Robert Duncan (writer)

Last updated
Robert Duncan
Born (1952-11-05) November 5, 1952 (age 70)
Sheboygan, Wisconsin, U.S.
OccupationMusic critic, author, journalist, entrepreneur
Period1970s – Present
Subject Rock music, jazz

Robert Duncan (born November 5, 1952) is an American music critic, author and entrepreneur. Duncan is married to the artist and photographer Roni Hoffman. [1] They have two adult children.

Contents

Career

Robert Duncan was managing editor of Creem [2] from 1975 to 1976 and a contributor to the magazine from 1974 to 1981.

His characterization of heavy metal as "dismal, abysmal, terrible, horrible, and stupid music, barely music at all" [3] has been cited multiple times by academics as evidence of the contempt most critics held for the genre. [4] [5]

Duncan also writes poetry and novels. His poems have been published in Maintenant, The Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art. [6] His first novel, Loudmouth, based in part on his experiences in music, was published on October 6, 2020, by Three Rooms Press (distributed by PGW/Ingram).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dada</span> Avant-garde art movement in the early 20th century

Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire. New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris. Dadaist activities lasted until the mid 1920s.

Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and United States. With roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock and acid rock, heavy metal bands developed a thick, monumental sound characterized by distorted guitars, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats and loudness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avant-garde</span> Works that are experimental or innovative

In the arts and in literature, the term avant-garde identifies a genre of art, an experimental work of art, and the experimental artist who created the work of art, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic Establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an advance guard identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus how the artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times.

Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise within a musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music includes a wide range of musical styles and sound-based creative practices that feature noise as a primary aspect.

<i>...And Justice for All</i> (album) 1988 studio album by Metallica

...And Justice for All is the fourth studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica, released on September 7, 1988, by Elektra Records. It was the first Metallica album to feature bassist Jason Newsted, following the death of their previous bassist Cliff Burton in 1986. Burton received posthumous co-writing credit on "To Live Is to Die" as Newsted followed bass lines Burton had recorded prior to his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Creeley</span> American poet

Robert White Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P. Capen Professor of Poetry and the Humanities at State University of New York at Buffalo. In 1991, he joined colleagues Susan Howe, Charles Bernstein, Raymond Federman, Robert Bertholf, and Dennis Tedlock in founding the Poetics Program at Buffalo. Creeley lived in Waldoboro, Buffalo, and Providence, where he taught at Brown University. He was a recipient of the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

<i>Spectres</i> (album) 1977 studio album by Blue Öyster Cult

Spectres is the fifth studio album by American hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult, released in November 1977. The album features one of the band's biggest hits, concert staple "Godzilla," and was certified gold in January 1978.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Christgau</span> American music journalist (born 1942)

Robert Thomas Christgau is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West. Christgau spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice, during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for Esquire, Creem, Newsday, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NPR, Blender, and MSN Music, and was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world – when he talks, people listen."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fantômas (band)</span> American band from California

Fantômas is an American heavy metal supergroup formed in 1998 in California. It features vocalist Mike Patton, drummer Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer), guitarist Buzz Osborne (Melvins) and bassist Trevor Dunn. The band is named after Fantômas, a supervillain featured in a series of crime novels popular in France before World War I and in film, most notably in the '60s French movie series.

Transgressive art is art that aims to outrage or violate basic morals and sensibilities. The term transgressive was first used in this sense by American filmmaker Nick Zedd and his Cinema of Transgression in 1985. Zedd used it to describe his legacy with underground film-makers like Paul Morrissey, John Waters, and Kenneth Anger, and the relationship they shared with Zedd and his New York City peers in the early 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chuck Klosterman</span> American author and columnist

Charles John Klosterman is an American author and essayist whose work focuses on American popular culture. He has been a columnist for Esquire and ESPN.com and wrote "The Ethicist" column for The New York Times Magazine. Klosterman is the author of twelve books, including two novels and the essay collection Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto. He was awarded the ASCAP Deems Taylor award for music criticism in 2002.

