It is, according to pop musician Prince.

“I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music,” pop legend Prince told the Daily Mirror in an exclusive interview today.

Puzzling, then, that the musical icon also said he deplores online and other digital means of music distribution.

“The Internet’s completely over,” he said. “I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”

Prince’s famous and longstanding battle against the web gained steam in 2007, when Prince declared his intention to file lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay for users’ appropriation of his music. He’s banned such sites from using it, and he’s also refused to work with legal, legitimate outlets such as eMusic and iTunes.

And don’t try to find his official site; it’s been shut down, as well.

“The Internet’s like MTV,” the star said to The Mirror’s correspondent. “At one time, MTV was hip, and suddenly it became outdated.”

I imagine my immediate response to this was the same as anybody else’s: “Wha?”

These comments make Prince seem horribly out of touch with today’s consumers. However, upon thinking about it, I’d say he does have a point. Fads come and go. If you’re around for long enough, you see a lot of them. Prince has been around for a few decades now. Surely his comments at least have their merits.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s right in this case, though. Prince’s comparison between the Internet to MTV is a telling sign of the faults in his argument.

The logic goes something like this. MTV, in its heyday, was the most important thing to happen to music. MTV eventually fell out of fashion. The Internet is currently the most important thing to happen to music. Therefore, if MTV fell out of fashion, then so will the Internet–if it hasn’t already.

I’m loathe to spell out the obvious, but MTV and the Internet are two very different things, in just about every imaginable respect. That includes music.

What was MTV?

MTV, as it applied to music, was a system of advertisement. Music videos were–in the simplest sense–very expensive and elaborate commercials for new music. Record companies financed these videos in hopes that the viewers would go out and buy the vinyl records, or the cassette tapes, or the compact discs. The videos didn’t distribute the music, so much as promote the songs and the artists.

Like any advertisement, the purpose of the music video was to raise awareness in the mind of the consumer. The end goal was always to get people to go out and buy the music on a piece of physical media–a record, a tape, or a CD. That was the real method of distributing music.

MTV, like FM radio, featured advertisements disguised as entertainment. Or advertisements that were also entertainment, if that’s what you prefer.

When people lament that MTV never shows videos anymore, they’re essentially lamenting that MTV now only shows commercials that they aren’t as interested in. The decline of the music video isn’t mysterious at all. One form of product promotion becomes obsolete when a better one rises up to take its place. Enter…

The Internet

One can liken the Internet to MTV as a tool of promotion. But it’s important not to ignore that the Internet changed many other things about music as well. Not only has the Internet displaced MTV (and, arguably, FM radio) as the primary method of advertising music, but it has also displaced physical media as the primary method of distributing music.

This is what Prince is ignoring. This is why he’s wrong. “Paradigm shift” is a naughty pseudo-intellectual term, but it absolutely applies here. As momentarily significant as MTV was, it did not force a wholesale change in the way the music industry did everything. The Internet has, however.

The moment that online music distribution became feasible, the days of physical media were numbered. Consumers will, if nothing else, follow the path of least resistance. Convenience is one of the greatest incentives to buy a product, and there is nothing more convenient than punching the name of the product you want into a search engine and acquiring it with a simple point-n-click. (Define “acquiring” however you like.)

No more driving out to the record store and pawing through everything in hopes that the album you want will be in stock. Hell, no more ordering CDs online, paying the shipping fees, and waiting for it to come to your house. Today, the music can be in your possession almost as soon as the thought enters your head.

We’ve gotten to the point where acquiring music online isn’t even new or exciting anymore. It’s just something that we do.

This is what Prince is fighting against. I don’t think he’s going to win.

“Liberated by the state of the music business.”

Not every musician is reacting to the Internet with hostility. Rush drummer Neil Peart is open to the new possibilities.

What’s happening with Rush? I read on your blog that you were going to meet in November to discuss your future. What happened?

Well, in fact, we’ve just started working on new material. So we plan to get some writing and recording done. And we’re considering doing everything this year — maybe even a bit of touring. We are in action.

