Rock’n’Roll middle School is a piece on Meltzer and Marcus and rockcrit in general which starts well and then just seems to tail off halfway, its story only started and its questions unanswered. It points out, quite reasonably, that all the recent press re. Meltzer has left unanswered the man’s central contention that rock criticism is a whore, dead dog, &c. It then promises to answer that contention. It then doesn’t, or at least hedges its bets prettily enough to win several topiary awards. I was directed to this by the music weblog at vitaminic, which I’d like even if it wasn’t so flattering to me.
It linked to me vis-a-vis yesterday’s piece on the Radiohead thing, which has generated some really interesting correspondence (I’m not going to have time to answer anything but the most trivial e-mails until Sunday, I’m warning now!) and raised a lot of spin-off issues too (see the forum for more) I think I agree with Stevie that I went too far in yesterday’s screed, but I’m still undecided.