Talkin' 'bout my generation
Jer wanted to know what I thought about this. Four things:
1: There are definitely some older critics who should shut the fuck up - every time Jann Wenner gives 5 stars to the new Mick Jagger solo disc or whatever Patty Smith shits out it's to the point where it's embarrassing. Maybe he's stopped in the few months since the last time I flipped through RS, but if so he stopped a few decades too late. But that is technically rock criticism for a music magazine. Here we're talking about the couple of pages of music coverage that your average city paper does every week. True, if here you have critics who are stuck in the past they should be canned; but critics like that range from 18-80.
2: The people being reported on in this article don't seem to fit the Wenner mold. It's entirely possible that they've been fired or demoted in some msiguided attempt to be "hip". That's stupid, especially considering music critics have never been, will never be, and should never be, hip. It kills the tastebuds. If that's what is going on (and of course we can't tell from the article), they should get their jobs back.
3: Of course, I have a large degree of sympathy for their replacements, as well. There's not nearly as many good positions out there as there are qualified applicants, and it's damned hard to make a living that way. Either way this goes, someone's getting screwed.
4: I would never want to be a "pop music" critic for a newspaper, since that would mean covering the most banal stories, the ones that are everywhere (i.e. radiohead is banal in this context, albeit not musicaly). You would have very little space and very little freedom. I know I wouldn't feel engaged, and I'm 22.
1: There are definitely some older critics who should shut the fuck up - every time Jann Wenner gives 5 stars to the new Mick Jagger solo disc or whatever Patty Smith shits out it's to the point where it's embarrassing. Maybe he's stopped in the few months since the last time I flipped through RS, but if so he stopped a few decades too late. But that is technically rock criticism for a music magazine. Here we're talking about the couple of pages of music coverage that your average city paper does every week. True, if here you have critics who are stuck in the past they should be canned; but critics like that range from 18-80.
2: The people being reported on in this article don't seem to fit the Wenner mold. It's entirely possible that they've been fired or demoted in some msiguided attempt to be "hip". That's stupid, especially considering music critics have never been, will never be, and should never be, hip. It kills the tastebuds. If that's what is going on (and of course we can't tell from the article), they should get their jobs back.
3: Of course, I have a large degree of sympathy for their replacements, as well. There's not nearly as many good positions out there as there are qualified applicants, and it's damned hard to make a living that way. Either way this goes, someone's getting screwed.
4: I would never want to be a "pop music" critic for a newspaper, since that would mean covering the most banal stories, the ones that are everywhere (i.e. radiohead is banal in this context, albeit not musicaly). You would have very little space and very little freedom. I know I wouldn't feel engaged, and I'm 22.
