connors has penned two memoirs, BEFORE THE FAME, chronicling his childhood in Skinners Pond, PEI and his early days spent hitch-hiking with nothing more than a flat-top guitar, and the recent STOMPIN' TOM AND THE CONNORS TONE, where Stompin' Tom sets the record straight on his rise to fame and the disillusionment with the Canadian music industry that led him to return all of his Juno awards in 1979. Meltzer further marvelled at Connors' unyielding orneriness when it came to protecting and valuing Canadian culture. "Well, he's a hell of a custodian," Meltzer laughed. Meltzer then went on to opine on how, like blues artists such as T-Model Ford and R.L. Burnside, by staying true to himself and true to his music, Stompin' Tom is a helluva lot more of a genuine Rock & Roller than ninety per cent of the acts who actual claim perform Rock & Roll music. "It's a big monster, Rock," he said wearily, "And it exists for certain pre-ordained reasons that were not part of the package once. Part of what it's there for is to make people stupid. To make people cease to resist. It's crowd control." But you know, and I know, and hell, even Richard Meltzer knows that Stompin' Tom Connors, who was recently in the headlines again, demanding to be removed from the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame due to what he considers the association's lack of support for true Canadian culture, is about something quite the opposite.
If you like this stuff, there's plenty more at http://www.egroups.com/ group/thismusicismylife plus a nifty pic of mustachioed RM to boot.
― Emmet, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
THE ROBERT BECK MEMORIAL CINEMA PRESENTS
August 2001
28 AUGUST - RHYMES WITH SELTZER (RICHARD MELTZER) Tonight we make a sojourn into cinema with the Philosopher of Rock, Richard Meltzer, presenting several of his rarely-seen Regular 8mm movie masterpieces, Ages 9 to 12 (1970), Piss Daiquiri (1971), A Royal Flush in August (1972) and Cots for Sleeping Six Abreast (1973). In addition we'll see films by his alter-ego Lar Tusb, including Joe Cocker Live (1969) ("An exhibition baseball game featuring Joe and Les, the first major singer in the Soft White Underbelly after Jeff Richards and Jack Sprat; Les's sister is one great broad and she's wearing her lipstick in this one." -RM) and Janis Joplin's Mams and Cunny (1968). Mr. Meltzer himself will do a phone-in introduction from lovely Portland, Oregon, as well as a video-reading in excerpts from Rhymes With Seltzer:Richard Meltzer Reads Some Stuff. The program will close with a screening of Andrew Dickson's Good Grief, in which Mr. Meltzer makes an all-important cameo appearance as a (semi-)mysterious writer.
All programs on Tuesdays at 9pm at Collective Unconscious, 145 Ludlow St. NYC
$5 Admission
Be sure to check out the website at: www.rbmc.net. Its changing all the time. Lots of cool new features.
contact: Brian Frye Cooper Station Box 499 NYC 10276-0499 fryebrian@hotmail.com
― Chris Robinson, Friday, 24 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Emmet, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Zach English, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Emmet, Monday, 10 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― John, Tuesday, 22 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Joe S. Harrington, Monday, 11 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 11 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
http://users.skynet.be/sb017192/meltzer.jpg
― %00, Monday, 11 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
You say it like it's a bad thing.
Why do YOU care about our sex lives, anyway? I mean, It's not like we're gonna fuck you or anything. Not even me, and my dubious taste in men is legendary.
― Michael Daddino, Monday, 11 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
So I just finally got a copy of THE NIGHT (ALONE). Halfway through as of right the eff now. Been looking for it for seven g-damn years. What the what anyhoo? Anybody notice that RM's no longer doing the Of Notes for the San Diego Reader, he still does one review a week in the Blurt section, but not as funny.
― E-Rock, Monday, 11 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― John Saleeby, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Is Dino really more substantial than Night Alone or even the SD reader published, Autumn Rhythm (2002) or any number of other writings?
I dont think so....ESPECIALLY given Tosches' recent insubstantial books including In The Hand of Dante which I found very disappointing
Tosches just gets more press.
chris robinson ottawa, canada
― Chris Robinson, Saturday, 10 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― jack cole, Saturday, 10 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― E-Rock, Tuesday, 13 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
And let me tell ya this...I don't pretend to be intimate pals with Richard...but we have conversed a lot over the last 2-3 years and there are a lot of traits in the man that I didnt expect to find after knowing his writings.
Chris
― Chris Robinson, Monday, 21 October 2002 19:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
As for Meltzer, how is it that Gulcher still has not been mentioned? It's the man's best work!
