Friday, June 5, 2020

Questions and Answers

I asked Michael Tatum to take a look at my first batch of Questions and Answers. He helped flag some necessary edits before I posted them early this week. He also suggested that instead of just linking to them (as I did again above), I should have included them directly in the blog. I don't plan on doing that as a matter of course, but this time I reckon they could use a little more exposure. For one thing I got zero new questions (here's the form) since they went up.

I imagine there are hundreds (if not thousands) of similar offers scattered around the web. I've felt a need for some kind of feedback for a long time, but found that comment systems were more work to maintain than they're worth. Two features are direct antecedents to mine: Greil Marcus's Ask Greil), and Robert Christgau's Xgau Sez. Joe Levy suggested the latter as a way of generating some public interest in Christgau's then-new Duke University Press essay collections, Is It Still Good to Ya? Fifty Years of Rock Criticism 1967-2017 and Book Reports: A Music Critic on His First Love, Which Was Reading.

Joe suggested "Ask Greil" as a model, but when I looked at the implementation, I had some second thoughts. I adapted the news roll code to display the Q&A in 15-unit chunks, most recent first, stringing earlier pages together. ("Ask Greil" is in flat files, one per year.) I added tags to the data file, thinking that someday I could support more search options. (I'd like to eventually put them into the database, but didn't want to have to update it more often than I do.) I also added a captcha to cut down on spam questions. I recently adapted the Christgau code for my own site, adding a few more tags (but still not making good use of them).

My main change was to add a "keywords" field. I expected (or hoped) to get a broader range of questions than the music queries that predominate for Christgau and Marcus, and thought it would be a good idea to be able to easily sort my answers into topics. Still, four of the first five questions were on music, including one of those potentially tedious requests to elaborate on grades. A sixth question, which I didn't answer here, was really more of a tip (Whitney Rose) -- more properly answered in last week's Music Week. While my email is elsewhere on the site (and still works best if you want a direct answer), feel free to use the form for tips, comments, or occasional kind words.

I rather hope to see wide-ranging questions, one that provoke me to think, maybe even do a little research, although I'd be happy enough with ones where I can just rattle off experiences and opinions. I like to keep an open mind about where this is going. And I'd like some feedback to prod me along. Thanks, in advance.

[Q] Combining two of your interests, music and politics (maybe next time for food), is a Geoffrey Himes column about how songs about blue collar life are ignored. or misinterpreted, by the audience they depict. "Born In The USA", possibly the most egregious example, may not need to be listed but I do wonder how you interpret this music/audience disconnect. It's weird, don't you think? -- Gregory Morton, Caldwell, ID [2020-05-25]

[A] I'm not sure I think anything about this, other than that stereotypes are worse than worthless, and generalizations leave out all meaningful detail by definition. Songwriters start with what they know and feel, which includes class and race and sex and a lot more, and it rarely reduces to just one thing. Their cohort may recognize themselves in such art, or not, just as other people may relate to it, or not. Add politics to the mix if you dare. Unfortunately, many people tend to straitjacket themselves to only like or dislike things they perceive as politically correct, and lose touch with the muddle we call life. I've known more people like this on the left than on the right, but I know more people on the left, and people like this on the right stay away from me, so it'd be wrong to generalize. What I can say is that when John Prine died, outpourings of grief came from all across the political spectrum -- even though you and I know he was one of us. One of my pro-gun, anti-abortion, Trump-loving relatives forwarded my link to my review of Fair & Square, even though I could hardly have been more explicit about both my and Prine's politics. Perhaps she didn't understood me? Or perhaps she misunderstands her own politics? Regardless, I love her, and politics has nothing to do with that.

[Q] Do you listen to music differently when you are trying to "grade" an album, trying to figure out whether it's any good or not? If so, do you find that type of listening enjoyable? How much of your listening is done trying to suss out the merits of a work, as opposed to just enjoying it?

Those came out as very specific questions, but my question is broader than that, but I'm not sure how to ask it. Which is to say, if you answer this, feel free to take it broadly. -- Matt Crawford, Pacifica, CA [2020-05-19]

[A] I don't do anything special for grading, or listen any differently when I know I'm going to grade a record. Grades are always provisional, just a note to myself, a crude of measure of how much I enjoyed a record, and not much else. I don't have any fixed aesthetic standards. Bad execution and/or lack of inspiration may count against it, but that's mostly because such things detract from enjoying a record.

