There are, of course, exceptions. You would do well to wander across to Slate (link at right) where a discussion has been taking place between the music critic (classical) for the New Yorker, Alex Ross, and another Alex, about the new Bob Dylan memoir. Ross wrote the single best piece I have read on Dylan, a longer story which didn’t really answer any questions, but asked some very good ones. I read most of it riding the tram to North Balwyn, about five years ago, a copy of David Sylvian’s “Dead Bees On A Cake” tucked firmly under my arm, on the way back from the city to Adrienne’s parents’ house, one of the last times before they decamped to Geelong.
The Slate dialogue, if nothing else, gives you a link to that piece, via Ross’s own weblog, Therestisnoise.com. (There you can also find his Radiohead piece, which places that band firmly in the compositional tradition, giving them possibly more credibility than they deserve.) I’m not sure if this is the same Alex Ross as the one who wrote a piece on the Dunedin sound of *that* era (Chills, Clean, Bats et al), which I stumbled upon many years ago on one of the early webzines, Feed.com or Word.com or one of those.