And we feel a bit liberated by the state of the music business. Even since 2006, when we started Snakes and Arrows, the album has become less significant in these times of iTunes and shuffle settings and whatnot. But perhaps we can take advantage of that and work in a whole different way. So we decided, when we did meet, that we’re not constrained by the patterns of the past, where you spend a year writing and recording, and the next year touring. Anything’s possible now; we can record a couple of songs and put them out and then go on tour if we want. So at this point, we’re just embarking on writing, but keeping ourselves open to all those other possibilities. One of our early titles for this year was Research and Development. That’s where we’re at.

So you might start making music in smaller increments?

Or larger. I went to see a band called Porcupine Tree not long ago. And I was talking with (singer-guitarist) Steven Wilson. They just put out a 55-minute piece. That’s a finger to the whole iTunes shuffle thing, and he intended it as such. And I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s another way of rebelling against it — by just saying no.’ There’s too much lost in giving up the integrity of an album — what it represents to you as a musician, and as a human being, for that matter. So I like that approach. That’s very possible for a band like us. So there are no limitations; we might go big or we might go small.

In a nutshell, Peart is saying the album format no longer governs the way musicians release music.

(For purposes of this argument, the album format involves making new music in chunks ranging from 30 to 80 minutes. This may or may not involve dividing the chunks up into discrete mini-chunks, usually by song.)

Though Peart talks about resisting some of the changes brought on by new technology, his perspective is realistic and forward-thinking. How we buy music affects the form it takes–that’s what Peart understands. With less and less music being bought on physical media, it is no longer necessary to format music with physical media in mind.

New music releases can be as short as a few minutes or as long as an hour. And it is no longer necessary for long-form music to be divided up into short tracks for convenient CD play. If bands want to release a few songs here and there just to stay in touch with their fans, they can. If they want to tour with a new batch of material that doesn’t necessarily conform to the traditional album, they can do that, too.

The Internet brings new freedoms for artists, but the decline in physical media also means that it’s now a lot harder for them to make money with their recordings.

“Giving it away is the best thing we ever could have done.”

For decades, the accepted modus operandi for music artists was this: record an album of material, play live shows to promote it. Record sales were the big moneymaker. This business model is quickly becoming untenable.

Record sales are now in permanent decline, and the “99 cents per song” policy on iTunes is doing a modest job of filling the breach.

Many bands are toying with the usual M.O. Some, like Umphrey’s McGee, are turning it on its head entirely. Vocalist/guitarist Brendan Bayliss explains:

The first time we played Colorado, we had never even been there. We sent out 1,000 CDs about a month or two before we went there for a show we were playing, and it sold out. Word of mouth is the best form of advertisement, and giving out the music will only come back in ticket sales. We don’t make money from selling CDs. The typical music model doesn’t really apply. I definitely think giving it away is the best thing we ever could have done.

Umphrey’s is relying on recordings of their music to raise awareness of their live shows, which is where they make their money. It’s the opposite of yesterday’s business model.

For anybody unfamiliar with this band, this is how it goes. The group makes studio recordings, but doesn’t rely on them as their main source of income. They do it primarily because concert venues want bands to have professional studio music available. It’s a sign of legitimacy.

Where Umphrey’s McGee really shines is in live performance. No two Umphrey’s performances are alike. Songs are regularly extended, twisted around, and changed every night. Their shows are the main draw; fans who see the band two nights in a row can expect surprises on both nights.

Fans are allowed to bring recording devices to the concerts. The fans will upload the audio from the concert to the Internet. The unique music from that particular show will circulate online, where it is freely downloadable to fans around the world. Far from complaining that this is money out of their pockets, the band members encourage this behavior.

As an additional incentive to make it out to the live shows, the band itself has recording equipment on hand. At the end of the concert, fans can take the performance home with them in the form of an inexpensive, official CD recording. It’s one more way of using recordings not necessarily as a method of making money, but as a way of building consumer loyalty to the real product: the concert.

As Bayliss says in the interview above, word of mouth is the best form of advertisement. Encouraging fans to freely trade recordings is the primary way that Umphrey’s McGee spreads awareness of its shows. This, in turn, enables the band to stay in business.

Postscript

There is another band that originally gained popularity through word of mouth. In the early years, fans would make unofficial copies of the music and circulate it throughout the community. Awareness of the music would build, and more and more fans would come out to see the band perform.

On the strength of that early fan awareness, the band became the biggest in its genre. It eventually became the seventh highest-grossing musical act in the world.