― Yancey (ystrickler), Monday, 21 October 2002 19:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Yancey (ystrickler), Monday, 21 October 2002 19:44 (twenty-one years ago) link
― david h (david h), Monday, 21 October 2002 20:27 (twenty-one years ago) link
― unknown or illegal user (doorag), Tuesday, 22 October 2002 14:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
I never answered Chris. He worried that I was pigeonholing Meltzer as a music writer. This isn't true. Obviously, I think Meltzer's ideas apply well beyond music. Check my Frith-Meltzer-Smash Hits comments on the Trouble with the Sociology of Pop thread: There's a basic dishonesty in journalism and academia. I still dream that by using Meltzer's ideas we can shock those two discourses out of their stupidity, at least here and there. I liked the pinefox's response, too ("pop for me = stability, maybe; whereas a serious engagement with sociological tradition might, for me, be demanding and relatively destabilizing").
"Great Writer" is a sad fate for Meltzer because it allows people to praise him while evading his ideas. Allows Meltzer himself to evade his own ideas.
As for some of what's been written above: Meltzer's the guy who said that, in rock, pertinence could be just anywhere. So to claim that he's not writing about the music or that he's only writing about himself is simply irrelevant ? at least, it's a way to fend off his ideas rather than to actually consider them. (Anyway, the claim is wrong in so many ways: "The medicine made me throw up." "Well, you're just talking about yourself, not the medicine.")
There are things I just don't get about this thread. "I don't think Meltzer's approach has gotten music listeners anywhere near as far as Marcus' or Christgau's methods." I don't understand why someone would write such a sentence and then not say what he thinks Marcus's or Christgau's methods are, how they differ from Meltzer's, and why they're better. Are we supposed to guess? I'll concede that the statement has some intellectual value: as a display of hairstyle or gang affiliation. I'm not against such displays, but you have to take them somewhere, otherwise there's no reason for anyone else to give a fuck. Where have Marcus and Christgau gotten you? What's it like to be a Marcus/Christgau man? What does it do for you, what does it demand of you? When you're a Marcus man, are you a Marcus man all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dying day?
Meltzer wrote (review of the Doors' Absolutely Live):
But the change, if there is any, can be indicated in a number of ways. For instance, are the performances just as good? Are the press parties just as good? Are the fans just as good? The answer to the last one's a damn sight easier than the rest, speaking from the standpoint of yours truly, of course. I'm just as good as I was then, and everybody else I've asked is just as good, some even better.
So here are standards of judgment that aren?t typical in written criticism. There's no law that you have to use these standards yourself ? Meltzer himself hardly limits himself to such criteria ? but if you're going to think about the man's work, you need to think about what it would be like to adopt those standards.
By the way, this thread would be a far better party if there was more attention to the actual words that Meltzer used, and the actual ideas he propounded. Not that his writing style and such aren't part of his ideas. But what does the style do. What ideas does it serve? And what did the man say?
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Wednesday, 25 December 2002 23:17 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 20 January 2003 15:03 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 03:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
― duane (24 hour troubleshooter), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 03:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 03:25 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 03:28 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 03:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
ain't there a shadow of the possibility that you somehow substituted 'pop culture' for 'pop music'??
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 03:52 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Saturday, 19 July 2003 02:09 (twenty years ago) link
― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 19 July 2003 02:13 (twenty years ago) link
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Saturday, 19 July 2003 13:30 (twenty years ago) link
― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 19 July 2003 18:28 (twenty years ago) link
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Saturday, 19 July 2003 18:54 (twenty years ago) link
― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 19 July 2003 18:56 (twenty years ago) link
― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 19 July 2003 19:00 (twenty years ago) link
― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 19 July 2003 19:04 (twenty years ago) link
― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 19 July 2003 19:17 (twenty years ago) link
― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 19 July 2003 19:21 (twenty years ago) link
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Saturday, 19 July 2003 19:38 (twenty years ago) link
― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 19 July 2003 19:50 (twenty years ago) link
― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 19 July 2003 19:52 (twenty years ago) link
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 20 July 2003 09:44 (twenty years ago) link
maybe kogan did though
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 20 July 2003 10:35 (twenty years ago) link
a) ok get to the point nowb) what the fuck does that mean?c) hahaha very funnyd) hmmm that's valid if he means what I THINK he meanse) omigod that's fucking genius, why didn't I think of that? f) what the fuck does that mean?g) (repeat)
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 20 July 2003 13:31 (twenty years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 21 July 2003 01:16 (twenty years ago) link
― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Monday, 21 July 2003 01:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Mark (MarkR), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 15:13 (twenty years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 15:20 (twenty years ago) link
kogan's line — probably laid out further up the thread — that as his writing got better his thinking got lazier is on the whole true (interesting also: eg name a writer this is NOT the case with...) (ie whose writing AND thinking improved in lock-step) (apart from me obv) (joke) (kinda)
― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 19:46 (twenty years ago) link
+ there's no way you can call the thinking 'in' the writing in The Night (Alone) (for example) 'lazy'.
