{"id":21304,"date":"2014-03-20T09:03:31","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T13:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=21304"},"modified":"2014-03-20T09:04:37","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T13:04:37","slug":"lifestyles-of-the-rock-and-rollers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/lifestyles-of-the-rock-and-rollers\/","title":{"rendered":"Lifestyles of the Rock and Rollers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Rolling Stones.<\/p><\/div>\n

This piece on the sorry state of modern rock criticism<\/a> is flying around social media.<\/p>\n

Imagine, for a moment, football commentators who refuse to explain formations and plays. Or a TV cooking show that never mentions the ingredients. Or an expert on cars who refuses to look under the hood of an automobile.<\/p>\n

These examples may sound implausible, perhaps ridiculous. But something comparable is happening in the field of music journalism. One can read through a stack of music magazines and never find any in-depth discussion of music.\u00a0Technical knowledge of the art form has disappeared from its discourse. In short, music criticism has turned into lifestyle reporting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As one prone to geezerism, there are some things I agree with here – and I definitely feel this trend has gotten worse over the last 10 years – but how much better was it ever? In the heyday of Rolling Stone<\/em> magazine, weren’t reviews centered around the revolutionary, youth-culture appeal of artists? Did anyone really take time to break down the harmonic structure of Jefferson Airplane<\/strong>, or were they described in terms of how “radical” and “groovy,” or whatever, their latest record was?<\/p>\n

What was Janis Joplin<\/strong> without photos of her stoned silly and wrapped in a feather boa? What were the ’70s Rolling Stones without them slumped around at odd angles, with a visible bottle of Jack Daniels and reports of Mick dashing off with Margaret Trudeau? The critics the writer of this piece cites from his glorious, high-brow youth were primarily jazz and classical critics. I don’t think criticism in those genres is at issue. What’s really going on here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This piece on the sorry state of modern rock criticism is flying around social media. Imagine, for a moment, football commentators who refuse to explain formations and plays. Or a TV cooking show that never mentions the ingredients. Or an expert on cars who refuses to look under the hood of an automobile. These examples […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21304"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}