After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking the year off from all new music, and instead revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs.
To become a professional critic, all you really need are some basic writing skills, a mania for meeting deadlines, a general disinterest in making money, and the ability to project the illusion of expertise. There are two ways to approach the latter. Use Your Illusion I: Find a genre or an artist you like, and dedicate yourself to becoming an authority, to the exclusion of context; or Use Your Illusion II: Study everything, and never have more than a superficial understanding of anything.
That's an exaggeration, of course. In music criticism, a lot of writers dedicate themselves to rap, metal, or Lithuanian folk music, but still manage to keep up with the Top 40; and there are plenty of omnivorous music buffs who possess an impressive amount of knowledge about, say, the life and discography of Johnny Cash. And then there are those who cross mediums freely, taking an active and scholarly interest in music, movies, television, books, and so on.
Myself, I'm a dabbler. Throughout my career, I've split my time between movies and music, and over the past 10 years I've added book reviews and TV reviews, plus the occasional piece about sports, comics and food. I've written about punk and country, action movies and avant-garde shorts, popular science and pulp mysteries, sitcoms and reality shows, football and the Olympics, fine French dining and Sausage McGriddles, post-modern poster art and The Flash. I don't specialize—or, apparently, discriminate.
To be honest, I didn't really make a conscious choice to go broad. Various accidents of history—like my dad being in radio, plus my mom dropping my brother and I off at the movies or the library on the weekend, plus superheroes being all over the TV when I was an impressionable kid—combined with my particular brain chemistry to shape me. Because I suck at abstract thought, I've never pursued higher mathematics, theoretical science, poetry, or the kind of groundbreaking leaps of logic required to write lengthy essays about a single subject. But I rock at memorizing, organizing and synthesizing, which are exactly the kind of traits vital to becoming a breezy pop-media type.
There are some advantages to dabbling. For one, it's more in tune with how most people consume media. Non-critics tend to spread their interests around, and pay equal attention to movies, music and TV—and they don't always have the rarified taste in one artform that they might have another. (At the university where my wife teaches, I know a lot of professors whose reading habits are almost exclusively highbrow, yet they rarely go to art films.) The other advantage to skimming across a wide surface is that the awareness of one form can improve the understanding of another. I remember being annoyed at one brainy film critic several years ago because he bragged about never watching TV, then praised a movie for a quality common to any given sitcom. I also remember interviewing a young musician who credited Smashing Pumpkins for pioneering an approach to the recording process that even Billy Corgan has admitted was inspired by My Bloody Valentine. The less you know, the more skewed your perspective you can be.
But trying to take it all in does require some abdication of expertise. You guys can do the math. You've seen how much music is in my collection. It's going to take me a year to listen to it all, and that's with no repeats and a lot of dedication. Ergo: a lot of these very fine musicians have clearly never gotten a proper hearing in my house. So keep those grains of salt handy, chums.
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Pieces Of The Puzzle
Chet Baker
Years Of Operation 1951-87
Fits Between Cole Porter and Charlie Parker
Personal CorrespondenceMy first real exposure to Chet Baker came via Bruce Weber's documentary Let's Get Lost, which, coupled with Elvis Costello's cover of "My Funny Valentine," was enough to convince me that Baker was a musician worth getting to know. I'm sure a lot of you know how that goes. When you're still in learning mode—as I think I still am—you take cues from what you already know. At age 18, I'd squeezed a lot of information about rock music from Rolling Stone and Spin and Trouser Press, but that left plenty of unexplored avenues. At the same time, I was also reading up on new and classic movies, and since this was an era when only one or two independent/foreign/documentary films were in theaters on any given weekend, it was fairly easy to keep up with the critics were raving about. So watching Let's Get Lost led me to Baker, just as Straight No Chaser led me to Thelonious Monk. And since both those gentlemen had CDs in a big discount bin at my local record store, alongside a whole series of budget jazz discs, Baker and Monk led me to Coltrane and Davis, and to a too-brief flirtation with becoming a jazz aficionado. (I bought a lot of jazz that first year of fandom, and then tapered off to almost nothing.) If someone accused me of getting into Chet Baker in order to be cool, the charge would be hard to deny. But without that initial connection, I don't know that I'd found such an easy way into his often-aloof, monotone music.
Enduring presence? Is it proper to classify Baker as jazz, or is he purely pop? The solos in Baker's cover of the Gershwins' "But Not For Me" are squarely in the jazz tradition, as is the way the piano counterpoints Baker's vocal at the end (which has always been my favorite part of the song). But the whole performance is over and done in three minutes, which doesn't leave a lot of room for exploration. In some ways it's less of a hassle just to classify Baker alongside Frank Sinatra. A very jazzy Frank Sinatra.
