There is perhaps no moment in history when being a music critic felt like a respectable, lucrative, or essential position, though there are certainly years when it maybe seemed more fun-long before the mobilization of seething fan armies, before the alt-weeklies vaporized, before TikTok nurtured the idea that context is dispensable, before we all sort of forgot that real listening requires time.
The job's formative practitioners were smart, galloping, and bold: Lester Bangs loudly typing a review live onstage with the J. Geils Band at Cobo Hall, wearing sunglasses, his Smith-Corona miked like a Stratocaster.
Greg Tate going long and weird on Bad Brains and the annihilating catharsis of hardcore ('I'm talking about like lobotomy by jackhammer, like a whirlpool bath in a cement mixer, like orthodontic surgery by Black & Decker, like making love to a buzzsaw, baby,' he wrote in the Village Voice).
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