Where is Greil Marcus' column moving to?

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).

At this point if someone defended American Stars 'n' Bars or Life as his best, what difference does it make?

stars 'n' bars is maybe my least favorite album of his that i could see someone defending as his very best. i always used to think of it as the one with Will to Love and Like a Hurricane + a hodgepodge, but over the years i've gained an appreciation for several of the other tracks (the Homegrown tracks especially).

re: greil's take on zuma, i think it's a pretty minor diss. to me it reads just as much like the words of someone who has loved the shit out of Zuma in multiple times in his life, but also some of the others, multiple times, who thinks that it is possible that Zuma will once again reign supreme. in the end, he's right that it just doesn't matter - at this point neil young has dozens of masterpiece songs, at least a handful of masterpiece albums, and the other stuff is also merely really good, usually. ranking him is an exercise of where you are in your own neil young listening career

To be fair, ranking is inherently unavoidable - there's going to be stuff better or worse than others - but it's easy to see why Greil and others (he's from alone) have grown sick over how much criticism has focused on it. Even before the ridiculous glut of magazines and newspaper articles ranking everything under the sun, it devolved into a nit-picking exercise of elevating something by knocking down something else.

I mentioned this elsewhere, but the critic Bill Wyman did a handful of ranking features for NYMag/Vulture because they proved to be so popular, but he knew how ridiculous they were and pointed that out in the opening paragraph of at least one of them - he tried to make them worthwhile by weaving in the stories he WANTED to write about, like how the HOF operates, how it reflected faults within the industry and critical establishment, etc.

I wonder if Marcus has trouble with people misreading the tone of his writing. Like he thinks he's saying, Let's all chill with our preferred Neil records, but it comes across as, Prof. Marcus has laid down the law.

personally, i love lists and rankings, and i enjoy seeing other people's too. rankings only become annoying when people take them way the fuck too seriously (you are, like a turricane)

I'm usually the guy who jumps in and defends Marcus...I think the disconnect J.D. points out it is valid.

"To me it reads just as much like the words of someone who has loved the shit out of Zuma in multiple times in his life..." I don't read it that way: "It’s never done it for me" seems to make it clear he never thought much of Zuma. Which is fine--just hard for me to personally get my head around, like if you loved Altman but Nashville never did it for you.

yeah, that makes sense! i haven't read much of his writing, so i'm probably not recognizing something that's noticeably out of character for him

and on that, if he doesn't appreciate Zuma, get the heck out of here.

the worst thing i can say about Zuma is that the lyrics of Stupid Girl are stupid. it's too bad, because i love the guitars on that song

just hard for me to personally get my head around, like if you loved Altman but Nashville never did it for you

Nashville and MASH have both taken a critical beating in recent years, but the reasons aren't new - Paul Schrader originally called out the former for being shallow and Dave Kehr criticized the latter (not to mention most of Altman's work) for being mean and misogynist from the very start. Add Kent Jones, Jim Hoberman, Michael Atkinson, and to a lesser extent Jonathan Rosenbaum who have all voiced similar criticisms after both were revived or reissued after Altman's death.

personally, i love lists and rankings, and i enjoy seeing other people's too. rankings only become annoying when people take them way the fuck too seriously

Absolutely. There's a lot that's wrong with the concept, but for someone just picking up music or film history, it's an easy way to pick up stuff you should see, as long as you don't obsess over whether #100 is really that much worse than #60, etc. I remember that happening to me when I came across an ancient issue of Entertainment Weekly at the doctor's office. There was a page in there for a contest that had the top 100 CD's of all time, and I was like "I don't know like 90 of these titles." So the receptionist (who I knew pretty well, I was going to that the office as long as I can remember) was kind of enough to Xerox me that page and I spent the summer going through that list every time I stopped by the library.

Even now, it's great to pick things up that way - when Sight & Sound publishes it's last poll, I zipped through the top 100, and everything looked familiar except "The Mother and the Whore." Sure enough it wound up being a great discovery, not to mention the other stuff made by the same filmmaker (who sadly made very few films, all of which haven't been commercially available in years because his son is obstinate to a fault - I caught "The Mother and the Whore" at a 35mm screening at BAM, not realizing how scarce those screenings could be).

and Dave Kehr criticized the latter (not to mention most of Altman's work)

Which doesn't surprise me at all. Nashville is pretty much everything you're going to love or hate about Altman; someone who identifies as an Altman fan but doesn't like Nashville, that's the kind of thing I would find confusing. So I don't know about Hoberman and the rest, but are they also simultaneously praising other Altman films? Whatever's in Nashville is also all over The Long Goodbye and California Split.

I would say you're focusing too much on Altman's technical approach to his films. In a lot of ways Nashville takes a lot of his technical innovations to the furthest point, and a lot of those skeptics, Schrader included, always recognized that. But it's also a much more ambitious work that thinks it has a lot more to say, and what it comes up with is usually the problem. Read Hoberman's Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan, it comes up in the very first chapter where he covers the historical reaction to that film.

No, what I most love about Nashville are the characters and the performances.

In that case, here's what Kent Jones says about that:

"The entire film is dotted with brilliant inventions - Gwen Welles' striptease, Lily Tomlin's sad marriage to Allen Garfield (Goorwitz) and beautiful relationship with her kids, Ronee Blakeley's neurotic superstar (to my ears, she sings the one credible song in the movie outside of the gospel number), Michael Murphy's political operative - and blanketed with terrible melodramatic cliches (Keenan Wynn and Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine as the super-stud singer with his stable of girlfriends, the absolutely improbable ending) and really terrible caricatures, the worst of which, hands-down, is Geraldine Chaplin's reporter, although Jeff Goldblum's magician isn't far from the bottom."