Customer Reviews

Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics

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1 star:		(16)

 

 

"Kill Your Idols" is a brief in an academic dispute. The sort of fight that erupts when a bunch of college professors get together. Chairs are thrown and bottles are broken because two people with PhDs don't interpret a text the same way. The hatred the matter generates is inversely proportional to its importance.

In this brouhaha, Jim DeRogatis and his fellow critics attack canonical rock albums, from Sgt. Pepper to Nevermind. The recordings considered essential, they argue, aren't good, or particularly enduring. Their conception of a canon is off base, for starters: A canon allows one to understand contemporary art by tracing its influences. Essential works may not endure, but they shape artists' ideas of what they can do. Jazz critics think little of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, but it would be foolish to ignore this derivative group, since they strongly influenced Bix Beiderdeicke.

Ditto an album like Sgt. Pepper. Jim DeRogatis certainly doesn't care for it, as he makes clear in the opening paragraphs of his review. Well, no, wait -- first he says he doesn't like it, then he presents an autobiographical sketch about his childhood and whines that he doesn't understand the 60s. Returning to the record, DeRogatis makes the comatose argument that Sgt. Pepper isn't a concept album (gosh, never heard that before, Jim). Then he drags the reader through each track, saying again and again that Sgt. Pepper is not a rock record. Heck, "Revolver" isn't really a rock album, either, but musicians were listening to that record in 1966 and "Sgt. Pepper" in 1967, and it influenced the music of the late 60s, for better or worse.

Most of the writers don't even bother to question the received wisdom of their predecessors, indulging instead in "your favorite band stinks" criticism. Nasty music reviews can be fun to read, but a collection of them gets tiring after page 20, especially when you're attacking albums most people don't own. And even then, the choices are strange -- "Double Fantasy" instead of "Plastic Ono Band?" "Ram" instead of "Band on the Run?" The assertions are old (Paul McCartney released a lot of saccharine albums? You're kidding!) and the reviews circle the drain of self-adoration. An essay on Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors" barely touches on the album; the writer instead composes a fantasy of gunning down the band. DeRogatis and Lorraine Ali have a conversation on the Doors that's ten percent "The Doors were more pop than blues" and 90 percent "Doors fans torment me so." Many contributors take shots at Rolling Stone, and one too many critics light incense at the great and holy altar of Lester Bangs. That editor DeRogatis wrote a book about the latter and was fired by the former is coincidence, no doubt.

When the writer stops looking in the mirror and listens to the music, "Kill Your Idols" has its moments. Jim Testa's essay on the Sex Pistols is provocative without being twee, and he makes a number of good arguments about the roots of punk. A piece on "It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" does an excellent job tracing the origins of Public Enemy's soundscape.

Those are the exceptions. Skip this book, unless you're really, really angry about Patti Smith's reputation -- and has anyone besides a music critic ever bought one of her albums? DeRogatis and his buddies wish that good music would always be essential. But what's influential isn't always timeless, and you don't need to shell out $16 to know that.

There's very little wrong with the idea behind this book -- questioning the canon is a valid exercise and one that's been going on in music, literature, painting, sculpture, etc. since the dawn of time. The problem with this book is that (barring a couple of exceptions) the writing is so damn bad, it obscures the point. If you're going to say you hate something, you'd better give some insightful, defensible statements to that end, and there is precious little of that here. It's like you learn in your first college writing course: you can start from any thesis statement you want, but if you base your paper on poor logic, cliches, and general banality, you not only fail in the exercise but are certain to lose the reader a few paragraphs in. Which is what nearly all of these essays do. Sorry.

In "Kill Your Idols," Jim DeRogatis finds fellow rock critics to contribute scathing reviews of rock albums, most of which are widely considered to be classics. At first, this makes for some fun reading, unless it's an album that you particularly like that's being raked over the coals, often by one who doesn't seem to be terribly knowledgable about that artist or album in the first place. Right away, you can tell that the reviews are not really all that interesting or insightful, just exceptionally negative. And some of the reviews are simply absurd, such as, to name one of many examples, referring to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," as a bad album. Not over-rated mind you, just plain bad. A complicated album that didn't have one single, yet managed to stay on the charts for 14 years and influence countless artists, well I guess all those people and favorable critics who believed it to be one of the greatest of all time were just plain deluded.

