Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________ PROPELLERHEADS: DECKSANDDRUMSANDROCKANDROLL BY GINA ARNOLD (04/07/98)

Another cringe-inducing review by Gina Arnold, and another example of how, inexplicably, U.S. critics just don't seem to "get" techno music and its derivatives, just as their predecessors were unable to figure out previous generations of musical innovation.
Frankly, I haven't heard Propellerheads' new album, so I'll skip the details of Ms. Arnold's review, pausing only to note the tip-off of her equating "wonderful" with "mainstream-sounding" in describing the album's hit single. Yow! Since when do critics (outside of industry trash like Billboard or senile embarrassments like Rolling Stone) praise things by calling them "mainstream-sounding"?
Ms. Arnold appears to have certain fixed assumptions about quality in music with what she goopily calls "narrative, melody and good old-fashioned heart" figuring heavily. Anything that goes outside such traditional strictures is "record production rather than songwriting." Well, it's all a matter of degree. When the Troggs nailed three crude chords to a stick and wailed "Wild Thing," was that the end of narrative and melody? When the Beatles and George Martin spent months twiddling knobs to make "Sgt. Pepper" what it is, was that a retreat into record production instead of songwriting? (No, I don't think "electronica" has produced its "Sgt. Pepper" yet, but it's got plenty of "Wild Things.")
What's going on here is an attempt to trivialize electronic music by making it out to be regressive rather than progressive, calling it disco rather than avant-garde. To invoke some parallels from "classical" music: When minimalists such as Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Steve Reich began using repetition, looping and phase changes in their music -- accenting rhythm and structure over melody -- it was a legitimate avant garde whether you happened to like it or not. (And I'll grant that many of the early minimalist experiments were unlistenable, although by the early 1980s all three composers were creating mind-boggling works that integrated textural innovations with, yes, melody.)
But let some kids in a flat in Brighton invoke the same kinds of effects -- using samplers and tape recorders because they don't have the budget or compositional chops to hire orchestras -- and their music is called "disco" because it doesn't have the same melodic sense as Mark Eitzel. Are these kids making stuff that's as complex as "Einstein on the Beach"? No. But they're pointing the way forward in the same way the minimalists did, only the U.S. critics won't listen because their music doesn't sound as though it could have been played 30 years ago by Bob Dylan or Lou Reed.
The piece closes with the ultimate gratuitous rock-journalism insult, the drug thing. Can Gina Arnold straight-facedly dismiss a genre because its culture is heavily drug-influenced? As if psychedelia wasn't influenced by acid, reggae/dub by spliff or punk rock by crank -- and each dismissed in its time by those who said only people on said drugs could stand to listen to Pink Floyd, Lee Perry or Black Flag? I've been reasonably chemical-free for a long time, vintage port aside, and yet find delight in techno, trance, ambient, drum 'n' bass and what-have-you, whether at a club, at work or at home while updating my stamp collection.
This kind of willful inability to appreciate the new should serve as a red flag to warn clever U.S. rock critics like Gina Arnold that they've reached the dreaded position of "old and in the way." Go on, keep eulogizing Nirvana, just move out of the March of Progress, over there in the corner next to the old farts mumbling about Dylan and the Stones and that damn punk-rock racket.
-- Jens Alfke
Gina Arnold understands nothing about underground electronic music and the culture surrounding it. Her review of the Propellerheads' record is pretty right on: It's kind of an average record. But then she does what so many mainstream reviewers do when tackling a record from the electronic side of the fence: admit their bias, their lack of understanding and complete lack of credibility on commenting on a genre they cannot grasp.
The last paragraph of her review has nothing to do with the record and is just a cheap pot-shot at a culture and music that she is not part of. DJ culture is "steeped in drugs," the only thing that can make the music palatable? What a crock! I guess that renders Led Zeppelin, the Sex Pistols, MC5, Stones, Velvet Underground and, well, just about every kind of popular music (except Lilith Fair folk possibly) utterly moot. Drugs, youth culture and underground music have always gone hand in hand. The popularity of drugs in the rave scene is no different than a '60s acid rock freak out or a Van Halen fueled coke-binge. Or Old English and Ice Cube.
Dance music does not have a short shelf-life, as she claims. What was rock 'n' roll in the beginning? Big-band? Hip-hop? Dance music is ever-evolving, not rising up and fading away. Styles may change, but it is a progression forward, not a rehash of older ideas (see grunge, ska, etc.). The cut-and-paste, sonic-collage creativity of DJ culture is perhaps the most creative thing in music today. Christ, people are still influenced by Stockhausen's tape-splicing experiments. You're trying to tell me that the underground dance music today is silly, unimportant music? Unlikely.