"But Not For Me" by Chet Baker
Chicago
Years Of Operation 1967-present
Fits Between The Beach Boys and Blood, Sweat & Tears
Personal Correspondence When I was growing up, Chicago was a band with two faces. There was the Chicago that turned up on classic rock radio with brassy feel-good numbers like "Saturday In The Park," and the insufferably saccharine '80s version of Chicago that spread Peter Cetera's palate-blocked vocals across AC radio like a fungus. One day around 2003, I had cause to research Chicago on All Music Guide, and once I read about their early predilection for double albums and side-long suites, I decided to buy the Rhino reissues of six of the first eight Chicago albums, all at once, and immerse myself for a month or two in elaborate horn charts and awkwardly dippy lyrics What I found was that early Chicago can be leaden at times, pretentious at others, and always less complicated in their sentiment than they are in their arrangements, but there's an exuberance about them that's awfully hard to hate. Pretty much everything the band did after 1974 is a waste of time and talent, but Chicago was definitely respectable once, and deserves a little rehabilitation among rock fans. Enduring presence? I'm not going to pretend like those early Chicago albums are flat-out masterpieces, but those willing to shelve their long-held aversion might find them pretty enjoyable for their strange tangents and catchy pop. I haven't had much cause to revisit those records since I distilled them down to a tight 80-minute iPod playlist five years ago, but they're all still waiting for another round of rediscovery—just as they always were.
"Goodbye" by Chicago
Chocolate Genius
Years Of Operation 1998-present
Fits Between American Music Club and Isaac Hayes
Personal Correspondence In the spirit of the Avenue Q song "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist," I'll confess that my own particular pathology is that I get overexcited when a black musician—or filmmaker, or cartoonist, or television writer, or comedian, or guy I meet at a party—likes the same kind of entertainment that I do. When I find out that Kanye West is into Daft Punk, or that Spike Lee idolizes Martin Scorsese, it warms the part of my heart that wants us all to be brothers—but that has never bothered to make any special effort to bridge the cultural gap myself. All of that said, mopey singer-songwriter Marc Anthony Thompson would be interesting to me even without the novelty of his racial identity—which he plays up by calling himself "Chocolate Genius." Thompson's solo debut Black Music is an often-harrowing tour of his sorrowful moods, bloodily grafting Isaac Hayes' lover-man soul onto stark Mark Eitzel confessionals. The second Chocolate Genius record, Godmusic, is looser and funkier, with instrumentation as mellow as midnight and arrangements so relaxed that they fog out. What saves Chocolate Genius from unlistenable pretension is an entertainer's instinct for wit and redemption, as well as his moments of real beauty. My favorite Chocolate Genius song is Black Music's "My Mom," a dour ballad about Alzheimer's and scary childhood memories, peppered with lines like, "See that wood-paneled room / That's where I learned to drink / See that hole in the wall / That was Seagram's I think." Thompson may play up his skin color to add a layer of confrontation and drama to his music, but that's only because his songs are strong enough to withstand the bait-and-switch.
Enduring presence? Thompson toured with Bruce Springsteen on the We Shall Overcome tour, but there's no sign of a new Chocolate Genius album on the horizon. He's generally taken his time with those records, so something will surely come; in the meantime, I'm really happy I got to spend time with him again this week.
"My Mom" by Chocolate Genius
Chuck Berry
Years Of Operation 1955-present
Fits Between Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters Personal Correspondence I've been listening to Chuck Berry off-and-on since I was a teenager, but it's taken me until my 30s to actually enjoy him. "These songs all sound the same," I thought when I was a kid; and yeah, to some extent they do. But as I've heard more and more of the music from Berry's era, and more and more of the music he later inspired, it becomes clearer that structural and melodic innovation isn't what gives Berry his reputation. It's all about the guitar solos, and the performances. A good live collection from Berry in his prime shows his versatility and fire. Just listen to the version of "Rock 'N' Roll Music" from 1996's The Best Of Chuck Berry. The fuzziness of the guitar, and the way Berry changes up the rhythm to make it more subtly Caribbean, shows how the simplicity of the song allows him to keep tinkering with it, and to light it up again every time he plays it.
Enduring presence? Berry's the godfather, yes? If there's any knock against him, it's that the flurry of amazing singles he cut in the '50s didn't propel him to greater things in the '60s and beyond. He wasn't one of those venerable old dues who cut a comeback album in the '80s with the help a young disciple, and outside of a flirtation with sprawling songs and concept albums at the end of the '60s, he didn't attempt much exploration into the new. Still, if you're learning about popular music, and you're tracing rock's lineage, a lot of those lines converge on Chuck Berry. So you'd better learn to love him.
