Under My Sum
Philosophy professor Crispin Sartwell
judges rock bands by the numbers
(originally published in City on
a Hill Press on January 15, 1998)
Jimmy Aquino
Arts Desk Editor
In the eternal battle between Beatles fans and Rolling
Stones fans over which band rules the earth, the Stones camp recently gained
some ammunition from a loyal soldier hailing from Penn State University in Harrisburg.
While MTV and VH1 played the Stones' "Has Anybody Seen My Baby?" video
to death last fall, Penn State philosophy professor and longtime Stones fan
Crispin Sartwell,
a pioneer in quantitative aesthetic theory, developed his own mathematical formula
for rating rock bands and their music, and with time on his side (as well as
numbers), he concluded that the Stones are the greatest band in rock history.
Controversial? You bet. The Oct. 6 Philadelphia
Inquirer op-ed piece in which the former freelance rock critic
introduced Sartwell's Laws and his ratings elicited more responses
than any other editorial he had written for the paper. (Die-hard
Beatles fans wanted his hide when he criticized the Beatles' abandonment
of bluesiness for an avant-garde, baroque sound in the Sgt.
Pepper era. He calls the lyrics of later Beatles songs like
"For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" "pseudosurreal bullshit.")
The rock press took notice of Sartwell's system, and rock radio
stations from all over the world scrambled to interview him.
In November, Sartwell talked to City
on a Hill Press, explaining the two Sartwell Laws and discussing
the merits of several artists, including Elvis Costello and the
Stones. Somewhere, Mick Jagger is aching to press his gigantic
lips on Sartwell's flesh.
Jimmy Aquino:
Explain your First Law.
Crispin Sartwell: Sartwell's First Law is that the quality of
a rock band is inversely proportional to its pretentiousness,
which means that the more pretentious a band is, the worse it
is, and the less pretentious it is, the better it is. If you think
you're some kind of great artist, if you're trying to compete
with Wagner, you're really not a rock band at all. In particular,
you're not a very good rock band. The corollary of Sartwell's
First Law is the pretentiousness of a band can be expressed as
a ratio of its artistic ambition to its artistic accomplishment.
Pink Floyd would be a 9:2. Their artistic ambition is a 9. They
take themselves extremely seriously as artists.
JA: Yeah,
I've noticed almost all the art-rock groups you've named in your
article, like King Crimson, don't fare so well.
CS: The
worst thing that has ever happened to humanity is art rock.
JA: Can
you explain your Second Law?
CS: The
Second Law is that the quality of a rock song varies inversely
as the square of its distance from the blues. I think that the
history of rock is an extension of the history of the blues. I
think of rock and roll as a traditional art form. Now this is
not to say that you have to just sit there playing the blues over
and over again, or this form can't develop at all, because traditional
art forms do develop, but if you lose touch with those roots,
if you go into a European tonality — Rush is a pretty good
example — you're making pretty bad rock music. In my second
article, I combine the two laws into a single quantity —
the RQI (the Rock Quality Index). The formulas are very complex,
man.
JA: You
came up with a pretentiousness quotient also.
CS: I
argue that the Rolling Stones is the best band in rock history.
Their pretentiousness ratio is a 1:8. That translates as a .125
pretentiousness quotient.
JA: Have
you ever rated each Stones album? You say Their Satanic Majesties
Request was a low point, when they sounded arty.
CS: Yeah,
that was an error. I have all the albums by the Stones, and except
for Their Satanic Majesties Request, they all rate fairly
well in the pretentiousness ratio, with some variations. But this
is one thing that's so impressive about the Stones: if you compare
the Beatles...
JA: I
agree with you totally. I tend to like the Stones more than the
Beatles.
CS: Good.
JA: That's
why I called you.
CS: You're
one of the few, man. You wouldn't believe the shit I've been getting.
It's incredible.
JA: I
agree with the Clash: "Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust."
CS: [Laughs]
Right on. The Beatles started out pretty damn good.
JA: They
incorporated African American blues styles in their earlier years.
CS: Right.
