Who are your Favourite Music Critics/Writers?
 

Well?

Lester Bangs... and...
CHRISTGAU!!!

Phil McMullen
Byron Coley
Fred Mills
Tony Dale
Alan Cummings
Lee Jackson
Colin Hill
Enrico Ramunni

I'm not sure there are any that I would call a favourite. Most music writers seem to think that they have to come up with loads of ridiculous similes and metaphors for their writing to be valid. I can't think of any that just write straightforward understandable criticism that makes sense on first read, rather than some sort of university thesis.

Jon Savage
Greil Marcus

I like Lester Bangs a lot, but find that I have to be in the mood for him.

David Keenan (top musician too in Telstar Ponies)
Alberto Campo
Simon Reynolds
Lester Bangs
Alessandro Castamagna
Guido Chiesa
Ian Penman
David Toop
Jon Savage
Rob Young
Stewart Lee (when he writes about music)

A few bloggers here and there.

Oh, totally forgot Keenan! He also plays music in Taurpis Tula (noise rock improv unit, featured in T Moore's top ten records of 2005) and the Tight Meat Duo (free jazz unit).
Keenan wrote a fantastic primer on SY for the Wire in 2002.
He also runs Volcanic Tongue, awesome UK record shop.

If it wasn't for the fact that he was in the original line up of Bmx Bandits, possibly i would have heard of him only as a music journalist.

Keenan is a renaissance man

lester and the thurston/byron tag team.

music critics/writers are cunts.

some people i know have had business dealings with david keenan and he's a pathetic prick, so i decided to boycott volcanic tongue.
anyway, regarding his writing, i always thought he seemed a little bitter when he was writing for the wire, and now reading what he writes on the volcanic tongue site he seems really smug.

my favourite writers are:

byron coley
phil shapiro
dave tompkins
joe carducci
hua hsu

ed pinsent is alright too

Feel slightly embarrased having never even heard of David Keenan until now.

How does one seem smug, while writing about music? I thought that the very fact that one feels like writing about it, or generally having strong opnions on it, is an act of smugness to start with? Mistery.

Not sure if the act of writing is, in itself, smug.

Doesn't that make ALL music journalists smug, then?

Only if you really think that writing about music is by definition smug.

oh yeah, the Bull Tongue duo is great

Unless you are writing about the technicalities of a type of music, you are formulating personal ideas around it, so you are smug because you think that you are owned or already have a platform for those ideas to be read to start with. In that respect, Lester Bangs or Ian Penman are super smug, but highly entertaining. I mean, what is the exact point of saying that all journalists are cunts and then having a blog that is published on the internet and where you write about the same subject as the same journalists you say that you hate so much? Seems a little hypocritical.

is it inconceivable that a person is capable of seeming smug whilst communicating their thoughts, ideas and feelings with words?

Wouldn't you be thought of as coming accross as such by some,then?