He’s Seen the Future of Rock Music, and Its Name Is Pad Thai

I had occasion to speak to a college journalism class recently. The students asked a number of good questions about my job, which I thought was awfully polite considering it soon became apparent that most of them never actually, when it comes down to it, read a newspaper, per se, though they have seen old movies where people seem to read them. Only two students had any career interest in the class, and they were hoping to land jobs in broadcast journalism.

I have to admit newspapers look a little peppier in movies, particularly when they come spinning toward the camera with such headlines as MONSTER EATS AUCKLAND! or WE’RE REALLY DIZZY! Papers look good on TV, and also sound good, like when Ward Cleaver snaps one open over his knee and starts looking at the lawn mower ads. They sound fine on the radio too: Crumple ‘em and listeners think it’s a cheery fireplace. If, on the other hand, you try crumpling a radio into a newspaper, you’ve only got broken plastic and capacitors.

So, onward into broadcast journalism, young souls. Those who are on deadline salute you. You’ll see far more thong bikinis than we.

But I just hope these kids know what they’re in for. You can’t simply walk into a plush broadcasting job. First you have to go through a rigorous name-change, to something like Tiny Grit, Brick Facade or Luke Warm. Then you have to learn to replicate two very important TV news faces: There’s the jovial what-do-I-care-I’ve-got-mine look, good for chummy reflections on the weather and/or sporting events and miniseries preview blurts, which covers about three-quarters of a news broadcast. Then there’s the gravely-concerned-but-I-don’t-really-get-this-either look they use to report hard news and disasters. If you’ve ever tried to talk sense to a dog, you’ll find this look comes naturally to them, while Paul Moyers is still working on it.

Meanwhile, for all you know I could be cleaning my ear with a No. 2 pencil right now. That’s the freedom of the press you hear about: We can do anything while we’re working because you can’t see us. This isn’t even me writing. I’ve hired a day-laborer to come up with the column for me this week. How do you think he’s doing so far?

The question the journalism students seemed most curious about was, “How did you get to be a rock critic?”

I guess it’s just something I was always drawn to. When other kids played doctor or cowboy, for Christmas I asked for a toy rock critic’s kit, with it’s little note-pad and ear plugs. In school I was drawn to words like commanding, compelling and Springsteenian . In my teens, my term papers often started: “I saw the future of sociology last night, and its name is . . . .”

Finally the big day arrived. There I was standing with a real note-pad and pen at a hard rock concert, my teeth being loosened by the volume as a young woman threw up on my shoes. I’d made it!

Actually, I don’t know how I wound up as a music critic. I liked playing the stuff, because the volume is a lot more fun when you’re the one generating it. Meanwhile, as Martin Mull has noted, writing about music is a bit like dancing about architecture. They’re mutually exclusive art forms, and recreating, or even dimly reflecting in words the magic that can occur in music is a daunting challenge. The trade-off is, with the bad shows, it’s easy and tremendous fun just insulting the jerks. But it’s nothing I ever aspired to. I took journalism in college, but I also took sexuality, and no one ever offered me a job at that. Rather, as I suspect most rock critics did, I just floated along until I fell into the job.

When people first starting thinking rock deserved some serious consideration in the second half of the ‘60s, they had to create their own forums for it, such as Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy magazines. By the end of the decade, many newspapers had recognized that this rock stuff wasn’t going to go away and might be due some coverage. I won’t mention names, but it took until the late ‘70s for this fact to register with one local paper. Few serious reporters were interested in the beat, but plenty of copy boys and other low-level scribes were. Many have turned out to be fine, but I suspect that some are still worried about their credibility as they plunge into old age, because they never miss an opportunity to ascribe a bloated importance to the pop music they write about.

There can be a band of sullen, pimply British drunks with guitars making a feedback whine that would sound exactly the same if the instruments had been left unattended on the floor, and under the critic’s pen, suddenly they’re young Byrons between the lyric sheets, while coaxing “courageous Spectorian walls of sound” from their guitars.

So by the time cruel fate made me a critic in the early ‘80s, I considered the job to be on par, triviality-wise, with chilling dessert forks for a living.

That’s not to say that music isn’t tremendously important. I think it can express far more than words ever can, and I agree with the late author/adventurer Bruce Chatwin that music predates speech as our true language. The best music can make us more alive, which is the greatest, and most truly subversive, goal of art.

But it isn’t like someone who was at a concert is going to read the paper over breakfast and say, “You know, honey, he’s right. I’m sorry we screamed and jumped for 90 minutes at the show the other night. I read here that the performance was just a hollow, calculated exercise in ersatz emotionalism.” It helps to keep from getting too big a head to realize what small influence we writers have. There have been occasions when other critics and I rolled out the hosannas for an upcoming show, only to arrive at the gig and find that the only audience assembled is 13 other critics. Curiously, you can do a favorable restaurant review and people will line up around the place. That considered, I might recommend that new bands give themselves names like Pad Thai and Rump Roast.

If critics did actually have much effect on artists’ careers, I imagine performers would turn a lot nastier, perhaps taking a cue from President Bush and getting fans so riled that they’d take to physically attacking reporters.

Having an audience of screaming Tom Jones fans converging on them might be some critics’ worst nightmare. This doesn’t scare me so much, because I’d like to think I’ve already faced my worst rock critic moment.

Once, my doctor had me get a test called a Lower G.I., which, while sparing you the details, involves a chalky radioactive fluid, a hose and a place where you’d very much rather not have it. The nurse administering the procedure looked at my chart and asked, “Say, are you the same Jim Washburn that writes for the newspaper?”

“Uh, yes.”

“The one who compared Phil Collins to a jar of old mayonnaise?”

“Ulp.”

“Well, I like Phil Collins,” she asserted, drawing ever closer with that hose.