The Critical Aspiration

It seems to me when I do a blog spot of top ten songs or albums of note, I don't get much comment in terms of praising certain bands or music but when I end up making a casual observation about something subpar, the inbox gets flooded up with counterpoint that I missed the point.  Mention that Carrie Underwood is a great singer and the twitter praises is there but if I call her Big Mouth then the nation comes back en masses and saying that I don't know shit, your blog suck and whatever comes to mind.

Last week's top ten featured me throwing a few observations about a certain band and I got back a comment saying that I missed the point and so on and that you can't rewrite music history and music will live on even after the critic and his blogs is long gone since hardly anybody reads them.  In a perfect world, every album would be a classic A plus and there would be no crap on the radio but sadly that's not the way of the world operates.

Basically it's not my job to rewrite music history but rather to rediscover things that I missed over the years and got the chance to hear it from the pawnshop cd's and albums that I have found over the years.  Music has been around for over 100 years in recorded format and even somethings from the beginning probably suck too.  Don't ask me what they are for I have yet to hear them.

Even the classic rock era has had some stinkers along the way and there are some things I enjoy listening to that critics can't stand and vice versa.  Today's critics have no use for Foghat or The Godz or Nazareth.  I have no use for Kid A,  Jessie J, Limp Bizkit and Sheryl Crow and while it would be easier to slam the hell out of each and every one that has made a poopy platter.   I have listen to a few too many shit discs and to this day King Of Kings is pure crap, or Train's Save Me San Francisco is just as worse hearing KDAT play Hey Soul Sister day by bay.  Or Sheryl Crow's First Cut Is The Deepest.  I'm sure I can gather big ratings by slamming crappy music and get bigger ratings and more hate comments to boot but like the first time I did the Top Ten is to point out of the feeling I was getting when I put a song on the top ten.

And of course Pure Prairie League was the first song of last week and I figured it would be a good lead track with Two Lane Highway, their top 40 hit from 1975.  The comment at hand figured that I hated the group and figured that I would slam them for their later material and there lies the rub.  The first PPL albums are classic and remain a good listen, Bustin Out the better of the three.  If I didn't like PPL, Two Lane Highway wouldn't be on the list, I played it many times on 45 and finally getting the album all these years reminded me they were good.  Even in 1980 when I'm Almost Ready came out, it did interest me to buy the album Firin' Up and to my dismay I found it too MOR and too mellow for me to keep it in my collection.  But Rolling Stone Review didn't take too kindly to them in the first edition judging by the two stars that most of the albums got, and All Music followed the same two star rating for anything after Two Lane Highway although Firin Up got two and half stars.  Robert Christgau hated them, threw them in the Meltdown section and never looked back.  But then again Christgau has never been much into country harmonies of PPL or The Eagles or Poco.  In some way PPL needs a complete best of overview that has both the RCA and Casablanca years and I'm sure somebody out there could compile a decent overview.  Till then you have Bustin Out and the uneven best ofs that RCA and Mercury Nashville has out and you will have to make do, unless you find the out of print S/T or Two Lane Highway under five bucks, on CD or LP.

Ever since the corporate world hacks bought out the labels from music loving heads of labels, the bean counters do not preach good music anymore, it's hits NOW or you're off the label.  It's not a fun time for the music lover to go find new music to listen to, most if not all new albums of this past century aren't that memorable and enough for the masses for forget Pink Floyd or Led Zep or The Beatles or Elvis, no matter how much Kid A has saved your Pitchfork critic's life, they might like it or put it in their top of the century but for the aging baby boomers, it does nothing.

To be a critic is that I pay for the music that I listen to or put on the top ten and I think if it's a waste of money then it's my right to denounce it, after all that's an hour of your life you won't get back or the 10 bucks you paid for the cd (or less or more).  It's would be easier just to post a song and say it sucks without reason and then move on to another suck song.  To which The Top Ten Of The Week is supposed to promote the songs that I enjoy listening while making a casual observation of how later stuff was snoozers and yes Firin' Up I actually fell asleep on the second side of the LP.  Perhaps I should rephase it by calling a great classic album to fall asleep too, would that work?  Probably not but at least I'll be getting comments worth posting and arguing about instead of the porn spam that seems to grown in numbers.

It's kinda like of that old Starclub review that I did a few years ago on Amazon to which 1 out of 5 readers thought it didn't help them in buying it. First song started out great, the second song was good and the rest just didn't do anything for me and most of the songs  I just fastforward it to the next.  There's a reason why it went to the dollar bins or penny section at Amazon.Com, if it was a classic album it would be held in a higher regard.  But the majority of folk out there thought it sucked to their ears too.  Or the infamous King Of Kings cd that Geffen issued in 1993 thereabouts.  It was awful, a waste of time and I couldn't hear anything that moved me to play it again.  And the kiss of death for a cd is when I start fastforwarding after the second song. I recall buying Pariah's To Mock A Killingbird, a album so bad, that after the third song, I went to the Salvation Army and stuck it in the cd bins and left the place.   Good music is timeless but bad music is a headache and a lesson learned not to buy crap music.  And the older I get the less time I have for bad music. Time is the most important part of your life and mine.  So much music and so little time even when you go past fifty that you have less time to waste on crap music.

And good music is in the mind and ears of the beholder.  Dark Side Of The Moon is a classic album for the mass appeal but for myself I have no use for it, nor Kid A by Radiohead.  After all classic and modern rock plays Dark Side on a regular basis.  What may be classic to me may not to you with all the obscure stuff that I find in the dollar bins.  Had I never opened up my mind and ears to all the music that i was missing twenty years ago I would have never discovered Blue Rodeo or Blue Mountain or Peter Himmelman or Dash Rip Rock.  I would have just stuck my head in the sand and played only the albums that I grew up listening to in high school.

So, if I comment on a song and say that later stuff from a certain band was a snoozer, it's a matter of opinion and the world will be here tomorrow even after saying such stuff.  Vince Gill isn't losing sleep over that.

Unless it was him incognito....

APRIL FOOL!

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