On Music and Criticism and Music Criticism

So I'm taking this Song as Literature class, not because I'm pretentious and knowledgeable concerning "good music"--in fact I have kinda bad taste, but rather because it's required that I take a senior seminar for my literature major and songs seemed like the smart cop-outty, poetry-like option. WRONG-O. It's hard. And the readings are hard. And I don't like the 1960s anymore. Don't get me wrong, Bob Dylan's my douchebaggy homeboy, Pete Seeger's like my ideological socialist grandfather, and Janis Joplin is who I aspire to be. But reading about the 60s is always so nostalgic and so nauseating. I don't want to deal with the em effing Beatles or the Rolling Stones because I don't care about what they supposedly stood for (which is SEX in bright red capital letters because the 1950s were the most repressive decade ever, so I hear, and we needed break free from The Man).

Anyway, I don't like to read music criticism, especially anything by the late cracked-out Lester Bangs--and yes, "cracked-out" may well be an anachronism in this instance. I think when you write about music and read about music it takes the magic away. It's just opinions and personal preferences and nonsense. Who cares about what your life was like before and after you listened to Astral Weeks? Not this girl. When people write about music, they become nostalgic and jaded. Gross.

I will admit, though, that music is one of the most telling aspects of a culture; we can learn a lot about a decade or a movement or a generation by listening to its music. So this is what I advocate: please, listen to songs. Don't write about them.         Go on, get to it.

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If you want a little taste of the Bangs' stuff I'm referring to, czech this out. It is, admittedly, one of his better pieces. It takes a more historical approach than "James Taylor Marked for Death," which I wouldn't recommend you read unless you're okay with the cuss words they won't let you say on TV and graphic metaphors.

Oh, and if you want to listen to something really, solidly good that came out of the past, listen to Kris Kristofferson's album Border Lord. I would even suggest buying it. Seriously. My mother has it on vinyl, and oh, it's marvy.

Fleuries, Songbook, and Complaints

It is flurrying in Pittsburgh. (Insert over-used pun on "flurry" and "Fleury" here.) No big surprise there. What is surprising is that there has only been one other time while I've been in this overcast city this season that it has snowed. Honestly, I miss winter. The 'Burgh is out-of-whack because of the weirdly warm weather. The Steelers are not going to the Super Bowl; Pitt basketball is just awful; and the Penguins have lost six games in a row--six!


But on to books: I got the new Philippa Gregory book for Christmas with a Barnes and Noble gift card. I haven't had a chance to read it yet what with all of my grad school applications. This is what it looks like.

So pretty.

For my classes, I'm not reading that many books. Boo, I know. And the ones I am reading suck for the most part. For example, we just read (the great majority of) Songbook by Nick Hornby. I don't even know what to say about it. It was dated, boring, and preachy with the ugliest cover you could possibly imagine. What is the point of an ugly cover? Shouldn't someone fix that somewhere along the line? Doesn't some high-paid idiot (like Buddy's biological father in Elf) get paid a lot of money to make sure that book covers are attractive so that when bookstore browsers, a nearly extinct species, judge books by their covers, they are more likely to pick up a certain book and buy it over another? I'll stop. Without further ado:

Hideous. Doesn't make any sense, either.

That's all I've got for you, reader, at the beginning of this heinous semester.