Guys,
Peter Carlson, the Washington Post’s “Magazine Reader,” writes about Spin’s “25 Years of Punk” issue in this morning’s Post.
I apologize in advance for the meta-incestuousness of posting a letter about a newspaper article about a magazine, particularly when it’s a magazine I’ve been known to write for on occasion. But I didn’t actually write anything for this issue–as anyone who knew me when I was younger will tell you, maybe a little too eagerly, I was never a punk–so there’s no self-defense or self-promotion involved.
Really, my beef isn’t with Carlson’s take on Spin’s punk retrospective–he seems to like it, and so did I–but with his tone, which is so jaw-droppingly old-fogeyish I almost want to believe he’s a brilliant satirist, pitch-perfectly nailing the self-amused dismissiveness of sclerotic daily newspaper critics. His lede mentions “the subtle, sublime pleasures of punk rock music,” but then he adds that “those pleasures don’t include listening to the music.” Yuk, yuk! “Listening to punk,” he continues, “is pure torture. Punk instrumentals sound like a beer can being eaten by a garbage disposal and punk vocals sound like the anguished cry of a guy trying to retrieve his beer can from a garbage disposal.”
How 1957 can you get? I was waiting for Pete to condemn the Ramones for encouraging juvenile delinquency or perhaps gum-chewing on school property. Overall, Carlson seems to like the issue–he calls it “delightful” and seems to have enjoyed all the funny quotes. There’s a band that called itself Bikini Kill–those crazy kids! But most of his praise feels like a patronizing pat on the head for the genre itself. At one point, describing the essay that opens the package, he writes that while “discoursing on punk, [Eric] Weisbard goes into full-bore, pedal-to-the-metal intellectual rock critic mode.” The anti-pop-music bias in that line makes me want to go, like, sniff some glue and destroy passersby. Can you imagine anybody writing a similar sentence about, say, art criticism? “Discoursing on Jan Vermeer, Peter Scheldjal goes into full-bore, pedal-to-the-metal intellectual art critic mode.”
Why is it that rock writing is the only area of arts criticism in which any attempt at intelligence or intellectuality is seen as suspect? (And to flip it around, why do so many otherwise clued-in magazines and newspapers continue to let people write about popular music on such a superficial, perversely underengaged level? I’m looking at you, Nick Hornby.)
OK, I’m ranting and grinding axes, I’ll stop.
AP
