Rock, Rot & Rule (Stereolaffs)
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They’re probably right: though I’d been a rabid fan for 20 years before I started writing criticism, the last three years have been a perpetual crash course in the past, present, and future of popular music. But the longer I pay my dues in this fraternity of insufferable know-it-alls, the more I realize that the job demands something no stack of books, pile of magazines, or shelf full of box sets can supply: the sheer electric thrill we all felt cranking up that first great rock ‘n’ roll record. Once you lose that–and in many ways the business of music journalism is designed to grind it out of you–you become just another copywriter, less in tune with your readers than with the PR flacks who crowd your voice mail. Harry Truman used to say that when he left the presidency he was promoted to being a citizen. On a more modest scale, a critic should aspire to be nothing less than a fan.
Clontle was actually Jon Wurster, the drummer for Superchunk. When I tracked him down, he explained that the idea had come to him after he heard Oprah Winfrey, then embroiled in a lawsuit with the Texas cattle industry, say something to the effect of “Freedom not only rings–it rocks!” His amusement at the emptiness of her statement snowballed into a laugh-out-loud funny but also surprisingly layered spoof of rock criticism.
Or, one might argue, Clontle’s book reduces him and his pals to rock critics, asserting their opinions as inarguable fact. When Scharpling asks how they can be debating the contents of a book that’s the “ultimate argument settler,” Clontle replies, “That’s up to you. The ball’s in your court.” There is no debate–and too often that’s the case in real life. Since I started writing Critic’s Choices for the Reader, I’ve had the unnerving experience of attending a show and seeing the crowd respond in accordance with what I’ve written, cheering the same songs–sometimes even the same lines–cited in the preview. This might give me delusions of grandeur if it weren’t so obviously screwy. So make up your own mind about this record. But I say it rules.
