Writing About Music is Like Writing About Music
Q/A with Jim DeRogatis, Rock Critic

This is part two of our exclusive Jim DeRogatis chat. Click here to re-read part one.

You mentioned you're a Jersey boy. It doesn't seem as though you grew up under the spell of Springsteen...

No, I hate Springsteen. I always did. To me, the people who liked Springsteen were the jocks who beat up kids like me in high school. I was listening to the Clash; I was not listening to Springsteen. To me, it just seemed old-school and reactionary, all that romantic bullshit. My dad grew up in Asbury Park. Asbury Park is where you went and needles washed up on the shore. Whatever the place Springsteen was singing about, I never recognized.

Wow. [pause] That was like a punch in the gut.

Sorry. [laughs] I may be completely wrong.

I remembered your review of the show in Chicago was sort of tepid, and I was thinking that's odd for a Jersey boy.

I thought it was a mediocre show; I thought he was sorta going through the motions. A lot of people said that it got better. I don't know.

It definitely had some very hypnotic moments for me.

I know. A lot of people were really stoked about it.

And I guess it's hard to find anyone nowadays who will speak out against Springsteen--the positive reviews have been incredible.

I know, I know. I was underwhelmed. I've seen him in places like the Pasaic Theater in New Jersey, and I've seen those three-and-a-half, four hour shows that people talk about as being so transcendent. Even then, it was these long raps about whatever, the iron factories going out of work or Vietnam when he was doing his Vietnam schtick. Now it was, "I wanna get baptized in the river of life, blah blah blah..." It just seemed hokey to me; it always seemed hokey. When you'd have somebody like Patti Smith, or Richard Hell, or the Clash or the Ramones talking about life, it always seemed a lot more real to me. Despite the fact that I admired the Beats--and that's one of the reasons I like Lester, because he was big on Kerouac and stuff--that kind of false romanticism is not something I've ever been fond of.

So what about the original romance of rock, the stuff from the fifties and sixties? Do you respond to any of that?

Oh yeah, of course. I have a deep, abiding respect of rock history, but I have a different take on it. I was born in 1964, so I was born the Beatles got here, and I resent this notion that I've been fed my entire life, that because I was only five years old when Woodstock went down, I missed the whole fucking party. I've been to raves in Hickston, Wisconsin in the mud, that have been as great--I can't imagine that Woodstock was any better. For my generation, these kind of events were just as valid, and that the entire view of rock history should not revolve around the sixties. That was my first book--I wrote this history of psychedelic rock that said there's lots of ways to view this. To an entire generation of music fans, Kraftwerk is more important or as important as the Beatles. There's this continuum, and you can draw the line and connect the dots through forty years of history. History is a fluid thing, and you can define it differently, depending on who wins. The problem is that the baby boomers have won, and so the stuff in the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame is Jefferson Airplane, not the 13th Floor Elevators. Why is that, when there's an entire legion of nineties' rockers to whom the 13th Floor Elevators have been more influential than Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead? Rock 'n' roll history should have multiple entry points. My entire approach to criticism is this: it's best when it's a passionate dialogue between people who really care about the subject. What we all do as music fans is we sit around with our friends and we try to get them to share our enthusiasm, or we rail about stuff that we hate and we're angry that we wasted seventeen bucks on it. I guess in a way, I am a romantic, I do believe in this idea of community. [laughs] So I'm completely full of shit and disregard everything I said before. I don't sit on a mountaintop and say my taste is better than yours. I'm the luckiest son of a bitch in the world; I get paid to write about this music. But I'm as interested in why the Backstreet Boys are so moving to this fourteen-year-old girl. If she can express her opinion and is not just sitting there being programmed by media to go out and buy--if this song is deeply moving to her--emotionally, spiritually, sexually, which is what it comes down to a lot of times, isn't it--then that's valid. I want to hear what she has to say. Even though I'm gonna say the Backstreet Boys are disgusting hype being rammed down people's throats, I wanna hear why she says they're not.

When you hear shit albums, is it still as easy to get angry about it?

Yeah, because I have this idea in my head of who I'm writing for, and it's basically me at seventeen. I've got twenty dollars in my pocket, and I'm gonna go out and spend $17.99 on a CD--seventeen-fucking-ninety-nine. Is this a piece of crap that I'm coming home with that I'm never gonna play again, that I'm gonna use as a coaster? Or is it gonna be something that's life-sustaining, that I'd spend my last penny on? Far too many rock critics forget what it's like to buy records.

So which artists today do you think recieve far less exposure than they deserve?

Oh, I think there's dozens. I think we're at this point right now where the most interesting stuff is happening far underground again. It's 1987 again, and the mainstream is as wretched as I've ever seen it, and the most interesting music is coming from the nooks and crannies, far off the beaten path.

What about the internet? Where do you think that stands right now?

I think it's encouraging. As far as downloadable music, it's still such a narrow slice of people who have access to such a thing. I have a fairly good computer, and I can't even download MP3 files. It doesn't seem to be the user-friendly medium. I don't get excited about an MP3 file the way I do about a CD, which still isn't nearly what it was about an album. But the ability to communicate with other fans of a band, and to share information--that's really, really valuable. I keep waiting for it to prompt some sort of renaissance in rock criticism, but it hasn't. Mainly it just prompts a lot of chatter, and I've yet to see the real clear, insightful, probing voices that criticism needs to be rejuvenated.

It's almost like a new form of communication. Maybe people need to adapt to how it works.

It still remains to be seen. It's still in its infancy.

Finally, is writing about music like dancing about architecture?

That's the stupidest quote ever, and you see it attributed to so many people--Frank Zappa, Martin Mull. Whoever said it first was stupid--writing about music is like writing about music, and writing about architecture is like writing about architecture. I don't know what dancing's about. There's a million things you can do to illuminate music in writing, and none of them have anything to do with dancing.