It is therefore ironic that this band was also one of the most prominent resistors of online music technology in the 1990s. Much in the way that Prince is doing now, the band decried the Internet for taking money out of its pocket. It didn’t understand the boundless free advertisement that online music presented.

I won’t bother with the name, because it’s still big enough that anybody reading this knows exactly who I’m talking about.

The Internet did not financially crush this band, and its members are still phenomenally rich and famous. They eventually figured out that resistance is futile. The Internet isn’t a technological nuisance or a passing fad. It’s a new way of doing things. It’s the new way of doing everything. If they didn’t know it then, they sure as hell know it now.

They decided to play the game. Prince, on the other hand, is taking his ball away and going home. If his recent comments make him seem out of touch with the times, it’s because he is.

Perhaps it’s part of the reason why Prince’s star doesn’t shine as brightly as it used to. Talent isn’t all it takes to stay relevant in the world of popular music. Musicians need to understand and care about the wants, needs, and tech-savviness of today’s music listeners. Prince seems to care only about where he’s at with respect to new technology.

I’m not sure that Prince gets to decide that the Internet is over. But I’m certain that the Internet will determine whether or not he’s over.

Ronnie James Dio (1942 - 2010)
- An American rock vocalist. His credits include some of the best years of Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and his eponymous rock band, Dio. After 53 years in the field, Dio’s legendary voice was sadly silenced when he succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of 67.

Westboro Baptist Church
- An Independent Baptist organization led by Pastor Fred Phelps and populated mainly by his own family. The WBC is most widely known for its radical Christian views, and for hate speech directed mainly against gays and Jews. The organization gains publicity by staging protest activities at the funerals of dead American soldiers and high profile figures.

Draw Muhammad Day
- An organized protest that occurred on May 20, 2010, encouraging artists to depict Muhammad in their artwork. The event was designed to uphold free speech, and to condemn the belief that people should have to abide by the rules of a religion that they don’t subscribe to. The protest grew out of Comedy Central’s unilateral censorship of a South Park episode that included a depiction of Islam founder Muhammad.

—–

Dio’s public memorial is tomorrow, and it’s probably common knowledge by now that the Westboro Baptist Church intends to picket it. To put it in their own words:

WBC to picket this public memorial to remind you who worship that old Serpent, Satan, that your time is very short. You know 67 year old, Satan-worshiping (or at least one of their enablers) Ronnie James Dio (of showing his devil horns to the world each time he goes in public) Black Sabbath fame is dead, right? We’ll be there! Just because the chances of any of God’s elect being amongst this group of heavy metal sycophants is slim to none does not mean they should not get some good words. Yes, it is true that Ozzy Osbourne did “accidentally” bite off the head of a bat, but THAT is the least of their sins (little nasties!), they currently do not do that, but they throw raw meat to the audience and encourage violence of EVERY FORM! Here you have the list of admitted sins of this now dead and in hell pervert: 1) He hates his neighbor(s) starting with Ozzy Osbourne 2) He hates God. Pay especial attention to the fact that he changed his original sir name from Padanova to Dio, which means “God” in Italian. 3)Ronnie the simpleton enabled, and encouraged Sorceries: everything he was about including the little finger horn thing (he got this from his mother which is an incantation to ward off the “evil eye”) to the drugs, bloody raw meat and his fellowship with those pentagram necklace wearing freakish band members. Yes, Ronnie James Padanova (NOT DIO) is currently residing in hell. When all those who worship him and his false gods meet him in hell it will be just like this: Isaiah 2:12 For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: Isaiah 14:11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. Praise God all ye, His people. The Great Day of the Lord draws nigh. AMEN!

The sheer wrongness of the Westboro Baptist Church, its views, and its activities is self-evident. The reactions that it inspires in people, often virulent, are absolutely understandable. Many would gladly see the church sued out of existence or its members attacked with physical violence–again, understandable.

But if the Muhammad controversy is to remind us of anything, it should be that free speech is fragile and worth protecting. I certainly wouldn’t lose any sleep tonight if Fred Phelps were to die this instant, but I might lose a few winks if his basic human rights were abridged. A mourner threatening to do violence against the WBC flunkies is no different from a Muslim threatening to do violence against an artist who depicts Muhammad. If free speech is to be protected, then that includes all speech. Even that which is vile, hateful, and horribly misguided.

