Heavy, Man

In the age of 'everyone's a critic,' the vast majority of people are still not critics, and have no pretensions to criticism. No one studies these things, but I imagine most people have little exposure to arts criticism on a daily basis. The most widely-read form of criticism, movie reviews, rarely seem to influence people's behavior. It seems people would rather listen to music than read about it.

This is understandable, but it might help if high-profile criticism was engaging or thoughtful. Things like newspaper and TV arts coverage rarely rise to either of criteria, though. In fact, just this morning I opened the paper to find this interview with (who else) SuperHeavy. It is really, really awful.

So, in order to demonstrate the vapidity of our celebrity press corps, here are some favorites from the SuperHeavy piece. Celebrity interviews aren't the same thing as criticism, but this piece got a lot more space in today's paper than any music reviews, essays or thinkpieces (it was the only music coverage, unless Dancing With The Stars counts). Lest I be accused of picking on Jagger, I'll note that he really did say all these things. Italics are mine.

They had no idea if all the group's members, which include soulful singer-songwriter Joss Stone [?], Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman and reggae singer Damian Marley, would even have chemistry.

Dave Stewart: "We just did it because we wanted to do an experiment, and that got developed and more and more developed until in the end, this record appeared." 

Jagger's legend was formed with the Rolling Stones and other successful musical collaborations, but he says none of that can be compared to his experience with SuperHeavy [this is an astounding statement]

Jagger: "Every time you get into a room even with the same people, it is different because people come up with different things."

Jagger: One thing serious [sic] that we did think about, we didn't want people with loads of entourages and that would have too big of egos 

Jagger: I went toasting, we call it, but it is the same thing (as rap). Damian was doing this really good toasting, West Indian rapping, so I thought, "I could do that. It can't be that difficult." It actually was quite difficult. With a bit of practice, it is all right. It is a laugh. 

Jagger: Dave created this whole raison d'etre why we didn't have songs. The raison d'etre for why we didn't have songs was because if we had songs ... people would feel that it wasn't their project as much [contrast with above statement about egos]

Jagger: This is quite conventional so we followed those 

Q: All these musicians working together -- was there sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll?
Jagger: For Joss there was lots of sex (laughs). She is the only woman so she has her pick. That is the sex part.

Same Rag You've Always Known

No one asked, but here it is: a list of the 11 albums that Rolling Stone gave five stars during the 2000s, baring any late entrants. The only remaining 2009 disc that seems like a contender is that weird-seeming Dylan Christmas album, which doesn't have the glow of a five star album about it, particularly after the turgid Together Through Life. In chronological order:

Bob Dylan-- "Love and Theft" (2001)
Mick Jagger--Goddess In The Doorway (2001)
Beck--Sea Change (2002)
Bruce Springsteen--The Rising (2002)
The White Stripes--Elephant (2003)
Brian Wilson--SMiLE (2004)
Beastie Boys--To The 5 Boroughs (2004)
Kanye West--Late Registration (2005)
Bob Dylan--Modern Times (2006)
Bruce Springsteen--Magic (2007)
Bruce Springsteen--Working On A Dream (2009)

Seven of these albums, distributed over just four musicians, are by artists who in any reasonable estimation of their work peaked sometime between 1965-1975. I'd add that Beck and The Beastie Boys peaked long before 2002 and 2004, respectively.

Anyways the most notable of these reviews is Jann Wenner's five-star write-up of Mick Jagger's Goddess In The Doorway. The review, possibly written by Wenner because even hacks refused to award a Mick Jagger solo album five stars, strains mightily to praise the album. In 974 words, it embodies almost every conceivable qualm one might have with Wenner's publication, presenting them with--and this is the most shocking part--a completely straight face. Is it even worth my time critiquing it?:

In terms of consistency, craftsmanship and musical experimentation, Goddess in the Doorway surpasses all his solo work and any Rolling Stones album since Some Girls

Goddess in the Doorway resembles the Stones' best albums in that it's a varied yet cohesive collection of ballads, hard rockers and one country song

Making the most of this opportunity to stretch himself, Jagger has recruited some outstanding guests...Rob Thomas...Lenny Kravitz...Bono...Joe Perry

It may seem a truism, but it's worth noting that he is - along with John Lennon, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Bono - one of the great male rock voices of this age

These statements wear their self-parody as unknowingly as the real Mick Jagger!

