THE CRITIC RECANTS
I WANTED to call this month's message "Portrait of the Reviewer as a Young Sniveller," but that wouldn't have fit the column-heading space. What I'm about to get around to, regardless of what we title it, is-are you ready?-- that criticism is subjective! Yes, I realize that's not a particularly startling in sight, but you'd really be amazed how many people haven't caught on to it yet. If you don't believe me, I refer you to our Letters section any month; some of our reader-correspondents have been known to react to a heretical put-down of their favorite artists with the out-raged indignation of Spanish Inquisitors. Of course, this is a two-way street. I myself have only just been able to deal with the idea that I may not be the world's ultimate arbiter of taste.
So, with characteristic humility, I decided to look back on the various things I've said in these pages over the last two and a half odd years to see how much (or how little) of it reflected my current opinions. In other words, how badly have I goofed, when did I, and about whom? Interestingly enough, I found that in general I erred in the direction of over-enthusiasm; the stuff I've strongly disliked I still do, by and large. But there were a distressing number of records that I raved over that I've discovered I don't play much any more and don't really care for. This may have something to do with the simple matter of meeting deadlines; sometimes you just don't get enough time to mull over a record properly. Something comes in which has to be reviewed right away, so you listen once or twice and type out your immediate gut reaction to it.
In pop music, at least, this may be a good thing. Pop is supposed to be immediate; great records shouldn't take you two or three months to digest-or so the prevailing critical cant runs. The only problem is that sometimes records that are indisputably great can throw you for a loop if they don't happen to sound like what you were expecting. A "Wild Hon ey" or an "Exile on Main Street," for example, may make almost no sense to you initially-and you're already in print with your negative reactions by the time you've decided you love them after all. But the reverse is more often the case: I've been knocked out by lots of superficially flashy or "pretty" records, reviewed them enthusiastically, and then realized that I can't live with them. Like I said, criticism is subjective.
Alright, alright, you're saying; enough of this beating around the bush, Simels. It's time to own up. What records are you talking about? Well, for starters, my most recent over-reaction was to John Lennon's "Rock and Roll" album, which you may recall I flattered with a Best of the Month treatment.
Subsequent listening have-persuaded me that, with the exception of Stand By Me (which is better than the original, the only justification for a cover version) and perhaps one or two other tracks, the record is gimmicky, overproduced, and fatally self-conscious.
Lennon must know more about rock than that, and for the life of me I can't imagine what it was about the thing that got me so excited. Maybe it was just a lean week.
The review I'm most embarrassed about, however, was the one bearing my enthusiastic endorsement of Lou Reed's " Berlin." At the time, I said some pretty strong things about how the songs all stood up even if divorced from their place in the overall scenario of the album, and how Lou's pared-down lyric style was a perfect complement to the stark, depressing story he was telling. Those words almost literally make me cringe now (and you thought being a rock critic was all beer and skittles, hm?), for I don't think any of the songs work on their own, let alone as part of the whole. Further, that "stark, depressing story" and "pared-down lyric style" now strike me as soap-opera bathos and third-rate hack writing (I don't even want to mention the singing). As a matter of fact, the only reason I haven't given my copy away is that there's occasionally some superb playing by the celebrated sidemen who did the backing tracks.
Why did I go bananas over it, then? Simple. Lou's first solo album was great, and I wanted to like " Berlin" because I had faith in him.
I've since learned, painfully, the folly of that kind of thinking. Developing heroes is a dangerous business in any business.
There have also been lots of albums that have caused me, because of one or two marvelous numbers, to overlook a high crapola index. I will therefore now concede that neither of the two Kiki Dee LP's I recommended to you are really all that good (though both do have their moments); that the first Sweet al bum is not the work of a great rock band, de spite the presence of a couple of exciting singles; that Brinsley Schwarz's "Nervous on the Road" was actually kind of boring (their other records, which I did not get around to reviewing, are not); that Colin Blunstone's second solo record is not at all, as I claimed, haunting (unless it's possible that it's hauntingly forgettable); and that the second Electric Light Orchestra effort is not the nifty Spike Jones cum Charles Ives rock/classical mélange I thought it was, but instead a one-joke album by a group that has since beaten a no-longer-amusing gimmick into the ground.
And finally, I have come to grips with the fact that neither album by the late New York Dolls is musically exciting or even amusing, and that Mick Taylor was right when he said they were the worst high school band he had ever heard.
So mea culpa, everybody; I'm just as fallible and prone to making ridiculous statements as the next guy. Of course, unlike Voltaire, I will not defend to the death my right to do so, but will instead, if I get the chance, deny un der oath that I ever made them. Next time you disagree violently with me, simply bear all the above in mind, and remember Mark Twain's dictum that in matters of opinion, one's adversary is always a fool. Now if I could only send a laminated copy of that to New York magazine's John Simon, then perhaps -- no, let's not stray out of our proper venue. I got enough problems right here.
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also see: THE OPERA FILE ; LETTERS to the EDITOR