The Guitar Hero series on Jemsite features interviews with guitarists and musicians who may not have star status YET, but their current situations have shaped them to be who they are--determined, fond of their craft, and heroes in their own right. Perhaps you'll see in these upcoming entries the next Jimi Hendrix, Melissa Etheridge, or Duane Allman. Or perhaps they'll become household names by doing what they do best--ripping a mean riff!
None of the Guitar players I've featured so far in this series are your typical guitarists. But Carl Wilson completely deviates from the rest. When I caught sight of Carl for the first time, it wasn't his playing that caught my attention (in fact, I didn't even know he played guitar), it was his recognition as a music critic for The Globe and Mail, who has critiqued singers, groups, and bands, had to know what he was talking about with musical sounds (including instruments) and had probably seen and heard a good many guitarists in his day.
That's exactly what Carl Wilson has done in Toronto, but on top of that, he's also published a book about Celine Dion, started his own personal blog, Zoilus, written for counless newspapers and magazines, and dabbled in his guitar himself. Though his guitar practice only ran over a 5-year span, it instilled in him an ability to understand the chords and pick up the sounds. And so because of this (and many other reasons) he is doing what he does today.
And that's why he's this week's Guitar Hero.
What does it mean to be a music critic? What happens when you write a bad review of a band, musician, or album?
To me, being a music critic is a little like being the host of a party or the animator of a discussion -- these days what I write or say is meant to stimulate conversation and provoke thought about what we hear and how we hear, more than to recommend what people should and shouldn't listen to. However, it's also to let people know about music they might not otherwise know. I write for newspapers, magazines, websites and wherever else I can, and sometimes you can hear me coming out of the radio box or the TV box.
I don't expend a lot of energy reviewing music I dislike. There's too much good music out there. Sometimes, though, 'bad' music has some other claim on our attention. I may write about a weak effort from an artist I and the people who are likely to read my work have generally liked in the past. Or about some song or artist that's playing an interesting role in a trend or political event or other social phenomenon, even if their work isn't of tremendous interest intrinsically.
A single bad review isn't likely to have a huge effect on anybody's career, but if an artist gets a widespread chorus of scorn that can obviously hurt, just as widespread praise can help. In general, though, if I am going to be critical, I try to be constructive - one of the most positive expriences I've had as a critic is to be told by an artist that something I wrote helped them to re-think what they were doing and to improve it.
Still I find in-depth explorations - such as my book, Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, which attempts to figure out why people love Celine Dion - more satisfying these days then writing short reviews or sticking a rating number on something.
How did you fall into the job of music critic? Is this the kind of job you set out for yourself when you knew you wanted to do something with music?
My goal wasn't to become somehow involved with music, actually. What I was setting out to do was to be a writer. But because music is important to me, writing about it was a natural combination - I liked writing about it and people seemed to respond well to my writing about it. So it gradually became more of a focus, though I have always written about other subjects as well.
I worked on the student newspaper when I was in university, and the first thing I was assigned when I came in and said I wanted to write about the arts was a Tom Waits concert review. The show turned out to be probably the best show I'd seen to that point in my life & is still right up there, so it was a good start. But I went on to do political reporting, city reporting, restaurant reviewing and more - music is just what I always came back to. What is the music scene like in Toronto, Canada. Give me a brief rundown.
This is too general a question - it's a big city that's defined by its diversity, so there's no single scene, not remotely. There's a hip-hop scene (or two), an arty indie-rock scene, a more punky indie-rock scene, a metal scene, a mainstream rock scene, a salsa scene, a reggae scene, an Ethiopian jazz scene...
How much does guitar come into play? Talk about some of the music or musicians you’ve written about that include guitar or guitarists?
Well of course in the rock scene there are lots and lots of guitars... on the other hand I'd say that while Toronto used to be a very heavy-guitar place, bands nowadays are emphasizing alternative lead instruments, such as violin, for example.
But you do have bands such as the well-known Broken Social Scene here, which includes a bunch of people who have played guitar in bands, all playing interlocking guitar parts and often playing that sound off various guest female vocalists including Feist and Emily Haines of Metric.
We also have a guy who I think should be a guitar-players' idol, Eric Chenaux, who does a vast range of improvised music with different ensembles on his hollow-body electric and his own folkish songs, not to mention some maze-like reinterpretations of standards from Cole Porter to Willie Nelson to Sade to Prince with the strange-but-beautiful trio The Reveries. He came up in punk bands but then took some backroads down the routes of folks like Derek Bailey (UK improvisor), Robbie Basho, Loren Mazzancane Connors....
But of course there are tons more. For example Toronto is also the home of the African Guitar Summit.
You’ve dabbled in guitar yourself. Tell me about your experience.
I took lessons for something like five years as a kid, didn't practice enough, and quit. Then a few years later as a teenager I picked it up again and did a lot of jamming with friends, but I was definitely more interested in noise than technique. Later played at parties and had what we called a "circus punk" band for a little while after university. Now I mostly play alone in my apartment so I can sing Mountain Goats songs and any chops I once possessed have pretty much evaporated. But I do love to play and sing socially with people when I can. It's a basic human high.
It's also extremely helpful to know a little bit about playing (I can also stumble around on piano and, years ago, trumpet) and particularly about playing in ensembles, in order to understand what's going on when I am listening to and watching musicians, and translate some of that for a readership.
