Rick Moody defends Gentle Giant

The material Moody addresses isn't for everyone: It tilts toward rock and the avant-garde; it highlights New York (where Moody lives); it is mostly — save some heartfelt but brief digressions into jazz and hip-hop, and cursory name-checking of "world music" greats — white. It has biases: Moody can't abide the music of the 1980s; he explains his revulsion — at length — in the final essay, a florid polemic titled "Europe, Forsake Your Drum Machines!"

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/21/148769433/riffs-on-riffs-rick-moodys-adventures-in-listening

Austin Chronicle: You obviously grew up in a musical era before iPods. Is the Cloud/Spotify good and why does new vinyl cost so much now?

Rick Moody: I am not interested in Spotify at all. I am slightly irritated whenever someone whips out their phone and tries to impress me with the obviousness of their popular music interests on Spotify. I like owning music, and by owning it I mean being able to stroll across the room and look at the package, and remove the little musical object from the sleeve and carry it back to the playback device.

I like albums. (And I think vinyl is expensive now because the prints runs are small.) I still love vinyl, but I don't like vinyl fetishism. It is too collector-oriented. Collectors are suspect, according to the psychoanalytic argument which is well-traveled at this point. The only argument for iTunes that I can come up with is that it is how regular people play music now, and that's worth bearing in mind. It's good to know what the people like.

I am slightly irritated whenever someone whips out their phone and tries to impress me with the obviousness of their popular music interests on Spotify.
this happens to me ALL THE TIME.
ugh. i actually like a few of this guy's books, but i'm not going to read these essays.

no way am i listening to this but comments are worth a lol

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/2012/mar/19/literary-listening-rick-moody/

a florid polemic titled "Europe, Forsake Your Drum Machines!"

kill me now

yeah I heard that show, bleh

dude does have pretty good taste otherwise though as much as I hate to admit it

Nice to see someone take a stand for old-fashioned pop values. Too bad it couldn't help him with his alcoholism.

"It's good to know what the people like"

-- NPR's mission statement

Those articles are kind of depressing. It's not that the music is bad, it's just not my thing, especially the "no drum machines" bit. However, it made me want to read his books! Not often a novelist comments about music.

I want to say that "strolling across the room" to get your CD is a rockist act, but it's probably not.

what about strolling across the room to activate iTunes

Or walking across the room to fix your WiFi so Spotify will work?

Well he kind of undercuts his own argument about being able to walk across the room to select a physical media from a collection when he says, "collectors are suspect".

I actually had a WiFi problem until today that was seriously undercutting my music appreciation Maybe RM is right.

Why is CD collecting not "collecting"? Old vinyl is expensive nowadays...30-40 for a decent LP. But collector CDs can cost over $100!

What in the shit.

'Narcissistic, hackneyed pap' = 'I have no articulate criticism of this music'

what a weirdo:

These sentences do constitute a provocation, but, even now, I don’t shrink from the sense of them. I still dislike this music passionately.

First, it is alleged that I am a misogynist for the “marrying up” line, with the particular charge being that I wouldn’t say this about a male artist. I would, however, say this about a male artist, so let me correct that misperception now: Larry Fortensky married up, David Gest married up, Tim McGraw married up. And even the president of the United States has admitted to “marrying up,” I believe, in referring to himself. There has also recently been a Redbook article on the subject of “marrying up.”

I will write about the structural similarities between the careers of P. Diddy and Taylor Swift.

^yeah both started as young up and comers in the record labels, quickly hitched their wagon to one of the greatest rappers of their generation, both watched on as their friend became and icon and was tragically killed in a driveby shooting

I am glad they have music they love, even if I believe they will be bored of her ultimately, just as I once was happy about the Bay City Rollers, or Sweet, or Alice Cooper, or, differently, Kiss, even though I recognized that music was kitsch.

you fuck

from comments:

You are not shocked in the least. You expected a backlash, you wanted a backlash, so you could parley another article out of a topic and hear your own self talk.

OTM

This guy is giving Gentle Giant fans (all six of them) a bad name

A response:

http://www.maura.com/472/post-menopausal-antiquing-or-please-rick-moody-just-quit-it

The other thing is can't really take the main lead singer's grating voice. Kerry Minnear, the keyboardist and other lead singer, had more tolerable vocals, but at his worst sounds like an anemic choirboy.

Man, this is exactly what I think! Derek Shulman sounds like a de-warbled Roger Chapman, can't improve on 'grating' as a description but I'd add ugly. Keyboard player sounds like a Peter Hammill... as a 7 year old, from Wikipedia:

Minnear did not sing lead vocals at live concerts, because of his inability to support and project his voice at a level suitable for live amplification

... phew, rock 'n' roll or what? Big brother Phil had the best voice but he was only with them for a few albums.