Lazy isn't neccessarily a bad word to use in respect of later Meltzer, but this is bound up in the enabling/disabling baggage of rockwrite that he endlessly, er, 'negotiates'.
― ds, Wednesday, 30 July 2003 20:07 (twenty years ago) link
yeah and whatever happened to those? all the links have been down since that site went out of business.
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 20:35 (twenty years ago) link
overall its worth a read.
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 11:05 (nineteen years ago) link
Anyway, Meltzer isn't too hot on post-anything 1970, at least in writing, seems like he knows about it but he can't summon up the energy. But Aesthetics is one of the essential books on the '60s, period, and indeed the greatest book ever written on the Beatles, their force field of influence on everything there for a fat five years.
― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 14:13 (nineteen years ago) link
Aesthetics of Rock is one of the few attempts by a rock critic to address both musicological topics (the "tongue," etc.) and subtle factors regarding the aesthetics of particular records (as in his Sgt. Pepper analysis).
Meltzer was a truly great rock critic, but the selection of pieces in A Whore Like the Rest seems to imply to me at least that he's not all that interested in this aspect of his past work. He poo poos his Village Voice pieces (of which there were many), for example. The record reviews he did for Rolling Stone in the early seventies were great, but there's only one of those made the book (the L.A. Woman review). I understand it, in a way; the book is more about him than it is about the music he was writing about. The problem with the book, though, is that it's too easy for someone to read it and to think that he might have been a good writer, but wasn't necessarily such a great critic.
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 16:22 (nineteen years ago) link
― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 17:55 (nineteen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 18:01 (nineteen years ago) link
eddie so so SO OTM
― Stormy Davis (diamond), Thursday, 28 April 2005 02:00 (nineteen years ago) link
Last year I was trawling the library shelves for a book and came acorss RM's "novel" The Night (Alone) which I'd never read. Apparently I was the first person to check out this copy! Now I wasn't expecting er, Madame Bovary or something in terms of traditional narrative etc but WTF! Talk about recycling the SOS. Right about the time the Meltz wheeled out his snowball fight with the New York Dolls anecdote for the 12th time I hung my head in despair. A real crisis of IMAGINATION in a truly original stylist who previously never lacked "I" (is more depressing than hemmorhoids). Hopefully his geezer book is a rebound.
Search: "Buy A VTR And Rule The World" (1978)in the old Best Of The Village Voice anthology. Meltzer at his non-bitter funniest and also wierdly prescient re: hometaping, file-sharing etc.
― m coleman (lovebug starski), Thursday, 28 April 2005 09:16 (nineteen years ago) link
And I think RM is willfully cranky, myself. I came across this mot when I was trying to write something useful about Big Star (which I find somehow impossible)--something like "Big Star is the means by which the current generation gets their dose of the British Invasion." Which is obvious, way obvious, also bedrock, and something, like so much of his writing, you shouldn't forget.
I was trying to explain how to read "Aesthetics" to a friend, he was put off by the "philosophy" angle. Forget that, just concentrate on it like you do Nietzsche or someone, go for the aphorisms, like the great bit about listening to the first Rolling Stones album and how its re-creation of a one-night stand corresponds to the millions of real one-night stands happening at the same time. That's great.
― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Thursday, 28 April 2005 14:18 (nineteen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Thursday, 28 April 2005 15:53 (nineteen years ago) link
first, wtf @ old ilx/this thread -- it's just bananas right from the beginning.
i just have one simple question related to richard meltzer: will 17 insects can die in your heart ever be reprinted or has it been and i just can't find it? going price for a used copy appears to be over $100. i'm assuming "good verse and bad" means it's going to be verse and not rock criticism?
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Tuesday, 25 June 2013 14:38 (eleven years ago) link
maybe try interlibrary loan?
i've always wanted to track down meltzer's article about abbott and costello -- i came across a reference to it once in one of his interviews but have never seen it anywhere.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 25 June 2013 20:32 (eleven years ago) link
yeah i have a trip to the library in my future anyway, it's on the list.
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Tuesday, 25 June 2013 20:40 (eleven years ago) link
apparently acc to my local library/worldcat there are 3 copies in libraries in this country, none of which are circulating. interesting.
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Thursday, 27 June 2013 17:48 (eleven years ago) link
and one of them is in the library of the HoF
― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Thursday, 27 June 2013 17:49 (eleven years ago) link