We haven’t even gotten into the first throes of December yet, but it’s time for the year-end lists to start rolling in. On a national level, I was thrilled to see Romantica included at #58 on Paste Magazine’s top 100 albums of 2007. Check out the full list here.
I was surprised at how indie rock-dominated Paste’s list was. If it’s truly a list of the best albums of 2007, do you think there was a conscious decision to disclude genres like hip hop (come on, no Common or Kanye [edit: oops, Kanye was on there], who would seemingly rank high?), jazz, and electronic (with the exception of indie-kid favorite M.I.A.)?
Or are we supposed to believe that the indie rockers are truly making the best albums right now?
I am wondering if this is a trend we will continue to see as the year-end lists start popping up everywhere.
… people use “disk” to refer to a compact disc. Am I insane? When I cracked open my fresh copy of the soundtrack to “I’m Not There,” I found that each CD says “Disk One” and “Disk Two.” I think it’s maybe because I grew up associating disk with things like the floppy disk that this bothers me so much. I wouldn’t ever write “floppy disc,” and I certainly would never call it a “compact disk.”
Scratch my earlier question: I know I’m insane, but does this drive anyone else nuts?
As observed by April Wright over on MFR, the latest issue of Rolling Stone has observations by some musicians and industry-types about what Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows might mean for the industry at large. One of the weird things about the general reaction to In Rainbows, in my opinion, is this idea that it’s going to influence some up-and-coming bands to follow this model and thus ruin their lives.
This seems about as silly as saying that the drug use of big bands leads directly to the drug use of up-and-coming bands. I’m not convinced that other examples set by bigger bands (endless, relationship-destroying touring that might lead to a record deal, or just plain trying to make music that will appeal to big record labels) are better examples than giving your music away for free. Once you’ve started a band and decided you’re going to try and make it, your chances of eventually landing in a position like Radiohead to begin with are virtually zero. Name me one other band that has enjoyed the level of popular acclaim that Radiohead enjoyed after “Creep” and who then managed to gain critical acclaim of a comparable clamor and maintain it for fifteen years.
Radiohead are unique, and any band foolhardy enough to believe that they can for sure become the next Radiohead by giving away their music is also probably gullible enough to believe they can become, say, the next Lily Allen by showing up to perform drunk, talking smack about other bands, and building a rabid fan base on MySpace. My point is that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between hard work and success when it comes to the music industry. Rarely does success come without hard work, but an awful lot of hard work by an awful lot of bands doesn’t mean they’ll be able to quit their day jobs.
So allowing your fans to pay whatever they want for your music is probably not going to be the path to success, but was bleeding yourself dry in the hopes that someday the right someone from some major label might be at your CMJ showcase really a more viable business strategy?
To quote Nick Hornby from High Fidelity, “People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands—literally thousands—of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives.” That all goes double for the people who, inspired by those songs, go out and form bands in the hopes of “making it” someday.
I don’t want this to sound overly negative; in fact, I’d like to stipulate that I’m talking here about “making it” on the terms generally associated with million-selling albums, music videos, and episodes of “Cribs.” The music industry is just that: an industry. I do believe that hard work can pay musical dividends quicker and easier than monetary dividends, and I believe that what’s happening with digital music now might mean that it’s harder to quit your day job to pursue music, but easier to pursue music and have a day job.
This month’s Harper’s has an excerpt in the “Readings” section from an article written by the poet W.H. Auden for the French monthly Preuves back in 1952, and it begins with one of the most lucid and true-feeling things I’ve ever read about what makes for good and bad criticism. He’s obviously writing about literary critics, but I feel that this holds true for music critics as well, particularly in this day and age where so much music writing <cough>Pitchfork</cough> aspires to the lofty heights of literary criticism. Just as nicely, though, he also manages to skewer simple cheerleading, or the assumption that just saying something is great makes you a better critic than someone who attacks mercilessly. I’ve bolded a couple of my favorite parts.
“De Droite et de Gauche” by W.H. Auden
Criticism is tradition defending itself against the three armies of the Goddess Stupidity: the army of amateurs who are ignorant of tradition; the army of conceited eccentrics who believe tradition should be suppressed by a stroke of the pen in order that true art may begin with them; and the army of academicians who believe they maintain tradition by a servile imitation of the past.
The desire to link art to life, beauty to truth, justice to goodness, almost infallibly leads criticism to utter a host of stupidities; a critic who ignores or represses this concern and contents himself with being no more than an amateur or an historian of art avoids covering himself with ridicule, but at what cost. No one reads him.
Judging a work of art is virtually the same mental operation as judging human beings, and requires the same aptitudes: first, a real love of works of art, an inclination to praise rather than blame, and regret when a complete rejection is required; second, a vast experience of all artistic activities; and last, an awareness, openly and happily accepted of one’s own prejudices. Some critics fail because they are pedants whose ideal of perfection is always offended by concrete realization. Others fail because they are insular and hostile to what is alien to them; these critics, yielding their prejudices without knowing they have them and sincerely offering judgments they believe to be objective, are more excusable than those who, aware of their prejudices, lack the courage to enter the lists to defend their personal tastes.
The best literary critic is not the one whose judgments are always right but the one whose essays compel you to read and reread the works he discusses; even when he is hostile, you feel that the work attacked is important enough to be worth the effort. There are other critics who, even when they praise a book, cancel any desire you might have to read it.