A WHORE JUST LIKE THE REST:

THE MUSIC WRITINGS OF RICHARD MELTZER

(Da Capo 2000)

By Tim Midgett

[Seattle - 6/23/2000] I had the good fortune to see Richard Meltzer read in Seattle a couple weeks ago--maybe forty people, Elliot Bay Books, 3 PM on a Saturday afternoon which helps explain the turnout. I also picked up his new book of old stuff. It is called A WHORE JUST LIKE THE REST, and it's full of music 'criticism' that Meltzer has churned out sometime between 1967 and yesterday.

For a few years now, Meltzer has been prone to self-boosterism coupled with peevishness over perceived slights, specifically regarding his spot in the pantheon of rock critics. I have at times found these proclamations to be offputting. The way I figure it: Meltzer is right when he reckons his music writing, as great as it is, is the least of his contributions to the world; he's right when he reckons that rock journalism is a fetid cesspool replete with ass-sniffers in pursuit of corporate largesse (except me); and he's not missing a thing by not being part of the club much after the mid-Seventies. For the most part, though, I've learned to enjoy his boasts and complaints even as I could set my watch to them. Especially the complaints. Accounts of ludicrous editing/reprogramming at the Village Voice, snubs by Patti Smith, the baroque demands of industry shills: they all find their way into the new tome and they are all worth the read. He also pointedly refuses to ignore his own moments as an asshole, which makes the bitching go down pretty well in the end.

But although Meltzer is one of the great essay writers of our (my dad's?) generation, his frequent tooting of own horn is probably a total waste of breath. History will likely bear out his significance as a social commentator and humorist, but I don't think there's anything he can do to hasten that process. Death might help.

The book is real nice--it's not as relentless with the belly laughs as Meltzer's occasionally in-print masterpiece GULCHER, but mostly he's got to write about artists and their meaningful artwork, as opposed to debating the relative merits of Lucky Strikes and Camels etc. Meltzer is at his funniest (and probably his best) when he's not trying to do anything but fly by the seat of his pants, as with A WHORE's reviews of unopened LPs or a cerebral palsy telethon, or a classic piano bars/peep shows piece that first ran several years ago in Forced Exposure. I had read maybe ten to fifteen percent of the material in A WHORE before, which left me five hundred or so pages of mostly great shit.

The designated 'music' theme of the book is kind of pointless. Meltzer might have been right there at the vanguard of rock criticism, with his first book THE AESTHETICS OF ROCK in 1970, but who fuckin' cares at this point. His reputation as a writer needn't rest on that. If all he'd ever done was GULCHER's "Luckies Vs. Camels: Who Will Win?" or his astounding review of Los Angeles burger joints (find it in the collection L.A. IS THE CAPITAL OF KANSAS), he'd be assured of a place in history, but he's written thousands and thousands of pages on boxing and toilet paper and Wilkes Barre (Pennsylvania), and I've yet to find any of those pages that I wish I hadn't read. His lone novel, THE NIGHT, ALONE, can be found as a cutout, and it might be the best sustained thing he's done.

A really funny guy, and there aren't many of them, if you stop to think about it.

* * * * *

Tim Midgett is the bass player for Silkworm and the author of $2.99 Wax Necessities

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