November 12, 2001 by A.S. Van Dorston

In The Big Takeover discussion group, some people were saying that young reviewers shouldn’t be required to know their music history. And why can’t a young reviewer have any knowledge of music history? I think we’re letting them off too easily. I was lucky enough to have good records around the house, so even at the age of 8, I was familiar with the bulk of the ‘rock cannon,’ from rockabilly to the Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, Byrds, Hendrix, Doors, Dylan, even the Fugs, Beefheart and Velvet Underground. Nevertheless, any inquisitive high schooler can amass a decent tape (or MP3, or CDR) collection by raiding and dubbing collections of friends, friends’ older siblings, etc. My friends had quite a trading network going on. By the time I was 18, any gaps in my listening knowledge (I knew what I needed to hear thanks to years of reading record reviews and the Trouser Press and other record guides) were quickly filled by hanging out in the listening room of the college radio station library.

There’s less excuse than ever of being ignorant. I’m all for enthusiasm and passion, but why should I waste my time reading someone’s reviews if they don’t do their homework? And passion really is intrinsically linked to knowledge. If someone is passionate enough about music, it goes without saying that they will be driven to hear as much as possible. If a critic is burned out and doesn’t want to listen to music, then I guess they’re not that passionate.

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Let me qualify my statement in that all MAJOR gaps were filled by the time I raided the college radio station library. Obviously, no one in their right mind would presume they could hear “everything.” Anyone who truly dives into anything, be it music, art, literature, or any kind of history, can appreciate the vastness of what they don’t know. No one can claim to have heard it all. But there is a certain level of shared cultural knowledge that is pretty basic for anyone who is deeply passionate about popular music. Any self-respecting critic should be familiar with everything from both Elvis’, to the Stones, Beatles, Velvets, Stooges, Modern Lovers, etc. etc. I have a feeling that even the novice writers at Punk, Sniffin’ Glue, Slash and Noise For Heroes had a grasp of the basics.

Beyond that, there’s always more worth hearing. For example, I discovered Lee Scratch Perry and King Tubby when I was 18, but I certainly hadn’t heard even a fraction of all that Jamaican music has to offer. I don’t think anyone has. But ten years later, thanks to Steve Barrow’s Blood & Fire reissues, I got to hear albums that hadn’t been heard by anyone beyond the people who were lucky enough to have the mere 500 copies that were pressed in the early to mid-70s.

So post-college, any further gaps that were filled were relatively obscure, and not necessarily something that one could be embarrassed about having not heard. Largely because those records have not been available for years, so it would be ridiculous to reference them in reviews anyway, since the general public would not be able to hear them even if they wanted to. For example, I heard the Yellow Magic Orchestra albums for the first time about six years ago. I’ve tried since to track down the three solo albums by Haruomi Hosono with no luck. Does that really impact my usefulness as a critic? Not unless I’m writing for The Wire. I also have never heard Fingerprintz or DNA beyond maybe one or two songs. No big deal, though someday I would like to hear them. I recently got some albums by Roy Harper for the first time. Not quite as obscure, but I don’t think my credibility as a critic has been enhanced by finally hearing him.

What I mean by gaps, are pretty obvious things, like, say, the three Eno-produced Talking Heads albums. A writer acquaintance read a reference to those albums in a Radiohead interview. He asked me what the big deal about the Talking Heads were Speaking In Tongues and Little Creatures didn’t sound all that important. He never even heard Remain In Light, despite it being it god-knows-how-many top ten all-time-greatest albums lists. It doesn’t matter how much music is coming out, there’s certain things that a decent critic has no excuse being ignorant of.

Sure, there’s more music released every year. But it’s still possible to find the great stuff. You just have to listen AND listen to the opinions, recommendations and warnings of peers and critics who you trust. It’s not that hard, for those who actually love doing it.

More on reviewers burning out and losing their passion — I find the excuse of writers being burned out by being “forced” to write about mediocre music tiresome. Everyone always has a choice. I find it difficult to feel sorry for writers who choose to write for newspapers, weeklies or magazines that force them to review average to bad music. They already chose their priorities — to make money from writing. No one forced them to choose those priorities. And no one forces me to read the tripe that is cranked out by these people. The majority of reviews found in papers and commercial magazines are such a waste of time. I can tell that even with the positive reviews, the writers don’t really like them. They’re more concerned about coming off as witty, and producing catchy soundbites that label presskits can regurgitate.

Thankfully, while Option and Puncture are gone, there are still plenty of sources for reviews with integrity. Beyond the hundreds of zines, there’s Big Takeover, of course, and Magnet, The Wire, and, to a lesser extent, two decent British consumerist music magazines MOJO and Uncut. And of course there’s the many non-commercial webzines. Music is sacred enough to me that I avoid dealing with the music business as much as possible. None of my professional writing has anything to do with music. I hold a dayjob so that I don’t have to compromise what I write about for pleasure. With my 9-5, I’m basically paying for the right to be independent. Kind of works in all aspects of life, really, from indie bands with dayjobs to other artists.

Posted in: Rants