Great food for thought, Shane.
Being full of supper and intemperate draughts (Othello Act 1, Scene 1) I shall have to think about this and comment tomorrow.
It's a very interesting point though.
Anon...

Was that they were completely tin-eared. Fabulous writers, yes, with a huge knowledge of the music scene but with absolutely not a jot of ability as regards the appreciation of music. Think of Paul Morley - a man of great import but with an ear so poor he could not differentiate between a major and a minor chord. Yet they dared to pass judgement on the work of others.

Apathy For The Devil. He frequently delved into musical theory, under the pitiful delusion he's a musician.
Utterly clueless. Nonetheless published. And, sadly, read.

God that book was disappointing!

..was that musicians with beards couldn't be any good.

!

When an interviewer, discovering that Salvador Dali's secretary collected all the reviews of his work, asked the great man what he thought about the comments, he replied that he never read them, on the grounds that he couldn't care less what people thought; he was only interested in the number of reviews and the fact that people were talking about him, and so the more, the merrier.

One view of critics (to which I subscribe) is that they're like eunuchs in a harem: they've seen it done; they know how to do it; but they can't do it themselves.

On the other hand, in my experience creative folk tend to be very supportive and understanding to others in the same boat.

Having dabbled in a very small way in music journalism quite recently, I would say that it is the music companies and A&R men who tailor output to appeal to media outlets and who change bands' sounds to fit in with, and manufacture, scenes.
The whole Libertines, Kaiser Chiefs second wave of Britpop was a case in point. It revived clichés going back nearly 40 years and pulled so many rubbish wannabe types in, in the hope of making some cash in an era of declining sales and circulations. No-one, myself included, said 'This is crap and we can see the joins, lads.'
The one thing I have noticed about front line rock critics, especially those on some other magazines and the quality press, is that few will ever decry something as rubbish, even when it patently is.
Whether this is because they are afraid of turning off the tap of stories/ new releases, are too close to PRs or are afraid of missing the next big thing, I don't know.
I do know that, ultimately, it doesn't matter a fig what critics say. If an act is good enough, or popular enough, they will have their moment, however fleeting that moment is.
On the other hand, some acts, who may not be major talents, do get a moment in the sun due to favourable write-ups. The Libertines, I ask you.

.. to admit putting "Pinball Wizard" into Tommy just because Nik Cohn loved pinball.
..and "The Who by Numbers" seemed to have been wholely aimed at UK rock critics.
As to Paddy's point, I don't think critics viewpoints matter much these days, they were long ago found out.
Charlie Murray is a writer I have some time for, but his unashamed lauding of the polished turd that was "Be Here Now" reeked of critical fear.

Rock music as I know it wasw only really getting warmed up by 1970. Can you give some examples because rock as you know it doesn't seem to be the same as rock as I know it. I take your point that rock journalism can influence things, back in 1970 it could surely only have been in a very small way. The readership of rock weeklies back then was surely a drop in the ocean and, although influential, could not have totally transformed the worldwide public's music consumption.

The much hyped inky press of the boring, after the Lord Mayor's Show, 1970s might have been more analytical (or up their own arses) than their 50s/60s counterparts but, crucially, there was one thing missing.....the fantastic music, graphic design, fashion and era to be analytical about.

Give me a perverse 'and the b-side has a poppy swing about it that will get you dancing' style of review in '66/'67 about Bob Dylan or Hendrix over Nick Kent and Julie Wotshername any day of the week.

The glory of the era '56 to '69 is that Little Richard, The Beatles, Dylan etc. had something to rail against and the bods at EMI and Decca pretty much just let them get on with it and concentrated on Mozart box sets.
Once Branson's mob had taken over, artistic freedom (contrary to the received wisdom) took a back seat and the industry focused almost entirely on the under 25 age group.

The Beatles, as an example, wrote songs for everyone; The Clash didn't.

..because they were too scared about what bloody Giovani Dadamo might say.

that somehow rock, like football, has become more corporate, as you say, and that it has had it's soul ripped out by the lure of the green.

Both have always been about money; the only difference is that now there's more of it going to the people that make and play it instead of being lavished on a club director's new roller or a cigar-toting mobster; some people don't like the idea that starving artists and working class heroes are finally getting their just reward instead of suffering for us.

Interesting stuff Shane, but I think it would've been refreshing for a hatchet man like Paul Morley to have been around in the sixties, laying into Herman's Hermits and Freddie and the Dreamers for example, instead of the uncritical Chumley-Warner pop picker types who seemed to be around then.

Rock journalism is an artform in itself and shouldn't be just an adjunct to music. I wouldn't want to read a dissection of G minor chords, unless it was in a specialist music mag.

And I don't think music has become more tribal since '77. Weren't trad jazzers and other jazzers having duffle-coated rumbles in the 50s? Mods and rockers in the 60s? And haven't all the tribes gone now? The punk v mod, punk v ted days seem a long time ago now.

While the NME and others loved to create 'scenes', lumping bands together with varying degrees of success, bands like The Smiths and Happy Mondays didn't need the media's help as they were so original.