I hope in the future that Salon has people review records they can understand. And stick to the review. Using the review as a vehicle to show how little you grasp what you are commenting on is bad journalism. People like Gina Arnold are bitter about something that many people like and they don't get. Instead of ripping it as frivolous, perhaps she should take some time to find out what it's really all about. If you want to talk frivolous, she cites Iris fucking Dement. How utterly reactionary is that? Her review was like having my grandmother listen to a Slayer record and say it's OK for the genre, but then rip speed-metal and those "damn youth of today." It was not worth your patron's time.
-- Mike Garringer
_______________ YELLOW JOURNALISM BY CAROL LLOYD (04/01/98)

Thank you very much for "Yellow Journalism." I too wonder how and why it has come to be that journalists, of all people, would be submitting so meekly to such a horrific intrusion into their private lives and bodies. I was particularly aghast to learn that so many nationally recognized newspapers were terrorizing their writers in this way.
It does, however, go a long way to explain the pathetic lack of articles warning the general public about this spreading cancer. Please, please, follow up on this theme, and help me and other readers find publications whose writers are still not under the thumb of the drug prohibitionists. And help me and others support those individual writers, unfortunately too rare, who still have the courage to say no.
-- Patrick L. Lilly
Three shakes for Carol Lloyd! Although a very serious issue, Lloyd did an excellent job of flushing out the humor. As for me, I'm but a mere mortal in the construction industry, and I refuse to forfeit my constitutional rights, insurance rates or not. I'll just go work somewhere else if need be -- walking away humming, "Back in the USSR" by the Beatles.
-- Mark Purdue McAlester
_______________ THE OTHER REPUBLICAN SMEAR BY JAMES C. HORMEL JR. (04/10/98)

Yes, it's a shame that Mr. Hormel's nomination is being held up due to his sexual orientation. But what about that other milestone of the Hormel clan: the P-9 meat packers strike of the mid-'80s, one of the worst labor battles of the last 20 years? Funny how, in a lifetime of donating to libraries, museums and symphonies, Mr. Hormel never did anything to help those 1,500 workers of Austin, Minn., who earned him his wealth -- and who lost their jobs fighting for $10 an hour. Too bad his son forgot to mention that legacy.
-- Thomas Goetz
SALON | April 14, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| SICK VICTORY BY DAVID HOROWITZ (04/04/98)

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_______________ PROPELLERHEADS: DECKSANDDRUMSANDROCKANDROLL BY GINA ARNOLD (04/07/98)
	Another cringe-inducing review by Gina Arnold, and another example of how, inexplicably, U.S. critics just don't seem to "get" techno music and its derivatives, just as their predecessors were unable to figure out previous generations of musical innovation. Frankly, I haven't heard Propellerheads' new album, so I'll skip the details of Ms. Arnold's review, pausing only to note the tip-off of her equating "wonderful" with "mainstream-sounding" in describing the album's hit single. Yow! Since when do critics (outside of industry trash like Billboard or senile embarrassments like Rolling Stone) praise things by calling them "mainstream-sounding"? Ms. Arnold appears to have certain fixed assumptions about quality in music with what she goopily calls "narrative, melody and good old-fashioned heart" figuring heavily. Anything that goes outside such traditional strictures is "record production rather than songwriting." Well, it's all a matter of degree. When the Troggs nailed three crude chords to a stick and wailed "Wild Thing," was that the end of narrative and melody? When the Beatles and George Martin spent months twiddling knobs to make "Sgt. Pepper" what it is, was that a retreat into record production instead of songwriting? (No, I don't think "electronica" has produced its "Sgt. Pepper" yet, but it's got plenty of "Wild Things.") What's going on here is an attempt to trivialize electronic music by making it out to be regressive rather than progressive, calling it disco rather than avant-garde. To invoke some parallels from "classical" music: When minimalists such as Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Steve Reich began using repetition, looping and phase changes in their music -- accenting rhythm and structure over melody -- it was a legitimate avant garde whether you happened to like it or not. (And I'll grant that many of the early minimalist experiments were unlistenable, although by the early 1980s all three composers were creating mind-boggling works that integrated textural innovations with, yes, melody.) But let some kids in a flat in Brighton invoke the same kinds of effects -- using samplers and tape recorders because they don't have the budget or compositional chops to hire orchestras -- and their music is called "disco" because it doesn't have the same melodic sense as Mark Eitzel. Are these kids making stuff that's as complex as "Einstein on the Beach"? No. But they're pointing the way forward in the same way the minimalists did, only the U.S. critics won't listen because their music