Shelving: Chuck Eddy - Rock and Roll Always Forgets

"My writing and thinking about music isn't as dogmatic or hotheaded as it was 25 years ago, but it's smarter. And I'm still somehow making a living at it, long after lots of colleagues, including plenty of great ones, have packed it in. I can't explain that, though it probably helps that I've never not been a curmudgeon -- sort of like how ZZ Top didn't seem unduly old in the '80s because having beards was always their schtick." Chuck Eddy from Rock and Roll Always Forgets.

So much music criticism (nearly all of it), is white guys writing about white guys for other white guys to read, I almost didn't want to mention the new Chuck Eddy anthology, but I have to admire the sort of warts-and-all approach to editing twenty-five years of Eddy's work. Not all of it has aged well, in fact, some of artists he's written about over the years are practically encased in amber they're so specific to their era. Plus it's organized by theme rather than year, which is a tad confusing, sometimes jumping from the late 70s to the early 00s, the Spice Girls sharing space with the Village People (though that makes perfect sense, really).

Eddy's a champion of the stuff critics are supposed to hate -- disposable pop stars, one-hit rappers -- and he deconstructs a lot of the myths about music writing and music critics. His two excellent pieces on Eminem are here, as well as excerpts from his Pazz and Jop ballots. One caveat though: I found myself liking the introductory essays more than some of the originals. Overall, I think it's a good anthology, and it's not another indie-rock fantasy, which is a great thing.

But I'm biased: I like my critics on the curmudgeonly side.