School of Rock Criticism

Like a lot of you out there in the blogosphere, when I'm not listening to music I want to be learning about it. So I read a lot of books about music and musicians. Some are so-so, and some are great. Once in a blue moon, one will even change the way you listen to music. If you fancy yourself a critic, it might even inspire you to go out and buy some new music just so you can write about it. Paul Williams' "Bob Dylan, Performing Artist: 1960-1973, The Early Years" recently afforded me such a attitude-changing experience.

I wasn't aware of Williams' book until it recently was recommended to me. I was familiar with some of his work. Specifically, I was aware of Crawdaddy! magazine, the first American rock music magazine, which Williams founded as a teenager in 1966. If you know the magazine's reputation or some of the writers whose bylines appeared in it, then you know Williams has critic's credentials to spare.

From a critical (or any other) standpoint, "Bob Dylan: Performing Artist" didn't disappoint. Williams presents Dylan as a performing artist, examining that artistry and what the artist reveals of himself through his officially released material, his concerts and unofficial concert recordings that circulate among collectors. The book is free of the florid prose that is being written about Dylan somewhere as we speak. It doesn't automatically assume he has God-like powers of diction and meter, a trap critics sometimes fall into (this one included). It is a plain-spoken, intelligent analysis of Dylan's early career. If that interests you, I suggest you buy a copy of the book and read it for yourself. I'm not going to review it further.

What I am going to write about is the ways in which Williams' book almost immediately changed my outlook on writing about music. It is not only a learned work about Bob Dylan as performer, but it serves as a textbook of sorts on music criticism. The following points are worth discussing, but it is my hope that they eventually will be evident to us both in the form of better, more thoughtful and more useful criticism from this writer.

When I finished reading Williams' book, I had about a dozen bits of pink Post-it note sticking out of the side, marking passages I wanted to revisit. Here's what I learned from reading and rereading them:

1. Don't be afraid to gush. The first point to ponder was in Williams' introduction, in which he wrote, "This is a book about great art. It is a personal report, a subjective investigation. So is all history, all scholarship, all criticism. The best any of us can do is to tell the truth as we see, hear and feel it. Something else we can do is stay in touch with the joy and wonder of it, and let that come through in our reports." I sometimes feel guilty if my praise for a disc is too glowing. In the future, I hope to be more comfortable in embracing that enthusiasm. In turn, I hope that it leads to more accurate descriptions of why I came to feel that way.

2. Trust your instincts. I've wrestled with this one many times, and Williams addressed it with a passage written so clearly I would have sworn he was speaking to me. On page 58, in the course of a discussion of Dylan's song "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," he writes, "Difficulties arise when we attempt to express, as in criticism, what we think we heard and felt. A very simple and direct message that is easy to feel may be hard to re-state. ... I suspect this happens because, being so moved by the songs, we wish to repeat in some way the "message" we've received, and either we find it impossible or else we end up defending a linear description of a multi-dimensional experience. Being unable to say what the songs mean (or to get agreement from others about what we say), we may jump to the conclusion that we don't know what they mean (or that others don't know). In fact, we have confused our receipt of the message with our ability to repeat it."
Like the first point, I've been hung up on this one often. Either I'm confused by lyrics that I can't seem to decipher, or I determine the message or the story of the song but doubt my analysis. Both result in wishy-washy writing where bold statements and strong sentences are needed.

3. To each his own. Some might believe that "A.M." is Wilco's greatest album. Others might be in the "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" camp. Both camps (or any other) are right. Williams discusses the tendency to rank a particular work above another or group artists' works in easy-to-digest categories. On page 111, Williams writes, "In fact we cannot actually listen to more than one performance at a time. It is tempting to try to simplify the oeuvre of a prodigious artist such as Dylan or Picasso by creating biographical or aesthetic periods in which to group his work, or by setting up standards by which a few works can be singled out as most successful or important. I plead guilty to both approaches, and believe a slightly misleading order may be preferable to none at all, but caution the reader not to take such arbitrary contexts too seriously. In the end, an individual listener has an experience of an individual recording; and greatness in art depends on what occurs in the privacy of that experience."

4. Even when we don't "get it," we get it. I don't need to explain this one further. Williams explains it succinctly on page 184: "The performing artist isn't interested in whether we understand what he's saying. He wants us to listen to the way he says it. What we feel while we're listening is what we get."

5. Toby Keith has feelings, too. I think that anyone who reviews music, or movies or books, occasionally takes perverse joy in writing a savage review about something that didn't provide us with an enjoyable experience. We even feel proud of the clever ways that we've phrased our put-downs. I still feel comfortable writing about performances I don't enjoy, but I'm not sure I'll be able to bring myself to write a hatchet job again. All the points I've mentioned stuck in my mind upon first reading them, and I hope they'll all stay there. This last one especially gave me pause and got me thinking about thinking. Before you write, that is. Or, at the very least, before your work appears in print. Williams describes a 1966 backstage visit with Dylan:

"He became less mysterious to me, and more human. At one point he indicated a line in an article I'd written about Paul Simon where I praised Simon for avoiding the "Dylanesque crime" of songs that go on interminably. He raised his eyebrows, and I squirmed – it was essentially a silent communication, he was not attacking me but, in a cautious way, letting me know the comment hurt. By not defending myself I acknowledge my careless arrogance, and in effect apologized. I think I learned at that moment to be conscious of, responsible for, what I write and the opinions I express, because what I say might sometimes make a difference to, be felt by, a real person on the other end. That afternoon Dylan gave strong support to my tendency to relate to works of art as things produced not by distant masters but by real people, similar to me, who have feelings and are searching for ways to express them accurately, honestly, straightforwardly."

Come to think of it, Mom tried to instill this one years ago, but phrased it differently. It went something like "If you can't say anything nice ..."

Williams' book is the rare read that leaves you not only in awe of the author's prodigious skills, but with the feeling that you have the tools to make such astute observations on your own. In effect, you do. All it takes is a performance, and your willingness to listen.