― 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
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