45 REVELATIONS
My big problem as a practicing rock critic (not that it takes much practice) has been liking too much. Too many records, too many diverse styles. My tolerant tastes tend to put off readers and other writers, blessed as they are with the certitude of the narrowly righteous.
45 REVELATIONS
Ken Barnes
by
My big problem as a practicing rock critic (not that it takes much practice) has been liking too much. Too many records, too many diverse styles. My tolerant tastes tend to put off readers and other writers, blessed as they are with the certitude of the narrowly righteous. And I'm denied the valuable luxury of monomaniacal literary savagery, on which rock critic reputations are built. All the really vivid vocabulary in the critical lexicon is negative, words like 'vacuous' and 'twaddle' and 'pathetic,' but nothing, not even an old Blood, Sweat & Tears record, sounds offensive enough for me to requisition those adjectives of assault from the arsenal.
I began as a perfectly orthodox early '70s rock critic—loved my Big Star and New York Dolls and Velvet Underground and Stooges and all the required listening of the era (still do, in fact), and parroted the party line on the power of pop. Then a few alien elements started creeping in to my writing—a little KC & The Sunshine Band on one end, Kiss on the other; people started shaking their heads and crossing streets to avoid me.