+ s a l o n + c o n t a c t u s + a r c h i v e s + t a b l e t a l k +
![[Sound Salvation]](vowell.gif)
B Y + S A R A H + V O W E L L
have you ever cared so much about a record you had to write it a letter? Cared so much you photocopied the letter, carried it with you, pasted it all over town? Taped it to telephone poles, glued it to walls? Cared so much you cracked? The pseudonymous New Yorker Camden Joy has scribbled and taped and glued rambling musical missives for the last four years. Part crank, part critic, Joy's embarrassingly personal prose obsesses over indie bands and their place in his apparently lonesome life. One of his more famous postings asked, in all-caps and felt tip pen, "the American President of the United States and all them U.S. trade reps to haul Pavement to the trade talks, they are our grandest export, our finest product, infusible in hot weather, our best materials, Pavement should be carried on our shoulders and emblazoned on our backs and ushered unto waiting planes at the last minute and with an almost effete, deliberate importance, their bellies bloated with our very best meats." Joy's relationship to the music industry is complicated. He often rails against rock's capitalist trappings. He wrote a 47-page pamphlet proclaiming Frank Black's "Teenager of the Year" as "The Greatest Record Album Ever Told" and proceeded to lambaste Black's former label, Elektra/Asylum, for dropping the musician from its roster. On the other hand, Joy ambitiously courts mainstream journalists; my first contact with him came via a 13-page fax of his press clippings (in which traditional critics all but crown him rock writing's bizarre new messiah). A package of booklets soon followed, including the impossible overrating of Black, a weird religious tract on Al Green called "The Greatest Record Album Singer That Ever Was" and the brilliant if baffling "The Lost Manifestos of Camden Joy."
As an agent provocateur, Joy walks right by criticism's gap, screaming. He has no time for the divide between first-person arts writers who insinuate themselves into analyses and third-person reporters who, through some hopeless nod to objectivity (or just shyness), try like mad to remain invisible in their own prose. Joy makes a plea for gushing. He told me, "I would like to have some sort of effect on the way people think about music. I think what's happened is we're very afraid of sentiment. In review after review, I'll see the word sentimental applied as a negative attribute. I don't understand that. I come from a world where sentimental is actually kind of nice." "I come from a world ..." Joy says those words almost condescendingly, as if he sees himself as some sort of enlightened alien, an ambassador of emotion come to teach us dried-up earthlings a little something about bravery. While his heart-on-sleeve approach might inspire a few eggheaded rock writers to explore their touchy-feely side, he ignores the fact that effective criticism involves a conversation between fandom (or anti-fandom) and intellect. But Joy's lack-o-logic makes his essays difficult to follow. He's not so interested in developing arguments, which makes his pamphlets awkward and meandering. His talents lie in two places: one-breath manifesto invectives (where Freedy Johnston's bad album equals betrayal, prompting the author to sneer, "I would crawl through glass to claw your eyes. I would offer a hug if my suit were explosive") and critical insights woven through fictitious narratives. His novel "The Last Rock Star Book or, Liz Phair: A Rant" will be published by Verse Chorus Press next month. A continuation of Joy's writer-as-stalker motif, the book exists in conversation with Phair's album "Exile in Guyville," telling the story of the protagonist "Camden" and his girlfriend "Liz." "She's had previous relationships," he writes, "been burned, has trouble trusting anyone." I'm sure Joy's fictional love fantasy will only make Phair that much more open. Ordinarily, death threats and delusions offer tell-tale warnings that an individual should be avoided face-to-face. But in the spirit that sends my newsier colleagues off to war zones, I dropped behind the lines of Greenwich Village and went on poster patrol with Camden Joy. It was the week of Valentine's Day. If you think Joy is hyperbolic about three-minute pop songs, you can imagine how bent out of shape he gets about his own love life. His girlfriend -- a real woman, apparently -- broke up with him. It was conspiracy. He blames the phone company. If not for the Nynex corporation's incompetence at pay-phone upkeep, Joy and his enjoyed would be together still. So he hatches a flier campaign with two goals: to condemn Nynex and to get her back. While I had romanticized postering as this secretive in-the-dark guerrilla action, it is actually cold and boring work. Especially in the middle of a February storm, when the tape will barely stick to slushy surfaces and your feet freeze up as you pass cozy restaurants and bars where the people inside look warm and so very nonchalant. Until that first night of traipsing (two more evenings of watching him
attach sheets of paper inscribed with things like "Camden's Conspiracy
Hearts" would follow) I had considered Joy, even at his least publishable, a
fellow critic. I (along with a dozen others, including New York Times pop critic Neil Strauss) had even joined his "gang" last September for the five minutes it took to write a poster addressed to the CMJ music conference about giving neglected musical talent a chance. But standing there, between a bright window of drinkers and the man who had drawn an innocuous heart around
the words "LINE DEAD," I had never sensed criticism's intermediary role so
keenly. I felt invisible, alone, and engulfed by context, alienated from
both him and the crowds of people around us. On 13th Street, he wraps
elastics around a red flier, drawn with descending valentines that look like drops of blood.
I can't understand a word of it, though it's my job to try. Instead, I point at the plaque on the building in front of us; anarchist Emma Goldman lived here. His poster, then, is
this spot's second monument to the irrational. I was outnumbered. Joy trudged along
with Goldman's ghost behind him, breaking the law every 10 feet. I stumbled beside them, reminding myself that there's a big difference between being an anarchist and writing about them.
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BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/columnists/vowell.html