Posted 6:29 PM by sport

This is a bite from the web page of Raymond Carney, a scholar who has written books on Frank Capra and other subjects, but who is notable as the main champion of the work Of John Cassavetes, my favorite film director. I highly recommend Carney's writing; he's an original thinker discussing important things. His page is here:
http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/
The selected quote is apropos to today's "event" …the release of my album "Uncle," which reminds me of a TS Eliot quote I'll keep to myself rather than risk belaboring the obvious.

Carney:
John Cassavetes tells the story of his life and work in both books, based on interviews that I and others did with him. Part of the research involved reading the reviews of Cassavetes' films that appeared when they were first released in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The experience was an eye-opener. To call them negative would be an understatement. Pauline Kael called Faces "dumb, crudely conceived, and badly performed;" Variety jeered at Minnie and Moskowitz as "oppressive," "irritating," "shrill," "numbing," and "indulgent;" John Simon called A Woman Under the Influence "muddle-headed, pretentious, and interminable," and Stanley Kauffmann said it was "utterly without interest or merit."

End of Carney quote.
A long time ago I was sitting in a pub with Tony DeCosa and mentioned that I'd like to find some way of making records that would be analogous to the ways (note that this is plural) Cassavetes used film. Soon I broke up the rock band and began working toward that goal. I've learned that the closer I come to reaching it, the less my work will be accepted or even noticed. This is torture, but what else can I do? I'll never know if the process has been successful or to what degree it is or isn't, since response to my work tends to be a blank stare. In another direction. People derive satisfaction from their work through money earned, prestige accorded or some feeling of personal accomplishment. The first two are permanently out of the question for some reasons I understand and others I never will. The third is rare and transient, but welcome and savored when it happens. But this is what I do, for better or worse, and while I regret the personal damage it continues to cause, I am neither ashamed of it nor apologetic for any of it.

So last night, breaking my promise to avoid such things, I thought: "Well, fuck it, let's see if there's anything online about the album yet" …all I found was the following, from a St. Louis critic named Steve Pick (an admirer of well-known scumbag Robert Christgau):

Sport Murphy, "Uncle," Kill Rock Stars.
Self-indulgent concept album about childhood trauma or something like that. Subject matter as important as the time a bird flew in the house. Music that's intentionally goofy and uninterested in making anybody want to hear it.

Does it mean I've reached my Cassavetes ambition because a prick like Pick dismisses my album so utterly and demeaningly? Of course not. Does it mean he's right? Of course not. In fact it means nothing at all except that some nonentity got paid to give a cursory listen to some of this album and write a squib about it. He deliberately ignores the clearly stated circumstances behind the album, choosing to belittle it as a navel-gazer's whine. "Self-indulgent" is a favorite term of many snide critics, along with "Pretentious." He uses the "...or something like that" device of indicating that my work is probably muddled and surely trivial, but certainly beneath his sage consideration and, by extension, any listener's. This reveals the writer's pretentious self-image: the objective auditor of other people's work, patiently sifting through the chaff for examples of inarguably fine music you and he can agree upon.

He mentions one of the few apparently "silly" tunes as a means of implying that the whole thing is based upon irrelevant events and inane whimsies. Then he extends this to the music, derided as "goofy" and willfully repellent. All this is fine, and my critic-friendly friends (and my critic friends) will sigh that, once again, I'm taking this shit too much to heart. Well, what this suggests is that these friends believe that criticism means nothing. So the work of a critic is meaningless? No, that can't be. Must mean that the work critics evaluate is meaningless. No that can't be, because then, ipso facto, the work of a critic is, again, meaningless. Then all it means is I'm a thin-skinned jerkoff who takes his work too seriously.

NO. Fuck that. I am no fucking idiot; I worked hard on this album during one of the - strike that - THE worst time of my life and the lives of my loved ones. I produced a work of honesty and, I think, beauty with a specific set of creative parameters toward a particular end. I avoided the sort of tribute schtick that would play on 9-11 emotions and prop up an illusion of my own nobiltiy by attaching myself to Pete's courage and ultimate sacrifice. I see where the flaws are, and am positive that listeners of the Steve Pick variety would never notice these even if they bothered to listen and think about my work on its own terms. Assuming they were capable of comprehending an album that defines its own terms as fully and idiosyncratically as Pete and I defined the terms of our own individual lives. My friends and I spent months crafting this album and the result is something I am proud of, despite a few admitted fumbles.

This odious pismire squirted out his response in about 5 minutes or less while skipping through the cd in a noisy office (not supposition, but proven by other reviews where he states this flatly). I choose to view the arrival of this bummer - in the first hours of the day my record is released - as a reminder to keep my guard up against other insults and dismissals to come. It reminds me that I work not merely despite them, but because of the lazy, smug and ugly approach to life they represent. They've come fast and furious my whole life, and one never gets used to them. But I continue to live and work on my own wavelength and I am my own hero. If that seems "self indulgent" to say, then you may not understand what it means to try and live up to the example of the heroes you have, if any. I assume Rayond Carney would not define Cassavetes as his "hero" but in the terms I'm talking about, he is, just as Carney is the hero of Cassavetes' reputation. His writings will continue to enhance understanding of these incredible films as long as they are screened, which will be as long as true art is needed. The work of others, like Kael, will be valued by nobody but film school students - as a practical textbook on how to impress critics - and wannabe critics as a careerists' guide to what kind of blather gets published.

I'll use Pick to firm my own resolve, which means I will make his uselessness useful to me. This is the creative act. Kiss my ass.