Are You There, Lester Bangs? It’s Me, Corman.

When I was in college, I was at an all-night diner by the name of Tolly-Ho, in Lexington, Kentucky. I had gone there to eat with friends, but I left with a bitter taste in my mouth. You see, one of my friends, a young man who I had by turns worshiped and envied since high school, paid me a painful insult prior to my early-A.M. feast of a cheeseburger and cheese fries (and no, he wasn’t criticizing my eating habits, though perhaps he should have).

As we waited to place our orders, we talked about music, a topic that often graced our conversations. “Corman,” he said to me, “We agree on a lot of things, but you’re just too insulated. You need the critics too much. If an album or an artist isn’t hailed by the critics, you won’t give it a chance.”

Muhammad Ali never landed a fiercer blow. Me, a follower? A lackey? A vulture, following predators who seek and strike at the good stuff while I wait cautiously in the shadows, flocking only to that which they’ve already caught?

Here I was, you understand, a young man of eighteen, consuming music at a crisp rate, spending my UK Plus Account (meant for book purchases) on heaps of CDs at the used record store across from the north corner of campus, eager to seek out my next top-five record or mixed-CD favorite.

That night in Tolly-Ho I put up a half-hearted fight. I tried to tell my friend and myself that it wasn’t true, that I had a mind of my own, that Robert Christgau and Rob Sheffield meant nothing to me.

Lies, all of them.

My real Odyssey into music had started courtesy of a “Top 100 Songs of All-Time” issue of Rolling Stone. I knew The Beatles, Dylan, and Marvin Gaye because of this list, and though I had quickly expanded my tastes beyond the boundaries of the list, I stuck to what seemed tried-and-true. I wanted the classics, the good stuff, music the way it’s meant to be, man. My listening rarely strayed past the limits of the 60s and 70s. The 00s were basically off limits, written off as the sad wasteland from which nothing musically great could grow.

In the past eight years, I’ve grown. I now listen to as much music from the last ten years as from the 60s and 70s combined. My favorite artists and albums lists are peppered with newer artists, the Arcade Fires and Josh Ritters and The Nationals of the world mixing it up with The Beatles and The Stones and Zeppelin. I’m proud of this because, as I now see it, I am finally free from the tyranny of critical acceptance. More than ever, I have confidence in my critical acumen, and what I listen to will be a reflection of me, not of the majority’s voice.

Or so I thought.

Not two weeks ago, this friend of mine (yes, our friendship had managed to survive the grievous - never mind true - barb) sent me an email. Attached to this missive he included three mp3 files. The songs he sent were recorded by a friend of his named Tyler Lyle who is evidently drawing some attention from the industry. “This guy is going to be famous. Guarantee it.” He wrote. “Here is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor.”

And you know what I did? I froze. I clicked out of the email and tended some other business, went back to it, clicked out of it again. Finally, I downloaded the files, but I didn’t listen to them immediately. I left them sitting there, in iTunes, unheard for three more hours. That’s when the Tolly-Ho conversation came rushing back to me. You know what my friend was really annoyed by when he made his observation to me? It wasn’t that I put too much stock into what the critics said. No, what really got to him was that I didn’t put enough stock into what he said. Like I said, this friend and I were constantly talking about music, and he frequently recommended bands to me or asked me to listen to a song he thought I’d love.

In response to his honest attempts to introduce me to music he figured I would enjoy (read: his attempts to be a good friend), I fed him some pap about feeling awkward listening to new music in front of people and rarely, if ever, actually gave his offerings a chance. In fact, I still remember pacing casually in and out of the room the first time he played Ryan Adams’ “Oh My Sweet Carolina” for me, as though to show him that I wasn’t giving the song my full attention. (That song and “Heartbreaker," the album from which it hails, are now among my all time favorites.)

Here was a guy trying to connect with me in a truly meaningful way, trying to improve my existence one song at a time, and I was running away from it. Why? Because I didn’t want to acknowledge what somebody else had discovered first. I know it’s shallow, but it’s the truth. That, in part, is why the safety of critically sanctioned top-whatever lists had such appeal: Nothing you find on one of those is likely to even be discoverable. You don’t really discover The Beatles, you know? They’re just sort of there, and everyone runs into them at one point or another.

I had spent years avoiding my friend’s recommendations because I wanted so badly to keep that sense of ownership we all have over the things we listen to and watch and read. We feel they have a special connection with us, and often, that connection feels stronger if we think we forged it alone. Or at least I did.

I say “did” rather than “do” because I’ve given all that up. I sat down and listened to those songs my friend sent me and they were as good as advertised. I’ve since downloaded the artist’s latest album and have been listening to it on repeat ever since. I came a hair’s breadth from letting this great work pass by unacknowledged, all because of a pride that has eyes only for my self-inflation.

Art is endowed with an intrinsic value. For a long time, I had confused that inherent worth with the worth I bestowed upon something because I found it first, or because some “expert” had blessed it with four-and-a-half out of five stars.

No longer. Play on, Tyler Lyle.



-By Josh Corman

Editor's Note:

If you would like to listen to/purchase Tyler Lyle's new album, follow this link. You will thank us later.

Buy/Listen to Tyler Lyle's "The Golden Age and the Silver Girl"