Phelps and his band of idiots should be allowed to protest this memorial, free of litigation or physical harassment. For the fans who will have to tolerate this unpleasantness, I guarantee that the tremendous love for Dio and his music outweighs the petty, small hate of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Preamble to the United States Bill of Rights

Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent starts of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

The flyer for “Draw Muhammad Day,” including the original cartoon that inspired it.

Ronnie James Dio, performing the horn gesture that he popularized. Rock in peace.

Myself, playing “Children of the Sea.” It can be found on Heaven & Hell, Dio’s first album with Black Sabbath.

Here’s a tasty winter season treat. A while back, IamRob and I were discussing doing a small musical project, just for fun. After a long time of not-getting-around-to-it-because-like-I-have-that-kind-of-time, I finally got around to it. Here is the result:

Rob made the initial recording, with Nick contributing the bass line. My additions are some (not all) of the dissonant sound at the beginning, the harmonies at the end, and the overdriven guitar solos that aren’t recorded through a wah wah pedal.

(Yes, I’m aware that I haven’t been posting much, and that the last two have been audio posts rather than real pieces of writing. Give me a break; I had finals last week and now I’m on vacation. Gawd!)

Today’s entry is special: the first ever I Evolved Into This!? audio entry. This means two things. One, there will be numerous musical examples, which are much easier to deal with in a podcast-style format than in a text article. Two, those of you who haven’t been already will soon be blessed with the sound of my splendid voice.

(In case you’re unfamiliar with newfangled technology, clicking the little “play” button will make the sound begin. You can adjust where you are in the presentation with the little arrow keys to the right, or you can grab onto the little slider and move it around. This assumes that you have located your computer’s “on” button and have somehow made your way to this page without these crucial bits of common knowledge.)

No, not the brown note. Brown sound–the elusive guitar tone championed by Eddie Van Halen on the old Van Halen recordings–is one of the most successful attempts to formalize and refine distorted guitar. It’s one of those holy grail sounds that guitarists can spend their entire lives chipping away at, including Van Halen himself. As I understand it, though, there are some misconceptions about it that have derailed a good many quests to achieve this elusive tone.

Yes, I believe I know brown sound, at least enough to discuss it. I’m not saying I have it nailed, but I do think I’ve made some observations that others may have missed, and have developed some basic principles that can lead you towards brown sound. The big one, which many people likely don’t realize or haven’t taken to heart, is that there is no one “brown sound.” “Brown” is a set of tonal characteristics, and the use of color to describe sound is deliberate. When Van Halen refers to sound as “brown,” he’s referring to a sonic aesthetic best described as natural and earthy. If your rig sounds more like an electronic noisemaker or a buzzing piece of electrical equipment than a natural wooden instrument, you’re barking up the wrong tree. As Van Halen himself put it, brown sound is like a nice home stereo, rather than a busted radio.

So, within the boundaries of the electric guitar, which sounds are natural and which are not? Try palm muting a few notes. Does it yield a woody “clunk?” I’d argue that’s brown. If you’re getting thumping “chunk” or even a mushy “shuck,” that’s not very brown to my ears, and it probably means you’re using too much drive, in the form of gain, distortion, compression, or whatever. And if all you’re getting is a thin, wimpy “tunk,” you’re probably not using enough. It’s beneficial to pay close attention to a marked trend in the Roth-era albums: more or less, the guitar sound on each album has less drive than the one preceding it. On 1984, most of the heaviness in the sound is coming from Van Halen’s aggressive picking, rather than the fuzz.

Now mash on a few chords and listen to the vocal characteristics of your tone. (If nothing else, vocal chords are a fairly natural musical sound.) Adjust your EQ to emphasize the lower midrange, because that’s where your guitar is going to sound like a gutsy, throaty human voice. One error that I’ve seen tone chasers make over and over again is placing too much emphasis on the treble end of the midrange. This is wrong, because in the lower register, your guitar is going to sound like it’s singing through its nose, and the higher register is going to sound like an icepick. So many people who have come so close have undone themselves with this one mistake. You want the lower notes to sound like they’re coming from the throat or the diaphragm. It’s okay for the really high notes to sound nasal, because (everyone should be writing this down) that’s how the natural sound we’re emulating behaves. Van Halen himself screwed it up on the 5150 album, on which the guitar sound was a victim of thin, papery production. Your sound should never be harsh, nor wimpy.

