R.I.P. Manny Farber, Poptimist Critic (1917-2008)

"The best examples of termite art appear in places other than films, where the spotlight of culture is no where in evidence, so that the craftsmen can be ornery, wasteful, stubbornly self-involved, doing go-for-broke and not caring what comes of it. " -- Manny Farber, 1962.

"White elephant art these days means Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Hüsker Dü, PiL, Big Audio Dynamite: over-the-hill bastards going through the motions for the bucks and the sucks. Ignoramuses disguised as experts lap up the alleged manna, then give Tom Scholz sh*t." -- Chuck Eddy, review of Boston's Third Stage, Village Voice, November 26, 1988.

"Radio is a good, weird machine," Greil Marcus insisted last year, and this year the theme was reflected in the singles lists of many critics who've never met--for instance, Frank Kogan, Rob Tannenbaum, Chuck Eddy, and Ted Cox. All were Amerindie partisans five years ago, and to an extent they still are, with Cox and Tannenbaum in the Lobos-to-Hüskers tributary and Eddy and Kogan down with noise bands like White Zombie and Pussy Galore. But for singles they listen to the radio and get off on getting manipulated. Cox and Tannenbaum go for pop-to-schlock, Fleetwood Mac or Eddie Money, while Eddy and Kogan list a lot of street-rap. But all fell for diva/girl dance records that five years ago they almost certainly would have dismissed as, dare I say it, disco: Whitney Houston, Deborah Allen, Company B, Exposé." -- Robert Christgau, Village Voice, 1987 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll essay.

"I've been hiding in your walls and plotting with your mouse. I'm hungry, and I'm gonna eat your house." -- Woodbox Gang, "Termite Song," 2008.

"Punks came around and spat at their Woodstock-worshiping elders; they evolved into indie rockers, a new establishment. Hip-hop produced a separate critical stream complete with its own brand of purists. This 1980s generation has lately been taken down by younger poptimists, who argue that lovers of underground rock are elitists for not embracing the more multicultural mainstream... Prefer Ray LaMontagne to Toby Keith? You're an NPR-listening square! Irritated by T-Pain? You're a Luddite! Sick of Fergie? You're sexist!" -- Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2008.

Strangely, Ann does not name names. Who are these youngsters, anyway? Do they really call underground rock fans 'elitists'? Where, exactly, have they done this? Are there really critics out there who make a rule of privileging music that they consider inauthentic and that only features guitars if the act didn’t play them or lyrics if the act didn’t write them, and who look down on all music by important artists considered part of the historical canon? Or might such critics more likely be figments of somebody’s paranoid imagination? And beyond all that, what exactly are today's poptimist whippersnappers doing that, oh I dunno, Chuck Eddy and Frank Kogan and Rob Tannenbaum and Ted Cox and Michael Freedberg and Davitt Sigerson and Deborah Frost and John Leland and Barry Walters and Phil Dellio and Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer and Robert Christgau, say, hadn't done long before Ann's mythic "1980s generation" came along?

Not to mention Manny Farber. I'm just saying.