WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT MUSIC? TO BEGIN WITH ... EVERYTHING: Jim DeRogatis is leaving his longtime perch as pop music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times to teach the reviewing arts at Chicago's Columbia College. He'll continue to co-host Sound Opinions and will blog at Vocalo.org.

In one of my rare acts of journalism committed on this blog, I interviewed DeRogatis in 2003 to discuss his new book on the alternarock boom of the 1990s.

Jim DeRogatis: Breaking News Archives

WHAT DOES VERTICAL INTEGRATION LOOK LIKE, ANYWAY? Unifying this blog's amateur interest in pop culture and (certain participants') professional interest in The Majesty of the Law, Jim DeRogatis has been covering the heck out of the latest DC machinations surrounding the proposed Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger.

SELF-PERPETUATING CORPORATE SUCCESS MACHINES: As promised more than a week ago, I've finally typed up the first half of my recent interview with Jim DeRogatis, music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. DeRogatis' new book, Milk It! Collected Musings on the Alternative Music Explosion of the '90s, covers the alternative music explosion of the 1990s and its decline, compiling the best of his writing from various publications over the past decade-plus.

From Nirvana to the Pumpkins to P.M. Dawn to the time Jann Wenner fired him from Rolling Stone magazine for writing a negative review of Hootie and the Blowfish's Fairweather Johnson (which Wenner spiked), then calling Wenner "just a fan of any band that sells eight and a half million albums" -- well, it's all there. And then some.

We spoke over the phone about two weeks ago:

Was it inevitable that there would be an alternarock explosion in the 1990s? Or if Nirvana hadn’t come up with a song that catchy and anthemic at that moment, how much of this never would have happened?

That’s a tricky question. Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick" was just as good, just as catchy, and any of the other Seattle bands, or the Replacements or the Huskers could have had as big a hit.

Nirvana was in the right place, at the right time, hitting all at once. And Nirvana was a band with undeniable power. I’d hate to romanticize it and say “you had to be there”, but it was captivating and inspired.

I remember how it felt for me, starting with this song that just the other DJs on my college station kept playing all the time, and then to see it break through into the mass culture. It was something.

Sure, but they would have been just as good musically if they had sold a Mudhoney-level or records, a Ramones level of records.

They never knew how to deal with that level of success.

It was a weird experience for them. Cobain was deeply troubled by the success. They didn’t know what the hell was going on. There’s that Courtney Love quote in my book -- the “no one told us about the thread count” thing, which is so chilling . . . I visited Cobain at his home a few months before his death, and it was like a slum. He’s living on Lake Washington, in a huge house with a thrift-store couch. They didn’t know how rich they were.

On the flip side, you talk in your book about R.E.M. and U2, bands that took their 80s success and kept going in the 1990s and into the present.

Sure, but while losing part of their soul. They’ve both become self-perpetuating corporate success machines, a sad caricature of what they once were. Say what you will about Nirvana, but at the end they were still a band.

I’d think there’s probably a third group that now belongs on that level – the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I guess, but I never thought they were that good. They went from being cocks-and-socks bonehead fratboys to cocks-and-socks bonehead fratboys who wrote hit ballads. My favorite chapter in the book was the one on bands like Pere Ubu, the Flaming Lips . . . bands that are making music for all the right reasons.

What did you make of that whole “don’t let them be your friends” speech Lester Bangs gave in Almost Famous -- is that how you try to operate as a critic?

Absolutely. It’s great advice for any journalist. Whether you’re covering a trial, or city hall, or the health beat, you’re there to report the news, not to be anyone’s friend. You get into music writing because you’re a fan, but your loyalty is to the reader, not the artist.

Bangs said something similar to that to me about ten years after he said it to Cameron Crowe. We both met Lester when we were about 17 years old.

Another topic: is it still possible, given industry consolidation, especially on the radio, for a band to be both commercially viable and artistically innovative?

Sure. Radiohead attracts 35-40 thousand people a night for their arena rock. Anything’s possible. Nobody saw Nirvana coming.