"Rock 'N' Roll Music (live)" by Chuck Berry
The Clash
Years Of Operation 1976-86
Fits Between Brinsley Schwarz and The Who
Personal Correspondence My first exposure to The Clash was via London Calling's "Train In Vain," which I heard on American Top 40 when I was 9 years old. For all The Clash's reputation as the quintessential punkers, to my preteen ears they were just another British pop band, on a par with The Human League, Adam Ant or Culture Club, because all I heard on the radio then was "Train In Vain," "Rock The Casbah," and "Should I Stay Or Should I Go?" (Though The Clash did cause a moment of anxiety in my family when my brother received London Calling from a relative for Christmas, and my mom noticed an "explicit lyrics" sticker on the cover. I was sent out of the room while she read the lyrics sheet aloud, so I never did find out how she reacted when she got to "Death Or Glory" and the line "he who fucks nuns will later join the church," but my brother did get to keep the record, so I'm guessing she quit reading early, once she realized the album wasn't pure filth.) The first Clash album I owned was the much-maligned Combat Rock, which I still dearly love, because it doesn't just genre-hop it genre-melds, and is in some ways the purest example of how Joe Strummer and Mick Jones both wanted to create a new kind of rock music, devoid of easy labels. Once I shifted from fan to student, I went back and scooped up The Clash and London Calling, and pored over them like holy writ; then in college I tackled Give 'Em Enough Rope and Sandanista! and Black Market Clash. I know it's bad form for a critic to do this, but I tend to hold The Clash apart from other bands, putting them on their own shelf, way above the others. I'm still stunned by the stylistic and lyrical progression over the five albums they released between 1977 and 1982. It's an achievement so profound and significant that it almost defies analysis.
Enduring presence? I don't listen to The Clash non-stop—heck, I don't listen to any act non-stop, given the sheer volume of what I have to choose from—but I revisit the complete Clash discography at least once a year, like I'd re-read a favorite book. There's so much going on in Sandanista! and London Calling especially that reward repeated listening. The more music I hear, the better those two albums sound.
"Gates Of The West" by The Clash
The Clean
Years Of Operation 1978-2001
Fits Between Galaxie 500 and The Shins
Personal Correspondence I don't necessarily want to revive the debate over Jason Heller's punk vs. indie-rock blog post last week, except to say that I thought it was keenly argued and fundamentally misguided. Jason was overstating his case on purpose, but nevertheless, he makes some value judgments that anyone who's been reading Popless these past nine weeks will understand I just can't back. When Jason laments that "as we get older, our tolerance for crazier, noisier, dumber, meaner music drops as precipitously as our hormone levels," and that "there's a recklessness, an oddness, a desperation—in short, a punkness—missing from Band Of goddamn Horses or whatever" and that "the Rogue Waves and M. Wards of the world…helped make weird, quirky, semi-ironic rock safe enough for frat parties and Hummer ads," then he's essentially asserting that abrasiveness and outsiderdom are inherently good, and polish and assimilation are inherently bad. Or, reduced even further: Youth good, maturity bad. And I just can't sign on to that, in part because I'm a middle-aged lame-o myself, and in part because I've never consumed music that way. Even when I was listening to The Dead Milkmen as a teenager, I was also spinning Steely Dan. (And actually, there's not too much difference between those bands, if you think about it.) I tend to use music to jump to different stages of my life, Lost-style—and even to stages I never actually experienced. When I was listening to The Band in high school, I imagined myself as a middle-aged hippie, reconnecting to my past. When I listen to Journey now, I imagine myself as the high school jock I never was. When I listen to Band Of goddamn Horses, I can be the kind of guy who listens to Band Of goddamn Horses, and judge the music from within the framework of where that band is coming from and what they're aiming for. What does all this have to do with The Clean? Even though I'm sure Jason would count the brief flurry of singles and EPs that these NZ proto-indie-rockers put out from 1980 to '82 as more on the "reckless," "odd" punk side his false dichotomy, to me I hear The Clean as the indie-rock ideal: musicians who love to play with sound, making the most of their low budget. Those early Clean songs are jangly and spacious and raw—flowering like boyhood. Then the band knocked off for ten years and came back in the '90s with songs that were more controlled and nuanced. Both versions of The Clean are strong in their own way—and equally humane—because they catch who the band is at a given point in time. Or to address Jason directly: People like to listen to music that suits their lifestyles, and sometimes that lifestyle includes raising children, which leads to reflecting on mortality, which leads to searching for meaning, which leads to wanting to consume art that yearns and aspires in a different way than just restless aggression. But you're a smart dude, so I know you know all that already.
Enduring presence? I don't mean the above to distract from the awesomness of The Clean, a seminal band in indie-rock and in the New Zealand scene. So do this: Listen to "Thumbs Off," one of their best early singles, and if you like it, then go buy the double-disc, career-spanning Anthology. Make it a permanent part of your life as it's become a permanent part of mine. You'll be a happier person for it.
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