New URL?

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I literally can not sink another penny right now into maintaining the rockcritics.com domain through WordPress. And I’m not sure what will happen when the next bill (due in a couple weeks) goes unpaid. I feel relatively certain that the site content remains intact but switches from rockcritics.com to rockcritics.wordpress.com. Doesn’t roll off the tongue as easy, but completely a-ok with me, as I have zero plans to do anything further with this venue.

But: I can’t say this with 100% certainty, and if there’s anything on this site you want to have for your own records, you might want to copy-paste it now. I have backups of all (or anyway, most of) the old pre-WordPress rockcritics.com interviews and features (2000-2007 or thereabouts), and many items since, but there are 1,000+ posts here. Backing everything up in one fell swoop is proving to be technically frustrating and mentally taxing at the moment, so I’m leaving it to chance.

I’m sorry if this causes anyone undue stress, and I sincerely hope you can retain what you need. (And I’m still pretty confident it isn’t going away but… I’m no techie and I’ve no time right now to do all the necessary research to figure it out.)

Talkin’ Aesthetics

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A mere eleven-and-a-half years ago I had an idea about The Aesthetics of Rock—see this post here–which I finally, a few months ago, got around to pursuing, for real. See my series on YouTube, Rock ‘n’ Roll From A to Z: An ongoing critical meditation on Richard Meltzer’s The Aesthetics of Rock (1970). The series is a combination of discussions, interviews, audio-visual interpretations of… etc. I was thrilled just a few weeks ago to land an interview with Meltzer himself (part 1 below), co-piloted by my friend Tim Ellison. (I guess this could be considered a follow-up to the interview I did for rockcritics.com with Meltzer in 2000; audio excerpts of that discussion pervade some of this current series.)

That’s a lot of Meltzer for you, but if not enough–meaning, if you would like to join in the discussion in some way–contact me ([email protected]). I plan to carry on this conversation for a while.

From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2005 edition

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BY JASON GROSS, 2005

In all of the pathetic, morbid self-obituaries that the print media’s been cranking out for itself recently, the one thing they keep leaving out is that this has been happening for a while now. Looking back at last year’s roundup, you’ll see all the same plagues afflicting the fourth estate: tanking ad sales (siphoned by Google, eBay, and Craigslist), writers tangled in ethical scandals, newspapers cooking the books about their circulation, print figures down, layoffs everywhere. The only difference this year is that it’s happening at a much more rapid pace, and you can bet that it’s not going to get prettier anytime too soon. Continue reading “From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2005 edition” →

My Favourite Jazz Books: A Baker’s Dozen (Tim Powis)

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By Tim Powis

Let’s begin with a bit of nonsense: “Historically… writing on jazz has been of such a low standard, has failed so signally to convey any sense of the animating dynamics of the music as to be irrelevant except… insofar as it conveys facts: when a given album was recorded, who played with whom, etc.” So says Geoff Dyer in his long and generally insightful afterword to But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz. Even allowing for the fact that it was first published (in Britain) in 1991, before some of the books listed below came out, and even though But Beautiful itself is among my chosen texts, I don’t know how anyone who’s read as much about jazz as I presume Dyer has could believe that statement. There’s been lots of very good writing about jazz. Much of it, it’s true, dwells to a considerable extent on recording dates and who played with whom, because that kind of information is crucial to sorting out a music in which bands with stable, let alone permanent, line-ups are rare and so many musicians have performed or recorded with so many other musicians. But none of the books I’ve chosen (from critical anthologies to autobiography) fails—signally or otherwise—to convey any sense of jazz’s animating dynamics, and there are plenty more where they came from. Continue reading “My Favourite Jazz Books: A Baker’s Dozen (Tim Powis)” →

From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2004 edition

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BY JASON GROSS

In 2004, the only thing worse than being a Democrat was being a journalist. The battered profession had to contend with crises of confidence (not just Jayson Blair, but Dan Rather), newspaper circulation scandals, biting from bloggers, slowed ad revenue growth for publications, ever shrinking word counts and sections (review columns cover on average only 10 releases a week), and increasing consolidation of media outlets (something the record industry knows all too well). To top it off, an annual Gallup poll recently revealed that scribes get low marks for “integrity” and “honesty.” Continue reading “From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2004 edition” →

Interview with Don Armstrong, author of ‘The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason’

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Don Armstrong’s The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason: Dispatches from the Front is long overdue. Unique among music writers, Gleason is the only critic from the pre-rock era (born in 1917, his first published jazz review appeared in 1936) who made the professional—and more crucially, the emotional—leap into rock ‘n’ roll before it had officially even been dubbed as such. Well, maybe it wasn’t a leap so much as a shimmy. Continue reading “Interview with Don Armstrong, author of ‘The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason’” →

From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2003 edition

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The 2003 edition of Jason Gross’s yearly music writing roundup, broken links intact.

