Lucinda Williams vs. Greil Marcus

http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/2004/features/gamespotting/073004/gamespotting_790screen013.jpg

Fruits of My Labor was one of the songs on the mix I made for my wedding. It's one of the only *romantic* songs that I actually find romantic. Yet another reason for me to say: fuck greil marcus and his corny schtick.

Lucinda Williams, "Love That Mystic Hammering" (New York Times Book Review, June 13) "I sure don't pretend to be no intellectual," says the adored tribute-album contributor in her piece on Bob Dylan lyrics. Her father was a college professor, but she spent her childhood out by the barn eating dirt, which is why her own songs ring so true today.

i lol'd

He can certainly be a bit harsh sometimes. I recall one Sleater-Kinney writeup where he was absolutely brutal toward Carrie Brownstein, basically saying she couldn't carry Corin Tucker's musical jockstrap . And that was for a band he liked

Not only did he like them, he named them the Best Band In America when Time magazine came calling back in 2001.

I saw him speak at a museum a few years ago, and in the Q & A portion of his presentation, he mentioned his current faves were the New Pornographers. I don't really follow his writing anymore, so I wonder if he ever let it be known that "Dan Bejar can fuck right off then" or something equally clever.

tbf marcus was a huge corin tucker fan pre-sleater-kinney.

seems like if you take the terms of Marcus' argument seriously, there's an easy solution: Baker and Williams can just each perform each other's music: problem solved!*

*yes, this means I think he has a dumb-ass argument

the title track of "Essence" was where LW began to lose me: all that overheaded production and raunchy diction--most unintentionally comic song about fucking in music history?

What Marcus said about The Roches was ridiculous, something like they were this "local" act of interest solely to Greenwich Village, who never should have even gotten a record contract. (As if Greil Marcus is some kind of industry sharpie or something). Not like they had this incredibly lucrative career but they did end up with loyal fans who would fill venues around the country to watch them well into the next decade. He's just so hateful when he talks about almost anybody who is openly middle class without pretending to be the revolution.

On "Wise Up": the scene was tailored around he song. I heard her perform it live in 1996..

marcus is such a profoundly weird writer that i kind of don't blame ppl for being completely put off by him -- he pretty much quit paying attention to the vast majority of popular music after, like, 1991, and has since pursued his own oddball assortment of interests to the exclusion of anything else. when he has popped his head out to comment on something it's often felt ludicrous, like when he picked an eminem single and raved that it was as worldshaking (etc etc) as 'like a rolling stone,' though it appeared to be the first hip-hop single he'd even noticed since 'mind playing tricks on me.' his book on the doors, oddly, felt like his freshest work in years: a band he'd barely written about before, and a band almost no one has ever written about in an interesting way. but somehow he managed to listen to them with new ears and write about things in their music that no one else -- to my knowledge -- ever has.

a band almost no one has ever written about in an interesting way

I don't agree with this.

I thought it was genuinely surprising he tackled the Doors--I had thought he didn't care much for them outside their debut. Alledgedly Marcus kept Richard Meltzer out of Stranded because, "He'd only pick a Doors album."

lol "Robert" Meltzer:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/l-a-woman-19710527

meltzer is not my idea of someone who writes about anything in an interesting way but i fully accept that i'm in the minority on that one.

Well, you've got Paul Williams, Greg Shaw, Barry Miles, Michael Lydon, Mick Farren, Al Aronowitz, Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs and others represented here, too:

http://www.rocksbackpages.com/artist.html?ArtistID=doors

maybe amend my comment to 'a band no one has written about interestingly in a while'? i'm honestly not a doors expert but i thought it was really refreshing to read someone talking about their music, the way the different players bounced off each other, and the way songs evolved through different shows -- rather than just talking about jim morrison and his lyrics and persona.

Her father was a college professor, but she spent her childhood out by the barn eating dirt, which is why her own songs ring so true today.

He hates Gillian Welch for the same reason, right? I sometimes forget people still make this argument.

xp re: Wise Up, it was in Jerry Maguire two years earlier so the scene was tailored to the song.