Other errors are more easily forgiven, because Van Halen spread a lot of misinformation in the early days. While he merely intended to discourage imitators, many of his old false claims are still regularly reported as fact. Many of these rumors surround the equipment he used, the most persistent one being that he had special modifications made to his amplifier. It is true that Marshall’s amplifiers from the 1960s, being handmade, were never two alike in their exact characteristics, but that’s it. More relevant is that he was using a Marshall amplifier in the first place, renowned for its warm, fat sound, plus a homemade guitar with moderately bright tonewood and–very importantly–a lower output humbucking pickup. The signal he got from this setup was thick, punchy, and dynamic, yet not harsh or razory.

To further emphasize the brownness of your sound, be sure to make only subtle use of your effects. While Van Halen was coining words to describe sounds, he came up with “jape,” which seems to describe an effect that’s applied as a subtle color to the sound, rather than being overpowering and transformative. Listen to the flanger in “Unchained” or the phase shifter in “Eruption”–they add to the sound, rather than changing it entirely. They’re almost transparent. For the most part, some reverb and a slight touch of chorus will be all it takes to lend a natural roominess to your sound, without sounding like it’s swishing around or coming out of a cave.

Brown sound can be worked toward with just about any equipment, expensive or inexpensive, so definitely don’t feel the need to break the bank in an attempt to replicate the Van Halen rig. As I previously said, stuff was handmade in those days, so you’ll never nail exactly what he has. You’re better off applying the general principles of brown sound to the stuff you have on hand and improving the tone you’ve already got. See what you can get out of that before you order up a vintage Marshall SLP.

—

To garnish this ham-fisted tutorial, I have some Van Halen capsule reviews prepared, which I seem to have left on another computer. Those should be appearing in this space before the day is over. - Ken

EDIT:

As promised.

VAN HALEN (MUSIC, 1978)
Bar tunes, with all the positive and negative connotations. Still, with this much energy, who cares if the record treats technique purely as a means to bring hammered people to their feet? +

VAN HALEN II (MUSIC, 1979)
This one might just commit the cardinal sin of boring the listener, but at least it has better production than its predecessor. And Edward seems to have realized he doesn’t need to play a billion notes per song to craft a good solo. FAVORABLE FACTOR: Sandwiched amidst the mid-tempo chuggers are “Dance the Night Away” and “Beautiful Girls,” which function almost as a throwback to 1960s California rock. Far out.

FAIR WARNING (MUSIC, 1981)
In the midst of a mostly unsuccessful experiment with variety that begins with Women and Children First and ends with Diver Down, Van Halen tried their hand at sleazy, densely tracked funk rock. Aside from the creepy shit at the end, Fair Warning is a welcome oddity. +

1984 (MUSIC, 1984)
If there’s a philosophy behind this lean cut, it’s “Forget the bullshit and know thy self.” They get funky, they get poppy, they boogie—and yet, it all holds together as the closest thing to a unified Van Halen mission statement so far. Ed backs off on the distortion so you can really hear the strings grind, as though to emphasize the album’s clarity of vision. +

5150 (MUSIC, 1985)
Despite his reputation, Sammy isn’t the problem with this album. Blame it on the wafer-thin production and the dearth of good quality rockers. “Best of Both Worlds” can’t hold the line on its own. FAVORABLE FACTOR: Believe it or not, it’s the keyboard tunes.

FOR UNLAWFUL CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (MUSIC, 1991)
For all the fans who begged Van Halen to get back to writing wall-to-wall riffy hard rock, here it is, but caveat emptor. The words “lackluster,” “uninspired,” and “formulaic” became critical clichés for a reason. -

VAN HALEN III (MUSIC, 1998)
Never mind the new face. This incarnation of the band is back to the old WACF/Diver Down tricks, throwing in everything but the kitchen sink in the desperate scramble for a fresh idea. If it weren’t for the fiery leads, you might forget who you’re listening to. -

Nearly as good as great art, or, at least, great entertainment, is great criticism. For many people, the word conjures to mind stodgy liberal egotists, regularly failing in their attempts to either second-guess or outwit the tastes of the typical moviegoer (which, incidentally, doesn’t exist). For others, it means Consumer Reports-style product reviews. That’s a ridiculous notion in itself, but it’s unfortunately accurate lately. Criticism–REAL criticism–has nothing to do with these things. It is the simple act of experiencing something and attempting to explain, hopefully with some insight and wit, how you feel about it. How your honesty and taste is received by your audience is entirely their fault.