There’s five major labels now, and soon enough there will be just three. They’re brontosauruses marching head into the La Brea tar pits of extinction.

But again, it doesn’t matter: if the music itself is good, it doesn’t matter how many other people are listening to it.

I don’t think enough can be said about Gerard Cosloy and the run he’s had at Matador. You take a look at who they released in the 1990s – Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Liz Phair, Bettie Serveert, Superchunk . . . it’s pretty stunning.

And even before that at Homestead Records, with Sonic Youth, Big Black, Dinosaur Jr. – he has an extraordinary set of ears. He’s still kind of a jerk. [laughs]

Those labels are thriving today – indie music is as good as ever. They’re in this and they’re ready for the internet to completely change the musical landscape. Back in the 1990s, there was a moment when they really believed they could take over the major labels, and with the Capitol-Matador deal, it came close.

Then it looked like real money could be made, and the music became gutted, deprived of its soul. Nirvana led to Bush, and Liz Phair led to Alanis Morrisette. It was horrifying.

More this weekend.

I WANT TO BE THE GIRL WITH THE MOST CAKE: To commemorate this blog's one-year anniversary (tomorrow), have a little fun and provide a little extra to you, my loyal readers (as well as the people who are just hoping for the free pizza), I decided to seek out Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis, one of this blog's favorites, who was happy to chat with me yesterday about his new book, the alternarock explosion of the 1990s, the contemporary scene and future of rock music.

I think you'll enjoy our conversation a lot, and it will appear here as soon as I have some time to transcribe my notes.

In the meantime, a preview. Because it all comes back to Nirvana, right? (And then back to the Pixies, but you know what I'm saying.)

We were talking about Nirvana, and how troubled Cobain was by the band's success. "They didn't know what the hell was going on," DeRogatis told me.

He visited Cobain at his home a few months before his death. "It was a beautiful house on Lake Washington, but it looked like a slum," he told me. "He had a thrift-store couch in the middle of the living room. They had no idea how rich they were."

Which he then linked to, and I will now for you, a 2002 interview he conducted with Courtney Love, contained in the book, and one particular Love quote which he called "creepy":

[Cobain biographer] Charlie [Cross] has this theory that there was always suicidal ideation, and there was no way around it. I think that's bull; ideation can be replaced with other ideation. Now, I have a theory, and it sounds vulgar, and it sounds shallow, and it's capitalism coming from a capitalist. But if we were around folks who knew luxury, who were our generation, who had money, who were flying on Lear jets, who were drinking fine wines, who were feeling great fabrics, who knew what Ming was, and fine art, and thread count, things might have been different. We didn't experience what [R.E.M. guitarist Peter] Buck experienced when he was living next door. We didn't have STUFF. We didn't know about food. We didn't have a cleaning lady! Wealth makes things nicer -- it does, and that's just a goddamn fact! We were rich people, and we didn't get to BE rich people. And I think that luxury might have replaced [Kurt's suicidal] ideation.

If only Kurt had been introduced to the Pottery Barn in time, Courtney. . . .

More on Nirvana, true rock experiences, bands that have become "corporate self-perpetuating success machines," the importance of Trent Reznor and more, as soon as I have time to type it up.

AH, LIZ PHAIR (IN LOVE AND WAR): Yeah, it's also possible to write balanced pieces about Liz Phair's new album, to treat her new album not as career suicide but as a legitimate effort by an established audience to broaden her appeal.

See the Boston Globe's Joan Anderman and Evelyn McDonell in the Miami Herald, both of whom have balanced-to-positive takes. For instance, Anderman quotes Phair defending the venture: ''It's pretty simple. I'm not 25 and getting high all the time. I'm happy I did 'Guyville' and that people felt that way about it. Honestly, I look back and think, 'How did I do that?' I can't write like that anymore, so I'm just gonna keep going. This album is a true representation of what I like and who I am. I know what makes me happy, and I'm unafraid to pursue it.''