<i>Transition</i> (literary journal) Experimental literary journal

transition was an experimental literary journal that featured surrealist, expressionist, and Dada art and artists. It was founded in 1927 by Maria McDonald and her husband Eugene Jolas and published in Paris. They were later assisted by editors Elliot Paul, Robert Sage, and James Johnson Sweeney.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Cravan</span> French poet, Dadaist and boxer

Arthur Cravan was a Swiss writer, poet, artist and boxer. He was the second son of Otho Holland Lloyd and Hélène Clara St. Clair. His brother Otho Lloyd was a painter and photographer married to the Russian émigré artist Olga Sacharoff. His father's sister, Constance Mary Lloyd, was married to Irish poet Oscar Wilde. He changed his name to Cravan in 1912 in honour of his fiancée Renée Bouchet, who was born in the small village of Cravans in the department of Charente-Maritime in western France.

Martin Popoff is a Canadian music journalist, critic and author. He is mainly known for writing about the genre of heavy metal music. The senior editor and co-founder of Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, he has additionally written over twenty books that both critically evaluate heavy metal and document its history. He has been called "heavy metal's most widely recognized journalist" by his publisher. Popoff lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Eric Robertson is a British academic, Professor of Modern French Literary and Visual Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London.

<i>Manifest Destiny</i> (The Dictators album) 1977 studio album by The Dictators

Manifest Destiny is the second album by The Dictators and their first after switching to the Asylum label. Trouser Press praised the album as "another helping of brilliant Shernoff originals".

<i>Christgaus Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies</i> Music reference book

Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies is a music reference book by American music journalist and essayist Robert Christgau. It was first published in October 1981 by Ticknor & Fields. The book compiles approximately 3,000 of Christgau's capsule album reviews, most of which were originally written for his "Consumer Guide" column in The Village Voice throughout the 1970s. The entries feature annotated details about each record's release and cover a variety of genres related to rock music.

Lorene Zarou-Zouzounis is a Palestinian-American writer and poet. Zarou-Zouzounis writes poetry for all ages, prose, historical fiction for children & adults, short stories and science fiction. She obtained her associate of arts degree from City College of San Francisco, and continued her studies at the renowned Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University. She is described as being influenced by her heritage and has frequently written on subjects relating to the Middle East.

<i>Christgaus Record Guide: The 80s</i> Music reference book by Robert Christgau

Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s is a music reference book by American music journalist and essayist Robert Christgau. It was published in October 1990 by Pantheon Books as a follow-up to Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981).

Three Rooms Press is a New York City-based small press. It was founded in 1993 by Kat Georges and Peter Carlaftes with a focus on poetry, but the press now publishes mainly fiction, memoir, and art. Three Rooms Press's name was inspired by one of the themes in Harold Pinter's play The Homecoming. The press also manages an annual international dada art and poetry journal called Maintenant, which was featured by the Brussels Poetry Fest in 2016 and 2017. Issues of Maintenant have been featured and sold in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the BelVUE Museum in Brussels. Three Rooms Press books are distributed by PGW / Ingram.

References

  1. "Roni Hoffman". Roni Hoffman. Retrieved September 17, 2019.
  2. admin (June 6, 2013). "From the Archives: Robert Duncan (2001)". RockCritics.com. Retrieved September 17, 2019.
  3. Ducan, Robert (1984). The Noise: Notes from a Rock 'N' Roll Era. Boston, Massachusetts: Ticknor & Fields. pp. 36–37. ISBN   978-0899193267.
  4. Walser, Robert (1993). ""Nasty, Brutish, and Short?" Rock Critics and Academics Evaluate Metal". Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. p. 20. ISBN   9780819562609.
  5. Weinstein, Deena (2000). Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press. p. 1. ISBN   9780306809705.
  6. "MAINTENANT 13: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art". New York City: Three Rooms Press. November 29, 2018. Retrieved September 17, 2019.