CRITIC GREIL MARCUS TAKES THE HELM FOR 10 th ANNIVERSARY EDITION THE LANDMARK TENTH EDITION OF DA CAPO PRESS’S ANNUAL COMPENDIUM OF THE BEST IN MUSIC WRITING. BEST MUSIC WRITING has compiled the year’s most compelling writing BEST on music for a decade now, so it’s appropriate that its tenth edition be edited by one of the defi ning voices on music and popular culture, Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces, Mystery Train, The Old, Weird America, and many other ground- breaking excursions into the very fabric of music, America, and beyond. As always, series editor Daphne Carr has helped gather an impressively wide MUSIC range of essays, profi les, news articles, interviews, creative nonfi ction, fi ction, book reviews, long-format reviews, blog posts, and journal articles on music and BEST music culture, from rock and hip-hop to R&B and jazz to pop, blues, and more. This year’s collection includes: AIDIN VAZIRI YUVAL TAYLOR DAVID RAMSEY BARRY GIFFORD JOSHUA CLOVER JAMES PARKER CARRIE BROWNSTEIN JESSE SERWER WRITING MUSIC JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN JEFF WEISS DAVID REMNICK ROSANNE CASH JODY ROSEN WENDY LESSER ANN POWERS TOM EWING JOSH EELLS REBECCA SCHOENKOPF WRITING MD DALIM 1043695 8/24/09 J. BENNETT KEN TUCKER VANESSA GRIGORIADIS STANLEY BOOTH W. DAVID MARX CHARLES TAYLOR NICK SYLVESTER GINA ARNOLD JACE CLAYTON PAUL FORD MICHAEL PISARO WILLIAM HOGELAND 20 JONATHAN LETHEM G r e i l M a r c u s is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Artforum, and 2009 writes a monthly column for the Believer. Since 2000, he has taught at Berkeley, 09 Princeton, the New School, and Minnesota. He lives in Berkeley. CYAN D a p h n e C a r r is a music journalist and scholar who lives in Manhattan and G reil M arcus MAG can be found on the Web at funboring.com. guest editor YELO $15.95 / £9.99 / $20.00 CAN MUSIC / ESSAYS BLACK Da Capo Press A Da Capo Original DAPHNE CARR A Member of the Perseus Books Group www.dacapopress.com Cover design by Alex Camlin 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page i BEST MUSIC WRITING 2009 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page ii PREVIOUS EDITIONS OF BEST MUSIC WRITING: Best Music Writing 2008 Best Music Writing 2007 NELSON GEORGE, GUEST EDITOR ROBERT CHRISTGAU, GUEST EDITOR DAPHNE CARR, SERIES EDITOR DAPHNE CARR, SERIES EDITOR Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006 Da Capo Best Music Writing 2005 MARY GAITSKILL, GUEST EDITOR JT LEROY, GUEST EDITOR DAPHNE CARR, SERIES EDITOR PAUL BRESNICK, SERIES EDITOR Da Capo Best Music Writing 2004 Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003 MICKEY HART, GUEST EDITOR MATT GROENING, GUEST EDITOR PAUL BRESNICK, SERIES EDITOR PAUL BRESNICK, SERIES EDITOR Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002 Da Capo Best Music Writing 2001 JONATHAN LETHEM, GUEST EDITOR NICK HORNBY, GUEST EDITOR PAUL BRESNICK, SERIES EDITOR BEN SCHAFER, SERIES EDITOR Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000 PETER GURALNICK, GUEST EDITOR DOUGLAS WOLK, SERIES EDITOR 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page iii BEST MUSIC WRITING 2009 Greil Marcus, Guest Editor Daphne Carr, Series Editor DA CAPO PRESS A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page iv Copyright © 2009 by Da Capo Introduction © 2009 by Greil Marcus All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Designed by Timm Bryson Set in 10.5 point Warnock Pro by the Perseus Books Group Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress First Da Capo Press edition 2009 ISBN 978-0-306-81782-3 Published by Da Capo Press A Member of the Perseus Books Group www.dacapopress.com Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA, 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, extension 5000, or e-mail [email protected]. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page v CONTENTS Introduction xi by Greil Marcus AIDIN VAZIRI 1 Guns N’ Roses, Chinese Democracy San Francisco Chronicle DAVID RAMSEY 3 I Will Forever Remain Faithful: How Lil Wayne helped me survive my first year teaching in New Orleans Oxford American JOSHUA CLOVER 15 TERRORFLU Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion CARRIE BROWNSTEIN 26 Mystery Drain NPR Music’s Monitor Mix v 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page vi vi Contents JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN 29 Unknown Bards: The blues becomes transparent about itself Harper’s DAVID REMNICK 54 Bird-Watcher: Thinking about