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The Afterword #97: The Critic-cast

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Twang welcomes Blue Boy, Chiz and Eddie G to the pod for a ramble around the world of criticism taking in masters of the genre such as CSM, Nick Kent and Ian McDonald through Amazon reviews, Q, The Word, Afterword reviews and where the team have been on the receiving end (or otherwise) of the attentions of Grub Street.



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  3. Must dig out my copy of Awopbopaloobo(etc) for another look. As regards My White Bicycle, I never buy anyone a book I wouldn’t want to read myself, so I got it for my brother in law for his birthday. He subsequently died.
    I’m too much of a gentleman to broach the subject with his widow.

  4. Thanks for an interesting hour – still painting the sunroom so it was nice to have some old geezers waffling away in the corner.
    I see Chiz has mellowed his stance on “sponsored” reviews on here but I was somewhat surprised there was no mention of the guy nobody would touch with a……

      • An in-depth secret investigation reveals you are Wrong. There’s more of the buggers than ever if you look closely. There’s an upswell of popular opinion (an upswell admittedly confined to The Languedoc) that demands each of these adverts should have a “Sponsored By” banner prominently displayed at the top

    • In the interest of informative balance it’s worth pointing out that Mod Towers is inundated with PR requests to review/feature new releases and re-releases to the tune of 5 or 6 a week, every week.

      99.9% of these are deleted unanswered.

          • You have indeed given up. You refuse 99.9% of all record company requests to review/feature particular albums but somehow you think it’s ok/fair to allow those self same record companies to use one of our members to review/feature particular albums either through his own posts or by him inviting other Afterworders to do the deed for him.
            I will repeat – almost all the new music I listen to these days is because of recommendations posted on here. I love a good review but that review , at least on this forum and at least for me, should be borne out of a true passion and not just because a record company has found a willing outlet. This is a pub not a music magazine.

            • How do you know they came through a record company and their willing stooge? I’ve reviewed plenty of things because I bought them and wanted to write about it, films etc too. You seen determined to claim bad intent where I don’t think there is any.

              • I love unbiased reviews, I really do, there are some fine writers on here. But it is very easy to spot the “sponsored” ones, you just have to look.
                However, no more flogging of a horse that now lies in the glue factory

                • Just for you, Lodey, I’m going to review Golf Sale by The Morning People. You can’t claim any kind of underhand brown-envelope tactics because it was never released, so nobody can buy it.

                  • It wasn’t offensive the previous 3,000 times he said it?

                    BTW “I’ll stop now, I’m flogging a dead horse” is the equivalent of Boris Johnson clambering out of yet another bed and saying “That’s it, I’m not fathering any more illegitimate children, it’s the straight and narrow for me” etc.

                    What I really crave on here is somebody giving something a right ploatin’. You know, the real foam-flecked it’s-a-cosmic-injustice-that-this-even-exists type of review.

                    Imagine Steven Wells reviewing a collaboration between Sting and the Mumfords.

                    • This is actually the reason that I don’t do ‘blogger takeover’ any more. I don’t have the vocabulary to express how shite I think some things are; things that are loved by others on here. e.g. –

                      Killing Eve. Absolute drivel.
                      Fleabag. Only managed 3 episodes. Vile.
                      Van Morrison’s latest. 1/10, and I am being generous.

                      Phew!

                    • On this whole question of bias, and also the panning of a famous artist, I would like to recall the review of Keef’s Crosseyed Heart that someone did here — I can’t remember who. Maybe someone should dig it out as an instructive example.

                      I was offended by that, not just because I like the album — it does have some really outstanding tracks alongside some mediocre ones — but because almost all of it read as an expression of dislike towards Keith himself, and almost none of it about the music on the album. There was even a quite unjustified claim of plagiarism.

                      Now that is the type of biased panning that I personally find unacceptable.

                      BTW the duet with Nora Jones on Illusion is fantastic as is the cover of Goodnight Irene and also some of the raunchier rockish numbers. Just setting that record straight and showing how a review like that can rankle enduringly!

