January 30 – February 1: Studying Audio

The record shelves of legendary BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel.

When we think of doing audio, our mind most readily thinks of music, though, as last week's class on poetry suggested, sound can be a part of our conception of that genre, and sound can be a critical component of our analysis of film (which we'll be discussing later this week) as well. As we did with the visual arts, we'll spend two days on approaches to audio.

We'll start on Monday by thinking critically about listenership with two pieces that should provide a solid foundation upon which to build. First up we have "The Three Listening Modes," an excerpt from French composer and sound theorist Michel Chion's book Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. [PDF]

I'm pairing that with "How We Listen," a chapter from composer and conductor Aaron Copland's iconic book, What to Listen For in Music. Just as Chion proposes three listening modes (causal, semantic, and reduced), Copland offers us three planes on which we listen to music (the sensuous, the expressive, and the sheerly musical). [PDF]

Lester Bangs, patron saint of rock critics, in 1977.

We'll wrap up the day with a few selections from a pioneering, one-of-a-kind rock critic: the late, great Lester Bangs. During his tenure at Rolling Stone and Creem from the late 60s to the mid-70s, and later as a freelance writer, Bangs tirelessly championed artists he deemed worthy — effectively conceptualizing the genre of punk rock, and later advocating for heavy metal and new wave acts — in a rapturous, free-wheeling style that displayed considerable musical knowledge along with an admiration for authors like Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Hunter S. Thompson. Here's a taste of his ornery style:

You'll be reading a few excerpts from Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll, a posthumous collection of Bangs' best assembled by Greil Marcus in 1988: [PDF]

• "Kraftwerkfeature" (on Krautrock pioneers Kraftwerk)
• "The Greatest Album Ever Made" (on Lou Reed's notorious Metal Machine Music)
• "A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Music" (a brief list-piece on noise music)

The first 50 (of 118 total) books in the 33 1/3 series. I've read 22 of these and 29 altogether (click to enlarge).

As is the case in other genres, there's a tension in music criticism — as in many other fields — between the maximal and the minimal: talented authors who are capable of writing book-length explorations of complex topics banging their heads up against the strictures of popular journalism (where 300 word reviews are considered a luxury). One of my favorite venues for the former over the past decade has been the 33 1/3 series, which has released more than a hundred books on important albums from ABBA to Neil Young, which address their subjects with startling insightfulness through a diverse array of approaches.

We'll start Friday off with a few selections from Marc Woodworth and Ally-Jane Grossan's recent volume, How to Write About Music: Excerpts from the 33 1/3 Series, Magazines, Books and Blogs with Advice from Industry-leading Writers, which, among other things, contains exemplary reviews of very contemporary albums you're more like to be familiar with. I've also included a few bits of advice and a useful writing prompt from the book: [PDF]

• "Expert Advice from Our Writers"
• Ann Powers on Daft Punk's Random Access Memories
• Jim DeRogatis on Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends
• Lou Reed on Kanye West's Yeezus
• "Writing Prompt: The Blind Review"
• "The Five Things Every Music Writer or Editor Needs"
• Marty Davis on Black Flag

Next, for the sake of comparison, we'll look at a trio of reviews of David Bowie's triumphant final album, Blackstar, from three very different sources, NPR, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone:

• "David Bowie's 'Blackstar' Is Adventurous To The End" by Barry Walters: [link]
• "David Bowie, Blackstar" by Ryan Dombral: [link]
• "David Bowie: Blackstar" by David Fricke: [link]

Finally, also from NPR, here's Linda Holmes' "The Individualism And Fist-Pumping Of George Michael's 'Freedom '90,'" a tribute published after the singer's death that focuses on what's perhaps the late singer's most iconic track. While reading this piece, I was genuinely struck by the facile way in which Holmes balances the audio and video elements of the track and works on both macro and micro levels. It's an excellent piece of criticism and one worth thinking about analytically: [link]