J.D.'s "profoundly weird" is a good description, I think--in a good way, for me. Even though I wish he had continued to write about Top 40 hits, he follows his obsessions, and that's just the way he is.

Even if "Wise Up" preceded Magnolia--and even if Aimee Mann was married to P.T. Anderson's music director--I still have to believe that Anderson happened to find a song that fit a scene he'd conceived independently. Love it or hate it, it's a key scene in an ambitious film, one that looks to me like it had been in his head for years. I find Marcus's "Given that a whole movie was based on her wisdom, though" a real stretch.

Love that Meltzer L.A. Woman review. It's in a Rolling Stone collection of reviews that was one of the first rock books I ever bought. "...signaling the return to Del Shannon from whence the Doors' mysterioso-hood was largely derived to begin with"--perfect connection.

"openly middle class without pretending to be the revolution."

seems from the excerpts in this thread that his problem with LW is the reverse - pretending to be the revolution without being openly middle class

i know that's not uncommon in the music world (artists from middle + upper class backgrounds playing up their hardships) but i can understand why someone might find it dishonest in a particularly grating way. i've never personally responded to LW's music but i don't have any kind of dislike of her.

Annoying but thorough profile of Williams by Bill Buford is essential reading in this beef:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2000/06/05/2000_06_05_050_TNY_LIBRY_000020984

I think of her as pretty similar to Neil Young, at least as a songwriter and performer: intuitive, not afraid of a simple rhyme or repetition, light on the reins with her muse (Car Wheels stories aside).

Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World and Car Wheels are all classics. After that, it gets a little rougher. Her singing verges on self-parody sometimes, like in her Elvis Costello duet There's A Story in Your Voice.

that New Yorker profile was largely responsible for her 1998 breakthrough.

I'd add Essence and World Without Tears to that list. An incredibly strong run of albums. West had a few good songs on it but the last two have been thin gruel indeed. Suspect this is b/c she found lurve.

that New Yorker profile was largely responsible for her 1998 breakthrough.

Delta Nights
by Bill Buford June 5, 2000

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2000/06/05/2000_06_05_050_TNY_LIBRY_000020984#ixzz20E9QOXDU

but it's from 2000
xp

"Changed the Locks" is one of the all-time greatest songs in human history so I tend to cut her a little slack

Even if "Wise Up" preceded Magnolia--and even if Aimee Mann was married to P.T. Anderson's music director--I still have to believe that Anderson happened to find a song that fit a scene he'd conceived independently. Love it or hate it, it's a key scene in an ambitious film, one that looks to me like it had been in his head for years. I find Marcus's "Given that a whole movie was based on her wisdom, though" a real stretch.

― clemenza, Tuesday, July 10, 2012 9:04 AM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark

don't know why we're still talking about this, but PTA and Mann were friends and his screenplay took direct inspiration from her at the time unreleased songs. this was all pretty well publicized when she got nominated for an Oscar for the movie and it revived/elevated her career.

huh wow – I thought I read the thing in '98. My mistake.

the idea of a new yorker profile breaking a musician's career big is kinda sketchy to begin with

xpost Yeah, PTA totally drew from Aimee Mann. There are direct quotes from her songs in some of the dialog ("Now that I've met you would you object to never seeing each other again" etc.). The whole PTA/Aimee Mann/Fiona Apple/Jon Brion/Michael Penn scene was really incestuous for a while.

I guess I'm wrong then. But it doesn't detract from the scene at all for me--the scene is what it is, regardless of where it came from. (Marcus seems to use the Mann connection to further discredit it.)

not if Lucinda Williams' core audience consists of NPR-New YOrker types

xxpost

"Changed the Locks" was on a 1988 mixtape I had, right after a song by Blues Traveller and right before "Own Two Feet" by the Jean-Paul Sartre Experience, that's where it fit into my life

I probably said this elsewhere but I'm like 75% sure I sat next to Lucinda Williams on a plane out of Denver or somewhere back in the 90s. She looked a lot like her, was crying a little and writing a letter that started like "well, here I go - paper to pen..." read an article about her that said she was doing a lot of writing letters around that time.