Some of the reviews are more amusing than anything else. I liked, for instance, Adrien Brijbassi's description of his agony when he attempted to slow dance at his prom with a girl he liked to "Stairway to Heaven." He then ruins his review though, by making the outrageous claim that "Led Zeppelin 4" is too derivative to be considered classic. Other reviews can only be characterized as mean-spirited. In his review of "Rumours," Jim Walsh seemed to find it funny to "fantasize" about sneaking into a Fleetwood Mac concert with a sniper rifle. Sure, a record like "Born to Run" is full of bombast as David Sprague suggests, but in the end, the songs are wonderful. By the way Steve Knopper: Roger Daltry belts out the chorus of "I'm Free" in the movie version of "Tommy," not the superior studio version. Before you tell us how bad a classic album is, at least get your facts straight.

Many of these reviewers, who incidentally, list their top ten albums in an appendix (which often include albums lambasted by another in the book), regurgitate a particular theme of rock-and-roll that I can't stand, namely that "black" music (the blues) is somehow more "genuine" than "white" music (rock). Besides being borderline racist, the fact is that most of the great rock bands, whether black, white or other, played blues-based music, as well as music that has been variously characterised as psychedelia, art rock, progressive rock, etc. One is not better than the other, just different. Another particular theme, just as misguided, is that a rock song or album has merit only if the lyrics are rebellous against society.

In the end, "Kill Your Idols," contains mostly uninspired critiques of mostly great albums that tell us more about that particular reviewer than it does about the album being discussed. Some of it's fun, but about two-thirds of the way through, the mostly undeserved negativism started bumming me out, and I wanted to lash out at the writer about how pretentious and presumptuous he/she was being by attempting to "kill" one album or another adored by so many fans and other, more thoughtful, rock critics.

A fine title but the book just doesn't live up to its own hype. The reviews are lazy and self indulgent with perhaps the worst offender being the dialogue between two writers dissing the Doors. (I wasn't actually aware there were any critics who liked the Doors and I dare say it would be more daring to mount a defence of them at this point but that's another topic...) The writers showing they are just as trapped in their own petty bourgeoise mythology as those they attempt to topple. The book seems another example of the sort of limpid navel grazing twaddle that mistakes itself for daring...this sort of thing makes one long for rigor, or Lenin even.

(There is however one important exception, the demolition of U2 which while not exactly a tough target is done with the wit and verve sadly lacking in about every other whimper in this book.)

Chicago's worst critic, Jim DeRogatis, is a terrible writer as well as a malevolent reviewer. This book proves that for a national audience. Critics are a valuable resource, but they lose their importance when they take more pleasure in gunning down art that was made sincerely than they do in honestly evaluating it, for better or for worse. I think it's pretty funny that a guy who hates on U2, Rolling Stones, Madonna and more earns only an average score of 2 stars from Amazon reviewers and hasn't cracked the Top 200,000 in (rock of) ages.

One of the goals of Kill Your Idols seems to be to fire a shot at the monolithic Rolling Stone and its limited-dressed-up-as-definitive perspective on the history of Great Rock Albums, while at the same time taking to task all non-RS critics who fall into line with the magazine's approach.

(A personal aside: I find it absurd to see albums like Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme mentioned in Rolling Stone's periodic greatest albums lists. Memo to RS: simply because you stick token recordings by high profile jazz artists in your predominately rock-oriented lists does not make you a genre-busting juggernaut; get over yourselves.)

Anyway, the whole perspective of this collection is intended to be contrarian at the very least. Unfortunately, some of the "revisionist" essays aren't all that revisionist, and some of the arguments are just plain sloppy. Several of the "classics" given a dress-down here are stretches, too. I don't think anyone other than an inebriated McCartney fanatic would call "Ram" its creator's best work, let alone a revered classic; Band on the Run and his first, self-titled album generally score higher. Led Zeppelin IV, Dark Side of the Moon and The Best of the Doors may be "hey-bruh" Soundtracks to Debauchery that have earned their fair share of disdain by being insanely overplayed, but they've never held up to critical scrutiny, entertaining as they may occasionally be if you don't think too hard about them. Let's also allow that these three albums DO have their place. So by attacking them, are the writers of Kill Your Idols subscribing to the same elitism they purport to be deconstructing?

