Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Hey boys....finally catching up on some of the last few weeks' blogs. And it's been pretty quiet out there. However, I am laughing out loud at the critical exchange you referenced on the Band, Derek, particularly the oh-so irreverent Guardian review. Fucking hilarious, and it must have been a ton of fun to blast to smithereens one of the hallowed bands of the past forty years.....and let's face it, he has a point about the Band, they were over-earnest, they did sing a lot of shit about Southern culture, the songs did go on and on sometimes......but their best songs, and there are a significant number of them (including the apparently execrable The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down) are absolutely timeless and transcendent (there it is, I called them transcendent).

And unless Mr. Gloomy Gus reviewer is prepared to slag all blue-eyed soul artists (Little Feat, Delany and Bonnie, Van Morrison, et al), and/or all blues-folk-country cross-overs (Young, Dylan, Grateful Dead, etc), because apparently the music has no right to eXIST..... well then, buddy, just shut your mouth, because the Band were pretty fucking special. Sorry, got a bit worked up there.

On that note (I'm rolling now), I've just thought of a new game, I'll call it Chesterfield Critic. The appointed CC (me, for now), chooses a few bands, preferrably who have few critical naysayers, and, inspired by Guardian boy, turns a wholly negative lens on their output, and tries to write critical dross from that perspective to stump the panel....i.e., guess which bands I'm referring to:

Band # 1 - self-important political posers unable to stick to a musical genre for more than 6 months who missed the zeitgeist of 19?0's (city name)__ by a country mile and ultimately dissolved in an embarassing mulch of self-parodying commercial stridency.

Band # 2 - utterly unremarkable early noise-poppers whose lack of ear for melody was only outdone by their boring sparse arrangements and annoyingly smug tongue-in-cheek lyrics and vocal delivery.... sometimes, somehow, credited with inspiring the (God help us) grunge movement.

Band # 3 - regrettable direction-setters of pop whose inexplicable influence still has not run its course despite forty years of hard slogging - simple pentatonic harmonies over top of naive (my three-year old has more complex thoughts) lyrics never did consititute genius and even less so today. Increasingly flaccid arrangements towards the end of their blissfully short career dragged them down even further and many if not all of their songs are entirely cringeable today.

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