Having said that I do think bands like The Libertines may have been influenced by what journalists wrote about them. And there was a point in the 80s when some NME/Melody Maker journalists thought they were more important than the people they were interviewing. I even felt sorry for Phil Collins when he was
interviewed by Morley in the early 80s in what was basically a long rant with Collins barely able to get a look in

....by a rock critic.

It's not a question of knowing about minor chords. The really difficult thing about reviewing records is having something to say about them. You can only do that if:
a) you've lived with them for a while - not in a "must listen to this record" sense of duty but in a natural, unfolding way
b) you've got something halfway interesting to say about them.

Most rock criticism isn't about music at all. It's about politics, image, career, the last album etc. Most adverse criticism is aimed at the genre itelf rather than the specific performance. "This is the sort of album...." etc.

If you listen to scores of new records a week, as many people do, you start to resent what they ask of you.

on non-musicians reviewing records.

My beef was with non-musicians, such as Mr Kent, using examples of musical theory in his reviews when he doesn't understand what he is talking about!

Of course we are all entitled to and capable of expressing an opinion on music, I wouldn't dream of being so pompous as to suggest otherwise, no matter what Mrs Fatman says. My apologies to Jack and anybody else whose nose I may have put out of joint!

As a working musician myself, however, I have a very low threshold for ill-informed gobshite. Does anyone actually enjoy being told how to do their job by people who really should stick to what they know.

Well said, Mr Hepworth, by the way.

on music critics by one L. Cohen:

The courtroom is quiet
but who will confess?
"Is it true you betrayed us?"
"The answer is yes.
Then read me the list
of the crimes that are mine,
I will ask for the mercy
you love to decline."

And all the ladies go moist,
The judge has no choice:
A singer must die
for the lie in his voice.

And I thank you, I thank you
for doing your duty,
You keepers of truth,
you guardians of beauty.
Your vision is right,
My vision is wrong,
I'm sorry for smudging
the air with my song.

...I am so afraid,
That I listen to you.
Your sunglassed protectors,
They do that to you.
It's their ways to detain,
Their ways to disgrace,
Their knee in your balls
And their fist in your face...

..to suggest that you need to be a musician to write about music. How preposterous!
Most musicians can't even talk properly never mind write articulately about what they do.
My original point was, has rock culture has been unduly influenced by what the rock press thinks of it, and I think it has.
David is right, rock writing should cover all kinds of things, not just music, and most people don't really want "The Bb diminished chord on the second chorus creates a modal suspension previously unheard in death metal," but when Johnny Rogan can write a book about The Byrds that's almost as big as a war memorial and hardly mention music at all, then things have gone a little off-balance.
My idea of perfection in rock writing? Ian Macdonald's "Revolution In The Head". It manages to cover culture, politics and personal relations but still describe the music with real eloquence.
I don't expect all rock writing to reach those heights, but a little subjectivity goes a long way.

First of all, on this question of appreciating music properly only if you can read, understand and play it. My brother plays flute and piano and used to sing in a London choir as a tenor and he wouldn't know a decent jazz or rock album if it bit him in the arse. On the other hand I've never played a musical instrument in my life and I do know a decent jazz or rock album. Why? because you only need two things to appreciate rock'n'roll. They're called ears. Whether you do or not is, of course, a matter of cultural taste and choice.

Nick Kent and Lester Bangs were two very talented writers in their chosen field and a lot of their credibility came from living the life and developing personal connections with rock stars and bands back in the day. Of course, they were egotists, arrogant, opinionated and projected their prejudices about certain acts into their critiques.
However, I must say having read their various collections, on balance, they did a fairly good job of separating the wheat from the chaff for their readers. For example, I like Jethro Tull's stuff and a lot of bloozey 70s heavy metal bands but at the same time I see where Bangs and Kent were coming from when they poured scorn on them in favour of the likes of Iggy, Lou Reed, Captain Beefheart or whomever else they tended to favourably review because they perceived them as original, challenging, mavericks, ground breaking or whatever.

But did these writers influence what I bought and listened to? Not one iota. Not in the 70s and not now. My ears are still in charge.

..but my original point was about the influence of the rock press on musicians.
Plenty has been written on the rock press and it's influence on music fans..god I knows I bought enough unlistenable tripe on the say so of more than one U.K. hack, but not much has been said on how the scene itself was affected.
If a musiciam wakes up in the morning and thinks "Mmm..I wonder what Mick Farren will think of this" then surely the first pit of hell opens up.

....in the new issue. His basic theory is that the record companies are conspiring with the bands to make too much unpopular music.

(OK, apart from film and TV.)

If the critic's primary role is to introduce a work of art (however loosely defined) to its rightful audience, then we ought to consider what else fulfils that role within that art form. In the world of pop and rock, we have radio, TV, Youtube, Spotify, last.fm and live performance amongst other things, all of which allow the public to directly engage with the music and judge with their own ears instead of relying on someone else's, however finely-tuned those may be.

This is not to downplay the role of the rock critic - proper music criticism (as opposed to the regurgitation of press releases or the grinding of axes bemoaned elsewhere in this thread) will cut through petty tribalism/PR guff to illuminate and deepen our appreciation of particular bands and/or albums in a way that MTV and Radio 1 can't or won't - but it is only one shiny implement in a particularly well-stocked toolbox for shaping public opinion.