Like a lot of bands, they started taking themselves real seriously
when they got big. The Beatles scored well on their first several
albums, then it's a slow, nasty slide [8:2]. I think what's so
impressive about the Stones is that they've been extremely consistent,
stylistically. Some people find that incredibly irritating. They
think they're doing the same thing over and over again. And basically,
they are, but it's a good thing.
JA: How
come you don't like the progressive rock movement so much?
CS: Oh,
I wouldn't say I don't like it. It depends on the band. My idea
is to compare [art-rock groups like Pink Floyd and Rush] to someone
like Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf, or for that matter, the Stones.
They're infinitely more pretentious than those people, and I think
that they're less infinitely interesting. It's harder to try to
be interesting. Now, if on the other hand, you don't think of
these [art-rock groups] as rock and roll bands per se, and you
think they should be evaluated as avant-garde artists, then I
think they're utter failures. If you want avant-garde musical
art, you want to go to someone like John Cage. If you stick these
[rock bands] in the art music world, they're incredible mediocrities.
They're not comfortably at home in the world of rock and roll,
it seems to me. They're trying to do something much deeper than
that, but they don't really have the artistic ability to do so.
JA: You
don't really like the Eurotrash elements of that art-rock sound.
Your take on rock is that it's an extension of African American
sensibilities?
CS: Right.
I think the basic way that it's received is in this African American
festive context. I think a rock concert is basically a modern
version of an African festival. It's more like that than like
a Mozart concert.
JA: How
would the ratios of artists from other genres fare under your
First Law? Would you rate bluesmen like Howlin' Wolf under the
First Law, or he wouldn't count?
CS: No,
sure he would. The classic blues artists are the artists that
approach perfection.
JA: I
take it their ratios would be low.
CS: Right.
Very low. People like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters are in some
ways, the best popular musical artists of the century — I
would say 1:10. There are artists in other genres that are comparable.
Hank Williams, for instance. He's very closely related to the
blues.
JA: Could
I take the pretentiousness system and apply it to genres like
hiphop?
CS: It's
kind of an interesting deal because hiphop is the direct descendant
of the African American musical forms that I'm saying drive rock
and roll. Hiphop is where the African American tradition is really
alive. I have a hard time thinking of any rappers that I would
call pretentious. I don't think you're gonna find many pretentious
rappers. I'm really into Wu-Tang Clan right now. All their solo
projects are good too. Oh, here's a pretentious rap group, if
they're rappers at all: PM Dawn.
JA: Oh!
That's a 9 in artistic ambition right there.
CS: Yeah.
That was a sad moment in the history of hiphop.
JA: Well,
I did like that Spandau Ballet sample in their song, "Set
Adrift on Memory Bliss," but otherwise, their New Age rap
is pretentious. I like the PM Dawn parody that filmmaker Rusty
Cundieff did in Fear of a Black Hat.
CS: Yes,
that was excellent!
JA: You've
said the Police's "Spirits in the Material World" was
the worst song in the history of rock. Why?
CS: Because
it's metaphysics, man. Sting is actually trying to give you a
little treatise on philosophy. What it is is Kartesian dualism:
"We are spirits in the material world." And it's kind
of this swirling, mysterious, profound sound that just goes on.
But it's really amazingly half-baked and unbelievably wrong metaphysics
— real old metaphysics. I just don't think Sting can do that
very well. I think "Da Doo Doo Doo Da Da Da Da" was
actually more profound than "Spirits in the Material World."
It's not that everything they did was bad — but I didn't
like any of their phases — and I thought that was a pretty
bad moment.
JA: I'm
sure there are a few rock songs that are worse than that.
CS: How
about "Champagne Supernova" by Oasis? That's pretty
bad.
JA: What's
your ratio for the Police?
CS: It
depends on the album. Probably 8:3. Early on, they were kinda
nice, doing this reggae thing. Sting put out some of the most
insipid tripe after they broke up. [Imitates Sting] "If you
love someone/Set them free!"
JA: How
about your ratio for David Bowie? Difficult, huh?
CS: He's
really hard to rate.
JA: You'd
have to rate him by persona.
CS: The
guy's a total chameleon. I liked his disco-ish phase, like "Let's
Dance."
JA: Oh,
he says that's his least interesting period because that was him
at his most mainstream.