Still, for every article like that, there's still writers like long-time Throwing Things favorite Jim DeRogatis, who tackles the new album in a lengthy Sun-Times piece:

Now, with the self-titled "Liz Phair" (Capitol), the singer-songwriter is devoting herself to scoring the mainstream hit that has so far eluded her. She yearns for a feel-good ditty as ubiquitous and innocuous as "Soak Up the Sun" by her friend Sheryl Crow, which found Phair adding backing vocals, and she proves that she's willing to pander to sexism (she appears naked on the cover but for a guitar) and the demands of the pop mainstream (parts of the disc were produced by The Matrix, the platinum-selling production team behind Avril Lavigne's "Let Go") in order to get it.

Phair is no Crow (she lacks the sophistication) and she's certainly no Lavigne (she's never been that naive, energetic or blissfully bubblegum). The result is one of the most tragically compromised records that a once-uncompromising artist has ever made.

DeRogatis recently described Exile in Guyville about as accurately as you can in two sentences: "[T]he album is a statement about what it's like to be a sharp, talented young woman who simultaneously loves and hates the men in her life. She can't live with them, and she can't live without them, but she'll be damned if she stops trying to find her ideal soul mate--or to concede that the problem may be partly her own."

Whatever this album ends up becoming, they can't take away my Guyville.

HALL OF FAVES: As Adam mentioned below, Michael Wilbon's election to "ALOTT5MA fave" status went down yesterday, marking the first time in history a person, thing, or abstraction was nominated but failed to take the honor (though it's going to be touch-and-go when "ennui" comes up later this year). This is largely because until Adam thought to ask the staff about Wilbon yesterday, the enshrinement process went: (1) fiat; (2) buyer's remorse. Let's face it, "ALOTT5MA Fave" status is a dubious honor bestowed, with rare exceptions, upon people or things that aren't really anybody's favorite anything. I dare you to come up with a less-impressive or more haphazard Hall of Fame than this roster of everyone that any of us has ever called an "ALOTT5MA fave":

Filmed Entertainment:
JJ Abrams
Amy Adams
Naveen Andrews
Kristen Chenoweth
Cruel Intentions
Anna Faris
Will Ferrell
Victor Garber
Jennifer Garner
Neil Patrick Harris
Shonda Rhimes
Aaron Sorkin
James Spader
Aimee Teegarden

Haberdashery:
Tim Gunn
Kara Saun

Games of Skill or Chance:
Bobby Abreu
Pat Burrell
Shaquille O'Neal
Stephanie Rosenthal

Ingestion:
Mark Bittman
Anthony Bourdain
Chik-Fil-A

Commentariat:
Jim DeRogatis
Roger Ebert
Tony Kornheiser
Elvis Mitchell
Kelefeh Sanneh

Childhood:
Kavya Shivashankar

Tonal Pleasantry:
Frenchie Davis
Kathleen Edwards
Verdine "Sexual Chocolate" White

And while we're clearing up administrative matters, you have probably heard us refer to this department or that bureau, and wondered, "where can I get an ALOTT5MA internal directory?" The answer is here, right now, with the following list of organizational responsibilities or expertises adopted, appropriated, or assigned:

Chicago Bureau Chief: Alex
Pre-1990s Heavy Metal Bureau Chief: Isaac
Japanese Monomania Desk: The Pathetic Earthling
Personal Health/Exotic Disease Desk: Isaac
Repressive Regimes Desk: All
Urophilia Desk: Adam
Dead Wrestler Series Editor: Adam
Halls of Fame Series Editor: Alex
Muktuk Series Editor: Adam
Things that Are Not Suitable for TV Expert: The Pathetic Earthling
19 Entertainment Modus Operandi Expert: KCosmo
Astronomy Bug: The Pathetic Earthling

ETA: Just to be clear, all faves and titles are culled from our recorded archives. Not making any editorial decisions here; just collating pre-existing data.

