July 01, 2024
LEFT OF THE DIAL
Speak slowly, please. I'm an NPR listener.
OK, I haven't willingly listened to NPR since I was a bookstore clerk, when I tuned in as part of a well-meaning effort to connect shoppers with "that purple book" they saw on Oprah or "that history book" they heard about on "Morning Edition." OK, there was that time in the Arizona desert where it was either "All Things Considered" or right-wing talk radio, but in general I've found NPR to be a rather arch, self-satisfied affair aimed at making aging lefties feel better about their failure to otherwise keep in touch with culture sort of the radio equivalent of Lipton tea with lots of honey in the cup.
But I was still gobsmacked by this column by NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin criticizing NPR's music reviewers for being too hip. As evidence, he cites innocuous, well-meaning reviews of Wilco, The Magnetic Fields and Morrissey as though they were weird music-school haikus about atonality in Glenn Branca's guitar symphonies. And then he proceeds to admit that, like some NPR listeners who have written to him, he's the type of guy who doesn't know the difference between Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. In other words, he doesn't know the first fucking thing about pop music and yet feels compelled to criticize NPR's music critics for having the temerity to assume that their listeners might, you know, have Clue One about Jeff Tweedy.
It's easy to get off on a rant, and I'll admit that I have no reason to believe that Dvorkin's elderly plaint indicates in any way the feelings of NPR management vis a vis pop-culture coverage (except inasmuch as they've placed him in a position where he's supposed to accurately reflect the needs and concerns of NPR's listeners -- or at least the ones who are inclined to sink time into sending emails and/or making phone calls complaining about pop music reviews. But he does endorse a point of view that seems to be increasingly prevalent in the mass media -- that critics aren't like "real people," that reviews are useful mainly as bland, thumbs-up/thumbs-down consumer guide entries, that "news you can use" trumps thoughtful pieces that are meant to intellectually provoke or enlighten a readership.
Has anyone else noticed how newspapers are opting, increasingly, just to pick up Ebert's syndicated reviews rather than take the time (and spend the money) to cultivate an independent, hard-working local voice? The Times' recent hiring of alt-weekly stalwart Manohla Dargis is a good thing, I think, for those of us in the New York market. But I dread the commotion that could ensue is, for instance, some editor in some office who doesn't know the difference between Wayne Wang and Wong Kar-Wai decides that he's acting in the best interests of his readership when he asks Dargis to lay off already about "the poetics of camerawork," etc.
Posted by Bryant at July 1, 2024 12:19 PM
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Comments
Weird. Entertainment Weekly had a farily lengthy interview with Morrissey, and I'm pretty sure both Wilco and the Magnetic Fields had the lead reviews in their respective issues, and I consider EW to be pretty mainstream.
Posted by: Kent M. Beeson at July 1, 2024 12:33 PM
Man, Bryant, I envy you if you have radio stations where you live. Honestly, in Philly, about 10 minutes of anything other than NPR or more than about an hour of that is just begging for a headache of unusual size. Thank god for books on CD (and Audible).
Posted by: Daniel at July 1, 2024 01:37 PM
Daniel, I pretty much keep my radio dial glued to WFMU out of New Jersey. Fortunately, you can listen on the Internet if you're so inclined. I highly recommend Station Manager Ken Freedman's show on Wednesday mornings (representative sample) as well as Laura Cantrell's Radio Thrift Shop (ditto) every Saturday at noon. Other hot picks include Greasy Kid Stuff, Mike Lupica, Transpacific Sound Paradise, Monica, Small Change, the crazy Seven Second Delay talk show with Ken and Andy Breckman (there's a great Joe Piscopo story and a great Richard Pryor story at the Seven Second Delay home page)-- oh, the list goes on and on and on. Check out the site. Shows are archived in MP3 format (96K) for two weeks, and the Real Audio archives go back for many years. It's just an amazing resource. Just the other day, I was trying to describe the cover version of "When U Were Mine" by Crooked Fingers to a co-worker, finally going to the 'FMU site, doing a playlist search, and then queuing up the song by scrubbing back and forth in the Real Audio archive until I found it. Not quite as good as Napster, but pretty good.
Anyway, back to the rest of the radio. I'll tune in WCBS or 1010 WINS on the AM dial if I'm in traffic, and occasionally I'll sample HOT 97 if I'm interested in hearing what the kids are into these days -- but mostly the local rock stations give me a headache. There's a station at Fordham University, WFUV, that a lot of people around here are into, but whenever I've tuned them in I've just gotten a bad case of the smugs. ("You know, Meg, people call me up all the time and say, 'Thank God you're here, WFUV. I'd just go to the music store and I wouldn't have any idea what I should buy.'" "Yes, Fred, what would our listeners do without us? That's why they all need to pledge right now by dialing 1-800-LUV-WFUV.") Plus, it's never too long before they put on the Indigo Girls or someone else whom I consider a dealbreaker.
Posted by: Bryant at July 1, 2024 03:09 PM
Depending on how inclined you are to listen about the minutae of current events, NPR is either a godsend or the boring station on the radio. For me, it's the former.
Does NPR have its share of shows aimed at aging liberals? Surely. But they also program: Morning Edition and All Things Considered, both of which tackle current events far more thoroughly than anything on TV. And This American Life, wild acclaim notwithstanding, is usually better than anything on TV.
KCRW, a NPR affiliate, is considered the hippest station in LA. Most hipsters, bobos, aging liberals, cognesceni that I know in LA listen to primarily this station, which programs cutting edge music around NPR programming. They also have programs like "The Treatment w/ Elvis Mitchell" and a program with Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal.
So while your point about the lameness of the NPR ombudsman and the general attitude towards criticism is well-taken, at least in LA, NPR via KCRW provides an antidote to the problem.
In fact, I don't know what I'd do with that station.
Posted by: Ryan at July 1, 2024 04:29 PM
OK, so I was being a little unfair to NPR, or to aging liberals, or maybe to both. And certainly I've enjoyed listening to programming from KCRW for years via the Web. Details on current events I tend to get from scouring the Web New York Times, Washington Post, BBC News, the Agonist, stuff like that and maybe I'm doing myself a disservice.
Is satellite radio worth a listen? Is there any public-affairs style programming on XM or Sirius?
Posted by: Bryant at July 1, 2024 04:48 PM
Test
Posted by: Bryant at July 3, 2024 02:29 PM