I don't mind people holding my name up as an Ideal of Something or Other, but this fellow's way off-the-mark.
(Taken from Stereokill, article written around a recent review carried in the NME.)
...In 130 words, Kharas makes one criticism of Isaac’s music, and then devotes the rest of his word-count to a pathetically contrived attack on his perceived image of Isaac (and fans). He rounds the review off with a trio of sentences taken straight from the kind of fiction you write for a school English class:
… from the dark a dancing, pissy-pantsed gaggle in whose fire lay – yes! – not just my balls but scores of charred gonads, roasting in the flames like woolly nuts. I turned and ran, castrato screams tearing through the night. I had become Sam Isaac.
Is this what music criticism has become? The trade that produces copy like this – smug, low-rent rants with little or no substance; articles that leave the reader with a stronger sense of the reviewer’s personality than of the character or quality of the subject’s music – cannot be the great art of Everett True and Steven Wells, can it? This kind of lazy, elitist journalism bears no resemblance to the profession that John Peel devoted his life to.
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I mean, whoa, hold on there boy, let's not get too carried away.
"Smug, low-rent rants with little or no substance; articles that leave the reader with a stronger sense of the reviewer’s personality than of the character or quality of the subject’s music" were almost exclusively the province of myself and Swells during the 80s (and beyond).
Credit where credit's due.
Next time, I'll try and invoke your name more accurately!
ReplyDeleteI was a drawing a comparison between established and respected critical styles and (what I saw as) lazy journalism on the part of that NME writer. I think there's an art to ranting that Kev Kharas hasn't mastered, which leaves him just being pointlessly offensive.
- Marcus
Stereokill.net
haven't seen the original article, but kev's a really promising writer - did some strong stuff for Plan B that was full of character + context.
ReplyDeleteHad a feeling that he might be! After all, it's a grand tradition, “Smug, low-rent rants with little or no substance; articles that leave the reader with a stronger sense of the reviewer’s personality than of the character or quality of the subject’s music”
ReplyDelete