We are all entitled to our own opinions. Be they right or wrong. Furthermore, as a messy by-product of our free enterprise system, we are all entitled to have our opinions purchased by the highest bidder.
Pursuant to this quirk of God-given liberty, for which our forefathers stamped on the heads of unwitting Sioux Indians and purchased Albuquerque for a Pez Candy dispenser, we have freedom of speech, and if we feel like setting up a major arts-n-culture dishrag, through which we disseminate that John Denver was a prophet and *N Sync are the spawn of cherubim, by golly, we can damn well go ahead and publish that to our hearts' content.
Aesthetics, in fact probably all non-Nietzschan schools of philosophy, are fast becoming outmoded, and the lofty overseers of critique and assessment are having their trousers yanked to their ankles in succession, being flayed in the streets, their snail-shaped bodies suffering the kicks and blows of methane-releasing Sum 41 fans, their mental switchboards of "approve-disapprove" responses being ripped out cord by cord and gnawed to ineffectiveness by horn-skulled cretins born from testosterone, cheap beer and ineffective condoms, finally being left to die in the ugly, profilgate mean streets of urban-based rage before they are picked up by diligent garbagemen and dumped off in a large pile of sinew and bones located somewhere in a suburban wasteland of sentimental detachment and intellectual stagnation Neil Gaiman could only fantasize about conjuring.
I can live with that, really. I don't get out much these days. Outta sight, outta mind, knowwhatimeansport?
But I'm no dummy. And neither are you. Apparently, however, Jann Wenner thinks you're a fucking moron. Even if the once-exalted field of rock criticism is as irrelevant now as it's ever been, though, I still think you have to use it wisely if you're going to pull a Barnum on the music world's reading public. If you're going to manipulate the system, fine, that's very good, just read the damn manual first.
Look, here's what I'm talking about. Rolling Stone founder and publisher Jann Wenner recently published what I believe is the first record review he's written for Rolling Stone in a long time, for the new Mick Jagger solo album Goddess in the Doorway. Before I explain it to you, let me tell you something about Wenner's history with administering the Rolling Stone record review department:
He fired Lester Bangs, the greatest rock critic of all time, for being disrespectful to musicians like James Taylor and the Grateful Dead.
He censured Greil Marcus, the second greatest rock critic of all time, for starting a review of Bob Dylan's Self-Portrait -- an execrable album Dylan himself has described as something he "loaded up with crap" -- with the phrase "What is this shit?" Marcus's review is perhaps the most famous piece of rock criticism in history.
The next week Wenner wrote a positive review of Self-Portrait to counter Marcus's.
Self-Portrait IS bad -- really, really bad. ("I once said," one critic -- might've been Marcus -- remarked, "that I'd buy an album of Dylan breathing hard. But I never said I'd buy one of him breathing softly.")
Wenner wrote a letter to the editor of his own fucking magazine, in which he criticized his own employee's skewering of the J. Geils Band's Love Stinks. I believe Wenner's exact quote was, "Love Stinks is a great record." He is wrong. "Love Stinks," the single, is a great novelty record. Love Stinks, the album, is uneven and half-hearted.
All right. Wenner is perfectly within his rights to fire anyone he doesn't like, to kiss the ass of a burned-out (at the time) 60's songwriting legend, call whatever he likes a great rock and roll record, and use his little print space to say whatever he feels, and to dress it all up and print it with Britney's tits on the cover as often as he pleases. I, in my dinky, remote corner of the media universe, cannot lift a finger to stop him.
But come on, Jann. Surely you'll be concerned when your ego starts to take the hit, won't you? Wenner's done something amazing with the new Jagger disc -- not once, but, I suspect, twice. It's one of the most foolish and laughable things I've ever seen printed in a once-respected publication, one that, for a tick of the wristwatch anyway, truly had its moistened finger planted in the air, catching every important counter-cultural development as it happened. As far as Wenner's concerned, only one thing he's done has been more foolish: Bankrolling the aerobics potboiler, Perfect, which put a stake in John Travolta's first film career.
Wenner wrote the Jagger review and praised it to Valhalla, where I suspect even the starkly cold figures of Norse mythology are laughing at him. He gave it five stars out of a possible five. According to RS, this designates the album as a "classic."
The new Mick Jagger solo record is an all-time classic. That's what Jann says. Go ahead. Look it up. Oh, all right, I'll do it for you:
"In terms of consistency, craftsmanship and musical experimentation, Goddess in the Doorway surpasses all his solo work and any Rolling Stones album since Some Girls." (Wrong. Tattoo You.)
"(H)e lets his guard down to an unprecedented degree on Goddess; the beautiful ballads draw on feelings of loneliness, vulnerability, spiritual yearning and, as always, life with the ladies." ("Life with the ladies?" Maalox moment.)
"Goddess in the Doorway resembles the Stones' best albums in that it's a varied yet cohesive collection of ballads, hard rockers and one country song." (Stick this fucker next to Beggars Banquet and teach your kids about the excitement of chemical corrosion, 'cause it'll melt on impact.)
