The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing

Various Artists: Falling Into Place: A MUSIC WRITER LOOKS BACK

JustoneGreekmadeupallthatwecallMusic!Suchabrainstormcouldonly havebeengeneratedinatimewhenyoucouldhearyourself.Thinkofit!Someone invented Music. This musical-history anecdote would be lost entirely on a rock audience attending Yanni’s recent gig at the Acropolis. Doubtless, it’s safe here. It would take a millennium for attorneys and accountants to learn how to cook the books. About the time these camp followers perfected their racket through the legal Ebonics in recording contracts, I’d gotten my ears wrapped around canned music. Actually, my first memory of canned music was in 1948: SpikeJones’sphenomenal“WilliamTellOverture.”Hissonoritieshadaprofound effect on my future. Shortly thereafter, they started pumping the power of song into New York elevators to beef up the urban audio environment. I was there. I got my Muzak memories in Otis Elevators. It was in one such elevator that my own Uncle Sam introducedmetohisboss.UncleSamplacedadvertisingforthemusicbehemoth RCA. His boss was David Sarnoff, “The General.” (Sarnoff liked folks to call him “The General.”) Before “The General” came up with the idea of broadcasting music on commercial radio, most Americans’ musical entertainment was some hard-backbonedhymnal,inhandbutonceaweek,oranoccasionalholidayparade. We rode up with that man. Below,onthegroundoutsideatRockefellerCenter,amonumenttoagilded Prometheus reminded us who had stolen the flame from the hearth of Zeus and brought fire to mortal mankind. Inside the spacious elevator, all was mellow. Hardwood and mahogany. Our ascent was faintly scored with a narcotic string arrangement.JustasIrecognizeditasaversionof“TheSongFromMoulinRouge,” it dawned on me: They’re telling us what to think and feel. I was ten years old, a naturally skeptical age. But I’d read Orwell. I knew one thing for sure: Things were getting louder. Before we hit his floor, “The General” asked Uncle Sam what kind of music appealedtohim,andbywhatmeansdidhehearit.UncleSamadmittedtoclassical music, Fats Waller, some Duchin and Shearing, but added that he didn’t have a record player. My Uncle Sam must have been some good ad-man for “The General,” for it wasn’tlongafterthat“TheGeneral”senthimhundredsandhundredsofrecords, the entire Red Seal catalog in fact, to his home in Long Island. It spoke volumes that “The General” also included a competitor’s state-of-the-art record player, a Magnavox. That was back in 1953, the year Elvis took his first acetate home (“My Happiness”) to his mother, as a belated birthday present. He would shake things up. Like the Psalmist David before him, he’d take on giants. Elvismadeabliponournationalradar.Manyoftheartistsfeaturedheredid not. To read on is to Discover America. xvi THE OXFORD AMERICAN 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page xvi Rage Against the Machine by Marc Smirnoff For those of us who love music—a figure estimated at 90% of the world’s population—the field of music journalism can seem more like a swamp than a field; one innocent misstep and you’re up to your neck in smelly muck. Aprofounddisconnectisoftenatplaybetweenmusicjournalism—withitsfocus on frivolous side issues like money, celebrity, controversy, and image—and the reasons people love music. Of the possibility of excellence in music writing, however, there is no limit. Lester Bangs single-handedly decimated any possible theory of limits. (As did others.) (With his other hand, Bangs held the door open to the ecstasies that attend pop-music absorption.) Solet’snotblamethemediumofwritingitselfforthedisconnect.Likemusic, writing is a power, and the centuries have proven that first-rate criticism—of books,paintings,food,drama,ideas,people,etc.—deepensourengagement.Such nonfiction(orjournalismorcriticism—theyblur)proclaimsanalmostholyfondness for its subject, even when (or especially when) howling in agony or anger from the rooftop. The best of this writing is eventually accepted as art. You may now want to skip ahead to the pieces that bejewel this collection becauseIamabouttorant.Myrantingwillcomeacrossaspetty,bitter,andsmallminded . But I won’t be able to stop (that’s part of being small-minded). For the generally deplorable state of contemporary music writing, I blame Rolling Stone. xvii 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page xvii WhenRollingStonedebutedin1967,thehippiecounterculturewasinfullbloom. Sure, hippies were prone to thick-skulled excess, but somebody had to stand up to therigidandpotentiallysoul-tamperingforcesthatpersistedbackthenintheU.S.A. (knee-jerkconformity,knee-jerkmilitarism,knee-jerkracism....). Flower Power eventually triumphed in the Cultural War; first, though, the longhairstookabeating.Here’show,inthe1960s,WilliamF.Buckley,Jr.,sawthe Beatles: They “are not merely awful [but] I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic.” * So, yes, another perspective was needed—the old thinking did not...