WHAT GOES ON / Mark Jenkins

CRITICAL CONDITION

It's true: the rock critic has gone the way of the buffalo.

As the recorded-music industry withers, so does its unruly stepchild, pop-music criticism. Newspapers are jettisoning reviewers of all kinds, rock magazines are disappearing, and music websites tend to pay (if at all) even less than the defunct magazines.

While the space for pop-culture analysis shrinks, the two-thumbs-up universe expands. Websites like Yelp allow civilians to review pretty much anything, and online merchants encourage their customers to post critiques. Most of these comments are useless, but they're easily available, and usually attached to multi-star or numerical ratings. If you'd prefer a yes-or-no answer over reasoned consideration, the web offers a worldwide break from heavy lifting.

For critics dejectedly watching their self-image fade, the latest crisis is the "instant" album, a phenomenon that includes not just download-only releases but also hard-copy ones like The Raconteurs's Consolers of the Lonely. Never mind all the beginner-band, industry-dropout, and dubiously legal music that's sloshing around the Internet. People can actually walk into a record store—if they can find one—and buy a brand new major-label CD that no one from Rolling Stone has heard yet.

That doesn't mean that writing about music will disappear. But rock criticism as a paying career, never a prudent career option, is looking increasingly iffy. For rock writers, it's a good time to be independently wealthy.

But then it always was. While large metropolitan dailies and a few of the bigger alternative weeklies employ full-time critics, most rock writers are freelancers who support themselves doing something else. (Rock reviewers are no more likely than cult musicians to have health insurance.) The Bush administration's economic shambles makes life harder, but it doesn't change the fundamentals of freelance writing, a field no one enters to get rich.

Enough about money. The larger issue is the role of pop-culture criticism, an impure form that was never welcomed by most of its audience. It may seem that the golden age of rock writing is over, but actually it never happened. Pop-music critics really didn't have much influence, and were appreciated by the biz primarily for their willingness to fall into line. Mavericks could be tolerated if they were amusing, especially since it was clear that no cranky commentator could damage music's major franchises. (Remember when hip critics hated Grand Funk Railroad? It had so little effect on the band that ultimately many of the detractors converted. That also had no effect on the band.)

Rock critics, like film reviewers, are fundamentally at odds with most of their readers, who want just two things: tips on which new cultural products to consume, and validation of their own opinions. A reasoned analysis that challenges their own viewpoint is about as welcome a surprise as a rat's tail in a bottle of supermarket salsa. (Readers aren't always wrong to reject rock criticism, of course. Lots of it is worse than supermarket salsa.)

A timely review of a new pop-culture consumable serves several purposes. It's a news item, informing people that the album, movie, or whatever exists, and what broad category it inhabits. A review is also entertainment, offering such pleasures—depending on the writer—as well-turned phrases, incisive jibes, or crude appeals to accepted opinion. (Heavy-metal "rocks!" Chick flicks "suck!") Lastly, if there's room, a review is a consideration of style, craft, influences, development, integrity, and so on. You know, art.

In today's always-on mediaverse, few readers have the patience for such matters. Free-market efficiency channels cultural opinions, which can be Googled faster than a vending machines can dispense a bottle of Dasani: "A-," "one thumb up," "buy now," "wait for the DVD." And since every click can be tallied, pop-culture businesses know for sure what they always suspected: Most consumers don't care what most critics think.

This reflects new technology, but not such a new attitude. The rapport between music consumers and reviewers has been always shaky. It's no coincidence that the cherished zeniths of rock criticism occurred during periods when, or in places where, the music under discussion was hard to hear.

For English-language rock criticism, the standard was long set by British music weeklies. If callow, absurdly trendy, and often rash in their judgments, New Musical Express, Melody Maker, and Sounds were great fun to read. Their energy had something to do with their weekly schedule, but owed more to the stodginess of the BBC. With precious little rock being played on the radio or TV, the music press had a near-monopoly on manic pop thrills. When satellite TV, commercial radio, and the Internet arrived, Melody Maker and Sounds disappeared, and New Musical Express retrenched. I rarely look at it anymore.

Much the same happened in the U.S., albeit on a near-subterranean level, with glam-rock, garage-rock, and punk. The mainstream U.S. music mags didn't get the Stooges, Ramones or their followers, and neither did "album-oriented" radio, which was already drifting toward a "classic" format. The obstacles to hearing or acquiring this insurgent music were boons to print journalists, notably at alternative weeklies and fanzines. Something was happening here, and you had to read to find out about it.

There's more to read than ever, of course, on myriad blogs and websites. But consumers can skip straight to the MP3s, or take their guidance from specialized search engines. Skipping the informational middleman has never been easier—or at least, not since rock criticism first forced itself into the conversation, demanding to say more about the music than AM DJs or the rate-a-record teens on American Bandstand.

Rock criticism is still demanding its say, however hard it is to deliver commentary that is both timely and informed as an ever-increasing number of CD and digital releases zoom directly to potential fans. Reviewers have to accept that they're often behind the buzz, even as their editors insist that their reviews must run on the official release date—whenever that is. (Internet release? CD release? First gig at which a tour-only disc is available?)

Amid this frenzy, I'm hoping for more care and less haste, more in-depth analysis and fewer premature discharges. But I'm expecting lots of stars, thumbs, and letter grades. At least the writers who specialize in the latter will have a new excuse: The Raconteurs made me do it.

Mark Jenkins currently writes about music and film for the# Washington Post #and NPR.org, among others. He is the co-author of# Dance of Days: Two
Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital (Akashic Books).