So, who writes real criticism? There is no definitive litmus test, because the vast majority of critics, including the good ones, are hemmed in by the standards and practices demanded by the marketplace in which they appear. Bad critics invest the value of their criticism in their numerical (or alphabetical) ratings. Good critics encourage you, by act of writing, to look past the ratings to the prose. That’s where the real stuff lies.

As far as film critics go, it’s hard to find one who has done so much for film and inspired just as much controversy as Roger Ebert. His show with Gene Siskel was originally thought to be a major setback for serious criticism, reducing the carefully thought-out essays of film’s finest period to brief television segments punctuated with thumbs up or down. It is true that Siskel & Ebert was, at best, a mixed blessing. On one hand, it brought a wider attention to film criticism. On the other hand, the wider the seed is cast, the more thinly it lands. Perhaps Ebert is partially responsible for the majority of critics reviewing films in the same way that Consumer Reports reviews vacuum cleaners.

But never mind that. Being responsible for a trend is not the same thing as being part of it. (Just ask Eddie Van Halen.) As always, look past the stars, numbers, and grade-school ratings. It is Ebert’s prose that distinguishes him as one of the most thoughtful and knowledgable film critics still working today. He has come under fire recently for being curiously lenient towards some films and harsh on others, and it has been speculated that his poor health in recent years has colored his logic.

Were I Ebert, I’d find that a little insulting. Not because of its presumptuousness, but because it assumes that the value of criticism is in second-guessing the eventual opinion of the reader, rather than offering an unvarnished account of the critic’s personal experience. Is it a little mindblowing that Ebert liked Knowing better than Star Trek? Perhaps so, but no more mindblowing than the general notion that different people have different opinions. On one side, you have reviews that attempt to pander to the sensibilities of the audience so that they can leave the theaters satisfied, not because they enjoyed the film, but because they knew what to expect. On the other hand, you have reviews that you vehemently disagree with, but are well-written, and packed with informed opinion and insight. I will ceaselessly opt for the latter.

James Berardinelli is another good critic. He differs from Ebert like night differs from day. He’s a relatively recent arrival in the field, having missed the 70s by a couple of decades. Rather than getting his foot in the door as a newspaperman at an early age, Berardinelli distinguished himself as one of the earliest noteworthy online critics. In daily life, he’s an engineer and a baseball fan, who, believe it or not, reviews movies purely because he enjoys doing it. His circumstances give him an invaluable everyman perspective, perhaps not quite as educated in the history of cinema as Ebert, but just as intelligent and respectful of his readers. And like Ebert, I’ve never known Berardinelli to second-guess the tastes of either the audience or his fellow critics.

All too fleeting in criticism is the journalism of Paul Schrader, who is best known as a screenwriter (with some famous collaborations with Martin Scorcese) and director (his Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters is the best biographical drama you’ll ever see about a figure you’ve never heard of). As a graduate student, Schrader wrote criticism often, and has made a handful of contributions to industry magazines since then. His film canon, or rather, his 15 page essay about the ultimate futility of the canon, stirred up a fair amount of talk when it appeared in Film Comment a few years ago. He was a student of Pauline Kael, and it shows in his prose: clear, on point in its understanding of craft, and uncompromising in its expression of opinion. Schrader has stated that he doesn’t like to apply his critical side to his artistic side, but he does so for a brief moment, introducing a catalog of his writings on his website. “Some are youthful, some are wrongheaded, some are pretty good.”

One more choice, somewhat out of left field, is Robert Christgau. He is the only music critic on this list, mainly because I can’t think of any other music critic who writes with the same qualities as the film critics I’ve mentioned. His reviews are uncompromising and careful, but they’re also written in a very unique way. Each is only a few sentences (or even a few words), highly dense, demanding to be analyzed for allusions and multiple meanings. Something has to be said for critics who don’t care who they piss off, because any critic who does isn’t a critic at all.