BY JASON GROSS, 2003

A common complaint about music today is that there aren’t a lot of good albums coming out anymore. Similarly, the same complaint is made about music criticism. My answer to both of these saws is that the good stuff is out there if you look for it. There’s no question that the Net has opened up a lot of possibilities and will help bring about many changes in journalism, but good work is still being done in the print world too–I found about twice the number of quality articles in 2003 as I did when I put together a round-up last year, and I’m positive that I missed plenty of other good things this time around. Continue reading “From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2003 edition” →

From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2002 edition

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From the let-me-take-you-way-wayback machine: Jason Gross’s “Best Music Journalism” summaries, which ran here every December from 2002-2006. (Jason’s survey eventually landed in other venues, which we spoke about in January 2022). We begin this archival dig with the debut edition. Continue reading “From the Archives: Jason Gross’s Best Music Journalism 2002 edition” →

The Oldest Guy at the Gig (Howard Druckman)

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Cheers to aging ungracefully (by Howard Druckman)

I became a senior citizen in 2023.

I don’t look, feel, or act like it.

The passage of time is undeniable, but at a point in life where I’m supposed to be managing my investments, planning my retirement, drawing up my will, and considering other such age-appropriate matters as I contemplate (and, in rare panicky moments, dread) my increasingly looming death, I’m off to the next gig instead. Continue reading “The Oldest Guy at the Gig (Howard Druckman)” →

What They Said: 2023 Movie Survey w/Phil Dellio & Steven Rubio

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For the past couple years, my friends Steven Rubio and Phil Dellio (along with yours truly, on occasion) have been engaging in conversations about movies on a YouTube series called What They Said (the entire WTS playlist is accessible here). Both agreed to answer a dozen questions about the year in movies just passed. Continue reading “What They Said: 2023 Movie Survey w/Phil Dellio & Steven Rubio” →

The Village Voice Pazz & Jop Ripoff Poll: Q&A with Glenn Boothe

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The spirit and methodology if not the copyright of Pazz & Jop currently carries forward in the cheekily named Village Voice Pazz & Jop Ripoff Poll, a Facebook group with close to 2,000 members, at least several hundred of whom will cast Top 10 Album ballots in the 2023 edition. PJRP is moderated by Glenn Boothe, who started the poll, and Keith Artin, who, according to Glenn, does the “heavy lifting” of the numbers. Continue reading “The Village Voice Pazz & Jop Ripoff Poll: Q&A with Glenn Boothe” →

Howard Druckman’s Top 10 Songs of 2023

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(Pictured above: Danny Michel)

1. Danny Michel – “Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself”
When the world is collapsing it’s hard sometimes to feel like you’re not. I haven’t had a bad year, but there’ve been some challenges, and ceaseless self-criticism doesn’t help. Ebullient, hopeful pop-rock like this anthem does a real service for people like me: it’s one of the few things that can reliably make you feel better, even if only for the duration of hearing the song. (As Pete Townshend once said, rock ‘n’ roll won’t solve all your problems, but it will let you dance all over them from time to time.) Continue reading “Howard Druckman’s Top 10 Songs of 2023” →

Best Music Journalism of 2023 (Jason Gross)

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Best Music Journalism of 2023: 30 great articles fly against the tide of misery

By Jason Gross

Ah, December… the time of year when we feast with family, exchange gifts with our loved ones, and reflect on yet another lousy, horrible year in the media. Horrendous job cus were reported mid-year and again in December, which might not be surprising since Americans aren’t even following the news like we did before and the tech companies aren’t working with publishers as much anymore either. Continue reading “Best Music Journalism of 2023 (Jason Gross)” →

Movie Music 3: interview with Jonathan Taplin (Aaron Aradillas)

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Part 3 of a three-part series on music in the movies by Aaron Aradillas

Jonathan Taplin is a veteran music manager, concert and movie producer. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, he worked for Bob Dylan and managed The Band. He organized and produced the first music charity concert with George Harrison’s The Concert for Bangladesh. In 1973, he collaborated with Martin Scorsese on the New Hollywood classic, Mean Streets, for which he was Producer and de facto Music Supervisor. Continue reading “Movie Music 3: interview with Jonathan Taplin (Aaron Aradillas)” →