...because no one is watching...
Just to get this in your own words, can you explain the concept behind 101 Albums You Should Die Before You Hear? And where (and from whom) did the idea originate?
My whole life has been a series of rejections.
In the early 1980s no one wanted me so I started my own fanzine (The Legend!) and helped Alan McGee start a record label (Creation Records).
During the later 1980s I wrote for the NME and then they didn’t want me so I joined Melody Maker.
During the 1990s I wrote for Melody Maker and when they didn’t want me I joined VOX.
VOX folded, no one else would take me so I ran away to Seattle (in 1998) and joined The Stranger.
The U.S government didn’t want us so we ran away to Melbourne (in 1999) and joined The Age.
The Australian government didn’t want us so we returned to the U.K. and found that no one wanted me to write for them anymore, so I started my own magazines – Careless Talk Costs Lives and Plan B Magazine.
In 2008, we moved to Brisbane and discovered no one in Australia wanted me to write for them so I started my own websites – Collapse Board and The Electrical Storm.
In 2015, we moved back to the U.K. and found that still no one wanted me to write for them, so I started my own book company – Rejected Unknown (title taken from a Daniel Johnston album). It was founded after I realised that there was this book company in the U.S. called 33 and 1/3 that was rejecting ideas from all kinds of interesting and exploratory writers (myself included). It decided to go with 101 Albums You Should Die Before You Hear as its first book for these following reasons:
1. There is too much mindless positivism on the Internet about music.
2. There is too much mindless conformity (101 Toilets You MUST Visit Before You Die) in life, in general.
4. It was an idea originally gestated several years ago when I was becoming acquainted with Twitter: the idea of creating dialogue via juxtaposition, simply through listing myriad and numerous albums that I considered none too good, with no explanation whatsoever. People responded well, but perhaps that was before I had wilfully and knowingly destroyed my own authority as a critic.
5. Feminism is concerned with versions of history left untold. Before you create, you destroy.
6. Music is too fucking important to be left to the (circle) jerks.
7. The very idea leads to a communal project. I have never been interested in competing on other people’s terms. The fact it is a book is almost incidental. If you do not feel part of a community try and create a community for yourself.
8. Not-for-profit, gender inclusive…two concepts that seem to run contrary to the state of commercial music criticism. Important, though.
9. Think about the title for a second: none of the takedowns in this book are gratuitous. They have all come about because the writer felt a personal connection with the music or community – a connection that was then later betrayed. They have come about because the writer cares passionately about music, or imitating the Scooby-Doo voice at the least.
10. And then there are the haikus.
What do you think of the current state of music criticism? And what factors affect this, in your opinion?
I am indifferent. I do not hold with the concept of Golden Ages. I do not enjoy it when contemporaries or the uniformed talk about THE PAST. There is plenty of shit music criticism around, same way there is plenty of shit academic criticism around, same way there has always been plenty of shit music criticism around, same way there has always been plenty of shit music around. The trick is, not to focus on it. (Yes, I appreciate the irony of making this statement within the context of this project…but I have never claimed that consistency is something to be proud of.)
How has the rise of online media affected music criticism? Is it more of a democracy now? Or is there a danger of true criticism being overshadowed by what amounts to trolling for hits?
No, and no. Or rather, yes and yes, if you prefer. Everyone has always been able to be a music critic, same way everyone has always been able to be a photographer. Everyone has always had the ability to publish (if we are looking back to the origins of popular music criticism, leastways). When it comes to criticism – a singularly selfish art – democracies are boring. I am not a fan of anointed ‘experts’ either. I do not believe it is more democratic now anyway because of the above: what has always mattered is not the ability to publish (which always existed) but the marketing, distribution, publicity…visibility.
Visibility is not more democratic thanks to the rise of online environments. If anything, it is less so.
Do you think the increasingly smaller “pie” in journalism as a whole – lower mag/newspaper sales leading to lower ad revenue leading to less paid work/publications folding (and the cycle repeating) – has led to music criticism becoming more anodyne, with critics more afraid to put their heads above the parapet?
You mention in the book's intro that Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is playing as you write, despite it being an album you once swore you would never listen to. Did this project cause you to re-evaluate your own opinions on any of the albums included (or any other albums, for that matter)?
I didn’t like the way Van Morrison is sitting on that album’s cover. I still don’t but with the advent of iTunes and all that malarkey I no longer have to look at the album cover while hearing the music. Now, damn it, I can see it again. Context and association is often more important than the music itself (a contention that quite possibly is at the heart of this book). There is a review of The Jam’s All Mod Cons written by Kieron Phelan that will not stop me from listening to the album – a personal favourite, although nowhere near as much as the two Jam albums that followed it – but did help to explain my utter distaste for their singer Paul Weller’s later solo career in words of less than five syllables. And this was something I had puzzled over for years. So, nice one Mr Phelan.
Pink Floyd’s Animals however is an album I will most certainly continue to avoid.
In regards to your own personal music tastes, presumably there must be at least a few slaughtered sacred cows in the book that you disagreed with?
I am fond of the first Velvet Underground album but that did not stop the observations made within David Nichols’ takedown of same any less valid. Likewise, The Beatles, Patti Smith and Beyoncé. I now have a strange craving to listen to The Police’s albums – a craving I certainly never experienced at the time.
This book is subtitled “Volume 1” – when can we expect a follow-up?
Tomorrow, if all the writers come through (and this project is open to anyone who cares to partake, and especially to any non-male or non-white contributors). I would like Volume 2 edited by a female, preferably Lucy Cage. I would like it to happen before Christmas.
The intro also mentions an impassioned defence of Blurred Lines – does that hint at another potential project, defending albums that have been critically crucified?
That would be nice, but conventional music critics do that sort of thing all the time. And the impassioned defence is not so much an impassioned defence as an impassioned refusal to toe the party line – and yes, there is a difference.
Also, couple of details to check: Where can you buy the book (we'll include a link/throw to that in the article) and am I right that you're currently based in Brighton?
https://www.paypal.me/JThackray (and visit the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/wearerejectedunknown/)
Rates (including p&p): £12 (UK only) / £15 (EU + Ireland) / £20 (rest of the world)
Would it be OK to share my answers to your questions on my blog? And thank you for caring.
