Today I started an opinion column (about music) over at Reverb. It's called "I Might Be Wrong." Radiohead does not suck.
I think it'd be fair to say that some people were not too pleased with the characterization of the band U2 in my first article. And, that's just the point. I hope there are many more disagreements to come. What's music if we can't all yell at each other about it?
(I think my favorite comment might be from user Yousuck who writes, "You are the one that sucks, writer.")
Check back each Tuesday (-ish) for more back-and-forths.
PS - A friend sent me an excerpt today from Ellen Willis's book, Out of the Vinyl Deeps, which is just out. It's from her report from Woodstock and is just great. (I echoed a similar sentiment about U2's ticket prices.) Anyhow, here:
"What cultural revolutionaries do not seem to grasp is that, far from being a grass-roots art form that has been taken over by businessmen, rock itself comes from a commercial exploitation of the blues. It is bourgeois at its core, a mass-produced commodity, dependent on advanced technology and therefore on the money controlled by those in power. Its rebelliousness does not imply specific political content; it can be—and has been—criminal, fascistic, and coolly individualistic as well as revolutionary. Nor is the hip lifestyle inherently radical. It can simply be a more pleasurable way of surviving within the system, which is what the pop sensibility has always been about. Certainly that was what Woodstock was about: ignore the bad, groove on the good, hang loose, and let things happen. The truth is that there can’t be a revolutionary culture until there is a revolution. In the meantime, we should at least insist that the capitalists who produce rock concerts charge reasonable prices for reasonable service."
