Arguably the first real rock critic in the United States (he wrote the first stateside review of a Jimi Hendrix album), Meltzer has had little more than a cult success since he began publishing works in the groundbreaking culture journal, Crawdaddy. His work started in the underground and basically stayed there (not counting some big league stints that ended poorly). Yet his writing, while often difficult, is still some of the best music criticism done in the past 40 years. Unlike contemporaries Lester Bangs and Nick Tosches, who attempted to turn rock criticism into literature, there is nothing pretty about Meltzer's writing. His goal on every assignment seems to be to capture the feeling of what he is writing about in his prose, turning the reviews and features he wrote into pieces of rock 'n' roll themselves. "Whore" collects the cream of a large crop of writing Meltzer did from the 1960s through the 1990s, organized in a semi chronological fashion and with introductions to each section written by Meltzer (the intros are often as interesting as the archived writing, which is saying a lot). Whether or not his manic style agrees with you or not, this is a book that belongs on your shelf if you are even thinking about writing music criticism.

(This review originally appeared on zombieunderground.net) ( )