Best Music Writing 2005, edited by JT LeRoy (2005, Da Capo). In LeRoy’s forward he talks about how he devours the writing of the old school music critics, dictionary and encyclopedia nearby, not only wanting to feel more connected to the music he loves but to be enveloped in it – to understand the language and the context and the layers of musical criticism. Camille Paglia and Ingrid Sischy’s discussion of rock n’ roll style and iconography from Elvis forward had me reaching for dictionary as well. Paglia uses a term like slatternly and then references Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph of Patti Smith like she’s a walking rock wikipedia. Settle down there, big brains, let me catch up.

I didn’t need my dictionary (or need to run back to the computer to search out albums and tracks and history) as much as I went from article to article, all published in 2004, but I was constantly flipping back through time in my itunes catalog. Not for the music of 2004, mind, but further back. I played through London Calling and other parts of The Clash library while I reminisced with Sasha Frere Jones and Michael Corcoran about 1979 and the crossroads of popular music that year (and that album in particular) was. I ventured through dusty and anemic areas of my music library while reading about Bob Dylan and Ray Charles. I lamented not having a single Buddy Holly track (or Nirvana for that matter but, shhhhh, don’t tell anybody).

Kalefa Sanneh’s The Rap against Rockism, however, is the one piece I found still immediately relavent to our current moment in music in 2006. Especially in light of the discussion of this year’s most popular music over at Lynne’s spot. The question to ponder is this – Why is an artist like Sufjan Stevens getting all the music critic love while Mariah Carey put out the year’s most popular (and listenable and contemporary and, generally, critically well received) album and is nowhere to be found? It is essentially the same question that Sanneh asks

"...when did we all agree that Nirvana's neo-punk was more respectable than Carey's neo-disco?"

Or to ask it a different way, twenty years from now will you be begging your oldies DJ to whip out his retro video ipod and put on some Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or will you be grabbing your homeboys and homegirls and trying to line dance to Shake It Off or We Belong Together because those were your jams?

Don’t front. Somebody is buying up all that fuckin’ Laffy Taffy and My Humps on iTunes.

That said, while Sanneh calls the rockist elitism to task, the collection is woefully lacking in anything relaven to say about the important music of 2004. For these talented writers, it really is all about the long gone days of folk, punk, Nirvana and white guy rock.

But for the skill in their prose, the collection is recommended. The rockism snobbery is just being put on notice.