Talk about complexity theory – Writing the Record tackles the shifting narratives of a golden age of writing when postmodernism met music journalism and the authors revelled in revealing self-reflexivity within their writing. Therefore, what I feel the need to convey about this review from the very outset is that what you are about to read is a book review written by an ex-music journalist who currently researches music journalism of a book about music journalism written by a popular music scholar who is also a freelance music journalist … oh what tangled webs we academics weave.
Now that candid confession is done, to the nitty-gritty of what Powers offers, which is of use way beyond the microcosm of interest in music journalism history. There is a subtle but passionate argument supporting the case studies here, which is to give ‘… proof of the vibrancy of popular music criticism and its maturation from marginal curiosity to animated public sphere’ (p. 4). On a basic level, she employs an analysis of the writings of one paper as a critical lens of a cultural period, in order to explore the role of the music critic as a public intellectual in the 1960s. However, beyond this, the rich research of the Village Voice focusing on the pinnacle eras of two key writers, Richard Goldstein and Robert Christgau, also sheds light on the music, the industry, the audience and the sociopolitical contexts of the period covered. From the outset, Powers beats the drum for the possibilities that music criticism can elicit. The best music writings are like ‘sparks where conversation begins, one node of many around which meaning may grow’ (p. 135).
The book harvests enough detail and signposts for a comfortable literature review of this field from a broad set of disciplines, beginning with a basis of cultural criticism, residing with Matthew Arnold, as an intellectual and the challenging impact of the rise of mass culture in the 1950s. In fact the very title of the book itself is a nod to the role of the press as a historical music curator. Powers then grapples with the role of the Village Voice as speaking for, as well as having a role in forming, an ‘imagined community’. This community had mixed feelings about folk and the emergence of rock. The critics of mass culture, particularly the New York intellectuals, influenced by the Frankfurt School, are contextualised within the emergence and increased popularity of media formats from which music could be consumed, whether that be on television, radio and vinyl. Powers convincingly argues that music journalists had a role to play in signalling that this was a different way of both consuming and thinking about music by drawing on Susan Sontag's ‘new paradigm of appreciation’ (p. 55).
While the book is USA focused, there are multitudes of ways in which it can be meaningful to scholars elsewhere, not least in the UK. The five thoughtful chapters of this reworked doctoral thesis are beautifully crafted. The historical journey through the newspaper from its predecessors and contextualisation within its geographical domain is a well-paced journey which takes us up to the present with all the technological challenges and opportunities that have faced the industry as a whole and the profession of musical journalism specifically.
The book would be a comfortable read for cultural and media, historians, journalism studies and, of course, within popular music studies. Primary sources from the paper itself are used to evidence the thematic expositions made by the author. Examples include the playing out of debates around essentialism and music as well as a detailed consideration of the conflicting pulls of the industry. The latter is exemplified via Goldstein's articulated dilemma of his position when trying to bring to public attention underground music while ensuring the music journalist does not become part of the hype of the machine itself. This was a time where the ‘company freaks’ and ‘house hippies’ were blurring the lines of fan and PR in the late 1960s – a period Goldstein suggested that:
Critics had become ‘afraid to evaluate’ in such an environment, and their criticism had become ineffectual because ‘publicity men seldom sweat their client's bad notices. They know it's the mention, not the verdict that sells product’. (p. 93)
This is a point that couldn't be more resonant now with the ubiquitous and yet contradictory role of social media lauded as both the new energy source of the industry as well as decreeing it to be the sole cause of its creative and economic demise.
It was heartening to read Power's calls for positive connectivity between music journalism and popular music scholars and indeed across cultural critics such as the influence of Pauline Kael on Christgau through which emerged his ‘pop aestheticism’. The examples used are colourful and well chosen. For instance, Christgau, the self-titled ‘Dean of American Rock Critics’, is drawn as an exposer of the industry. Not only does he get more records than he can listen to but he points out that there is more recorded music every year than there are hours to listen to it, and that he gets $40 per review compared to the money the multinational artist he is reviewing receives. Therefore his term ‘mattering’, which is used as an apt chapter heading for the final chunk of the text, implores us to really question what the role of a critic is. This crescendo of thought culminates with a polemic of music criticism possibility as Powers so eloquently concludes:
To live in a world that cares about music and culture, that creates musical citizens, demands that we are loud and clear in those beliefs. It also requires being proud of what criticism does well – that is, that we champion its ability to start conversations, catalyse interest in music and produce knowledge. A robust critical sphere is good for all of us less because it has mass appeal than because it is representative of the salience of music in American culture. And that matters. (p. 136)