But what of the other ten? I suspect that about half of these albums will make the magazine's Decade Top 10. Personally, I've heard most of them--many of them on the strength of the RS reviews, I confess--all, in fact, but the Jagger disc and the three Springsteen albums. I doubt I'll hear any of those four, ever: though I love the Stones, I have no desire to hear Doorway, and while Springsteen fans seemed to love The Rising and Magic, I am not of their ilk.

Aside from Goddess in the Doorway, To The 5 Boroughs stands out as this list's other big misfire. It may have seemed natural at the time--responding to 9/11 helped net The Rising five stars, the Beasties hadn't released an album since the 90's, the singles were pretty fun, and RS does adore the Beastie Boys. But as a long-player, it's unexciting, surely the group's worst.

I can understand the Dylan reviews better. Note that 2 albums represents half of Bob's 00's output, and the magazine, which exists in large part to worship at the shrine of Dylan, picked the right two. "Love And Theft" is the weaker of the pair, but still quite good, one of three great records to be released on the 00's-defining, above-mentioned date (the other two being Jay-Z's The Blueprint and Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which are both better so go figure). I do love Modern Times, however. Aside from its deeply ironic title, the album shows a reflective, lonely Dylan, with an arsenal of sharply written tunes. Still, it's a four-and-a-half star LP, tops.

Beck's Sea Change is another album on the list a half star short of RS's ultimate honor. It meant a lot to me when I first heard it, and the first five tracks will blow your mind. But Beck's transformation into a Nick Drake-like singer-songwriter arrived just in time to capitalize on the massive goodwill lent that particular mope in the early 00's, and the second half of his album drags. Plus, it sucks that Beck's vocals are always dirge-y now, even when his musical surroundings aren't. Wasn't that way before Sea Change.

The vocals on SMiLE bother me as well. Wilson's voice is audibly strained a number of times--most noticably on rerecorded but only slightly inferior versions of "Heroes and Villains" and "Good Vibrations"--and we can still only wonder what it would've sounded like had Brian been able to keep it together in 1966. But the old man and his many collaborators' take on a teenager's symphony to God is wonderful, complex stuff. RS surprised no one with the review, but they weren't too far off, either.

Which leaves the two best albums that Rolling Stone awarded five stars, the only two given to youngish artists. The Late Registration review might be the more surprising of the two, and not just because a black person got it. Previously, the magazine hadn't seemed particularly keen on Kanye--College Dropout, which won the Village Voice critics poll, got just 3.5 stars (which Ye later called them out on), and he'd never landed a big profile or anything. But Late Registration is not only an incredible record, but one that also caters to rock crit tastes (I mean, having Jon Brion co-produce your album?). A lush, hip-hop White Album, with enough subtle production tricks and facets of Kanye's then-interesting persona to make 70 minutes go by fast.

And finally: self-indulgence is the name of Jack White's game these days, but there was a time when he'd indulge his audience as well. That Rolling Stone would love the White Stripes was a foregone conclusion, but to award Elephant five stars took at least a small amount of balls in 2003. I vividly remember the issue, the first RS I got via my subscription: it was "The Cool Issue" and featured Lisa Marie Presley on the cover, along with a small blurb about the Stripes album. Elephant is where it all congealed for the Stripes: a blues-punk barnstormer that envisioned the Brill Building as a rickety garage, lower frequencies as the apocalypse, and a glorious coexistence of country-kitsch and multitracked screeds. The best album to receive five stars from Wenner's rag this decade and just enough to make me thankful that Rolling Stone existed in the 00's, if only for personal reasons.

English Blood Runs Hot

I sometimes feel sorry when artist's work leaks to the internet. While Jack White and Radiohead-level freakout/hissyfits are uncool, and smell strongly of the big egos involved, you have to feel for a guy like Bradford Cox. He got angry when somebody leaked the new disc from his pals in Animal Collective, and couldn't understand why people didn't funnel their energy into recording their own versions of highly anticipated albums instead, like he did for Pavement's Brighten The Corners. When Microcastle leaked 6 months before the album was to be released, Cox reconvened Deerhunter to record a completely new album, Weird Era Cont., which was packaged with Microcastle. That is how you respond to a leak, people. (Weird Era also leaked prior to the double-album's October release).