I'D MAKE ROOM FOR YOU, I'D SAIL SHIPS FOR YOU: We don't always award an ALOTT5MA Award for Unrequited Crush of the Year, but 2008 was a special year indeed. He was covering the American Idol beat for the LA Times and she, of course was "the greatest performer in 'Idol' history." And I might have forgotten about it, except that Richard Rushfield wrote Carly Smithson again today, God bless him:

"American Idol," for all the fame it bestows, can be a marketing handicap. A surprising number of former contestants face the question, "What kind of artist are you?" This is certainly the case for Smithson, whose powerful vocal skills broke through the clutter in Season 7 but whose pop/rocker style was difficult to express around the songs of Mariah Carey, Dolly Parton and Broadway musicals. ...

In the studio, two songs seem to be the full expression of the power she only hinted at on "Idol" -- an intense ballad titled "Lie With Me" and "Let Me Fall," a blazing power-rock anthem. The songs seem very personal (although she insists they are not taken from her life), about relationship anguish and tormented love.

Oh, the memories. Rather than going back to his legendary elegy for Ms. Smithson's Idol run ("Shock, grief, anger, betrayal. These were the feelings that swept through the Idoldome after the stunning dismissal of Carly Smithson...."), let's instead highlight what he wrote the following week:

The Idoldome was a colder, emptier place Tuesday night than it had been a mere week ago, when the most electrifying singer in "American Idol" history, Carly Smithson, still walked among us. In the life of every "Idol" partisan, sooner or later this day must come when one must look defeat dead in the eye and search for new reasons to keep faith in the system.

In the end, democracy cannot be just a way to force one’s own candidate into office; the means must be more important than our individual ends and, bitter though it may be, the will of the electorate must be embraced. Were it not for American Idol, one must recall, we would have never known Carly Smithson at all. However, taking my seat in the Carly-less Idoldome, I recounted the words of the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert in his Elegy of Fortinbras, when he wrote, putting words in the mouth of Hamlet’s sole survivor ...

You get the idea. Rushfield may not get the girl, but darn it, he gets the ALOTT5MA Award. (Perennial runners-up: Peter King on Brett Favre, Jim DeRogatis on Billy Corgan.)

IF HE DIED IN MEMPHIS, THEN THAT'D BE COOL, BABE: Sad, sad news tonight--Alex Chilton is dead. He was 59 and the cause of death was an apparent heart attack. Chilton was known to many as the lead singer of the Box Tops, whose blue-eyed soul hit "The Letter" is a staple of oldies radio. But it was with his next band, Big Star, that Chilton had his biggest influence. The band had next to no commercial success in its time, but it influenced a generation of pop-rock bands most notably REM, the Replacements (who of course went so far as to record "Alex Chilton"), and Wilco, among thousands of others.

Don't take my word for it, though. Seek out some Big Star and I guarantee you will be enchanted. "September Gurls" is a great place to start, though you might prefer "In the Street" (aka the theme from "That '70s Show," albeit as covered by Cheap Trick). Or even better yet, let Sound Opinions' Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot guide you through Big Star's albums in this episode of their show from last fall.

THE SADDEST FACT I'VE LEARNED IS NOBODY MATTERS LESS TO OUR SOCIETY THAN YOUNG BLACK WOMEN. NOBODY: Our old friend Jim DeRogatis did a lengthy and much-buzzed-about interview with the Village Voice today in which he reminds us that when you think of R. Kelly, you should think of one thing first and foremost (warning: link contains potential triggers):

I DON'T MEAN TO BUG YA: Jim DeRogatis, on the worst rock movies of all time. On Scorsese's The Last Waltz: "I’m from the punk era. I believe what’s great about rock ’n’ roll is community and the tearing down of boundaries. And the basic thrust of The Last Waltz is that these are superheroes so much better than you. Plus, it’s boring. It’s fun looking for the scenes where you can see the cocaine on Neil Young’s nose, but these guys are insufferable, and Robbie Robertson is the king of that."