doesn't sound as though it could have been played 30 years ago by Bob Dylan or Lou Reed. The piece closes with the ultimate gratuitous rock-journalism insult, the drug thing. Can Gina Arnold straight-facedly dismiss a genre because its culture is heavily drug-influenced? As if psychedelia wasn't influenced by acid, reggae/dub by spliff or punk rock by crank -- and each dismissed in its time by those who said only people on said drugs could stand to listen to Pink Floyd, Lee Perry or Black Flag? I've been reasonably chemical-free for a long time, vintage port aside, and yet find delight in techno, trance, ambient, drum 'n' bass and what-have-you, whether at a club, at work or at home while updating my stamp collection. This kind of willful inability to appreciate the new should serve as a red flag to warn clever U.S. rock critics like Gina Arnold that they've reached the dreaded position of "old and in the way." Go on, keep eulogizing Nirvana, just move out of the March of Progress, over there in the corner next to the old farts mumbling about Dylan and the Stones and that damn punk-rock racket. -- Jens Alfke Gina Arnold understands nothing about underground electronic music and the culture surrounding it. Her review of the Propellerheads' record is pretty right on: It's kind of an average record. But then she does what so many mainstream reviewers do when tackling a record from the electronic side of the fence: admit their bias, their lack of understanding and complete lack of credibility on commenting on a genre they cannot grasp. The last paragraph of her review has nothing to do with the record and is just a cheap pot-shot at a culture and music that she is not part of. DJ culture is "steeped in drugs," the only thing that can make the music palatable? What a crock! I guess that renders Led Zeppelin, the Sex Pistols, MC5, Stones, Velvet Underground and, well, just about every kind of popular music (except Lilith Fair folk possibly) utterly moot. Drugs, youth culture and underground music have always gone hand in hand. The popularity of drugs in the rave scene is no different than a '60s acid rock freak out or a Van Halen fueled coke-binge. Or Old English and Ice Cube. Dance music does not have a short shelf-life, as she claims. What was rock 'n' roll in the beginning? Big-band? Hip-hop? Dance music is ever-evolving, not rising up and fading away. Styles may change, but it is a progression forward, not a rehash of older ideas (see grunge, ska, etc.). The cut-and-paste, sonic-collage creativity of DJ culture is perhaps the most creative thing in music today. Christ, people are still influenced by Stockhausen's tape-splicing experiments. You're trying to tell me that the underground dance music today is silly, unimportant music? Unlikely. I hope in the future that Salon has people review records they can understand. And stick to the review. Using the review as a vehicle to show how little you grasp what you are commenting on is bad journalism. People like Gina Arnold are bitter about something that many people like and they don't get. Instead of ripping it as frivolous, perhaps she should take some time to find out what it's really all about. If you want to talk frivolous, she cites Iris fucking Dement. How utterly reactionary is that? Her review was like having my grandmother listen to a Slayer record and say it's OK for the genre, but then rip speed-metal and those "damn youth of today." It was not worth your patron's time. -- Mike Garringer
_______________ YELLOW JOURNALISM BY CAROL LLOYD (04/01/98)
	Thank you very much for "Yellow Journalism." I too wonder how and why it has come to be that journalists, of all people, would be submitting so meekly to such a horrific intrusion into their private lives and bodies. I was particularly aghast to learn that so many nationally recognized newspapers were terrorizing their writers in this way. It does, however, go a long way to explain the pathetic lack of articles warning the general public about this spreading cancer. Please, please, follow up on this theme, and help me and other readers find publications whose writers are still not under the thumb of the drug prohibitionists. And help me and others support those individual writers, unfortunately too rare, who still have the courage to say no. -- Patrick L. Lilly Three shakes for Carol Lloyd! Although a very serious issue, Lloyd did an excellent job of flushing out the humor. As for me, I'm but a mere mortal in the construction industry, and I refuse to forfeit my constitutional rights, insurance rates or not. I'll just go work somewhere else if need be -- walking away humming, "Back in the USSR" by the Beatles. -- Mark Purdue McAlester
_______________ THE OTHER REPUBLICAN SMEAR BY JAMES C. HORMEL JR. (04/10/98)
	Yes, it's a shame that Mr. Hormel's nomination is being held up due to his sexual orientation. But what about that other milestone of the Hormel clan: the P-9 meat packers strike of the mid-'80s, one of the worst labor battles of the last 20 years? Funny how, in a lifetime of donating to libraries, museums and symphonies, Mr. Hormel never did anything to help those 1,500 workers of Austin, Minn., who earned him his wealth -- and who lost their jobs fighting for $10 an hour. Too bad his son forgot to mention that legacy. -- Thomas Goetz SALON \| April 14, 1998