CS: Yeah,
well, I kinda like that.
JA: Yeah,
I like "Modern Love." I always sing that in the shower.
CS: Me
too. I like that one. But now, "Major Tom" was just
sad, man. I never understood why that one's still getting played
on classic rock stations.
JA: Wow,
you have such divergent opinions. Most people consider that period
to be Bowie in his artistic prime.
CS: Well,
given that I hate [the Beatles' later albums], I'm gonna hate
that stuff because it's pretty late-Beatlesy. But yeah, he is
hard to rate. I can rate the songs. "Major Tom" —
4:1.
JA: How
about ratios for the Beatles — post-breakup? Lennon and Plastic
Ono? McCartney and Wings?
CS: The
problem with McCartney's solo stuff has not been great pretentiousness
or overwhelming artistic ambition. The problem has been in the
artistic accomplishment. I don't think he's done anything very
interesting for a long, long time. But I kinda like that last
Lennon album.
JA: I'd
like to hear your take on Yoko.
CS: She's
an interesting case because she was actually a conceptual artist
when Lennon met her. In some ways, she's quite a serious artist,
and I'm not sure if it's fair to evaluate her on my scale. One
of my favorite artists doesn't fit in this scale very well either
— this is the one exception whom I can think of clearly —
Elvis Costello, who I think is brilliant, but it's not like he
lacks artistic ambition. He's trying pretty hard. The thing is
he's got the accomplishment to back it up. He's a brilliant lyricist.
He's pretty pretentious in the sense that he's very serious about
his art. I think he's very ambitious artistically, both melodically
and lyrically, but the thing is he's one of the few popular music
artists who has those kinds of ambitions and can fully pay off
on them. He ends up with not the greatest ratio per se, because
it's probably 8:9 or something like that, but I think he's better
than that ratio would lead you to believe.
JA: What are your top 10 rock-band ratios?
CS: I
did start calculating RQI's for them, but I didn't get all the
way through. The Stones (1:8) were #1, the Ramones (1:8) were
#2, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin were
2:10, the Pretenders were 2:10, Booker T. and the MG's were 2:9,
the Allman Brothers were 2:9, Nirvana were 2:9, Blondie were 2:8
and Eurythmics were 3:9.
JA: That's
interesting. That's a surprising ratio there. I didn't expect
a syntho-pop band to get such a low ratio. And they did do good
stuff.
CS: Yeah.
It's the way they used the synths too. It's okay that they used
synths —
JA: —
if it has soul, if it still sounds soulful, unlike Depeche Mode.
CS: Right.
Exactly. That's a real good contrast. You see, the vocals in Depeche
Mode sound like they're made by a machine. But as for the vocals
in Eurythmics, Annie Lennox is a real good soul singer.
JA: Yeah.
I'm thinking of that one Eurythmics song with Stevie Wonder on
harmonica. That was a great-ass song. "Must Have Been Talking
to an Angel."
CS: "Sweet
Dreams" was a great single, and also "The Walk,"
from that first album. The last one in the top 10 is the J. Geils
Band (2:6). The J. Geils stuff that finally made it big on the
radio was "Centerfold," which is, in a way, not a novelty
song, but they were really a great white blues band for a long
time, before that. [J. Geils member] Magic Dick was an incredible
harmonica player.
JA: Are
you planning on going to California and doing a few lectures on
the lecture circuit?
CS: [Laughs]
If anyone is payin', I'm playin'. This has been my 15 minutes
of fame, man. It's been really bizarre, but so far, no concrete
cash offers have been coming. And California's a long way off.
JA: How
much press have you been getting on this? Has MTV News interviewed
you?
CS: No,
but I've done about 20 interviews on radio stations, including
the top-rated show in Japan. I did a bunch of shows from Canada.
I did the morning shows on classic rock stations all around the
country. There's gonna be articles in Details magazine
and the Washington Post, but so far, MTV or Rolling
Stone or anybody like that haven't called.
