No "Stairway"?! Denied!
"Here's 'Stairway to Heaven', which Americans have used to jam classic rock radio down listeners' throats for over 40 years. I know this wasn't the intent of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (derisive comments about 'Stairway' from Plant are well-known and difficult to ignore), but the legacy of 'Stairway' in America, at least, cannot be altered."
be nice
I don’t like critiquing music. Yes, I write about music.
Aside from atrocious musicianship and outright plagiarism, we all know that appreciation of music is subjective. It therefore seems pointless to savage a work of art based on personal opinion. It’s akin to screaming at all the bad drivers on the road when you yourself don’t know how to drive.
However! Some time ago, I was enlisted by an ultra-local paper to review new albums. My instructions: “be nice”.
That’s it.
At first, I thought it was a bullshit mandate. I wanted musicians to better their music — and better music in general — even if it meant I crushed their spirits enough to keep them from it forever. The “be nice” mandate was bullshit not because I couldn’t be cruel, but because I was being forced to obfuscate the cold, hard facts about the terrible artists’ “potential” and “talent”. And, I thought, I’d be goddamned if I would ever ingratiate myself to spare some feelings! Right?
Well, I am no Lester Bangs, and it’s not just because I was forbidden to be.
For starters, I was reviewing albums by musicians who were either just starting out or laboring in obscurity for good reasons. With a handful of exceptions, each CD I received ranged from inoffensive to teeth-grindingly terrible. It was like a musical kaleidoscope of recycled riffs from more popular artists, mewling vocals, and treacly, broken-down melodies.
Just my opinion, of course.
So, the order to “be nice” got under my skin. Uncovering the merits of this “awful” music had me questioning my judgement in no time. I started thinking about how many genres or musicians I was ignorant of. I doubted all the ideas I had about the difficulty of guitar techniques. I re-affirmed my kindergarten-level knowledge of music theory.
And then I started to sympathize with these musicians, toiling in obscurity, being un-appreciated and second-guessed.
Worst of all, I wondered: Were these musicians simply being humored by their peers and producers? That thought horrified me.
Jeeze… why did that get to me so much?
I realized that I, too, fear that important people in my life felt like they had to “be nice” to me. Because of that, I fear that I’ve too often been told that I’m better than I actually am. I came to see that lambasting these struggling musicians would have felt good not because I believed they deserved it, but because it would be like making up for all the discouragement that I should have gotten. Being “nice” was the acknowledgement that I, too, could have easily been lied to when I was told that I was talented or smart or pretty… or a good writer. And who wants to think about that?
Still, I generally subscribe to the “art for art’s sake” idea. But that doesn’t mean I like it.
Photo of Lester Bangs from flickr user chez bo.
The best thing my wonderful English teacher, Mary Jo Roberts, ever did for me was gave me an F on my first essay for her. Huge “F” practically carved into the paper with a red ballpoint pen. “You must do better” written and underlined below it. Changed my life.
I do understand the part about “being nice” in the reviews. I just hope the bands do, too…
Related: you are a tremendously talented writer, and you know that I am not being nice. Because I’m not.
I, too, believe there need to be more “Fs” in the world. That’s one of my biggest fears — that somebody needs to give me an “F” and they’re not.
I feel like a fraud, often. But when I read something like this from you, it makes me feel that I’m doing *something* right. 🙂