"IF THAT MOLE IS GONE, IT'S NOT KELLY": Six-plus years after the videotape in question was sent to our friend Jim DeRogatis, the ALOTT5MA Urophilia Desk reports that R. Kelly has been acquitted of all charges by a Chicago jury this afternoon after 7 1/2 hours of deliberation.

The decision of the alleged victim not to cooperate with the prosecution, no doubt, was a problem. More from the Sun-Times, Tribune.

e.t.a. For context, Bill Wyman review Kelly's history of sexual interest in and out-of-court settlements with underage girls, none of which, I believe, was presented to the jury.

FROM THE ALOTT5MA UROPHILIA DESK: We're not providing daily updates of the R. Kelly trial -- the Sun-Times and Tribune are your comprehensive resources for that. (Also, child pornography is not funny, even if several aspects of this trial are. A Space Jam room in your house?) But it is worth noting that yesterday was the day that ALOTT5MA friend (and pop music critic for the Sun-Times) Jim DeRogatis was called to the stand, where he was ultimately granted the shield of the Fifth Amendment against testifying (though not reportorial privileges) regarding questions of what happened to The Tape after he received it in the mail.

GODWIN'S LAW IN FULL EFFECT: Goofus DeRo compares High School Musical Live! to the work of Joseph Goebbels, but Gallant DeRo trains his sights on a more entertaining target, explaining why no aspiring music journalist should want to work with Jann Wenner on MTV's new reality competition "Who Wants To Write Think-Pieces About Midlevel Bands Struggling With Their Limitations In The Harsh Face Of Stardom?"

Jim DeRogatis' mild original review of Hootie and the Blowfish's Fairweather Johnson ("Hootie music never rocks, and you certainly can't dance to it; at best, you just sort of do the awkward white-person wiggle so prominent at Dead and baby Dead shows alike"), which nevertheless got him fired from Rolling Stone, can be found here.

I KNOW IT'S LATE, I KNOW YOU'RE WEARY: Jim DeRogatis defends (and extols) Bob Seger in concert, arguably the worst inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

But for my money, I'll take a strong Seger show -- which Thursday undeniably was -- over a run-of-the-mill Bruce Springsteen set any day. Unlike the Boss, Bob isn't aspiring to craft Important Art or make a Grand Statement. He's just playing the sort of music he loves, and he's arguably as good at it today as he ever was.

I've been to run-of-the-mill Springsteen concerts. There is simply no way Great Seger > Mediocre Springsteen. Ever.

THIS BLOG IS A VAMPIRE, SENT TO DRAIN: Our DeRo [Heart] Uncle Fester Watch continues with the most bizarre shoehorning yet -- a Kanye West concert review in which the Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis calls West "as much of a notorious perfectionist and workaholic as fellow Chicagoan Billy Corgan". Whuh?

BUT ONCE I REALLY LISTENED THE NOISE JUST FELL AWAY: Is it summer? Yes. Then we're due for the annual How Dare Liz Phair (Or Any Female In Any Creative Field) Dare Try To Make Her Work More Accessible And Commercial rant, this time from the Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis, who, otherwise, we're generally a fan of:

To compare Phair's first three albums to her most recent discs is to see a schizophrenic split unprecedented in rock history since Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship. She defends this as part of her inevitable growth as an artist -- a specious and nonsensical claim, given that the melodies and lyrics of her earlier work are infinitely more sophisticated, complex and mature than the sunny platitudes and hummable inanities of late. . . .

My God, what happened to this woman's self-esteem, let alone her brains? What possibly could have inspired one of the sharpest songwriters of her generation to turn to writing such utterly banal crap?

What bothers me so much about DeRo's piece is how personal his sense of hurt is, that he feels directly betrayed by Phair's decision to not just write songs for him but reach a broader audience. As though Jim was entitled to "authentic" Liz Phair music, regardless of what the Actual Liz Phair wanted to do.

Y'know, it's quite possible that Liz Phair was never talented enough to record a second Guyville. It's also possible that she just didn't want to. But for DeRo to show such deference to every odd Billy Corgan project (which the public has rejected) yet deny Phair the same freedom to experiment is . . . unphair.