            • I’m loathe to reopen this debate as we’ve already had it on a number of occasions, too many really, and I thought the overwhelming consensus (bar two members) was that people were perfectly happy with the way things are as regards reviews. You don’t seem to appreciate that people enjoy writing reviews and I get many requests from members wanting to do them, far more than are available. Your constant moaning is a slap in the face for people who, unlike you, put in the time and effort to write them.
              I’ve found that all ‘pubs’ usually have a door marked exit which patrons are able to use if they don’t like it there.

              • Stops belt before horse goes into glue pot. Pushes said dead horse to its feet ( no mean task let me tell you) and mounts up.
                I only brought this topic up again because as I said at the top I was surprised there was no mention of sponsored reviews in the podcast. As I also said above this surprise is almost certainly confined to one currently Languishing in the Languedoc. I have never used the word “biased”, I love biased reviews. God preserve us all from bland reviews. Most of the sponsored reviews on here are jolly well written ( there was one on The Fall 84cd boxset I thought was particularly good), it’s the sponsored bit me, myself and I objects to.
                Collapse of horse

                • I think your idea of sponsored is somewhat stuck in aspic. If you’re thinking free promo records with a bag of charlie and a brown envelope stuffed with used tenners, you’re somewhat out of date.

                  I’ve done a couple of reviews on here. They’ve all been online streams which is an awful way to listen to music. I’d happily pay to listen to them properly on vinyl or CD. In fact, in every case, I have done.

                  • Very true, Steve. These days I hear that music journalists don’t even get a copy of the album they are reviewing

                    Back in the day, the Duke and I had a pretty good idea of the second hand record shops where the gentlepersons of the press would offload their review copies. This meant one could pick up some hot off the press Cds the very week they were released.

                    Personally, I feel very nostalgic for the days of brown envelopes, shameless floozies, megalomaniac managers and jaundiced journos with friends in all the wrong places.

                    • Don’t know about other labels but EMI started doing in house listening sessions around 2005 for a couple of their their biggest artists to try and prevent pre release piracy. Journalists were invited to listen on headphones in the Brook Green building and couldn’t take physical product away with them.

                • Christ on a bike. They are not sponsored. Not adverts. A free stream is made available before the formal release date. No guidelines on what to write, no editrorial review. Just listen and say write what you like.

                  • Unless you don’t like it. You’d think given the material offered there’d be more negative reviews. At least those would be worth reading

                    • Could it be that Mr. Bargepole is simply in the habit of turning down offers to review what he really doesn’t want to soil his ears with?
                      I can think of plenty of artists I just don’t want to listen to, let alone go to the trouble of doing it and then reviewing their stuff.
                      As Lodey says above, we’re not a music magazine.
                      If we were you’d be obliged to turn in reviews of the albums you are assigned, because it would be your job to do so.

                    • That’s the perfect argument for only writing reviews of stuff you like. Genuine recommendations are great, and most convincing when they come from someone who doesn’t regularly churn out the obligatory 300 words about releases they really don’t care very much about. “This is out this week” is more suited to music magazines I think.

                      As I said in the podcast, I like good reviews, and I like bad reviews, because both have heart, or humour, or some sense of a connection between the writer and the music. If anyone here has every thought ‘I need to review that thing I’ve never heard for the Afterword,” they don’t.

                    • See, once again I’m afloat on a boat full of penguins, Moose is making no sense whatsoever (Nurse, where is the like heavy stuff) and it’s Thursday night and I am watching The Morning Show (talking of drugs this is like mainline). Must be time for Tiggs to review something or other. Calling Gary, Gary where are you, did you get the olives?

                    • Personally, I’m happy to review anything. However, I suspect Barge assumes most Afterworders do it for pleasure and asks people according to their tastes as he understands them. Hence, the inclination towards positivity. There may even be some albums everyone refuses. I can’t be certain, though.

                    • I’ve only done one review at @bargepole s request and exactly as Tiggs suggests he clearly asked me to do it because it was an artist he knew I care about and that I’d be interested. It was Van’s new one – sorry @bigsteviecook

                  • Or, in my case, a pdf of a book about my favourite band, Wilco, which I reviewed earlier this autumn and gave a decidedly lukewarm report because it disappointed me. I also clearly stated that it had been given to me via Bargepole in a pdf format. I wanted to like it (because: Wilco) but when I didn’t it never occured to me to give it a glowing review because it was a freebie, and I don’t think anyone else here would either.
                    As long as it’s clearly stated under what circumstances you are reviewing something on the blog I don’t think it’s a problem. Then, if you’re suspicious of how much of the endorsement depends on the writer’s gratitude vs. their honest opinion, you can opt to ignore it.
                    Reviews of every kind are interesting to read, IMO, even albums by artists I wouldn’t dream of listening to. If nothing else, they often teach me something I didn’t already know.

