uTopianTurtleTop

WORLD OF LAUGHTER, WORLD OF TEARS

Carl Wilson of Zoilus was feeling grumpy toward Chuck Klosterman yesterday too. Carl’s example chastens my overripe generalization about what’s wrong with rockcrit, which I should have qualified somehow -- maybe, what’s wrong with *rockist* rockcrit, an anti-critic critical term which Carl wrote nicely about a little more than a month ago, “Rolling Stone” magazine indeed being the all-time rockist champ, rockism’s convention center of conventional wisdom, the bright yellow stripe in the middle of the smooth rockist road, and thank goodness for traffic lanes so we all know our place. (The mag does do some good political reporting.)

In fairness to Klosterman’s book, I should note that it did make me want to check out Guns ‘N Roses, a band I don’t consciously know at all, though I’m guessing I’ve heard them in passing. (Where was I in the late ‘80s? Oh yeah, I remember -- doing theater, reading books, playing guitar, singing Alberta Hunter songs at the top of my lungs by Lake Michigan’s deserted winter shore, scraping by.)