oh klosterpaws

no one?

"No one really disagrees that there's a stereotype about a correlation between rock music and insanity."

Instant improvement on my end, at least.

i'm leaving out his examples. "people assume". not "most people assume". not "a lot of people assume". just "people". meaning...everybody? does everyone assume this?

I'm assuming he means mentally unstable behavior in rock or pop or whatever. i would say there were plenty of cultural penalties depending on the behaviour. just being called "crazy" by people you don't know is some sort of penalty.

well, yeah. I think in context this is fine; the Who ref made above works the same way--he's pretty clearly talking about in pop music, rather than in the world.

the ACTUAL disconnect is perceived as "creativity"? how does that work? and why "mildly" insane? wouldn't people expect them to be really really really insane?

longwinded way of saying -- the article's main problem is that it reads like a template, and a very pedestrian one at that.

"Gilmour replaced Barrett in Pink Floyd but still tried to produce some of Syd’s ill-fated solo work in 1970"

"tried" "ill-fated"

Ultimately, it was not a detachment from reality that made them geniuses; detachment made them unproductive and vulnerable. Contrary to popular mythology, you don’t make good records when you’re crazy. You make them when you’re not.

Is he addressing more of a myth about Syd Barrett or Brian Wilson fans - that some romanticize mental illness as the context in which this great music was created - than the reality? The crazy/not crazy and crazy=not good/not crazy = good binaries are very simplistic and banal.

the first paragraph is a trainwreck of logical fallacy and unsupported assertion.

conflating Ozzy (socially dysfunctional person w/ennablers) and Daniel Johnston (diagnosed mentally ill person) doesn't hold up if you think about it for a minute or two.

I'd say Courtney Love has surely paid a cultural price for mentally unstable behavior.

his [Syd Barrett]disaffected, hyper-British vocal delivery has influenced singers who’ve never even heard his records

how does this work? sounds nice, but it doesn't make sense.

And I agree with Scott, K's characterization of Barrett's downward spiral is offensive. The implication is that he just spaced out. While there is disagreement among those who knew him about the nature and cause of Syd's condition, anyone who's known a schizophrenic or deeply disturbed person will recognize Syd.

and if the main thing he's remember for is being crazy, if he's been in effect dead for 35 years how could he be so influential?

and the Landy stuff is just too simplistic and glib, a reductive take on a complex situation. Landy's methods were creepy and controlling -- he deserved to lose his license -- but I bet even Brian Wilson would acknowledge that some good came from it. he got off drugs and started on the path to the better place he's in now.

Brian Wilson broke, too (several times). Unlike Barrett, he did get fixed; unfortunately, that process made things worse.

It's serviceable, but I'd rather the article actually came at Landy from the opposite angle, as a controversial therapist who ended up changing the course of a musician's life rather than introducing Brian Wilson first and trying to use him as a parallel to Syd Barrett. It seems a little too reductive and leaves out the meat of Landy's story. And makes it sound like it's about Brian Wilson.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/magazine/31naked.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The Naked Guy obit is incredibly sad.

someone was still high on crack when he pushed the publish button.

Which might be why some of the picking-on here is to totally off-base: Coleman, do you seriously not understand how someone's vocal style can be a secondhand influence people who never heard him? I mean, if that doesn't make sense to you, you should blame your grade-school teachers, not Klosterman. (The good news is that if you think about it long enough, you will suddenly realize why so many American punk bands since Green Day have singers who sound like they're about to cover "Alternative Ulster.")

In-thread comparison to the wonderful obit for Naked Guy isn't doing the piece any favors, either...

xpost It's fairly banal, in the way that his stuff is often banal, but at least the conclusion he's pushing here -- that contrary to popular imagination (and don't kid yourself that this isn't the popular imagination), craziness is a hindrance to the craft of making art -- is one that seems true and useful, if not exactly revelatory. I mean, usually his stuff is banal in a way that seems actively wrong to me.

during the thread, we have piling on, ILM...the question will be placed 15 posts from the spot of the foul...we will repeat first post...

Worst People Who Will Not Be Missed:
Augusto Pinochet, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Markus Wolf, P.W. Botha (gets the gasface!), Ta Mok, Ken Lay, Eugene Landy

except for the fact that his examples are people who made great music when they WEREN'T FEELING SO GOOD.

yeah, really. although, i have given myself a self-imposed limit of two new york times-related rants per calendar year. so i only get one more in 07. i didn't read all of the obits in the magazine, but this definitely stuck out as the worst that i read. seriously, it reads like 5 minutes of google/wiki "research". it reads like he's never even HEARD barrett before. which could actually be the case. and, okay, a "fanboy" writing it might have been worse, but i doubt it. just somebody, anybody (david fricke, maybe?), who has some sense of why syd's stuff is so long-lasting and how his music made an impact on 60's rock and beyond. till today! prog, psych, metal, indie-rock and on and on. klosterman's cult of the artist bugaboo is almost as tired as artist as crazy-ass shaman anyway. and, yeah, like matos said, maybe most people do know barrett more as a myth and all that crazy diamond stuff, but this kinda article is the reason why! trotting out the same tired lore and anecdotes that will never ever be as exciting or as interesting as the music he made. so, that's all i hope for as a fan. someone who takes the music and art seriously and gives someone who was talented their due. in a remembrance anyway! and i get matos's point that landy is good material, but he's a footnote. a footnote that belongs in a wilson bio. syd doesn't deserve being paired with him. someone who has been giving people nothing but pleasure for over 40 years does NOT need to be remembered as someone who "couldn't do anything". and that's why i started this thread.

NYTIMES EDITORS HIRE THIS MAN INSTEAD OF KLOSTERFUCK NEXT TIME, PLS.

^^^^This is basically my stance here.

But Stence, saying that Barrett's voice influenced people who didn't know of him is not a "wrong detail," it's demonstrably k-correct

It may be correct, and I obviously understand his implication I just protest the way he said it. No big thing. If I was his editor I would have said something like: I get what you are saying, but it reads pretty stupid and maybe you should change the wording around.

so not otm.

Damn, you're right, I'd forgotten about that! Something to catch up on.

That's all.

Okay, I'm coming in late, but WTF? Of course it's about his tone and not his points. KLOSTERMAN is about his tone and not his points!

In the rare cases when he has any... Reading him can be mildly pleasant, in the way that having a VH1 list show on in the background while doing other things can be mildly pleasant, or intensely aggravating, in the way that a VH1 list show inspires atavistic blood-fury if you actually pay attention to anything the talking heads say.

Joan Didion wept.