THEY STILL HAVEN'T FOUND WHAT THEY'RE LOOKING FOR? ALOTT5MA fave Jim DeRogatis talks with U2's Larry Mullen Jr.:

DeRo: But U2 never wanted to be a band like Pink Floyd or the Rolling Stones, which basically became massive money-making oldies shows.

Mullen: And we won't! With respect to you and your colleagues, when it's time for U2 to get the bullet in the head, we'll do it ourselves, thank you very much! But we're greedy, and we want to push boundaries. We want to do things that nobody else has done before, and we will do whatever we have to do to achieve that. We're never satisfied. We never feel like we've made our greatest record. We always feel we can do better, we can be better, and that's constant. After every record, we sit down and go, 'OK, what was wrong with that? What was right with it?' And next time around, we fix it. We constantly do that, and that's why U2 survives.

There's a very deep unhappiness in U2, because there's a sense that we achieved great success and became a really big band, but we were never a really great band. There was always that thing that we were given all these accolades, but we didn't really deserve it. We got it because we managed to do very well live, and it was all about being big. Being big means s--- to us. It's being great that we want, and that's what we strive for.

Okay, people, it's May 1, 2005. On what date will U2 perform its last live concert?

PLAY THE BLUES, EDGE! In honor of St. Patrick's Day, and of their recent induction into that place that's supposed to be in Philadelphia, not Cleveland, I present the following excerpt from Eric Waggoner and Bob Mehr's essay in Kill Your Idols (DeRogatis and Carrillo, eds.), on U2's The Joshua Tree:

Its landscape is peopled exclusively with sufferers and self-flagellants, wailing endless jeremiads to the slate-gray sky. We "turn away to face the cold enduring chill" (as opposed, one assumes, to the warm enduring heat); rivers, wells, and bottles "run dry" with such alarming frequency that one wonders why we don't move to well-irrigated Salt Lake City, if we like the goddamned desert so much; we're forever running through alleys, streets, storms, valleys, mountains, deserts, plains and fields in an effort to escape fire, rain, demons, locust winds, darkness, heat, cold, dust and thunder. The Joshua Tree is the Godzilla v. Mothra of rock albums. All is cinder, rubble, and death from above. . . .

There are seventy-two instances of first-person pronouns on The Joshua Tree (the next most prominent poetic element, water imagery, clocks in a distant twenty-six times; fire comes in third, with nineteen appearances); I stand with the sons of Cain, I lie on a bed of nails, I have climbed the highest mounts, I'm thirsty, I'm cold, I'm bare-assed naked, I, I, I, me, me, me. Bono, honey, come down off the cross. We can use the wood.

Count 'em here.

WELL READ OR RED IN THE FACE? I thought that being an English major as an undergrad, while not providing me with a skill that could ever earn me six figures, would at least have saved me the embarrassment of only having read five books on this list of 50 Essential Reads by Contemporary Authors put together by the organizers of the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction.

How many have you read? What book should be on the list? And what book from the remaining 45 (cross off Nos. 2, 18, 24, 29, and 31) should I read next?

Link via Blog of a Bookslut, where there are also some interesting items about some sloppy editing in Jim DeRogatis' new book.

CANON FODDER: Pop critic and Adam interviewee Jim Derogatis has a new book out. Kill Your Idols is a collection of critics reconsidering -- or attacking -- the Great Albums canon, both the hipster-certified (Dylan, Young, Sex Pistols, Public Enemy, Wilco) and commercial (Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Springsteen) variants. Apparently nobody was willing to tackle Velvet Underground & Nico or Slanted & Enchanted. Anyway, to sum up some of the highlights, and I must emphasize here that the opinions are not necessarily (and not necessarily not) those of the management:

Pet Sounds: Woof.
Tommy: Why?
Trout Mask Replica: Fishy.
Led Zeppelin IV: Zo-so.
Harvest: Rotten.
Rumors: Heard it already.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: Nonsense.