Back when I was writing assigned reviews, I took more extensive notes, looking for details I could use in a review, and I kept playing a record until I finished writing. That's a lot of work, and I rarely put that much into a record any more. If I had to write at greater depth, I wouldn't be able to get to nearly as many records, and my sense of comparative value would suffer. The downside is that I regard most of words I do wind up publishing as crap: not exactly useless, but lacking in insight and craft. Probably why I tend to denigrate my skills as a reviewer.

I started grading just as a memory aid. I was very familiar with Robert Christgau's grading scale, so that gave me a framework with a few thousand data points. But whereas he insists that "grading is hard work," and has minimal standards of how many times he has to play a record before grading it, for me it's just data -- necessarily approximate at first, better considered over time, not that I have any way of making that distinction. (I toyed with the idea of using two numbers for grades: one for level and a second fraction or degree of certainty, but decided that would be way too much trouble.)

[Q] Found you by looking up who made the Robert Christgau website. I love it! It really captures the internet in the '90s. Was curious, did you make all of the websites you have linked here, or are these just things are recommended? i.e. did you make the original website for FiveThirtyEight and Glenn Greenwald?

Thanks! Also wanted to add that I love this website: http://carolcooper.org/ -- Naif Alrayes, San Francisco [2020-05-19]

[A] I built Robert Christgau's website in 2001, and Carol Cooper's a bit later. I had the idea of creating a portal toolkit for music writers based on a more generalized revision of the Christgau website code. Several writers expressed interest, but Cooper signed up first, so I rushed a site together for her, and when I didn't develop my proposal further, her prototype stuck. I've done several other websites, including one for Carola Dibbell, but not the ones you mentioned, or anything else in the "Links" list on most of my pages. ("Local Links" directs you to various spots in my own website; "My Other Websites" points you to other websites I maintain, although the current version of Wichita Peace was designed by someone else -- I built an earlier one using Drupal.) Hullworks was intended for other people's data, but mostly contains my Jazz Critics Poll pages.

I suppose the "Links" list is also attributable to me being stuck with a 1990s web aesthetic. I used to have a whole "Links" section, but found it impossible to maintain, and got increasingly annoyed when website maintainers wrote me begging to get included. On the other hand, I've never gotten into the habit of using my browser's bookmarks, or for that matter a RSS reader, so the links still help me get around.

I have on occasion gotten complaints about the "1990s look" of my websites (but never from Christgau or Cooper -- their interest has always been in their words, so the lack of graphics has never bothered them). Some of those principles I still regard as valid, and I still don't see much value in JavaScript, or in things like cookies. But it has become clear to me that some degree of design changes are necessary. About a year ago, I announced that I was going to do a redesign, and I set up a mailing list for people who would like to consult. Lots of things have slowed me down, so I have little progress to show at present, but if you'd like to be included in the list, and especially if you think you could help, please drop me a line.

[Q] You obviously listen to a lot of music and read a lot books on politics, but I wondered if you also read a lot of music books. For instance, Rolling Stone just published a list with The 50 greatest rock memoirs of all time: are there many on it you have read? As for myself I am specially fond of books with references to other records, like the Questlove book. Speaking of Questlove: he published a list last year with his favorite albums. I was pleased to see Coltrane Plays the Blues on it, a personal favorite. But I also noticed some jazz albums you haven't graded as far as I know (by Ahmad Jamal and Max Roach), something I didn't think was possible for some one with such an jazz affliction. -- Ziggy, Amsterdam, Netherlands [2020-05-13]

[A] I'm not a very fast reader, but I've read steadily since I quit high school in 1966, and keep plugging away at it. After losing my tech job in 2001, I thought I'd focus on writing, and figured the subject I knew the most about, and had the most to contribute to, would be political philosophy -- a pursuit my wife, who's always been a political obsessive, encouraged. Ever since then I've focused almost exclusively on political topics, as you can see from my list here. As fate would have it, I've written a lot more about music during this period -- even made a little bit of money off it -- but I really haven't read many books on music. In particular, I haven't read a single one of Rob Sheffield's The 50 Greatest Rock Memoirs of All Time. The only one I've even been tempted by was Patti Smith's Just Kids. The Questlove book does look promising, and Luke Haines' Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Role in Its Downfall might be fun. The one music memoir that I did read recently was Ani DiFranco's No Walls and the Recurring Dream, which surely belongs on Sheffield's list. I've written a good deal about DiFranco before, and I had a personal interest, in that I have family in Buffalo who knew her growing up. Indeed, for me the later music/career parts were less interesting than her childhood and emancipation.

