Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________STOP THE VIOLINS! BY SARAH VOWELL (10/31/97)

Nothing but straw men. Does it take any but the most iron-poor powers of discernment to hold Vanessa Mae, or Paul McCartney's orchestral work or Anne Rice in low esteem? This is such dumb, small writing -- the bait-and-switch approach. You pile it on some easy target, something or someone that no one with any taste or desire to hold onto their hepcat credentials would take the pro side of, and then you try to tack on some Broader Stroke -- in this case, the "irrelevance" of the violin, the "problematic" nature of Sting's songs, the superiority of the punk/post-punk ideology (i.e., "At least we're not pretentious"). But who or what is more pretentious than Hole? Such chickenshit nihilism, such naked opportunism, charlatanism, inauthenticity. Gutless, like so much that is supposed to be so subversive, "dangerous." The Trent Reznors and the Courtney Loves of the pop world, they're about as daring as a "Star Wars" lunch box. And yet writers like Sarah Vowell, and endless other rock critics, continue to extol them and their ilk. It's amazing how unsophisticated these people are (and already you can hear their preemptive cries against the very idea of sophistication, of anything resembling rigor, cultivated ability). Even more amazing that otherwise pretty good magazines keep them in business -- surely you don't do it just to get a rise out of rednecks like me. I hope things haven't gotten that cynical, that easy.
-- Andy Markham

I was surprised to find Sarah Vowell apparently saying that the violin as an instrument is terminally unhip. At the time I was reading her column, in fact, I was listening to Stuff Smith, with his wonderfully hard, driving, amplified sound. She might check out the recent Verve compilation "Stuff Smith - Dizzy Gillespie - Oscar Peterson."

-- Charles Mann

SALON | Nov. 4, 1997

R E C E N T L Y+| MEDIA CIRCUS: PUBLISH AND PERISH BY MORGAN CAST

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_______________STOP THE VIOLINS! BY SARAH VOWELL (10/31/97)
	Nothing but straw men. Does it take any but the most iron-poor powers of discernment to hold Vanessa Mae, or Paul McCartney's orchestral work or Anne Rice in low esteem? This is such dumb, small writing -- the bait-and-switch approach. You pile it on some easy target, something or someone that no one with any taste or desire to hold onto their hepcat credentials would take the pro side of, and then you try to tack on some Broader Stroke -- in this case, the "irrelevance" of the violin, the "problematic" nature of Sting's songs, the superiority of the punk/post-punk ideology (i.e., "At least we're not pretentious"). But who or what is more pretentious than Hole? Such chickenshit nihilism, such naked opportunism, charlatanism, inauthenticity. Gutless, like so much that is supposed to be so subversive, "dangerous." The Trent Reznors and the Courtney Loves of the pop world, they're about as daring as a "Star Wars" lunch box. And yet writers like Sarah Vowell, and endless other rock critics, continue to extol them and their ilk. It's amazing how unsophisticated these people are (and already you can hear their preemptive cries against the very idea of sophistication, of anything resembling rigor, cultivated ability). Even more amazing that otherwise pretty good magazines keep them in business -- surely you don't do it just to get a rise out of rednecks like me. I hope things haven't gotten that cynical, that easy. -- Andy Markham

	I was surprised to find Sarah Vowell apparently saying that the violin as an instrument is terminally unhip. At the time I was reading her column, in fact, I was listening to Stuff Smith, with his wonderfully hard, driving, amplified sound. She might check out the recent Verve compilation "Stuff Smith - Dizzy Gillespie - Oscar Peterson." -- Charles Mann SALON \| Nov. 4, 1997