I've only heard like four songs of hers and they haven't made me want to chase down more.

lucinda definitely better than that olive oyl williams woman as far as demented voices go.

put aside yr musical opinion of aimee mann or lucinda williams. greil's disdain is personal. his attitude toward anita baker is incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaaY3slVuus

that said I borrowed his doors book from the library and enjoyed it more than anything he's written in years. insightful on the 60s/revivalism. made me listen to the doors w/fresh ears. also it's short

only thing by him I've read is Lipstick Traces which I think is an incredible book

the thing i remember most from that New Yorker profile was CD Wright questioning LW's right to write so many songs about Frank Stanford's suicide--basically saying "you meant nothing to him, little professor's daughter."

I have no idea who CD Wright is but wiki sez Lucinda Williams only wrote one song about Frank Stanford ("Pineola") which doesn't seem unreasonable to me if they knew each other.

pretty sure "Sweet Old World" is about him too

while we're on the subject, there's a christgau putdown of aimee mann that struck me as really gratuitous and gross, lemme see if i can find it

"Crescent City" from the eponymous album too, no?

idgaf about lucinda wms; marcus seems pretty otm but seeing the repetition of it is a little *steeples fingers* odd

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=aimee+mann

Lost in Space [SuperEgo, 2002]
I've never understood this ice queen thing myself. What's the big thrill--getting to see them bite their lip when they come? All I know is this poster girl for the DIY fallacy is still the ultimate NPR middlebrow, addressing disillusioned love songs to the biz the way Christians address illusioned ones to the Lord Jesus. For her fans, the news is that she's invested her profits in studio musicians. Takes talent to make that more boring than solo acoustic, no? C+

wtf dude

Not a C, a C PLUS.

he is by far the most supportive fan i have in the world so i can't say anything bad about the guy. and one of these days i will read one of his books. i promise. maybe the doors one. or the van morrison one. oh wait chuck. chuck is my number one fan. god bless him. then old man marcus.

but yeah the anita baker quote is dumb.

i've been burned by xgau way more often than marcus over the years. i've always like xgau as a writer but i don't trust his ear at all.

Thoughtful, as always.

I mean I kinda think a male critic joking (“joking”) he wishes Joe meek were around the murder a female artist for the crime of a poorly performed cover song (his opinion) is at a minimum creepy. Evidence to the contrary is proof of little, christgau didn’t call every female rock band sluts either but that maybe didn’t make the runaways feel any better.

it's such a relief that they're on the way out

to be replaced by AI-generated content and know-nothing scab horseshit like the recent Shorter memorial, no doubt

I was chastised the other day for taking some tweet about the Sight & Sound poll literally--just internet hyperbole, you know. So: that's okay today, but not with any of these guys?

I dunno about that argument. But I think if that was a one-off comment about LW by GM, it would be weird enough. But tied in with his decades-long obsession with her, it’s something more.

More or less starts here:

Pretend you have a ballot for the 2022 edition of Sight & Sound's top 10 movies of all time list

Anyway, we'll have to agree to disagree here. I like your posts a lot, Omar, and you're not someone I want to argue with.

It’s all good, clem - but I do reserve the right to revive it if he reviews her memoir by wishing she’d take a time machine directly to the lower decks of the titanic.

Like I said initially, I'm guessing he'll devour the book in one sitting so he can devour it.

Wonder how he found the spin doctors' cover of "have you ever seen the rain?"

He was driving and had to pull over so he could destroy his car radio, IIRC.

Gave him a lump in his throat

I interpreted the comment that Joe Meek would "deal with this" by communicating with the spirit of Mississippi John Hurt, as he did with Buddy Holly, who would back Greil's opinion of Lucinda's cover version.

That does seem the more likely read.

https://i.gifer.com/3COd.gif