From Echophoria Sent Sun, Apr 11th 1999, 14:27
From Echophoria Sent Sun, Apr 11th 1999, 14:27
Is everyone familiar with the notorious JoJo Dancer/MC House Shooz/The Gay Rapper "1998 Rock Critical List?" The '98RCL is a relentless verbal tirade launched against the sacred cows of the industry, and JoJo's vituperative spew has the rock-crit world a-titter. It also has many a flabby has-been calling for JoJo's blood. The full text, which veers uneasily from the sublime and trenchant to the petty and infantile, has been posted on the Spin Magazine website, leading many to believe that Spin's senior editor, Charles Aaron, is the spiteful "JoJo." JoJo apparently shares enough of Aaron's verbal quirks and personal vendettas; though there is also the likely possibility that JoJo's rant is a meticulous attempt at framing Aaron. See last week's Village Voice for an in-depth discussion. So here's what JoJo has to say about Our Boy Simon. Almost merciful compared to the thrashing that Kodwo Eshun, the symbiotic other-half of the tiny Reynolds/Eshun Mutual Admiration Society, receives... SIMON REYNOLDS. (ex-SPIN, author of GENERATION ECSTASY: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture). Proudly, almost militantly, ignorant of American post-punk and alternative rock, not to mention hip hop, this shaggily taciturn, rave-glazed Englishman somehow managed to helm the record reviews section of SPIN for almost a year. How? Because it was assumed by outsiders and oldsters that Reynolds was the chosen oracle of "electronica," and if anyone had the key to unlocking its Next Big Thingness, it would be Simon Sez. Unfortunately, Reynolds resents any term he doesn't coin himself, so "electronica," unlike his still-born babies "post-rock" and "neuro-funk," was, per Simon, a tiresome sham by which he refused to be sullied. His editorial imperative boiled down to a dour import column and page after page of hip hop record reviews by an army of aggressively misinformed British fuckheads. On more familiar ground with the release of GENERATION ECSTASY, Reynolds slipped back into his role as heady, raver-rific tour guide-popping Es, worshipping speaker cabinets, and blabbering about post-structuralism. As a history of rave culture, his book is good, clean pretentious fun-an authoritatively info-crammed, Eurocentric fan's notes (though his decision to exclude hip hop is a fatal flaw, he apparently doesn't give a shit). As a cultural manifesto, however, which is how Reynolds would obviously like it to be viewed, GENERATION ECSTASY is a long, breathless slog; its adjective-addled, "post-human" theorizing about the pre-eminence of sensation over identity is repetitive and tiring. No writer has ever made dance music seem so hysterically important, yet so impenetrably dull. If you look beyond the vitriol, it does put Reynolds' self-important crusade into perspective. I thought JoJo's dismissal of that most withering of sacred cows, The WIRE, was also amusing. and dead-on. THE MY-AREN'T-WE-SMART-BOYS-WITH-OUR-TOYS? AWARD: Of course, it's the British trainspotter's catechism THE WIRE, a monthly logjam of the most defensively arrogant, humorously dense, and gleefully school-marmish verbiage (David Toop excepted) you'll hopefully never encounter in any other music magazine. After institutionalizing the annoying Euro catchphrase "electronica," lapping up everything DJ Spooky ever mumbled, and trashing rock-damaged Americans for not inducting Lamonte Young into the Baseball Hall of Fame, they just keep on droning. Special shout-out to distressed beat-writers Peter Shapiro and Kodwo Eshun (who repeatedly express disgust over the lack of critical appreciation for the music they adore): If your prose skills ever remotely approached your passion for the sounds in question, then we could chat. Until then, take your banal hyperbole and sod off. Do read the rest of JoJo's attacks. The full text can be found here: http://www.spin.com/poplife/koolthing/art%2D19990326%2Dkoo1/page2.html <CENTER> <A HREF="http://www.spin.com/poplife/koolthing/art%2D19990326%2Dkoo1/page2.html"> JoJo hyperlink </A></CENTER> mr. e. np: jimmy giuffre 3: emphasis, stuttgart 1961 (hat ART)