Where is Greil Marcus' column moving to?

You guys should read that Jim Walsh book.

Judging an artist by (some segment of) their fans never holds water for me.

greil picks his 10 worst rock critics:

https://greilmarcus.net/2018/03/21/the-10-worst-rock-critics-1982/

not hard to guess who tops his list, but apart from that one, 5, and 10 i haven't heard of any of these ppl

Not familiar with most of those names either, but I'm with him on John Leonard.

Greil prefers Bad Company to Free. The man is obviously a lunatic.

3/2/18
What do you think of Dead and Company?
– Adam Taslitz
I went to grade school with Bill Kreutzman, who I knew, and high school with Bob Weir, who I didn’t. We can leave it at that.

Note that the list was compiled in 1982. Before Albert Goldman wrote The Lives of John Lennon.

Where he redeemed himself completely.

you would think he could find something nice to say about workingman's dead/american beauty. they are so american songbook-y.

xpost LOL. Saying Goldman's the #1 all time worst rock critic thing must be because of his Elvis book. The Lennon book is like Goldman letting him know he was OTM.

The insanity of the Lennon book is something. And the loathing of everyone and everything.

greil says that goldman is "at work" on an elvis book, so his hate for the guy goes back even before that. i guess he must've really hated the lenny bruce book or something.

i gotta say, greil's attack on alexandria ocasio-cortez (whose name he didn't bother to spell correctly) in his latest ask-me response infuriated me. he comes across as even more of a centrist crank than usual, insisting that AOC ("and her like," not a great choice of words) won't accomplish anything except encouraging democrats to either "stay home or vote for republicans, to, you know, heighten the contradictions." sad to see the guy who wrote lipstick traces (and who still writes strong, disturbing stuff about the changes DJT has wrought in US politics) sound like this, but i guess that's what we get from someone who still refuses to hear a negative word about bill clinton.

i realize this is an ilm thread but this seems like the main thread for greil talk, so.

The 20th Century Women question right before that one is mine--I'm undercover over there.

A friend pointed out the most bizarre assertion in there: "Just remember that Bernie Sanders is no more a member of the Democratic Party than Donald Trump is." There are also things I agree with. I've got a full-time job defending Bill James these days, though--Marcus will have to fend for himself.

Sanders insists he’s not a Democrat, so that seems accurate enough on its face (without seeing the larger context).

I took his comment to mean philosophically, but yeah, "a member of" might have been intended more literally.

Obvious home for "Real Life," only took 35 years.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/greil-marcus-real-life-top-10-column-727342/

wild that the swearin' record is on there, way to go greil

The Hopper quote doesn't nearly live up to his claims, the NPR packhorse librarian quote does, but then I've heard that before I read this. Makes me wonder about all the songs and shows he doesn't quote.

His writing is “better” than Xgau’s; but it shares an abstract, passive, unengaged quality that feels like he’s not really interested in writing about this stuff (and so why I am reading what he has to say)?

I mean, a sentence like this — “But on this penultimate episode, the lack of focus was acute.”

I like that, suggests that lack of focus---intense diffusion?---so intense/striking that effectively it is the focal point, whatever the showrunner's conscious intention. Which goes with the rest of his
description, as he casts about, tracking the songs in different corners of diff scenes. Makes me want to watch it. Another thing he shares w xgau, one of the things they can do well, making a good-faith effort at
descriptive reportage, whatever the opinion/grade. Not that they always do it well, or at all.

I give 'em points for bravely putting a quotation in there that might undercut their descriptive claims of quality (xgau does a lot of that these days, spotlighting so-so lyrics, not mentioning sonic context so much).

Yeah, that happens a lot in a book I just read (Music: What Happened?, by Scott Miller). Quoting lyrics can be tricky; if it doesn’t convey how good they sound to you in the context of the song (and often it doesn’t), the reader just goes, “Huh? Guess I’d have to hear it...”

Ask Greil:

4/24/2019
As I’m sure you’ve heard, some people are arguing that Billie Eilish is the new queen of alternative pop, overthrowing Lana Del Rey. I was wondering what your thoughts on Billie Eilish are? What new thing (or things) is she bringing to the table?
– Reede

“Queen of Alternative Pop.” How would you like that on your tombstone?

Myself, personally, no. I guess it'd be okay to be the King of Alternative Pop--I'd have to give it some thought.

Ha

Great answer (to a question about Marcus dismissing influence):

I think there’s a fundamental difference between influence, which is of little or no interest to me and which I think is at best a diversion from more interesting questions and at worst a cover-up of what makes a person interesting, unique, unclassifiable, and inspiration. Bob Dylan was influenced by Woody Guthrie—an influence he soon enough sloughed off—but he was inspired by Robert Johnson. He wrote like Guthrie, and imitated his phrasing. He didn’t write like Johnson or sing like him, but Johnson showed him what it meant to make art. Even when, early or late in his career, he takes up an old folk song and tweaks it just slightly (“As I Went A-Ridin'” early, “Red River Shore” later) he is inspired by it, but not influenced by it. It’s a fact, not an ideology, like a chair. You are not influenced by a chair when you sit in it, but given what it might do to your momentary sense of comfort or discomfort, it might inspire you to give voice to a thought you would never otherwise have had. It used to be that when I felt my writing going stale, I’d re-read Hemingway’s short stories or favorite pieces by Lester Bangs. I wouldn’t come away writing like either, but I’d find myself inspired by the sense of clarity in Hemingway (“A clean, well-lighted place” has become a tiresome cliche, and people are influenced by the phrase as a moral imperative, but there is clean light between his sentences) or the daring and love of words in Lester. Fitzgerald wasn’t influenced by Hemingway or Zelda but he was inspired by them. That’s what I mean.