This is all a preface, however, to my main point: sometimes, unavailable/illegal things are so awesome they deserve to be leaked (I'm looking at you, unreleased and now unclear-able Paul's Boutique-era Beastie Boys tracks). Such is the case with Cocksucker Blues, the unreleased documentary that follows the Rolling Stones on their legendarily debauched 1972 North American tour. The film, which legally can only be shown in the presence of director Robert Frank, made its way to the internet recently.

Cocksucker Blues plays like a film of deleted scenes, a succession of unnarrated, uncontextualized images that flash before our eyes. It's verite to the point that you can hear the cameras rolling. Much of the documentary is presented in a spooky, bluish B&W, which lends a certain menace to the film's prosaic scenes, and an outright villainy to its notorious ones--public sex aboard a private jet, groupies and hangers-on shooting up, Mick Jagger doing lines of blow.

Of course, outright menace underscores the entire film, as the '72 tour was the Stones' first since their disastrous concert at Altamont, then and now as potent a symbol as any of the death of 60's idealism. The ghost of deceased Stone Brian Jones, a flower child felled by excess, also haunts the proceedings. Indeed, the Stones of Cocksucker Blues are hedonistic and apolitical, in pointed contrast to the radical Stones Goddard offered four years prior.

The version I streamed seems to be missing the very end of the film, but it's still fascinating stuff. The concert scenes, filmed in color, sizzle--in particular a duet between Jagger and Stevie Wonder that begins as "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" and transitions into "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," a brilliant bit of "Midnight Rambler," and footage of Jagger and Richards listening to "Happy" that segues into the Stones performing the song, with Jagger handling some of the lead vocals.

The film--for shame!--has little interest in Watts, Wyman, or Taylor, much less the touring musicians, but Jagger's magnetism compels. His on-stage persona is sex incarnate, and his sartorial decisions are as glam as glam gets. Off-stage, and in snippets of interviews we hear, he seems tired and conflicted, wanting both celebrity and peace of mind, to be and not to be Mick Jagger. Most telling are Jagger's visible relief at riding the tour bus (rather than taking the Stones jet and mingling with the on-board entourage) and inattentive response to a parade of half-sincere birthday wishes.

It's one of the film's few clues as to what made the Stones so brilliant, so fascinating. The menace is a part of it--the Luciferian affectations, profane grooves, and lyrical raunch--but it hardly explains how the group, from 1964-1981, produced one of the most consistently brilliant bodies of work in the history of rock music. And in 1972, the band was on an equaled but never bested hot streak, having, in the space of five years, released three-and-a-half of the greatest albums ever made.*

It seems the Stones milieu, disgusting and warped by excess as it may have been, was key to their music. The hedonism--as well as the prodigious talent of all involved--provided the irresistible boogie and salacious licks, while a certain antipathy towards this world accounts for the more reflective, honest moments (usually the country songs and slower blues numbers). The Stones had it both ways with Mr. D, it seems, or at least regretted their sympathy for the satanic. The second verse of "Dead Flowers" shares something of the two impulses, and captures the contradiction well:

Well when you're sitting back in your rose pink Cadillac
Making bets on Kentucky Derby Day
I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon
And another girl to take my pain away

The narrator speaks to a sybarite but is himself a lowlife. Yet the sybarite was once a part of the underworld, and the narrator, with his easy access to drugs and sex, an alpha male of the underground. Neither has both feet in either world, an their coexistence and contradictions blur the boundaries between high and low society. The song's tone and lyrical content, a pensiveness via hedonism, clearly emanates from the ne'er-do-well, and there's little evidence of soul-bearing by his former accomplice (just as "Brown Sugar" is hardly introspective). The two poles of high society and demimonde are characterized by the popular perceptions of Jagger and Richards, respectively.

The value of Cocksucker Blues for Stones scholars is that while it exposes the band and its coterie's sybaritic side, the performances suggest that the self-proclaimed "world's greatest rock and roll band" may have been exactly that. A few fleeting images and sounds help us grapple with the questions why and how.


*Sticky Fingers has never been a favorite