Another (Rock) Blog Bites the Dust

Yesterday the news came that the music section of an online entertainment mag I've been writing for since 2005 was going to be permanently disabled. Yep, we rock critics weren't bringing in the readers. I can't say I was surprised. In today's big fun world of Everything Internet, rock criticism seems almost archaic. The question is does anyone really care in general?

Today's modern popular music has become such a generic commodity that there's really no reason to report on it at length. Not to say it's all bad. Hell, I can't resist Katy Perry most days. The gal cranks out some legitimately catchy stuff. But with the majority of the Top 40 being constantly fucked by an Auto-Tune program with no protection, what difference does it make if I, or countless other critics bother to write it up and score it?

I started my music critic career in 2000. By 2001, I was writing for a couple of popular online music mags and running my own. It was fun and it felt necessary. I got to enjoy a hell of a lot of cool music I would have never heard otherwise, and became fast friends with a lot of the groups and artists I championed. I even got to talk to some of my all-time heroes such as Maureen Tucker, Ralph Steadman, Bruce Campbell and the like. This was before everyone and his brother was blogging about music (like I'm doing right here), and there was still a spot where you could stand out amongst the crowd.

My old bible.

But times change and tastes shift and the music business shot itself in both feet with not knowing how to adapt to the mp3 revolution. iPods and mp3 players took prominence as the way to listen to music and suddenly we're back pre-Beatles time when the single ruled the airwaves and not the album. Yeah, the '70s have long been over, kids. I couldn't even tell you the last time I just sat down and listened to some new album and didn't feel my finger itching to hit the "next" button to speed up the process. When I was younger, I would have sat down and listened to every damn song intently. I still do with old albums. But new stuff? It's like I've gone back to when I was getting a two-dollar a week allowance as a kid and buying whatever awesome 45 I had to have.

The Internet has also proven that the glory days of rock criticism are pretty much D.O.A. My biggest influence before I got into doing the gig was the original Rolling Stone Record Guide with the red cover put out in the '70s. There were tons of hilarious reviews in it for classic albums, often summed up in one or two tossed-off sentences. It's funny how decades and newer writers can make a difference. Hell, in that book The Beatles' Let it Be got the rating it actually deserved. Now everyone tends to give it four or five stars. Why? Just because it's a Beatles album, that's why.

But back when people actually gave a shit to get their music info from the likes of Rolling Stone, Creem, and later on in Spin and Q, you could count on some decent-to-great reviewing. These days we're so programmed into having our music fix dialed in at the push of a button that reading a review about it seems more of an afterthought. It's the whole "adapt or die" conundrum. And do I even care what some dude on the Internet thinks about the latest song or disc I may or may not be enjoying? Not anymore.

This man would still give a shit.

Music reviewing has, by and large, become robotic and lazy. We're getting far enough away from "the classics" these days that it's all the easier to just shit out the thoughts and claim the paycheck (if there happens to be one). But that's OK by me. I don't care if I ever read another book on '60s rock, either. It's been done, it's been said, and there's not very much to discuss when it comes to the grooves of the day. Getting caught up in celeb's trash a-la Britney Spears hardly has anything to do with any music. Watching U2 or Kanye West climb the charts with their latest offering as expected is nothing worth talking about anymore.

Music sales are way down. Old farts like me can't be appeased because the labels only want to cater to zit-faced kids who move on to whatever weekly next big thing they are offered. So we sit around and spin our old crap that we grew up on, saying the same old shit like, "Music nowadays is just garbage. They don't play their instruments at all, and have other people write their songs!" Which is funny, because the generation before mine was saying the exact same thing when their favorites were old as well.

But yeah, I place more value in a movie or video game review than I do in one for music. I don't care how great the latest and greatest might be, just like some kid doesn't give a crap about how much I enjoy Trout Mask Replica. Like a record spinning backwards, we have moved almost completely away from the center and off the map entirely. Yet it might all be for the good. Seeking out new frontiers might just be what we all need.

Postscript:  I suppose I should clarify that what I'm talking about being "over" here is writing and reading current album reviews.  Writing and discussing music the way I do on this blog is something I still very much enjoy, obviously.  But the whole mechanism of breaking an album down per song and then ascribing it a number of stars or whatever holds no meaning for me anymore.