That makes total sense. When I re-read something I love, it makes me want to write more.

that was a wonderful answer

i've often had trouble explaining why i like hemingway (despite not caring about bullfighting or fishing or hunting or many of the things he wrote about), and "there is clean light between his sentences" is a fantastic way to put it

That makes total sense. When I re-read something I love, it makes me want to write more.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Saturday, May 25, 2019

Yes. Also: "I want to do better than you."

http://greilmarcus.net/2019/08/02/announcement-real-life-rock-top-10-moves-to-l-a/

Your move, Christgau. We're definitely in Nosferatu territory now, and probably have been for quite a while. I don't begrudge him this at all, though. If you're still engaged, and you still have things you want to say, even if you're not always in sync with the way the rest of the world wants you to say them, keep going.

Found this amusing, a photo Marcus mentions in some new "Ask Greil" answers: a Life photo of Dean Martin in the '50s, with Marcus's grandmother to his left.

http://i.pinimg.com/564x/b9/86/7a/b9867afd4321c0d8dec95a1cf1de80ed.jpg

From Glenn Kenny's Goodfellas book, in connection to a detail from The Godfather Marcus gets slightly wrong in Mystery Train: "forgiven, since he was writing without benefit of home video, and because he can often be some kind of genius even when he's wrong."

Lol

Thought it was a pretty good one-line summary of Marcus, especially with regards to the Little Richard/Dick Cavett anecdote he gets all wrong.

That’s exactly what I was thinking of as well

In a bio note somewhere, he mentioned some of his ancestors RIP near the grave of Hank Williams, in Montgomery's Oakwood Cemetery. It's in the Capitol Heights area, over the Alabama River, woodsy and picturesque mostly, although some of it's gotten decrepit as Covid and other medical factors took a toll on the groundskeepers, also City personnel who might be called in from elsewhere. Said the City, when they recently got a groundswell of bad publicity (the Hank-Greil family etc. section, the most popular part, didn't get decrepit, but City says this not preferential). Volunteers and more City resources now brought in.
The patriarch was Captain Jacob Greil, a grocer originally from Bohemia, who served in Confed Army and then became leading citizen of Montgomery; he may be namesake of Greil Memorial Psychiatric Hospital, now closed (think it was founded elsewhere, before being moved to Montgy. area). His wife and 6 other relatives are also buried there.

findagrave.com notes Eternal Rest Cemetery was once an independent burial place, but is now a Jewish sub-section of Oakwood Cemetery. Dunno if this is the area where they're buried---I've been to Hank's grave, but not since I read Marcus's mention, so I haven't looked for the Greils. Didn't look around much when I was over there before. If I had, and noticed the uncommon name, I would have remembered, and thought of him.

Marcus's RS list:

http://greilmarcus.net/2020/09/27/greils-top-40-lps-circa-september-2020/

Bill Clinton Jam Session -- The Pres Blows

lol, never change dude

Beach Boys, Shut Down Vol. 2

this is definitely a very greil thing to pick; he's been consistent in his disdain for pet sounds, "the cult of brian wilson," etc., for as long as i can recall. (looking it up, i'm just surprised it doesn't include "be true to your school," which he's long insisted is their greatest moment.)

It feels like a relatively conventional list next to the one he contributed to Paul Gambaccini's second Top 200 book in 1987:

1. X-Ray Spex – Germfree Adolescents
2. Wire – Chairs Missing
3. Buzzcocks – Twelve Reasons (Bootleg: Spiral Scratch sessions)
4. Slits – Once Upon a Time in a Living Room1
5. Costello, Elvis – This Year’s Model (US version)
6. Mekons – Story 1977-82
7. Public Image Ltd – Paris au Printemps (band listed as Image Publique S.A.)
8. Gang of Four – Entertainment!
9. Adverts – Crossing the Red Sea with the…
10. Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth

Three of them remain; the Raincoats took the place of X-Ray Spex.

He should have made room for both, but otherwise reet, even w/o pre-Pet Boys.

I remember Marcus saying somewhere that his 1987 list was an explicit turning away from American music in the time of Reagan.

Very much a Lipstick Traces list, yeah. I found it thrilling at the time--all that stuff was almost a decade old, but many of the people who were voting alongside him still hadn't caught up.

it sometimes feels as if different greils are answering each question on his site, but never moreso than this week, when he hands down this verdict in one answer:

Rubber Soul, the American version, is their best album, but it’s not fair to compare other Beatle albums to it—it would be anyone’s best album.

and, the same day, peevishly responds to another questioner's assertion that zuma is neil young's best album with this:

Well, sure. It’s never done it for me, and with someone who’s been making records with his own name on them since, what, 1968, 1969, unless he’s been buying them himself, best is meaningless. It’s your his best album. I’d take the Dead Man soundtrack any day. And go out with Way Down in the Rust Bucket. But what about “I’m the Ocean”? The second and third solos in “Cowgirl in the Sand”? The first five tracks of Americana? Who says you have to choose and rank?

...uh, you did?

I find Marcus's Neil Young opinions very, uh, shaky. I know I've got all sorts of quirks of my own, but it's hard for me to get my head around the idea of a Neil Young fan having such little regard for Zuma. Dead Man's good, I guess, but it I remember it as basically fuzzy noodling around that worked in the context of the film but that I'm not sure I'd listen to at home.

(Not really your point, which I agree with.)

Also, it's hilarious that an artist as unorthodox as Neil Young gets Marcus unduly prissy about what are his best. At this point if someone defended American Stars 'n' Bars or Life as his best, what difference does it make?

Neil's score for Dead Man is glorious, but it's much less successful as an album, or rather the album he put out (with the anachronistic car noises thrown in and the bits of dialogue that also need the film as context just as much as the music).