You know what's amazing? I've been doing op-ed for the Philly
Inquirer for a while. I'm tackling these hard issues like
education, drugs and stuff like that. Nobody cared at all. I did
this thing on how the Stones are better than the Beatles, and
I got death threats. [Laughs] It's incredible. It's unbelievable,
man. I know now what people actually care about. It's not education
or politics.
JA: They
care about who in this world is a Stones person and who's a Beatles
person.
CS: Right.
Exactly. It's sad, isn't it? But it's true.
Rating the Rockers
(originally published in City on
a Hill Press on January 15, 1998)
Jimmy Aquino
Arts Desk Editor
During my interview with Penn State
philosophy professor Crispin Sartwell about his rock and roll
pretentiousness rating system, I asked the former rock critic
to give me his opinions on a whole bunch of rock artists. I excised
some of his comments on these artists from the article because
of space reasons, but here they are for your reading pleasure
— or displeasure, if you find yourself disagreeing with Sartwell.
(If you're a lifelong Beatles fan, he's your worst enemy since
that Beatlemania Broadway show from the '80s. His Philadelphia
Inquirer article in October about how much the Stones is better
than the Beatles got him national attention.)
Here's what he had to say about those political punkers, the Clash:
"Basic punk rock tends to do pretty well on my scale. I like
the Bosstones, the Presidents of the United States of America
and Green Day. They all do okay, but the Clash is pretty classic
stuff. 2:6 or 2:7 (a 2 in artistic ambition and a 6 or 7 in artistic
accomplishment)."
On Bob Marley:
"My top 10 ratios were rock bands only. You could call Bob
Marley and the Wailers a band, so maybe he should be in the top
10. It's gotta be high, like 2:9 or something like that."
On the Beastie Boys, who, according to him, are probably the only
really good white hiphop act:
"1:5 or 2:5. One thing I like about them is the way they
play with race. Vanilla Ice was trying to pretend to be black.
But the Beastie Boys are pretending to be white. It's like playing
with whiteness. They've got this kind of nerdy-white-guy rapping.
Now that's interesting. I think we white folks gotta do a lot
more playing with whiteness and parodying ourselves. Musically,
they've done some really interesting things. They grew into really
interesting artists."
On Fleetwood Mac, Bill Clinton's favorite band:
"It's amazing that these people never die. Even the drug
addicts never die. Fleetwood Mac isn't really a crazy, pretentious
band. 3:3 or 3:2. For their era in the late '70s, the production
was pretty amazing. The production values on those albums were
influential. Lindsey Buckingham was a really good producer."
On Jimi Hendrix:
"The reason that Hendrix is so interesting, from the point
of view of Sartwell's Laws, is that even in these incredible flights
of fantasy that he created on the guitar and these unbelievable
sonic events that he devised, there's always a connection to the
blues. Even at his most abstract, Hendrix was an extremely good
blues player — the most innovative blues player of the late
'60s. 3:9."
Early Springsteen doesn't fare well in Sartwell's system. (In
his article, he said, "Early U2 and early Springsteen, who
took what were fundamentally fairly simple ditties and mounted
them with an elaborateness usually reserved for Wagnerian opera,
are almost unbelievably overrated.") Here, he explains why
Springsteen's early stuff is not his cup of tea:
"I don't like the arrangements. It's this huge wash of sound,
and he's kind of bellowing. As his career has gone along, he's
stripped down the arrangements more and more, not only on the
acoustic albums, but on the raw material too. He sounds a lot
better as he goes on. 'Pink Cadillac' is a really good rock song
with good arrangements, but I didn't like the 'Born to Run' stuff
so much."
As for Led Zeppelin, he said they fare well in Sartwell's Second
Law (the quality of a rock song varies inversely as the square
of its distance from the blues) because of the bluesiness of their
first few albums, but they get pretentious in their other records:
"There's a certain pretentiousness there, but it creeps in
much worse by the time you get to 'Stairway to Heaven.' It's hard
for me to tell how good 'Stairway to Heaven' is. I've heard it
so many times, I just turn the thing off when it comes on the
radio. Early Zep is fine, man. It's pretty hot-rockin' stuff.
Occasionally, they returned. I like some of the later stuff too.
But there were moments of huge arena-size gestures that just didn't
work out too well."
© 2001 Jim Aquino