How Much Personal Response Can You Take In Criticism?

only I can really relate to. Is this a bad thing?

no! this is good, personal context and all that. i haven't seen the breeders thing you mention, but, if it was bad, for me it wouldn't be because of the personalization of the piece. i think this is the way to go (or *one* way at least), i like personalized highly subjective reviews/pieces.

what is antifolk?

Antifolk: http://www.antifolk.homestead.com/

Musical genre taking in influences like Violent Femmes, Social Distortion, early-Beck. The Moldy Peaches are probably the most famous Antifolk band. As JDBG said on stage "You know Antifolk? Dylan, Ramones... let's do this".

there are no rules except: i. you are not their press agent, ii. it should be good to read IN ITSELF (this is a v.complex area, obv)

A frightening reminder and caution of when this approach goes too far for readability - GINA ARNOLD. I doubt even Klebold and Harris had so many issues with their high school, but even they a)were actually still IN school (big difference, that) and b)they expressed their dissatisfaction quite a bit more concisely than Arnold (i.e. writing one book after another on how crap it is when people you don't like buy the same records as yourself)

I like personal response. What I don't like is when the personal story being told feels 'learned' in itself - like, most 'personal' stories of getting into indie music follow a familiar rite-of-passage thing (I used to listen to pop, then I saw the light), as do most 'personal' stories to getting into dance music (my first E, etc.). I'd never deny the truth of those experiences but it takes that much more effort to put a bit of yourself into them and make it exciting for the reader. If you're telling any kind of story, after all, you don't want people guessing the ending before it's really got going.

I don't really like even Joan Didion for that reason ... I expected to really like her but couldn't really wade through the attempts at glamorising her depression as a prelude to talking about how close she was to Keith Richards. That's a bit harsh, but it's not that she talked about being depressed that bothered me - but that it was kind of insincere ... I think you run an incredibly big risk when you make journalism personal because you're actually asking the reader not just to read about something they're interested in, but to like you. In that sense, I suppose it's quite brave. But it often seems to come across that people are really begging for approval ... if you can force yourself to be humble enough to reveal your own ridiculousness, like St Augustine or Rousseau or Kafka or Bridget Jones or whatever, then it works, I think; of if you have enough confidence to not give a fuck what anyone else thinks.

If your response is idiosyncratically personal then you're essentially writing about yourself and not the music. If you have an interesting personality and write well there is no obvious reason why your writing should not still be very good. But it's a difficult trick to manage - I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone do it in practice.

Meltzer is brilliant at revealing his own inner shitheel.

It's true that reviews with a lot of personal content often don't tell you much about the music - but I'm one of those people who prefers reading reviews of, or writing about, music I already know, so this doesn't bother me too much: I'm more interested in reading about how other people are experiencing something I also experience, which makes personal writing very effective for me.

I think it's a bit limiting to think of "personal response" as only being a straight retelling of experience (in fact, as I indicated re The Breeders review, a totally straight retelling is highly unlikely to interest me). I think there's quite a lot of high quality music criticism in which the writer really grapples with their response to the music, and with their issues with that response, where they need never actually mention any particular details from their personal life (though, obviously, talking about personal experiences can sometimes work perfectly). The idea that there's some rigid binary between autobiography and "professional standards" is probably much more damaging to music criticism as a whole than any specific difficulties of execution on either side of the fence.

Keep doin' what you do Dom, I for one enjoy your writing immensely mainly for the reasons you have outlined, ie the personalisation and your way of placing your writing into context. It's all about one person's opinion and if it moves you, go for it.

Kris.

ArfArf: "there is no obvious reason why your writing should not STILL be very good" => implication that music writing w/o personal idiosyncracy is nevertheless intrinsically better? if so, i cannot think of sufficient examples of "music writing w/o personal idiosyncracy" (in any field of music) to justify this as a RULE (at the moment i cannot think of any examples AT ALL but that is lack of coffee not lack of existence)

"I was thinking about the hammering that 'I love the Breeders like I did when I was a young angry lesbian' essay got on here. Was that because of the personalisation of it, or because it was shite?"

