How on earth does Michael Azzerrad’s surreally bland music criticism website The Talkhouse survive? The one where they get musicians to review music. I write more in a day by myself than they post in a week. I was just trolling for content there, in the wake of their big big big time get (in my circles any way) Lou Reed reviews Kanye West post. Slim pickings indeed.
Lou isn’t a rock critic, though he, hardly surprisingly, has excellent ears.Steve Crawford got it right when he said: “Talk about flipping the script. Have we reached the point in human history where Lou Reed now wants to be Lester Bangs?” I suppose so but Reed is no Bangs. Because Reed doesn’t want to dig under the surface, he claims there is nothing under the surface. Because he doesn’t like people analyzing him, he won’t analyze Kweezy. And although I find this fascinating, I don’t necessarily believe him: “When I did Metal Machine Music, New York Times critic John Rockwell said, “This is really challenging.” I never thought of it like that. I thought of it like, “Wow, if you like guitars, this is pure guitar, from beginning to end, in all its variations. And you’re not stuck to one beat.” That’s what I thought. Not, “I’m going to challenge you to listen to something I made.”
Pure feedback isn’t pure guitar and I don’t think Reed thought it was.
But it took me back to The Talkhouse, which I found essentially, not even disappointing; I found it not really there at all. The concept, musicians review other musicians, would be much better if there was some there there. There is something so completely lazy about the website. I make no great claims for rock nyc, not even when compared with the Talkhouse or any other website except for one claim: we’re not lazy. Helen and I insure that there is new articles to read 7 days a week , always, we never even take a holiday off.
The week of June 24th, they gave their readers 5 album reviews, one new forum and one feature. That’s amazing. How can they make a living like that? What are they doing. I mean, what do they do all day long? Play solitaire? Hassle rock stars for copy. Discuss the state of rock and roll criticism, something they apparently know exceedingly little about.