Originally published on December 19, 2002
Nearly a decade ago, I was at an awards ceremony featuring an interesting panel pitting young upstart music journalists against some of the old guard. The young insulted and dismissed the old while the old just let it roll off their backs. One young writer referred to Lester Bangs as a sexist, racist pig, unaware that she was seated next to the executor of Bangs’ written legacy. Later, that reserved executor said something I’ve never forgotten. In response to one editor boasting that it’s the young who give the old new direction, he just shook his head and said, “It’s not about when you got on the bus, but that you got on the bus at all.”
Maybe it’s because of that calm retort, but I’ve never been a critic who scoffs upon learning that someone is discovering a band I’ve been fanatical about for ages. I love turning people on to music I’ve been swooning to for 15 years, lending them much-played, out of print, or import albums and watching them get as excited as I was, and still am. Recently, an extremely well-learned music writer told me he’d just heard Ride for the first time, and I lent him my imports, because if there’s one genre I’m fanatical about, it’s shoegazer, and I have it all in complete collections.