                  • Well, if Bargie was to invite ME to review the latest Van, I’d politely say “No thankyou” because I have no interest in hearing any more Van than I’ve heard already. If he’d invited me to review that recent Gong box I’d probably have accepted. Invited to review a box set of Half Man – Half Biscuit I’d have said “Fuck no!” because I cannot abide them and wouldn’t want to torture my ears.

                    As you said yourself, way up there ⇑ this is a pub not a music magazine.
                    Why would you expect people who are not doing it for a living to WANT to write reviews of records they disliked?
                    This is not the BBC. We don’t have a duty of balance here, when it comes to reviews.

                    • Surely it’s obvious that if there is a review of a band available then I’ll offer to someone who is a fan and would like to hear it, rather than a non-fan for whom it would be torture – why would they want to spend their precious free time listening to and writing about something they’re not interested in?

                    • Twas I that was given the task to review the Gong box set and great enjoyment was had. However the Butterfly Ball that I reviewed because I liked the art work back in the day, I thought was tedious to a t. But I forced myself to listen to it all before reviewing.
                      The Gong review seemed to become a post on what was prog or not.

                  • I like reviews from people who love the artist in question and ones from people who don’t know their work at all. With the former you get an understanding of where it sits in the context of the artist’s, if you will, oeuvre. With the latter you get a completely fresh take unencumbered by fore knowledge or prejudice one way or t’other. I’ve enjoyed both types of review here. The review I mention in the pod which I did of the Yes album was an example of the latter but it was significantly enhanced by some of the comments which followed it from people who knew it, and knew what they were talking about, much more than I did.

              • I’d like to thank you, Bargepole, for giving me an interesting, stimulating year.

                You’ve got a good gang going on the reviews these days, lots of different perspectives and different writing styles. I wouldn’t describe any of them as ‘sponsored’. The Nights In section is thriving, largely thanks to you.

                Keep up the good work.

                😍😍😍

  5. A stimulating listen, thanks chaps! The Nick Cohn book was the first rock music book I ever read, probably the first rock music book ever written in many ways. I remember it as really challenging me as a reader (on the Beatles, for instance), but it struck a chord with me and led me to write an article in the student mag saying similar things. No one was listening to old music then, but it was the start of people looking back at music ‘history’ which we had never done before.

  6. Mine was the two Age of Rock books, culled mostly from early Rolling Stones and Creems, with a few hilairious “straight” pieces thrown in for balance about how the Fabs were Soviet agaents (Back in the USSR is not ironic it seems). Great photography too.

    Charlie Gillett’s The Sound of the City is seminal, even if his contention that nobody white has done anything worthwhile since 1963 is a bit precious.

  7. Spot on with “Awopbopaloobamalopbamboo”, one of the first serious “rock” books but with tons of humour…another of Ian McDonald’s books “The Peoples Music” a collection of essays is also superb. Also you mentioned Bob Dylans books. I really enjoyed Toby Thompson’s “Positively Main Street”, which covers young Bobby growing up in Hibbing, its a lovely book…Hey and lets not forget “Chronicles”

    • That sounds a great Dylan recommendation, thank you. One of my favourite Dylan books is The Dylanologists by David Kinney in which he tracks down a whole series of Dylan obsessives. But my problem isn’t with books like that; it’s the ones that attempt critical analysis that I find deeply flawed. Right now I’m struggling through one, ‘Why Dylan matters’ by Richard E Thomas. The special pleading of the title should be enough of a warning. And sure enough, it’s another serious academic checking his critical faculties at the door to fanboy over Bob.

    • I think I’m right in saying that Nik Cohn was also responsible for the short story which inspired ‘Saturday Night Fever’.

