Anti-Climacus

LINK: Hispter Detritus has a good defense of the pop music canon against trying-to-be-cool critics:

" Take a look at the table of contents, and tell me what nearly all these albums have in common. If you answered "they're all really good", you're missing the point (though I don't blame you). If you answered "they're all really big sellers", you're a bit closer, though the inclusion of Parsons, Patti, Beefheart, Costello and Wilco (and the nonexistent Smile) does mitigate that idea a bit. And if you answered "most of these aren't so much critical darlings as they are popular albums amongst the general populace that also happen to be critically acclaimed", well, dingdingdingding you win the Showcase Showdown and get to drive home in a brand-new Chrysler Cordoba. This isn't a book about tearing down critical darlings -- while I have even less interest in reading some pseudo-rebel hacks tear any of these bands apart than I do in seeing them pee all over Led Zeppelin, where's all the crit-dork-cred bands? Where's the Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, the New York Dolls, Kraftwerk, Can, Television, the Slits, the Fall, Black Flag, Descendents, Fugazi, Pavement, Sleater-Kinney or Lucinda Williams? As far as critical canons go they're a lot more important and pervasive than a lot of these groups that were disposed of by critics as "irrelevant" or "obsolete" after punk hit (Skynyrd, Floyd, the Doors) or were never darlings in the first place (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness?! RAM?!?!?!)."