For almost ten years, independent rock critic Glenn Mcdonald has kept a highly personal and elegantly well-written music column, The War Against Silence. He has championed artists popular and obscure, and remembered acts that others might regard as 1980s nostalgia with melancholy and grace. As his past few columns have vacillated between the personal and the musical, he has opted to end his run at the beginning of September.
posted by pxe2000 on Jul 29, 2004 - 16 comments

The meaning of Stuart Adamson Glenn McDonald: “Supernatural is death music to me now, in a year when the last thing I need is more contemplation of death. The gift the end of a record gives us, and so too the end of a career or a life, is the opportunity to go back to the beginning again... All my grandparents are dead. The leader of my favorite band is dead. Two of my favorite writers are dead, and one of the others hasn't published a book since 1963. We too will vanish, whether in flames or our sleep or capitulation.... Mean what you are. Do nothing that can be undone, and live or die with the consequences. Live in such a way that if you tell people to stay alive, and then die nevertheless, they will know that what you and they believed together was stronger and truer than anything that merely happened”
posted by joeclark on Dec 23, 2001 - 5 comments

“There’s no such thing as ‘a B+ album’ ” “...or a three-and-a-half-star album or whatever. Value is not an internal property of a work of art, so, to me, grading a record is not just inane and offensive, it demonstrates a profound misunderstanding about how people react to art.” Interview with Glenn McDonald (ibid.).
posted by joeclark on Jun 15, 2001 - 12 comments