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Stuck In Normal
by Chris Bertolet - bertolet@earthlink.netGustave Flaubert said, "A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier." While artists everywhere nod rabidly, let me be the first to say, "What a steaming load of crap."
My hunch is that Flaubert puked up this pseudo-truism after reading early critical response to his own Madame Bovary, which has inexplicably risen to the rank of literary classic since its still-birth in 1857. Words can't begin to express how much I hate this episodic, trivial brick of a novel. In fact, I hold it responsible for Gone With the Wind, another accidental farce that asks us to boo-hoo a woman of privilege whose self-absorbed head games land her in the emotional shit-pile. Confession: if given a choice between suffering through Bovary again and receiving a root canal with a rusted length of barbed wire, I'd probably have to flip a coin. But I digress.
My point isn't that I don't care for Flaubert's work, but for his criticism of criticism. Critics are here to stay, and more by the day. Like the old saw says, opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one. And with the explosion of the Internet (picture a vast network of hoses connecting every asshole on the planet...or, well, don't), opinions are multiplying like flies on a dead trout.
Call me crazy, but I say bring it on.
Like the work it observes, the lion's share of criticism is self-conscious, ego-driven shit - in other words, the kind of stuff Flaubert was whining about while his doting manservant buffed his toenails and served him chamomile tea. But to dismiss criticism as a form because some of its practitioners are hacks is like dismissing rock and roll because of Leif Garrett and White Snake. The fact is, we need critics.
In the November 1970 issue of Jazz & Pop magazine, critic Patricia Morrison wrote:
Real criticism is a process of selection, a functional energy: it pulls in all the goods, considers all variants, and then goes on to pronounce conclusions. The best criticism concerns itself with direction and flow, general trends; and it logically follows that the best critics are the ones who can double as visionaries, who can see simultaneously where it's been and where it's going and how it is right now.
Where it's been, how it is, and where it's going. Direction. Flow. Sound a little familiar? It's precisely the awareness, continuity and motion that characterizes compelling, dynamic improvisation - in other words, the music we love.
The best criticism, like a great rock or jazz jam, has insight into its own origins and a drive to imagine the future. In content, it sketches the ancestry of art, whether from Plato to Nietzsche, from Riefenstahl to Kubrick, or from Coltrane to Garcia. In form, it mirrors what it strives to explain. For example, some of the finest early jazz writers, sailing uncharted waters, chose to abandon traditional critical forms and embark on more poetic expressions of the free verse they heard crashing from the stage - almost the journalistic version of interpretive dance.
Patricia Morrison continued:
Criticism is a reflection of both the artistic creation upon which it is based and of the society that fostered the creation; criticism provides insight, not doctrinaire pronouncements. No critic is infallible, and any who speak ex cathedra without having first considered all possibilities are only fooling themselves.
I'd be the first to admit that I've spoken ex cathedra now and then if I actually knew what ex cathedra meant. But my guess is that it means "out of school," or without sufficient frame of reference. And I think that Morrison was trying to say that good criticism, whether it speaks to an exhibit at the Guggenheim or Limp Bizkit's latest, ought to be informed.
As someone who's absorbed a fair lot of genuine country music - from Williams to Haggard to Cash - I can comfortably assert that Vince Gill and Randy Travis are the same person, and that their evil Reich of two-stepping robots should be all be de-activated and ceremonially dismantled. But as someone who has a hard time appreciating white supremacist rock, I've had limited exposure to the genre, and ought to disqualify myself from opining on the recent offering from, say, Swastika Bob. I'm just uninformed.
All this poses an interesting question: in the context of improvisational rock - a spontaneous, evolving form whose spirit and vision are seldom captured in the studio - what constitutes "informed?"
