A young fogey at the American Spectator deplores the popularity of Rock Memoirs -- i.e., autobiographies and ghost-autobiographies of Rock Stars -- because Sammy Hagar's popular reminiscences are self-serving and full of glaring omissions. Therefore, ergo, and to wit:
To say that rock itself, considered in light of the Western classical tradition, is a fundamentally unsophisticated musical form is like saying that Boucher’s portrait of Marie-Louise O’Murphy is slightly better than a stick figure drawing of a naked woman. A course in rock theory will (one hopes anyway) never be offered at Juilliard, not because conservatories are bastions of cultural atavism but because it would be over after a week of lectures.
Gosh.
These are two very precious sentences, to be tenderly cherished forever: they are enwrought with golden and silver light, the blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half light, and also too horseshit.
Wherever do they incubate these specimens?
Our young fogey, whose name I have linked to up there but cannot be arsed to remember, is probably right that lots of Rock Memoirs follow a similar Organizational Pattern, but my sweet lord, does this tit not acknowledge the Structural Censorship that makes him speak lamentable gibberish such as the foregoing, or else this:
“All happy families,” Tolstoy wrote in 1873, “resemble one another,” an observation with which many have since disagreed.
Tolstoy said that -- in 1873? How far-ranging your intellect!
And mas:
the above outline might well serve as the RM equivalent of Joseph Campbell’s influental work of comparative mythology, Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Or this:
Richards’ antinomianism is not of a fundamentally different order from that of, say, Criss or Tyler
Yeah, probably not.
And let's spelunk:
For one thing, when one takes a long view of the matter, it becomes difficult to judge rock talent in any meaningful way. Between the 4/4 tempo and snare-driven beat (not rhythm) fleshed out by simple instrumentation and throwaway lyrics (“Yeah, she’s straight / Just won’t wait”) of the “first” rock song, “Rocket 88,” and the abrupt time signature shifts, Mellotron noodling, and pseudo-mysticism (“Nothing is real”) of the “best” rock song, “Strawberry Fields Forever,” there is far less musical progress on display than between two successive symphonies by a minor 19th-century composer.
So much for the Beatles, then. "The White Album? Piffle!"
This is great:
I’m not trying to be a snob.
No, nobody thought you were making any effort in this regard.
An honest list of the records sitting on my shelf right now would include dozens of rock albums, including more than a handful of items by some of the idols whose memoirs I’ve just panned. But I put on albums like Some Girls on what I think are suitable occasions: while playing poker or peeling garlic cloves or polishing glasses.
How charming you are!
When I sit down to listen—really listen, while doing nothing apart from maybe smoking or drinking a cup of coffee—it’s Purcell or Stravinsky I want to hear.
That is very impressive.
Here are some other terrific sentences.
TIBOR FISCHER ONCE WROTE that Martin Amis’ Yellow Dog “isn’t bad as in not very good or slightly disappointing. It’s not-knowing-where-to-look bad. I was reading my copy on the Tube and I was terrified someone would look over my shoulder.”
I have also come to accept that it’s better for me not to think about what I might have read instead: more than half the published fictional output of Henry James, say, or the first three volumes of the Pléiade Voltaire.
Townshend, who is probably the only RM author who can claim to have once been an acquisitions editor for the venerable London publishing house Faber and Faber (a position held by T.S. Eliot)
Yes, you aced sophomore year. Could you now... not talk anymore?
We've read... books?
Thanks much.
(What ghastly shite.)