Charlie Parker, every day The New Yorker JODY ROSEN 80 Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison The New York Times ANN POWERS 86 “Idol” Banter: Meet the boys Los Angeles Times JOSH EELLS 88 The Eyeliner Wars Blender J. BENNETT 98 Shit Magnet Self-Titled VANESSA GRIGORIADIS 115 The Tragedy of Britney Spears Rolling Stone 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page vii Contents vii W. DAVID MARX AND NICK SYLVESTER 142 Theoretically Unpublished Piece About Girl Talk, for a Theoretical New York Magazine Kind of Audience, Give or Take an Ox on Suicide Watch Riff Market and Neojaponisme JACE CLAYTON 160 Confessions of a DJ n+1 MICHAEL PISARO 174 On Difficulty Machine Project CARRIE BROWNSTEIN 180 Your Trusted Source for Music Reviews NPR Music’s Monitor Mix JONATHAN LETHEM 183 Fly in the Ointment (Director’s Cut) Rolling Stone YUVAL TAYLOR 189 Funk’s Death Trip PopMatters 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page viii viii Contents BARRY GIFFORD 204 Hey, Ludwig, Grab Yourself a Pigfoot Jacket JAMES PARKER 205 Unauthorized!: Axl Rose, Albert Goldman, and the renegade art of rock biography Boston Phoenix JESSE SERWER 214 Bass is Loaded Wax Poetics JEFF WEISS 223, 228 Who’s Biting J Dilla’s Beats? LA Weekly An Interview with J Dilla’s Mother, Ms. Maureen Yancey LA Weekly ROSANNE CASH 240 The Ear of the Beholder The New York Times CARRIE BROWNSTEIN 247 BRANDED! NPR Music’s Monitor Mix 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page ix Contents ix WENDY LESSER 249 Crowd Control Threepenny Review TOM EWING 256 The Rise and Fall of the Festive Fifty Pitchfork Media REBECCA SCHOENKOPF 262 Soul to Soul Los Angeles CityBeat KEN TUCKER 266 Pure Country Best American Poetry STANLEY BOOTH 269 My Mentor, My Teacher Newsweek.com CHARLES TAYLOR 274 That Same Small Town in Each of Us Newark Star-Ledger GINA ARNOLD 279 Liner notes for the album reissue of The Replacements, Let It Be Rhino Records 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page x x Contents MICHAEL ODELL 286 This Much I Know: Edwyn Collins (singer, 48, London) The Observer PAUL FORD 289 Six-Word Reviews of 763 SXSW Mp3s: K through S The Morning News WILLIAM HOGELAND 324 American Dreamers: Pete Seeger, William F. Buckley, Jr., and public history Boston Review CARRIE BROWNSTEIN 346 Every Inch of My Fun NPR Music’s Monitor Mix Other Notable Music Writing of 2008 349 List of Contributors 353 Credits 361 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page xi Introduction Greil Marcus In many ways, the piece here that bothers me the most is Jody Rosen’s “Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison,” a straight New York Times report on a small technological break- through. Researchers had managed to translate the audio waves of a performance of “Claire de Lune,” recorded visually on paper in Paris in 1860, into sound that could be played back. One commentator wrote that the discovery opened the pos- sibility that, someday, we might be able to hear for ourselves the greatest of all lost voices: Lincoln’s. That was my first thought, too. There’s a way in which “the mystic chords of memory”— which is what we are forced to rely on when imagining if the de- livery of, say, the lines “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” from Lin- coln’s Second Inaugural Address, matches the words themselves, undercuts them, or leaves them even more on fire than, on the page, they already are—can never be as powerful as mere chords of memory and no more, no need for mysticism: I was there. Lincoln is just a touchstone. Anyone else might think of Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass—or a version of the number one hit minstrel-show play, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (for the time being we xi 0306817823-Marcus_Layout 1 8/17/09 12:55 PM Page xii xii Introduction have to rely on the Firesign Theatre recreation from their 1974 Everything You Know Is Wrong), or real slavery-time secret ring shouts in the woods, not merely the handed-down accounts transcribed in the 1930s by WPA writers or recorded by Alan Lo- max in the 1940s. In other words, if Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville could invent the phonautograph in France in the 1850s, who knows what Americans, or Russians, or Japanese came up with at the same time, or even earlier? It’s 2009, one- hundred-and-twenty-one years since the Edison Company achieved playback on a wax cylinder, and we have no idea what remains to be heard: what we don’t know.