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The Big Takeover > essays

Finally, Rock & Roll Has Its Very Own Anne Coulter

by
12 May 2006

There’s something perfect about the EAGLES OF DEATH METAL. Their new album, Death by Sexy doesn’t really come out and make a grand statement, but it also doesn’t… er, wait a minute, I just got an IM from MICK LEWIS:

MICK: you might want to check this out [Thanks to reader JASON MILLER for pointing out this article to me! -ed.]

Hmm, this looks interesting:

There is a kind of band and musician that I like to call “editor-rock.”

They are white, intellectual (or at least semi-intellectual), ineffectual, and generally namby-pamby, albeit with occasional forays into, you know, distorted guitars. No aggression. It’s very polite and well-mannered—way too much so, in fact—for rock music. It’s music for the head, and not the hips and gut. Judging from most ratios of sales-to-coverage-in-glossy-magazines, it’s beloved primarily by magazine editors in major cities. (But, as you may have guessed, editor-rock is not beloved by me.)

Yes! Thank you JON FINE for telling me what rock’n’roll is all about. Here I am thinking that R.E.M. and BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN were making brilliant contributions to the genre, but now I know it’s just “Editor Rock.” After all, I am a music writer so it’s no wonder I like these bands.

Mr. Fine gives us some examples of non-editor rock: SLAYER, BLACK FLAG, KING CRIMSON, BOREDOMS, and MAGMA. The funny thing is that these are all what I’d call “Asshole Rock” bands. “Asshole Rock” is a genre best described as rock music that I don’t really like, but is appreciated by a lot of people, most of whom make me feel insecure about my own tastes.

OK, I’m sorry. I truly have nothing against any of these bands (well, except maybe for HENRY ROLLINS-era Flag). It just bums me out to read completely inane articles like that one (then again, what kind of music coverage can you really hope to get from BusinessWeek?). However, Mr. Fine deserves ridicule if only for stating that artists like Springsteen and RADIOHEAD are “beloved primarily by magazine editors in major cities” in order to advance his completely idiotic concept. There’s really no point in trying to polarize music fans in this way.

Filed under media industry magazines

Comments

Jon Fine is an ass…he’s writing for Business Week for god’s sake!


— Tim Broun    2006-05-13 13:46    #

King Crimson and Magma are two of the most intellectual (or pseudo-intellectual) bands in the history of rock right there. Can you dance to Crimson? Hell no. Is it head music? Absolutely. Not that I don’t don’t like them, mind you. Neither one of those are requirements for me (and hey I like Radiohead). I don’t even know anything about this guy but I can already tell that’s he’s full of it.


— Matthew Berlyant    2006-05-15 16:59    #

Hmm…I don’t much like Springsteen or Radiohead either, but I’m not going to deny the love that tons of non-editor, non-industry, non-rock snob types have for them. You’d think a guy who writes for Businessweek would look a little further into the fact that the millions of records those folks have sold haven’t been to the comparitively few editors and rock writers.

There seems to be a lot of “us vs. them” in music journalism these days. (Bleedthrough from social commentary and political punditry, perhaps?) I subscribed to that kind of worldview when I was young and stupid, but now I’d much rather be inclusive than exclusive. I’d rather talk about music I love than bash music I don’t.

But I don’t get paid to do either, so what do I know?


— Michael Toland    2006-05-15 17:18    #

Michael’s on to something. I’ve seen an absurd stream of “rockist vs. non-rockist” arguments flying around recently. These kind of dovetail with the idiotic “Stephen Merritt is a racist” streams. And, yes, it does seem to be rooted in political springs. Being a “critic” does require discernment, sometimes harsh yet always fair discernment, but doing it via political or personal criteria does seem a bit reductionistic, if not outright juvenile.

And Matthew, in re Magma and Crimson. They are ABSOLUTELY “body” and “gut” music. The head’s got very little to do with it. You feel their stuff and get transported by it or you don’t. No thinking, just feeling, required. Dylan—now that’s head music.


— ari abramowitz    2006-05-24 02:47    #

Michael’s “Us vs. Them” comment is what I was getting at with the Anne Coulter comparison. Fine’s piece hit me the same way a politically polarizing article by some whackjob pundit would, right down to the whole gut vs. head thing which seems lifted right from Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness” routine.


— Adam Symons    2006-05-24 18:06    #