Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Hyden
...I'm going to be writing about... Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Metallica, Linkin Park, and the Black Keys...I picked these bands because they rank among the most popular of their respective eras, and...they also represent turning points in rock history that haven't always been appreciated or remarked upon all that much...I'd argue that these bands are important in ways that few other rock bands in the 21st century — even the ones I adore and passionately push on people...
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In hopes of getting a clearer picture of Hyden's agenda, I read his previous two "Winners" articles and did a background check:
Quote:
Wikipedia: Steven Hyden (born September 7, 1977) is an American music critic...His music criticism has been published in several other outlets including Rolling Stone, Slate, American Songwriter and Salon.com. Additionally, Hyden co-wrote the book...100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists. He was born and raised in Wisconsin (USA)...
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Hyden will turn 36 this year. He was nine when
Slippery and
Master of Puppets broke out, and admits to being thirteen when introduced to Led Zeppelin via an album that had been released six years
before he was born. Even worse, he chose to base his Kiss article on a documentary that was made about them in -- WAIT FOR IT!!! -- 1977!
Hyden says he
"started caring about rock right around the time that Pearl Jam and Nirvana came and went as go-to cultural shorthand for disgruntled kid-dom" (hyperbole much?). Since he could have participated in the ascendancy of only two of his seven bands, he is forced to rely on researching record charts and the work of the then big-time music journalists with whom he so shamelessly wants be associated -- Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs, Jon Landau. He seems to think that fans hung onto every word they wrote (Zeppelin fans didn't give a damn any more than BJ fans do), and that any band that did not eventually shake loose their noncommercial roots should be considered an artistic failure. Also, look at the illustrations for each article: Only Jon is made to look like a cartoon character with two different hairdos! And what's up with this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Hyden
Jon Bon Jovi was in his element. The 50-year-old self-described steel horse–riding cowboy stood backstage at Madison Square Garden as tens of thousands of people waited in the arena to hear him sing about imaginary New Jerseyans. It was a task he'd executed many times since his mid-20s. Only this time — this time being the star-studded 12/12/12 Hurricane Sandy benefit concert — he wasn't going to sing about his pretend Garden Staters, at least not at this particular moment. Frustrated fictional ex–dock worker Tommy and his girl Gina would have to wait for Bon Jovi's set in another hour.
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He's just playing the same old critic's game of damning BJ with faint praise, like the concert reviewer who wrote "When Bon Jovi are this hot, they're smoking" instead of "Bon Jovi were smoking hot." I seriously doubt Hyden would be caught dead describing any of Bruce Springsteen's lyrical characters as "imaginary" -- it certainly wouldn't earn him a place among his rock critic "gods!"
Hyden has also written a
"critical analysis and personal reflection on '90s alternative rock." Hopefully he did it well if only because he witnessed it. But while I sincerely give him credit for missing the target only once in naming his "holy seven" (there would have been no Linkin Park if there had been no Limp Bizkit, and no Limp Bizkit if there had been no Rage Against The Machine), the
Winners History of Rock And Roll is a project that Hyden was not qualified to undertake.
Because Hyden's personal perspective was too remote and his personal agenda too sycophantic, I therefore concur with Becky's diagnosis that his articles are underripe and long-winded. Hyden uses the term "mainstream rock" -- technically, there is no such animal. Rock music has always had counter-culturalism and rebellion at its core, consequently making it pointless to judge it via pop culture's standards.
