Word: williamses
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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It is true that Crawdaddy! today is a decadent rag, full of archly pretentious art-writing about rock and that it has been decisively and deservedly supplanted by Rolling Stone as the only worthwhile rock magazine around. Nevertheless it is equally true that Paul Williams himself remains one of the...
Williams' writing is strewn with astonishingly true insights which range in scope from one-line revelations about our most major and complex artists (e.g., that Bob Dylan has always been at heart a rock and roll singer who started out in folk merely because there were no other options open...
When, however, this objective theoretical framework is sensibly conceived and sounds reasonable, the opinions of the rock writer can trigger two kinds of reactions in the reader. Those who agree beforehand with the judgment being defended find that their joy is immeasurably heightened; and those who disagreed at the outset...
A TYPICAL example of Williams' style is his method of evaluating Jefferson Airplane. He begins by positing two concepts: complexity and kinetics. Complexity means that "there is a lot going on" in the Airplane's songs, intricate musical interaction among the group's members, the enormous energy that therefore is...
The danger of this kind of elaborate complexity is, of course, that a song might get bogged down under the sheer weight of all its minute structuring, which makes it dead and therefore a bad rock song. Just then Williams' second theoretical concept, that of kinetics, comes along to clarify...