>> What's sad is how many of friends consider Reynolds (and guys like >> pitchfork) inspiration/hero/grand influence/whatever. > > I think there's a place in the world for Simon Reynolds, but > like most music journalists, he's essentially making a career > out of sniping from the sidelines, and someone who does that > for a living can only be seen as an inspiration by people who > aspire to that sort of position.
I think the book has its merits but I have serious issues with it - and I think he is very condensing in relation to Mills. That is an obvious value judgment, not a critique and the lowest point of the text. My main issue from memory was that Reynolds perceives electronic music culture as closely tied to a hedonistic (drug) subculture - but it's so much more expansive than that. He has a definite bias in there and he projects that onto the Detroit movement. And he marginalises Detroit completely. At the same time I think some people in the scene feel uncomfortable with this culture being intellectualised and I am not sure why. No theory is going to be right/wrong or can be all encompassing - that's the nature of 'theory'. It's an argument only. You can love music and buy music and avoid the treatises and the mags, even. I can understand why some people have issues with music critics - especially in relation to mags like Mixmag. I remember as a kid reading NME and feeling very irritated by the way bands like Duran Duran - the whole New Romantic wave - were dismissed as some bourgeois phenom. At the time Paul Weller was their darling with Joy Division/New Order, etc. Many of those in the New Romantic movement had working class roots and they conveniently negated that. That dreadful champagne socialist Julie Burchill. Grrr. But what is a "music critic"? Few of them make a "living" from music. In fact most papers do not pay for reviews - the CD is the payment. And I don't know any (dance) music writer who is not involved in some other aspect of the business - DJ/producer, publicist (which I have a problem with, actually), or whatever. Also the role of the critic is changing with new technologies - even with forums such as this list. As many people would read reviews on this list as some music mags. Anyone can post a review on Amazon! I myself regard them as a form of entertainment. I always read reviews after I have listened to something. That's fun. I know many, perhaps rightfully, have a problem with the way that mags back trends but that dialectic has existed long before mags, there will always be flux in pop culture whether there is a traditional media or not. Is the 80s revival so very different to the classical revival in the Renaissance in terms of dialectic? And yes I doubt that Botticelli thought he was painting 'Renaissance art' but that's how we view it in retrospect, yet the art works exist on their own. Tags are everywhere.
