We journalists are not in the music business, we're *covering* the
>music business. Well, at least that's how the oft-referenced Greg Kot
>positioned himself during a panel at lat year's (?) SXSW.
>
>Neal Weiss
A good read between the lines quote, I might add. I've seen more
journalistic credibility from the small, local music newspapers than I see
in such "acclaimed" journals as Rolling Stone, Country Music, Guitar, Jazz
Is.
It's as though the journalists/reviewers are starry-eyed "groupies", much in
the tradition of Circus magazine or that old Tiger Beat.
One very good example is Rolling Stone. Except for Christgau who
occasionally enchants with his bursts of analytical insight, I'm often left
with complete wonderment as to whether or not the reviewer really liked the
album in question. They tend to teeter the line of like/dislike and the
innuendo is often that he or she didn't like the album but that they just do
not come out and say so. I liked RS better when they had the guts to print
a boot to Exile On Main Street. You just don't see that much anymore in the
way of honest opinion. I cannot give much credibility to Mr. Kott for
example, who seems to attach a "neutralized barb" to his wiriting and then
happily wanders back into mainstream appeal. It just gives me the
impression that he doesn't want to make any enemies and at the same time he
cloaks his true feelings. That is not reviewing and it is not honest.
What I also think is that some time ago some of the critics who became
noteworthy for their insight strove so valiently to be perceived as
intellectually aesthetic that they over extended their "brilliant" and
nuanced opinions with the general population to the point that people no
longer perceived their written perceptions as valid. A critic in my
honest opinion is writing for the public, not for the recording industry or
the artists. Did all of this change around the time that Landau abandoned
the credibility ship and joined the country goes pop twain<g> Or is it
deeper than that? I suspect that it is.
Tera
