First off, I’d like to apologize to Chuck Klosterman. This post isn’t really about him. He is just representative of something I wanted to talk about. That is the fact that people never seem to talk about what they claim to be talking about. And I think the constant talk about relevance is a relevant example. Is Van Halen still relevant? How about Madonna? Is she relevant? Were they ever relevant? (If you haven’t guessed yet, one of my goals here is to use the word relevant so many times that it becomes a meaningless, strange, irrelevant noise people make. Relevant, relevant, relevant, relevant.)
Relevance is the ultimate relative term. Nothing is ever absolutely relevant. The existence (or non-existence) of the Higgs Boson is pretty darned relevant to particle physicists, but not so relevant to most of the rest of us. 2+2=4 is awfully relevant to first graders practicing their arithmetic, but not so relevant to appreciating the genius of Mississippi John Hurt. In other words, if something is important to you, it is relevant to you. If something is pertinent to a conversation or argument, it is relevant to that conversation or argument. So the short answer to the title of this piece is probably. He is a published author, and people buy his stuff, so he is probably relevant to them. And there might be a Mrs. Klosterman or some baby Klostermans who find him relevant.
Now, with all this talk of relevance, you’re probably thinking that I’m guilty of not talking about what I claim to be talking about. That would be far too meta and postmodern for me. That’s not my style; not relevant to the way I approach things. My little diversion into relevance was just to illustrate the way this happens. When Chuck Klosterman is supposed to be talking about music, he instead often writes about relevance, fashion, nostalgia, business, anything but music. He, like way too many other authors, fails to stay relevant to his own topic.
A couple of weeks ago, he wrote a review of Van Halen’s new album, “A Different Kind of Truth”. Reading the review, you find out that he had fun at a Van Halen show a few weeks ago, he loves old Van Halen, he doesn’t really like the new album (although it is good enough, it just doesn’t move him), and that David Lee Roth “gets a lifetime pass.” He only makes a few passing references to the actual music. It’s “loose, effortlessly heavy,” which is nice, but since it’s not coupled with a description of any kind I have no idea if it is Metallica or Led Zeppelin, Nirvana or Anthrax (or maybe even Stryper or Poison). It doesn’t sound as good as records did in 1976. Again, no description, so I don’t know if this means just simply digital vs. analog or if it’s other kinds of problems like too much bass, the vocals are too out front, or some other issue. Eddy’s tone is not as good as it used to be, although it is still good. I did learn that Chuck Klosterman thinks Eddy’s guitar tone is, “the most jarringly singular post-Hendrix guitar tone anyone has ever produced,” but, again, I have no idea if it’s bright or dark or piercing or fuzzy. The only real description we get in the whole piece is that the album is, “just overstuffed with notes.”
(As an aside, he says, “Wolfie Van Halen gets an “A” and Alex Van Halen gets an “A-,” but only because we’re grading on a curve and AVH has never performed poorly on any song I’ve ever heard,” but he never even says what Wolfie and Alex do on the record.)
So, I supposedly read a review of the new Van Halen album and I’m left having no idea what the new Van Halen album sounds like or if I might want to buy it. Instead I learned that Chuck Klosterman is a big Van Halen fan from his youth and that, odds are, nothing will ever live up to the albums he loved as a kid. That’s nice, but not what I thought I was reading, not really relevant to anyone other than Chuck Klosterman. Again, I’m picking on Chuck Klosterman, but you’ll find this problem in all kinds of writing by all kinds of people. Hopefully, by calling attention to it, we can get people to stay relevant to their own topics.