      My favourite paragraph in ‘Awopbopa…’ is the one which goes-

      “In the end, the way I like it best, pop is teenage property and it mirrors everything that happens to teenagers in this time, in this American twentieth century. It’s about clothes and cars and dancing, it’s about parents and high-school and being tied and breaking loose, it is about getting sex and getting rich and getting old, it’s about America, it’s about cities and noise. Get right down to it, it is all about Coca-Cola.”

      I don’t think I’ve ever read a better definition of the form.

        • I think the last sentence is the best. It makes a mockery of any serious form of definition of an essentially ephemeral and fleeting genre which, for Cohn, was the only kind of pop music worth contemplating. And it’s funny. Iconoclastic.

          I think Morrissey must have read this book as a kid too and based an entire interview style on it.

          • I actually don’t think that the best of pop music is as ephemeral as is sometimes made out. I can look back at the sixties, for example, and distinguish quite clearly between those tracks that still give me pleasure and those that definitely don’t.

            • It was thought to be ephemeral, and it was supposed to be, then in the sixties they started making works of art that would endure. Nik Cohn’s definition is worthwhile though, as a way of conveying what’s so great about pop and still is, but it’s not the whole story, clearly.

              • True. And Nik Cohn hated the kind of pop that aspired to the condition of art. His chapter on the Beatles exemplifies this- he much preferred the raucous din of the Stones because, for him, rock and roll was a beautiful noise and not much more. I sometimes feel like that. Sometimes I’m in a Stooges frame of mind but, at others, I need another blast of ‘Close to the Edge’.

                The book was written towards the end of the sixties so he would have no idea how things would develop. If he hasn’t written a sequel then he should. He would have loved the Pistols. And Mozzer…

              • Oh this is not at all what I was getting at. The ‘great art’ stuff is precisely what has not endured that well. For me the paradigm case is Sgt Pepper’s, but add your own notorious examples.

                No, the enduring stuff is Johnny B Goode, The Locomotion, Dancing in the Street, Green Onions, Proud Mary, and any number of early Beatles and Stones singles. It’s a bit different with albums, but not that much. I still think the first four or five Beatles albums are their best and most enduring.

                  • I think Things We Said Today is an early example of Macca writing a song that he hoped would endure. He wanted L & M to be Rodgers and Hammerstein at that stage.

                    A better example would be an apparently throwaway but actually quite brilliant bit of stuff like I’ll Get You

                    • I take your point. But I would argue that the idea of writing a ‘standard’ was largely one which preoccupied the Denmark Street/Tin Pan Alley crew at this period. Pop was at a trans-formative point although possibly only a few- like Dick James- could see it at the time. Macca was always ambitious and one of the few musicians who tried to see what the landscape looked like beyond the next hit. Most groups and artists just saw gleaming new Cadillacs, mansions and lots of easy sex.

                    • I’m Looking Through You is my favourite example of The Beatles producing what for them is a minor song and for anyone else would be their claim to fame and immortality

                    • The example I nearly gave above was I’ve Just Seen a Face. To them, a tossed-off* space-filler in the middle of side two. To us, chooooooooooooooooooon!

                      *Hur, he dutifully intoned

                • Yes, interesting. But I suppose that, crucially, the ‘non-art’ stuff was intended to be ephemeral and disposable at the time of release. No one- not least the Beatles, Stones or Motown crew- would have imagined that we’d still be listening to these singles now. They were meant for a five or six week stint on the chart or jukebox before being chucked and forgotten forever. As we all know, back then a group or artist needed a new hit every two or three months in order to keep the career alive (although the notion of a ‘career’ itself would have seemed ridiculous- hence those questions to the Beatles – ‘what will you be doing in five years time?’). The only way to survive this pressurized treadmill pre-Pepper was to ‘do a Cliff’ and become a ‘family entertainer’. I suspect that Cohn himself has mixed feelings about the durability of 50s and 60s classic pop and rock. None of it was meant to last. That’s what was so beautiful and precious about it. It was fleeting. Flash. And gone.

                  • Is that not true of the albums too? They were recorded of the moment expecting to be forgotten after a year or so. In 1967, The Beatles were just recording a collection of songs. I don’t think they had any idea they might endure. Sgt Pepper may be regarded differently after the fact. It marked a turning point. But, when they were in the studio making it, I don’t think they ever imagined people would still be listening to it fifty years later.