If any art form needs to be rescued from its critics, I would argue that it is literary fiction - I haven't heard many calculating, critic-pleasing albums of late, but have read a dispiritingly large number of gutless, formulaic exercises in critical box-ticking which have had the gall to call themselves novels.

Given the lack of alternative means of influencing public opinion (e.g. decent literary programming on TV and radio and no, adaptations don't count), the power to make or break new novels is largely in the hands of literary reviewers, so it is understandable if writers try to second-guess their tastes in pursuit of success - it's only the readers who lose out, after all. Sadly, I can only see this state of affairs worsening if and when the libraries close - if it is much easier to take a chance on an unknown author if we don't have to pay to read them, what is it going to be like when the only way to access new writing is through our wallets?

..that rock music is critic-proof now. The internet, and especially blogs like this have created an environment wherein anyyone can be a critic, even if a cursory glance at Youtube comments means that this usually manifests itself as "This is gay..etc"
But from the early 70s into the 80s the environment was very much like your description of the literary scene. A handful of influential critics, more often than not hampered by their own prejudices, absolutely called the shots.

Happened with Modern Art and architecture (cf 'The Painted Word' and 'From Bauhaus To Our House' - Tom Wolfe.) Artists and architects started producing work which followed critical theories dreamt up by writers. You see it now wth people like TraceyEmin or Damien Hurst, who are partly so popular because their works been designed to be very easy to deconstruct and theorise about.

With music, it's like the NME is an 'Indie' paper and the only contemporary music press left, so bands have to fit into that papers very narrow idea of what contemporary music is to stand any chance of initial coverage. If your in your shed with half a dozen tuned pigs thighbones, an old Revox and a detuned sitar and your making the best music ever, there's no way you'll get known as there sn't a media platform extant for your work to be discussed.

The thing is, I am a music critic in a small way - for Amazon Vines 'free stuff in exchange for reviews' program - and I do try to review records objectively.

However the emails I get from irate readers are always subjective and/or emotional. e.g. here's one from today: (Artist) is not shit how can you say that when I'm deprased (sic) she cheers me up. Posh wankers like U don't unerstand how we feel but (artist) does. Why dont U listen to Lady Gaga or Kesha if you just want to feel big?" There all like that.

All this about a completely inocuous pop/dance record that made the Spice grls sound like Throbbing Gristle.

The point being, that pop musics meaning is made by the listener,not the critic or even the artist. Somewhere out there there's a 14 year old girl who thinks some drivel about going to Da club in your SUV is somehow about her adolescent angst. And whatever Kesha sings about, doesn't..

Sorry.

Enthusiasm: 87
Perception 100
Emotional 89
Social Creativity: 80
Musical curiosity: 99

Musical scores:

Group the music: got all jazz and all rock but split the hip hop and pop in half
Match the beat 16/18
Tap the beat: 7 high, 2 medium
Melody memory 11/12

Never done anything like that before. What does it all mean?

..for being a good rock critic are an unblinkered attitude to all music, a natural curiosity and a stubborn disregard of "style" (whatever that is)
Whatever you think about punk, you'd have to admit it was driven just as much by the press as it was by the bands, which is why you saw bands like The Vibrators, no better or worse than The Pistols, sneered at for some unseen (to most) lack of "cred"
These things were so arbitary that what would have been major crimes in some (Strummer's public school background, Rotten's Hawkwind past) could be conveniently ignored.

..you said exactly what I was trying (in my clumsy way) to say.

Interesting stuff. I found the 70s NME a good read even though my tastes were more 'Sounds' material. The NME of those times opened me up to a lot of things (films, books, ideas) I didn't get in the provinces otherwise. Nick Kent and CSM were good writers in a way their successors were not.

But there were a series of things that I think were symptomatic of where it went wrong; Paul Morley; 'year-zero' punk attitudes; the whole "cocktails/ Blue Rondo A La Turk/ Spandau Ballet/ Gary Crowley" thing; "Einstürzende Neubauten" and similar as the way of the future; the myth of 'authenticity' (a big one for the protected slumming it in reality; and the bloody awful 'Indie' scene. I suspect the egos of Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons were game-changers.

is like dancing about architecture (Zappa, I think). It is like trying to describe a colour or taste. You don't know why you like it, you just do. And there is nothing more subjective, temporal or indeed focused on those reading it than music criticism. I realised this when The Strokes were breaking who sounded like dozens of early 80's bands. I scratched my head in wonder, your average 20 year old loved them because the'd never heard anything like them before. The were lauded by the music press, rightly so, because the NME and the like are catering to a younger audience (same with Nick Kent, Morley back in the day). That it has been done before is of zero consequence, Oasis case in point. When you get to a stage where you can roll back 20 years to identify musical influences, you probably shouldn't be taking (or giving) any music criticism seriously.

Oh to be 20 again, when everything was shiny and exciting.

"Rock journalism is people who can't write (not true,SP) interviewing people who can't talk (often true) for people who can't read (Not true)"
It's a great soundbite, but like many aphorisms, it doesn't hold water.