The book assumes a familiarity with longstanding critical opinion and partially plays to an audience unmoved, and even disgusted, by the hyperbole. I'm personally delirious to see someone finally have a go at The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street and Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, two albums that have amassed considerable critical reputations despite the fact that they're absolutely no fun to listen to. The former, because of the altered states of its participants, is more a tribute to producer Jimmy Miller's ability to put together a consistent-sounding (but still ultimately unsatisfying) collection of songs the band didn't care to finish. The latter is simply music to kill house plants with; if I want to listen to atonal free jazz, I'll put on Ornette Coleman, who started down that course a full decade earlier (and doesn't seem like nearly such a wanker).

I'm equally happy to see a swipe at Sgt Pepper, though slamming that album is nothing new. Greil Marcus, way back in 1977 in his book Stranded (which is referenced several times in KYI), called Sgt Pepper a "cardboard tombstone for its time"; Rolling Stone is the only major entity that seems to continue ardently polishing Pepper's reputation, though the problem remains that there are plenty of people who still nod along mindlessly as Rolling Stone Tells You How It Is.

Let's get to the meat of the issue, though. Simply writing a bunch of essays that run counter to conventional critical opinion on a variety of albums doesn't really cut it. To be honest, most music critics are insufferably full of themselves, and Kill Your Idols only partially addresses this fact while at other times giving prime examples of that very insufferability. Would that DeRogatis have taken a more strict editorial stance on encouraging each of these critics to connect with his or her audience in a personal way instead of preaching, as if to the uneducated. I don't mean personal in the Lester Bangs style of avuncular discourse either (Bangs should get an editing credit for this book, so pervasive is his ethos). Some of these essays attempt to make that shift, while others are content to be catty. (Don't get me wrong, catty can be fun, but is that really the point of this book?)

Where Kill Your Idols earns its modest points, though, is in suggesting that establishing a canon of "essential" albums isn't nearly as important as encouraging us to develop educated opinions about the music we personally find indespensible in our own lives. A sense of history may be important, but that sense has to be balanced with our own experience. The writers contributing here thumb their noses at the idea of that prescribed list of "classics" and, even if most of the essays in this book don't completely convince, the very reasons behind the gesture are worth reflecting upon.

Older rock critics NEVER liked The Best of the Doors, Dark Side of the Moon, Ram, and Sgt. Pepper's (or for that matter, most of 'em, Kick Out the Jams, which DeRogatis's hero Lester Bangs tried to kill on contact), so what's the point here? A slim pretense on which to hang a payday, but then, that's authorial style for ya. And by the way, if somebody can't hear what's great about Exile on Main Street and the Sex Pistols, they're the dope.--Dave Marsh

This book is incredibly tiresome. The authors seem more interested in cheap shots than a serious discussion of the music. They also seem to have a chip on their shoulders. Avoid this stinker like the plague.

This book has a few excellent essays, most notably Dawn Eden's review of "Smile," the legendary un-released Beach Boys album. Reviews of the MC5, Gram Parsons, and Public Enemy albums are also very good and insightful. Unfortunately there are also numerous poorly written essays, padded with details about "why I became a rock journalist." There is also a hard rock emphasis that dismisses Neil Young's Harvest, for instance, apparently in favor of Deep Purple. All in all, I would say save your money and ask your public library if they could order it.

I have mixed feelings on this book. While the idea behind it is interesting, most of the book isn't. Many of the reviews are poorly written and don't offer a clear explanation for why the writer dislikes the particular album they have chosen. As with any exercise like this, some of the discs in the book deserve to be here, i.e. Trout Mask Replica (ugh), Rumours, Kick out the Jams, The Doors. BUT c'mon people, Pet Sounds? Blood on the Tracks and (GASP!), OK Computer?? These are GREAT albums. Oh well, I guess that's the point, right? At any rate, it may have been easier to take had the reviewers presented thier argument a little better. The appendix with the contributors own top 10 lists was cool though. Skip the purchase, get it from your public library.