            • Yes, Tahir. The really good pop and the really bad. Then there are the ones inbetween that were just forgettable, and that is exactly what we’ve all done with them.

  9. Thanks, really enjoyed it.

    Like some of you I also long for critics who are real personalities in their own right, never mind the subject of their criticism..

    • See, I really don’t. The idea that “we should get Charlie Sh**r Murray to do an exclusive review” leads eventually, inevitably, to five stars for “Be Here Now”. Give me a pithy informative amusing review from someone I know or care nothing about and that’s good enough for me.

  10. Back to what Steve and Dave said about the conditions in which the modern music journalist often has to work.

    I can’t help feeling the record companies are shooting themselves in the foot. Surely reviewers are more likely to produce a more thoughtful, worthwhile review in the comfort of their own home than at some record company office?

    I asked DuCool about his experiences reviewing the latest Grateful Dead album. For heaven’s sake do not breathe a word of this to Bargepole!

    Kidnapped by a Ninja Vigilante Squad on the train home to Spånga, he awoke on a ranch in the Mojave Desert …..

  11. There isn’t a reply button on the post by @blue-boy which is why this post is way down here.
    I’m glad you like the new Van Morrison, but it just doesn’t push any of my buttons. The band are great, and at 74, his voice is great too, as good if not better than any of his peers. I was probably being grumpy when I gave 1/10, and it’s probably a culmination of disappointing albums from him that makes me feel like this. There are some good songs on the album, though I don’t think there are any great ones, and there are some terrible ones(imho obvs.).
    Bluesy R&B songs are repetitive but he takes it a bit far. I haven’t counted, but I would bet that he says the line You don’t understand 30 times is the song of the same name. Dark night of the soul is said at least a dozen times in the first 3 minutes of that song and then repeated constantly for another 2 1/2 minutes. Reminds me of a dentist’s drill. Can’t remember off hand the name of the last song…something like Days Gone Past… and it’s a riff on Auld Lang Syne. Jeez, I was almost praying for it to end, and it goes on for almost 8 minutes.
    Anyway, it’s good that we all like different things, and I’m sorry if I have slagged off your favourites from the album.

    • No, I think that’s all fair @bigsteviecook. I liked some of the songs more than you did but agree there’s a fair amount of filler and a handful of stinkers. But I’m still really liking some of the songs and I’m enjoying It more than any album since maybe Healing Game (though I accept the bar is not high). You never know it may even creep into my year end top ten – but there’s a fair amount of latitude I’m giving because of 50 odd years of listening to the old grump and his
      music meaning more to me than almost anyone else’s. Like you say, the fact that we all respond differently is a good thing; I can’t imagine ever being upset because someone else doesn’t like something I do.

  12. It is interesting, in the context of all of the above, that in Van we had a keenly awaited and rumoured ‘return to form’. Reported of course in advance of the release and presumably subject to (very) limited, subjective critique?

    Well the hype worked but the product (bar perhaps a couple of songs ) is God awful.

    • I’m glad that someone else agrees with me. Often I think that it’s just not me ‘getting’ it.
      I had a count earlier, and I have 19 Van Morrison cds. I like him fine, but I’m not that much of a fan.
      There’s lots of good stuff in there, but I really don’t understand the critical acclaim he gets. The interview recently in The Guardian was terrible. The journalist was a fan……..WAS. I bet she won’t be buying the next one.

      He probably can’t do anything wrong in Blue boy above’s eyes, he having followed him for so long. I have a blind spot for a few artists too.

      • No blind spot here. Van has made at least half a dozen albums that rank as high as you can get in the canon of “Amazing”. He has also made 79 albums that vary from ok to nae bad to “Jesus fuck will you just stop”. He also appears to be a complete dickhead. His last album of any import was The Healing Game and that was released in 1863. Will his records still be coming to my Desert Island? Of course they will

    • You don’t get the hamper. It doesn’t work like that. Ain’t your wafers, your artisan chutney, your cheese with mysterious bits in. Ain’t even your impossibly small and pointless bottle of mineral water. You don’t even get to sniff the basket*.

      (TMFTL)

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