"Rob Thomas of matchbox 20 collaborates on the pop-y [sic], melodic opening track, 'Visions of Paradise,' which boasts a soaring chorus. Lenny Kravitz produces and co-writes 'God Gave Me Everything,' a driving, riff-propelled rocker that evokes the punkish stomp of the early Stones." (As galling as even sharing a deli plate with Thomas and Kravitz sounds, think how distressing it must be to know that those are the album's two best songs.)
"It is a clear-eyed and inspired Mick Jagger who crafted Goddess in the Doorway, an insuperably strong record that in time may well reveal itself to be a classic. World, meet Mick Jagger, solo artist." (World, meet my inability to hold down food.)
Okay, okay, reset. None of this would bother me -- it's one man's fully entitled opinion -- were it not for one additional move that Wenner's pulled in his campaign for this album. I'll get to that. But first, here are the notes I took while sampling this new album, this opus of eternity, this statement of McMick. I didn't want to buy it, so I downloaded it in its entirety.
Goddess Notes:
Absolutely nothing groundbreaking.
an adequately recorded, glossy collection of inspirational statements, decorated by elements like string sections and background choirs, which other people don't use only because they can't afford them.
Those are the extent of my notes. Even informally, I see no point in making the effort to dogmatize about life's mediocrities; just leave the damn dog on the side of the road and move on.
But I will expand a bit further, briefly: Goddess In the Doorway is a chiefly boring, by-the-numbers exercise, with some decent bits of corporate rock craft, more guest appearances than a Santana BBQ, a highly compressed sense of excitement, an unconvincing reinterpretation of Mick as a Paragon of Shopworn Maturity when even guest singer Bono sounds a bit wiser for the mileage, a song called "Gun" that suddenly veers off course for an orchestral break that scared me into thinking Jagger was going to pull a Barry Manilow and quote a Chopin piece midsection, two limpid "dance tracks," a good guest appearance by Joe Perry, an outdated '80s-style cover shot, 12 artificial studio creations, and an inability to rouse me from my fascinating perusal of the classied furniture ads in the Tacoma News-Tribune.
The worst album ever made? No. The worst Stones-related album ever made? No. The worst Mick Jagger album ever made? No. Better than Keith Richards' Talk Is Cheap? Hell no. Worth mentioning beyond this evening? No.
Play switcheroo with me. Let's say instead of Mick Jagger singing lead on these songs, it was somebody like... oh, Justin Timberlake. Or Rob Thomas. Or Kravitz. Would we care? Would Wenner be working overtime, consulting a thesaurus for the first time in years, to craft a paean to its glory? Would we suddenly remark about what a breathtakingly mature manly man Justin Timberlake has evolved into over such a short time? Come on! We'd be giggling ourselves to oxygen deprivation. I wouldn't call this album a cynical attempt to load it up with guest stars to revive your career a la Santana, or a half-hearted excursion into modern dance rhythms to earn your keep on the disco floor, but it's close enough to those, so that I can easily joke about I'd much rather hear Liz Phair release a response record called Goddess in the Drain Opening.
Enough about the disc, I've run out of Catskills jokes. Let's talk about the 2001 Rolling Stone critics poll, which just came out. I should mention that I've not yet seen a single review of Goddess as enthusiastic as Jann's, in any publication. Entertainment Weekly gave it a lackluster C+. All-Music Guide (full disclosure: I've written for them) gave it four stars, but compared it unfavorably to the latest works by fellow dinosaurs Dylan, Elton John and Paul McCartney, all of which are in fact better records, with Dylan's actually deserving of being called a classic.
I go to a bookstore and flip through the new RS with Gwen Stefani's bare midriff and long, lustrous bare legs displayed on the frontispiece. I flip to the results of the annual critics' poll, which has sunk so far in public importance that it merits a mere one-page spread these days. They list the critics' top 10 picks of the year, with Dylan's Love and Death topping the list, no argument with that.
Goddess In the Doorway finishes third.
I jerk my head back and widen my eyes. "Man, oh man... that's gotta be an album worth the money!" I think at first. "I'll definitely download it for free tomorrow!"
Leading me to downloading it today, and eagerly anticipating swimming in the luxurious rock rhythms and firebreathing passion Jagger has misplaced before but miraculously relocated. Which thus led me, after hearing it, to wondering exactly how much Ecstasy Wenner downs with his bagel every morning, because this is an album singularly notable for its ordinariness.
I do not see how even the most doe-eyed of rock critics, marching aesthete soldiers parading down NYC streets with their granny glasses and turtlenecks, could see this as anything more than an experiment in water-treading. Maybe slightly warm water, but water regardless. When the more widely-attended Village Voice poll comes out later this year, I doubt this album will place anywhere in the Top 25. In fact, I can't see the most devoted Stones freak in rock history licking his chops over this thing. In another fact, I really don't see how anybody could write anything superlative about this record unless he's been...
...uh, paid off?
