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A heretic's Sunday confessions

Of course there's a modern rock critical canon, and so I wasn't all that surprised to skim a New Yorker article extolling the virtues of the new U2 album, nor to find that I simply did not care. I once broke up with a very good woman (in my 20s, I hasten to add, happily married these last ten-plus years) because she was young enough to hear and adore the first couple U2 albums, and I took the fact that I just didn't get it as a bad sign. (It was, incidentally, a stupid reason to break up with her, and she's better off without me.)

But I was sitting with my morning coffee and realized it was Sunday and I should confess my apostacies. Which may not be a word, but what the hell. And invite my gentle readers to share theirs. So, in no particular order, save the order in which they come to mind...

I don't hear the magic in U2. It's a big, bold, arena band, and I've seen them at least twice (in Vancouver, B.C., with Los Lobos and the BoDeans, I believe, though from where we sat it was hard to know; and in Seattle, with a bunch of funny East German cars hanging from the ceiling), and I've eaten in Dublin at Bono's restaurant on somebody else's expense account (and the food wasn't very good, so maybe that's what I hold against him?). Now...they've hit a few out of the park, and I'll give them that. But the adoration, the assumption of profundity, the expectation that each album matters deeply...I don't hear it. It's a big, simple, bold machine they've built, and it's a force for good, to be sure. But important (to me)? No. If they sold 20,000 albums a year, would anybody care?

And then there's R.E.M. The best thing R.E.M. ever did was hire Scott McCaughey, who has written for me a couple times in a couple places, and has now for some years gotten to play and play with a band he adores. Great for Scott, and I went to see them in LA just to see him have all that much fun, but Scott has always had fun, no matter the stage or his companions. And, again, they've hit a song or two that is fun to hear on the radio, and they have been a force for good in the world. But deciphering the mumbles of the early stuff (which is a lazy criticism, I grant you), or untangling the rest? I don't hear it. Nothing touches me.

Which brings us to Bruce. For seven years I worked for Charles R. Cross, who started and edited and designed Backstreets, in many ways the template for what we tried to do with No Depression. Hell, I even typeset the headlines for the first tabloid issue of Backstreets, if that counts. But the worship...I really don't get. To my ears he's a banal songwriter, and like the composer of any good Hallmark card some of his songs strike a nerve. But a deep thinker he's not (maybe this is part of the appeal), and a working man he's never really been. It's not that I mind the calculation, although I probably do. It's that I don't think he has anything real to say. And when I finally saw him (courtesy Charley) in the Tacoma Dome, what I saw was a recreation -- a very careful illusion, including a tub of water to pour over himself so it LOOKED like he was sweating -- of what his earlier, legendary performances may (and may not) actually have been like. If you're going to manipulate me, do it with your art, not your stagecraft, please?

Somehow that leads to Dylan. Obviously it leads to Dylan, the dissembling mumbler, a second tier Kerouac, the man for whom Pete Townsend should have been singing "I just want to be misunderstood..." Apparently there is something inviting about wandering lyrics which invite selective misinterpretation, and I don't mourn particularly for the fact that Dylan didn't continue to write the topical songs which brought him to the foreground of Sing Out!. I spent a lot of time, back in high school, with Blood On The Tracks, and finally concluded -- as the cliche now goes -- that there was no there there. It was clever and oblique and facile, but it wasn't a truth I could grasp, or a truth I could hear, or something I needed to spend any more time listening to.

Now...I'm sure to take a beating for having quickly typed this little scree, and that's fine. And I'm sure somebody's going to say, "Well, if you just listened to..." and my point here is that I've either heard it, or nothing in the music I did hear suggested it was worth my time to take that next step. Besides...music and art are intensely personal things. These four revered artists simply do not touch me. They're supposed to; they touch millions. I've heard plenty of their work, and not all of it. I don't care that they're major stars -- that's not a reason to criticize their work. I'm simply indifferent to their charms.

And what I was really after, as I sat down to type this, was whether anybody else here wished to add a name or two to my list. So we'll see.

Tags: Dylan, R.E.M., Springsteen, U2, alden, over-rated, scree

Comment by Reno Sepulveda on April 5, 2009 at 6:48am: See this how you generate traffic man. Start stirring the shit. But if you really want to get things going here on No Depression you should lay off Bono and go after Gillian Welch and that guy that sings with her.

Uncut magazine used to have a regular feature called Sacred Cows were they would gore everybody from Neil Young to the Kinks to Radiohead it was all great fun. The thing is that fans will love an artist till they hate them. I could add some names, I can even agree with some of yours but the truth is I'll never have a stadium full of people pay to hear me sing my songs so why go negative on people that are brave enough to put their work out there for open ridicule?

