After wading through Richard Meltzer’s convoluted bullshit titled “Vinyl Reckoning” [July 2], I remembered why I quit reading so-called rock criticism a short time after the disgusting genre reared its ugly little head. Similar to Meltzer’s crapola, it was more of an exercise in abject narcissism than it was a review of any record.
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Even if it had been done more intelligently than it was, the entire concept was flawed to begin with, because taste is relative to the individual. It has been said that people don’t know what they like, they simply like what they know. So where does someone who happens to know one kind of music get off telling someone who happens to know another kind of music that that person’s taste sucks? The whole business reminds me of those “musical appreciation” classes in school where those wittingly or unwittingly serving elite interests attempted to indoctrinate us with elite notions of acceptability.
Madman Jack