Now wait. I am not suggesting that Rolling Stone sells positive reviews to its friends to boost their careers. Not at all. I'm suggesting they sell positive reviews to record labels too. But friends as well. In this case, Mick Jagger got a hell of a return on his investment. Five stars and a third-place showing on the critic's poll? Fuck me, man! Wenner better get the window seat on Mick's jet the next time they fly to Barbados!
Now, it's completely possible money wasn't exchanged on this. Suggesting so would probably lead me to round criticism from people with things I can't afford, like attorneys. But I am suggesting that some ultra-ulterior motive is resting behind the lauding of Jagger's solo album, simply because nobody in the world I know, not even friends of mine with a softer side for commercial music, would call this thing a classic. And I am suggesting that Wenner massaged the critics' poll, because in a year when some truly inspirational work came down the pike from Dylan, the Strokes, Sigur Ros, even fucking Leonard Cohen, the coronation of a merely average release from Mick Jagger sticks out like one of his damn lips. The question is, why?
Maybe it's the name of the magazine. These people haven't given a single Stones album a bad review since Emotional Rescue. If I'm not mistaken, each of the Stones' 80's and 90's works got at least an "excellent" rating, and you and I both know that's bunk. "Harlem fucking Shuffle"?
Also, consider that Wenner is very close friends with Billy Joel these days. And check this out: before Wenner's friendship with Joel, they were ruthless on him. Glass Houses was ripped to shreds. The savvy NYC staff found him to be a preening, bongo-headed Long Island flap, an assessment I'm not inclined to dismiss off hand. But beginning with The Nylon Curtain every single Billy Joel album -- all of which were far inferior to what I only call his "best" albums because I can't think of an immediate substitute for the term -- were rated as "excellent" or higher. Do the math. Check it out. Go through the back issues.
I'm all for standing up for your friends' business ventures. Really. If Hickey comes up with a clothing line, or Captain Tenille makes a new Shake-n-Bake recipe, or Quacky comes up with some killer new face moisturizer or something, I'll be first in line to endorse them. But you see, that's not art. That is merely based on a "does it work/not work" principle. Art is more difficult to adjudicate, it's got all these switches and buttons and principles of technology and human frailty and shit, and you have to spend time on it. Wenner's review -- by the way, the actual writing of the review stinks too -- smacks of doing a favor to a friend. That's why I'll never review any album a friend of mine makes. It's sort of along the same lines as us needing an independent counsel to check into things like Whitewater and Enron.
That said, I don't think Wenner necessarily lied about his feelings for Goddess in the Doorway. I just think he's an idiot. Here's what I think happened: Wenner got the album in his office and ejaculated, probably because he hadn't heard a new album in years. So he frantically searched the RS offices to find a regular reviewer who loved the album as much he did, to give it great ink and the stamp of legitimacy. However, he could find nobody in the office who thought the Jagger album was anywhere nearly as good as he did. So he wrote the review himself and, in a rare moment of amateur enthusiasm, decided to go whole hog and issue the full five-star verdict.
But the sales didn't take, and Wenner gets roundly criticized by puzzled cognescenti for using his editorial prerogative to call a half-assed album a bonafide classic. So, just to defend himself, to make it obvious that he's not alone when he really is, he somehow -- influences the final results of the critics poll, so that Jagger's album finishes highly. Nothing will top the wildly positive perceptions of the new Dylan album, he realizes that -- giving Jagger the top spot would certainly ruin his cred. And just to be safe, let's put somebody else at 2nd place, though I forget who (think it was Radiohead). There. So Jagger's released THE THIRD BEST ALBUM OF 2001 ACCORING TO A PANEL OF THE NATION'S CRITICS!!!! and it's immortalized in print forever.
That is what I think happened, and I'm not alone in that scenario; in fact I'm rewording what's been suggested elsewhere.
So. Why am I spending so much time on this rather insignificant and intellectually unfathomable quirk of recent rock journalism history? Simple:
To show the inherent manipulation of cultural aesthetics that happens just like this on a daily basis,
To comment on the inherent lack of total faith we can instill in our major media outlets,
To illuminate the real ethic behind A Promotional Consideration and to hold your author accountable for any wild hyperbole he may engage upon in this space in the future, and finally
To make Jann Wenner look like a stupid, blow-dried fuck.
That said, have a nice night, have a good new year, go play Exile on Main Street if you want to hear actual five-star Jagger, and I'll be back in touch when the next box from The Company shows up. P.S. It'll include the new Bolt Thrower!!!!!
(Note: A fellow contributor on a music industry board I'm on claims that this year's RS Critics Poll was made up by only 6 people, meaning it's possible, using the inverted point system, that Jagger finished a legitimate third without Wenner's influence over others. However I recall the RS poll having at least 20 contributors not more than 3 years ago, so I don't know why there are so few now. Maybe they missed the memo. Cheers. =PS)
(Note 2: More fodder: Check this out. It's the top 10 lists of all the critics RS says it employs on their website. The Jagger album appears on exactly one of these lists, at #8. - PS)