Give me some examples of what you have said about the guitar in certain bands or songs? What are some things you notice and would critique?
I'm more inclined to note timbres and textures than other elements of guitar playing - to give the reader a sense of their style and the role the guitar plays in the group's sound. Although if someone is a particularly (and appropriately) spectacular player of course I'd note that. I recall writing about Six Organs of Admittance, for example, on my blog:
"Wasn’t sure at first how I felt about Mr. Six Organs (Ben Chasney): His intense Faheyesque acoustic guitar picking was compelling, but his singing and speech frequently seemed a little swallowed and awkward - not uncommitted, no, and his melodies and words courageous and vulnerable, yes, full of musical stretches and handstands and yarns yanked inside out unravelled from the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk & so forth. But I was a'fearing the young rover lacked gut, wondered if it weren’t all a bit too academic, if the sweet fuzziness would ever push on to full heart force.
"By the end of the set, when he had his acoustic leaning up the amp so it heaved and groaned like a ship caught in an icefield, and he was crouched on the ground field-hollering out a tune overtop the feedback and slamming his knee regularly on the stage to torque the vibrations of the strings and provide nerve-end percussion – that question was settled like a gangfight."
You’re the author of Let’s Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, which talks about what loving or hating Celine Dion says about our society, mass culture, and judgment. I’m not going to ask you to give me a summary of what the book says about society. Instead, of going to ask that if you had to put guitars and rock & roll music in place of Celine Dion, what (in your opinion) would this say about our society? Is it a need for nonconformity or rebellion as most people have said?
I would argue that it's been a long time since rock had all that much to do with rebellion. Sure, the urge to make loud noise is a liberating one -- it's sexy and a little impolite and athletic and all that. But since the 1960s it's also been the dominant part of the culture, and while there are occasionally bands that are politicized or have a social point to make with their guitars, but playing amplified guitar in itself isn't rebellious. It's what your dad did. Maybe still does with his four lawyer buddies in the garage on the weekend.
At least that's true for white guys. I think it's still got some edge when black people, for instance, reclaim rock guitar - as Prince did, and as kids do now in the "Afro punk" movement - and when women play electric guitar, they're still challenging sex roles and stereotypes. But that's not because guitars are rebellious so much as that they're mythologized as masculine.
That's not an argument against rock as a style - as I write in my book, there's no inherent reason why being subversive or rebellious needs to be a primary criterion we use to judge music. But just like advertising culture that urges us to "think outside the box," by which they mean think exactly what they are telling us to think and buy their product, rock's rebellion at this point is mainly against not-rocking, and not-rocking is in many ways the more non-conformist act. (This also applies to recent hip-hop, by the way. That's why I started getting more interested in non-rock pop that is less prone to disguising it's conformity as non-conformity. It seemed less hypocritical in many ways and more comfortable with the very healthy human idea of pleasure.
You’ve written and done quite a bit with pop music. Does guitar fit into the pop music scene? If so, how?
Pop isn't a single style or scene, remotely. When guitar rock is popular, it's pop music to me. But if you're asking about pop that isn't rock, then the answer in general is that pop uses whatever tool fits the job - so when Avril Lavigne wants to sing about being tough, she's going to use an electric guitar, though she might not when she wants to sing about being romantic or sad. In fact, almost all big pop artists want to rock out now and then - they trade much more in variety and versatility than rock bands do, which is part of the secret to success, that they make music for many moods and needs, not just specializing in one particular sound. But beyond that the guitar is a standard part of studio technique for arrangements in all sorts of styles. That and the keyboard being the two most dominant lead instruments (as opposed to rhythm instruments) by far in North American culture anyway. Tell me about your blog, Zoilus. How did you come up with that name?
It's the name of a critic in ancient Greece who was famous for having complained that Homer (ie. more or less the founder of western literature) wasn't a good writer. So the critic who was famous for how wrong he was, and his name became synonymous in the classical tradition with being a complainer or nitpicker. So I thought it was a funny reference. And at the time I started the blog, about five years ago, everyone was giving their websites or tech gizmos these sort of nonsense-word names, and it was fun to have something like that but have it actually mean something. Now maybe it sounds a little old-fashioned as a site name, but then again blogs are seeming a little old-fashioned overall. But for me having a place to write more casually, frequently, colloquially about music and whatever else I choose, and in that way to keep in touch with my readers, musicians, other writers, etc., has been incredibly great.
Who are your musical influences?
At this point there are way too many to say. On one side there's arty pre-punk and post punk bands such as Pere Ubu (featuring guitarists Tom Herman and the late Jim Jones), as well as free jazz and improvisation (Marc Ribot, anyone?), and on the other with country-influenced, beautifully crafted songwriters such as Townes Van Zandt (who had an acoustic guitar style all his own). And I love those who can combine emotionally and intellectually intense and poetic language with beautiful but complex music, such as the aforementioned Tom Waits or the criminally underrated Veda Hille in Vancouver (mostly a pianist, though she plays tenor guitar too).
But get me some Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong on a rainy Sunday afternoon -- or some Michael Jackson, Prince, Outkast and Erykah Badu on a Saturday night - and I'll be pretty happy then too.
And I want my writing to have all those feelings in it.
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