Besides I still need to get over to the forum and list my favorite Wilco! album and the five albums that... changed my life! and great moments in American song...

Comment by Grant Alden on April 5, 2009 at 6:52am: But, see, Gillian and Dave...their music works for me.

Comment by Ron Frankl on April 5, 2009 at 8:26am: Thank you for your confession, my son. Knocking over a few clay idols, Grant.

Well, obviously musical preferences are subjective; think how boring it would be if we all liked the same artists. Personally, I agree regarding U2 (artifice over substance), and it's been a long time since R.E.M. made music that mattered. I beg to differ on Springsteen, and believe that music he made in the first decade of his career was intelligent, heartfelt and meaningful. Dylan - which Dylan? The protest singer, the master of the thin wild mercury, the romantic, the battle-scarred hollow man searching for inspiration?

I guess my point is that twofold. First, that we tend to value music that moves us when we are in our formative period, our"salad days" to use an archaic term. Most of our life is ahead, and the possibilities seem relatively endless. I think we tend to cut our favorite artists from this stage of our lives more than a little slack, because of the connection with a more hopeful time in our own lives. My second point is that, sooner or later, every major artist loses the spark. Please, name one veteran of the '60's and '70's and even the '80's who hasn't suffered a loss of inspiration, and turned out music that seemed hollow or dull. Removed from their original sources of creativity by time, wealth addiction or other factors, it's only normal that their music suffers. That's not to say that these artists aren't capable of producing great recordings or performances, it's just not a sure thing anymore.

Grant, if you had been fortunate enough to see Springsteen in the mid to late Seventies, as I did many times, I think you might feel very differently. He's been phoning it in for several decades. Even I find his music boring and false now. But back in the day he had the ability to move and inspire an audience like few artists I've ever seen.

Comment by Paul Cantin on April 5, 2009 at 8:39am: There's something bracing in witnessing the derailing of the consensus train, even if you happen to be sitting in the bar car.

The late, lamented Spy magazine had a semi-regular feature by Joe Queenan called "Admit it, It Sucks." The only sample I could quickly find online is a piece decrying latter day Civil War fascination, here, although I recall a hilarious piece skewering farmers' markets. I mean, dumping on farmer's markets? But to strangle a metaphor, the more sacred the cow, the more juicy the steak.

There are critical heresies and then there are fan heresies. The sacred cows of critical favor are very different from those of the general population. For proof, I invite you to publish something critical of Celine Dion in a mainstream publication and watch what happens. Sacre bleu. If I were to write something eviscerating Ms. Dion on this website, I doubt it would cause a ripple. Rightly so, it's shooting fish in a barrel. But critique her (as I did at the zenith of her fame) in a daily newspaper and ... well, you may want to check under your car before starting it in the morning.

I've never found much of value in U2. Pandering, obvious, their vaunted musical "experimentation" can usually be directly traced to less-heralded artists. Bruce, with each new record I struggle to find some crumb to justify my affection for his early work , and I tend to end up questioning why I was ever a fan. And then I'll stumble upon something like this live show from the Agora Ballroom in 1978, and I have no need to wonder why people made a big deal of Bruce back in the day. If the guy on that recording was making records today, I'd be first in line.

As for Dylan iconoclasm, I prescribe "Idiot Wind." Repeat when necessary.

Comment by Ron Frankl on April 5, 2009 at 9:22am: Paul:

Those '78 shows were amazing, weren't they? And the Agora was one of the best.

Comment by Paul Cantin on April 5, 2009 at 9:25am: further to Dylan and iconoclasm. See here.

Comment by Old Soul on April 5, 2009 at 11:09am: Right on with U2, except maybe for (an undisputed masterpiece), and even more so with R.E.M. Yet you failed to call out one of the most overhyped artists ever, Lucinda Williams, and her singularly overpraised . Talk about being no there there.

Comment by Old Soul on April 5, 2009 at 11:12am: Sorry, my post got cut when I used brackets on the titles. U2's best work was "The Joshua Tree," and Lucinda Williams's very mediocre record was "Car Wheels On A Gravel Road."

Comment by Ron Frankl on April 5, 2009 at 11:18am: Wow, Old Soul. I think that "Car Wheels" was Lucinda's only consistently strong album. I find it easy to dismiss most of what's come since, but I think "Car Wheels" is a classic.

Comment by Jeff R Hall on April 5, 2009 at 11:30am: The Eagles, Poco, Fleetwood Mac all fall into this catagory for me. In fact, most of the 70's, except Mott The Hoople and Punk. (I'm sure there are some exceptions, but not many.)

REM was Godhead. I still listen to and love those first 5-6 records. U2 did some amazing songs and a few very good albums.