― 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), Monday, 21 July 2003 15:19 (twenty years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 21 July 2003 15:35 (twenty years ago) link
― strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 05:30 (twenty years ago) link
― Mark (MarkR), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 02:45 (twenty years ago) link
i think it'd add a little color to her cheeks.
― Kingfish (Kingfish), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 11:47 (twenty years ago) link
― strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 11:51 (twenty years ago) link
― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:25 (twenty years ago) link
That's exactly my point.
― Mark (MarkR), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:53 (twenty years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:59 (twenty years ago) link
― Mark (MarkR), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 15:05 (twenty years ago) link
― strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 15:06 (twenty years ago) link
― strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 15:12 (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