Both, frankly.

Personalizing a review is tricky business, as it often comes off as trite, meaningless and self-serving. Be warned.

i can't really read music writing unless it has a personal element to it (music writing, which is different - i think - than the record reviews which show up in your local free weekly or even spin and its fellow travellers most of the time)...nancy is even more of a fascist on this point than i am, which is why - i think - she often can't understand why i want to "do" this...that said, i do wish my own writing was more personal in a way, as i typically read back what i write and find it dry and sterile as hell.

it got a hammering = it was NOT self-serving obv

I can't think about/ relate to music in any other way but the personal. God, I'm such an egotist.

Mark

Of course only a small amount of writing about music is truly impersonal. But a writer can try to balance his awareness of his own idiosyncratic response with a striving for what, for want of a better term, I will call objectivity. I acknowledge the difficulty with the terminology, particularly at ILM where objectivity is practically a dirty word. But despite the difficulties I hope that you will understand my meaning clearly enough: as well as his own experiences and response to the music he can take account of the likely response of the reader, and he can seek to maintain a respect for the instrinsic character of the work he is writing about.

This is not an easy trick to pull off either - arguably it is impossible - but I am more likely to be interested in writing that at least attempts it. Which is not, of course, the same as saying that it is "intrinsically superior".

If I read a piece by Joe Schmoe which is presented as a response to John Coltrane, it will almost invariably be because I am interested in John Coltrane, not because I am interested in Joe Schmoe. If Joe has a lot to say about Joe Schmoe and very little about John Coltrane, then I feel I have suckered into reading yet more self- advertisement posing as criticism. Which is what I think almost all rock criticism is.

Jazz writers seem to manage this better. Whitney Balliet can be highly idiosyncratic and even egocentric. But he usually manages to balance this with a proper attention to the work under discussion and a courteous respect for what is likely to interest the reader. And he can write.

As I said there is no intrinsic reason why the most extremely subjective writing on music should not be interesting but it will be because the reader is interested in the writer and not in what he has to say about the music.

In my case I can't think of a rock/pop critic who has pulled this off. But Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis both write about jazz in a way that tells me very little about jazz, but quite a lot about Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis and also about an interesting strand of hostility to modernism and intellectualism in the arts. Thomas Mann's writings on Wagner are interesting because they tell me things about Thomas Mann, or the fear of sensuality in the arts among the Geman bourgoisie at the turn of the century. Nietzche's writings about Wagner are interesting for similar reasons. But these are big personalities, and they can all write. I don't feel the same about the columnists in "Mojo" or "Uncut".

I think my first-person criteria boils down to this:

1. if yr gonna write about something personal, make sure it's idiosyncratic enough that most people don't have in their writers' arsenal. for instance, lotsa folks can write about taking e for the first time, but how many can or will say they'd already been raving for five years when they took it? everyone's heard the i-saw-the- light stories, but if you saw the light in a different way than everyone else, that's usually more inherently interesting.

2. i tend to willfully misinterpret the term personal writing as meaning You Know Instantly Who's Writing It, as opposed to I Ate Cornflakes For Breakfast And Had A Sudden Vision ME ME ME ME. even if Chuck Eddy or Christgau or Douglas Wolk or Simon Reynolds don't use the first person their stuff is so stylized, so themselves, that they don't need to; their writing personas are interesting enough to create a context for me as a reader. and that's damn hard to do well. I know a few people (won't bother naming names) who got started writing in first-person who didn't have the basics down, who didn't know how to WRITE, basically, and so their stuff was/is even more obnoxious than most bad writing because it's so fucking infuriatingly self-centered. way I see it, you need structure and phrasemaking ability before you even think of turning it into an I-fest.

Matos said what I was trying to say better than I did - it would never occur to me that Christgau, Kogan etc. weren't personalised writers.

and of course Michael Goldberg, but that's another story--right Tim?

Well Goldberg definitely has a personalised style, and he makes me want to personally punch him. So, yeah, I guess he counts too.