Consider the case of Jim DeRogatis (L.A. New Times, Chicago Sun Times, etc.). DeRogatis, a self-styled critical maverick, claims that Rolling Stone honcho Jann Wenner canned him a few years ago because he dared to pan Hootie and the Blowfish's sophomore album after their debut had shipped 13 million copies. DeRogatis went on to write a dazzlingly comprehensive book called Kaleidoscope Eyes that traced the evolution of psychedelic music from the Acid Tests to contemporary rave culture. Like him so far?
Then consider that his review placed blame for the Hootie scourge squarely on the shoulders of the Grateful Dead. In fact, DeRogatis rarely misses an opportunity to diss Deadheads or jam band disciples in general. In one online rant on the Dave Matthews Band, he explained: "I have this theory that it all has to do with lame-ass white people who couldn't dance - who were doing that Grateful Dead wriggle dance. It's like pseudo-hippie, but it's really people who are fucking stockbrokers putting on tie-dyed shirts and going to this concert and drinking Bud Light and thinking it's a psychedelic experience."
So the guy's opinionated. That's his job - he's an advocate. If he's a little bitter, maybe that's because it's difficult for him to watch silently as the throngs find transcendental bliss in something he Just Doesn't Get. I feel the same way about the Backstreet Boys. Yes, I wish DeRogatis would focus more on what he finds lacking in improvisational music than he does on the scene and its attendant bullshit (which he doesn't even bother to get right - after all, why resort to "theory" when all you have to do is dive in and know for sure?). And I wish he'd acknowledge that Hootie owes more to Bread and Air Supply than it does the Grateful Dead. In his heart, I'm sure he knows that's true.
Still, as much as I might think he's wrong, I have to honor his opinion at least as much as that of a Joe Fanboy who collects 1300 hours of Widespread Panic while neglecting the decades of music that gave rise to it. In itself, having 100 shows under your belt doesn't make you informed. It's more likely to make you myopic.
In the world of jam bands, as in any medium or genre of art, there's wheat and there's chaff. There are acts that have It (or one day will), acts that are destined to flounder in their quest for It, and acts that couldn't give a shit about It unless it came packaged with a record deal and breasts. The fact is that while we might like to think otherwise, it really isn't "all good." It can't be.
So, as fans of improvisational music, we face choices. Most of us have limits on our time, our money, and our wall space. Most of us (unless we choose to make it a career) can't afford to acquaint ourselves with the burgeoning horde of jam acts on the club circuit. We need a filter, a mechanism to separate the wheat from the chaff, or we'll drown in mediocrity. In short, we need critics.
Many of us have taken to the Internet as our filter of choice. Usenet newsgroups like rec.music.phish and rec.music.gdead, once you learn how to navigate through grovels, trolls and "ticklespam," are churning opinion mills, and eminently populist ones at that. Bandwidth is up for grabs, and everyone's entitled to a soapbox. Of course, this means that you have to suffer a whole lot of insipid, content-free 420-speak to find considered opinions; in fact, it can be hard to find someone capable of spelling their own name. But it doesn't take too long to figure out who listens, who feels and who thinks, and suddenly you don't have to collect and liquidate the entire summer tour. You've found a filter.
Usenet's a nice tool for folks who want to get deeper into their favorite band, but where do you go to find opinions on acts you know nothing about? This web site (at least implicitly) claims to be a clearing-house for information about bands in the jam scene. Is it, really? A subjective one, maybe.
Though it's still evolving, I believe Jambands.com can do better. Frankly, I still see an awful lot of fawning in the CD reviews, and a lot of cheerleading in the Regional Reports by blissed-out devotees of the bands in question. All that's nice, but I think it often comes at the expense of objectivity and insight, and that's not so nice. I challenge our readers, editors and contributors (myself included) to turn a critical ear to the music they love. Go deeper. Let your words mirror the music, both good and bad, and in turn, you'll challenge the community of musicians to innovate and delve.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read the comprehensive catalog of 19th-century French realists. I figure I owe that to Gustave.
Chris Bertolet heard enough tepid bluegrass at the High Sierra Music Festival to sod his own golf course. So he did. Watch out for the blind pothole bunker on the fourth hole.
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