The Questlove list appears here. Should be easy to see how I've missed some jazz albums. I don't have any real idea how many jazz albums have been released. My first swag was 100,000, which would be 1,448 per year since 1950. Then I thought I'd try Discogs, which comes up with the number 1,159,285, but that includes reissues and singles. Hard to extrapolate from that, but it certainly doesn't suggest that my swag is too high. I currently have 17,966 jazz records (including pop vocals) rated, so that's what? 12-18%? I've made several attempts to come up with a sample size over the years. Even with promos and streaming in recent years, I doubt if I've ever heard more than 25% of all the new jazz being released. Looking at my 2020 music tracking file, I've heard about 40% of all the jazz I've taken the trouble to list. I've omitted at least as many jazz albums as I've listed, reducing my share to 20% or less.

So far, I've heard 11 Ahmad Jamal records (2 A-), out of 24 in my database (but he's released more like 80). I've heard 9 Max Roach records (1 A-), out of 31 in my database (that's just records which list Roach as leader; I have 10 more rated with Roach as co-leader, including 5 at A/A-; with co-leader records he's released close to 100 records, plus side credits on another 100+, some as monumental as The Amazing Bud Powell and Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Colossus). I'm not a big fan of piano trio or drum ensembles, but those are major artists, and I'll check out more of their work when I can.[1] But there are lots of jazz musicians I've barely sampled (if at all). That's just inevitable.

[1] I listened to a bunch of Roach records in the following week, so the numbers above have roughly doubled.

[Q] Your reception to Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville and Whipsmart mirrored that of the critical establishment at the time, but something changed for you circa Juvenilia, and you outrightly panned Whitechocolatespaceegg despite Christgau's positive reception to both albums (A- and A respectively). What changed for you, especially as it relates to Whitechocolatespaceegg which Christgau treated as a comeback of sorts? -- David [2020-05-06]

[A] Those albums date from 1995 and 1998. I wasn't writing about music then -- at least not in any systematic way -- and I wrote nothing about Liz Phair until Funstyle in 2010 (which I liked much more than Christgau did: A- vs. *). I vaguely remember Juvenilia as being short and rough, a step back, so I'm not surprised I found it wanting. Those tracks are probably all in the 3-CD box The Girly Sound Tapes (2018), which I graded more generously (***), but 25 years after her masterpiece, it probably sets somewhat differently in my mind. I don't remember the other album, or for that matter her 2003 Liz Phair (a B+ which Christgau graded A), at all. I did start to stream White*egg after this question, and shut it down three tracks in. Maybe it's a tad better than B-, but not so much I felt I needed to figure it out.

You previously asked me this same question about two other records: Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Robert Cray's Strong Persuader. Those I remembered, not only the records but the exact point when I decided I couldn't stand them any more. I suppose the reason I can remember them so vividly is that I quickly grasped their appeal, before something else turned me off. I won't go into what -- one thing I never want to do is to spoil a record that you like just because I don't, and you should never let me. But part of the story thers is that I've always had an anti-hype reflex. (I don't recall much hype behind the Cray or Phair albums, but they sold well and the former won a Grammy, so must have had hype beyond Christgau.) It's not that I don't like Dylan, but I've often been out of sync with whatever the critical consensus is on him. The best known cases where my initial reaction was heavily influenced by anti-hype are Bruce Springsteen and Charlie Parker. I've since made my peace with both, although at a lower level than they are generally accorded.

But back to the Phair album(s). Christgau wrote not just capsules but feature reviews of White*egg and Liz Phair. I don't know whether he did that because he initially thought them important, or thought them newsworthy and wound up deciding that he really liked them, but either way he spent a lot of time with the records, whereas I played them once or twice and decided I had wasted my money. Maybe I played them more -- I often do that with records I initially panned that Christgau came to like (most don't move much, but one that really did was Randy Newman's Harps & Angels).

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