Rolling Music Writers' Thread

dog latin, i've noticed a sort of imperative to play nice w/r/t reviews and live previews over the last little while.

not EVERYWHERE, per se. but in some places it's like "let's just review stuff that's good"

"if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"

I once had a review changed from ultra-negative upon submission to oddly positive in print. I complained, but it was allegedly a genuine subbing error... still felt queasy about the whole thing though.

ads be hard to come by these days

Pubs are so desperate for readers these days that I can imagine a desire to cut down on the negativity and snark. After all, no one likes to be told their favorite band sucks.

I can actually understand a publication's wish to only run positive (or at least thoughtfully negative) reviews. But that's harder on the editor, who must do a much more meticulous job of pairing writer and subject. If you're willing to run raves and teardowns more or less in equal measure, you can almost assign anything to anyone.

Too bad pubs (and blogs, too) fail to understand that it's the negative reviews (or the balance of positive/negative, more accurately) that build their reputations as trustworthy sources.

xpost

Yeah, but the only way to stay alive now is to be a niche publication, and niche publications' readers want their tastes validated, not challenged.

otm

Which I don't have the slightest problem with, btw; I've always been a big believer in critics being experts on one or two things rather than trying to be generalists who know a little bit about "everything" ("everything" being its own kind of parochialism anyfuckinway; it always boils down to liking mainstream pop, hip-hop/R&B and half-assedly nodding in the direction of country, metal, etc.).

I think there are a few different scenarios being swept together as one here: a publication pushing for positive reviews of particular albums (maybe because they're high profile or advertisers or just a favorite of the editor/publication) vs. a publication wanting to keep it positive as much as possible and have a more "up" tone vs. a publication dealing with limited review space and preferring to use it to recommend good stuff instead of trashing bad stuff

If you wanna see the utter valuelessness of the "generalist" approach, check out Slate's music writers' roundtable that's happening this week and count all the different types of music that are being totally ignored.

I'm having a hard time seeing the utter value in keeping a bingo card w/ genre names on it at hand every time I read anything about music.

the older i get, the less i feel the desire to generalize. doing so feels so insincere, you know? because unless one is omnicient it's impossible to know EVERYTHING about stuff happening in EVERY genre.

at this point i write about noise, experimental, indie, some rap, and some pop. and i don't even feel like i've giot a handle on all of that a lot of the time.

Please don't use Jonah Weiner as an example of what it means to be a generalist.

generalist/specialist isn't an either/or, most writers are situated somewhere on that spectrum and can play generalist or specialist as appropriate

totally

and notwithstanding the (very few) critics who can pull these extremes off, i don't think there's anything particularly appealing about either a) pretending to be "above" genre and refusing to acknowledge different cultures' values and traditions, or b) immersing yourself so far in a scene that you stop being able to see the wood for the trees

The problem with genre experts is that they often focus on things that aren't necessarily of concern to me as a "casual" listener.

or alternatively, genre experts sometimes point out things that i wouldn't have noticed as someone not attuned to that particular style, which i find tremendously valuable in finding my way into enjoying it

Oh, to be sure. I guess it only becomes a problem for me when they get hung up on a set of internal rules for what makes their genre work.

I couldn't even skim that Slate thing, btw. My brain just glazed over.

Please don't use Jonah Weiner as an example of what it means to be a generalist.

Why not? (Genuine curiosity.)

I just hate his writing, that's all.

Ah, OK; I was thinking the exact opposite, that you thought he was somehow better than a mere "pop critic" or something like that.

No, if anyone is a mere pop critic, it's him!

In generalist publications, the problem with specialist writers is that they can start to cheerlead for their genres, sometimes regardless of the quality of the record they are reviewing. And one reason why you tend to read more good reviews than negative ones is that there is so much released that any title reviewing fewer than 150 titles a month will see its editor think: "I have 25 slots this month. There are 10 albums that have to be reviewed. There are 10 that my writers are desperate to write about. So the other five ... shall I just select some crap to take down, or maybe try and steer readers to something I rate?" Doesn't seem an unreasonable impulse. Better to review, I dunno, Cold Cave than just rip on a Def Leppard album for the sake of it. Your review will not change anyone's opinion about Def Leppard, but it might make someone check out Cold Cave.

I used to notice a pattern with 'in-house' mags such as Tower Pulse! where each issue they'd do a harsh takedown of a hot new release that was destined to sell bazillions anyway; it almost seemed like a deliberate 'see? This mag is an organ of a retailer but we're impartial!' kind of thing.

I wonder if that's still a thing, aiming all a mag's darts at things that can't be hurt anyway while keeping it positive re: vulnerable 'sprout' artists?

(Sorry if I'm not supposed to post here-- I'm not a music writer but I am a writer. Just found the subject rather interesting).

We don't seem to have 'done' http://ripfork.com/ yet so this seemed like the best place to put it

The purpose of RipFork is to hold music critics to the same level of snarky, loquacious abuse that they dole out to the artists actually making the music. My ultimate goal is to uncover how and why we allowed music writing and the keys to aspiring bands’ futures to be dictated by these critics in the first place. To those writers I criticize on the site: this is meant to be a humbling experience. Take from it what you will.

To everyone else: Have a good time.

It's just all a bit tragic really, even when I agree w/ him I just feel bad that he's gone to this much effort for something of such scant significance (and that's before you get to his whole 'thinking too hard gives you wrinkles' steez or his refusal to accept that niche music reviews are sometimes written with niche music fans in mind)

Whitest Words: cloying, oeuvre, orthodoxy, affectation, ubiquity, overwrought, incongruence, authorial, Sapphic, relegated, mimicry

fuck this dude for real

hoo boy I missed that he has a "whitest words" category!!

:o

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the thought of someone not from the UK (no bio so I dunno where he's from but he has never heard "amongst" and wonders if it's a UKism) poring through drownedinsound daily and going "you know, this writing is not always very good"

"there's a tendency for music writers to write about dub and its endless sub-genres as if more than 0.00001% of the internet-cruising world knows what the hell they're talking about"

Yeah, I think this might be more than 0.00001% of the people who go to music review sites, never mind click on dub(step)-related reviews.

(Oh, dub is so obscure! Is that the same as all this wobblestep-wonkwave-core that the kids like? I don't know, I tell you garage is where I PARK MY CAR amirite, next it will all be "living room" and "conservatory" ho ho.)

Some of the entries are just incredible - his 'deconstructions' actually are like Mr Logic from Viz. It tips over into heartbreaking pretty quickly :(

problem is that anyone who really was a good enough writer to provide the kind of takedown that landfill criticism sites like DiS or p4k require would not actually be bothered to do so

im not sure that they require a "takedown" so much as this guy requires "a sense of perspective" and "a cure for butthurt"

This was much better when it was just Brian May ranting uncontrollably about DiS hacks on his blog.

Yeah but that was better than nearly everything

landfill criticism sites like DiS or p4k

DiS is totally a landfill site but p4k isn't, I've read dozens of great reviews on that site

What print publications do people here contribute to? I much prefer seeing my writing in a print magazine to on the web.

I thought I'd ask a staple question that I think may have been toiled over before on ILX, regarding use of the first person in gig and LP reviews. Is this generally considered unacceptable in anything less than the most stylistic circumstances? Or does it really not matter too much?

I'm going to try a different tack: Suppose you are an aspiring musician, and the question is the use of guitars in creating musical recordings. Is this generally considered unacceptable in anything less than the most stylistic circumstances? Or does it really not matter too much? Well, those would be the wrong questions. The question I'd pose to you first would be: Do you like music that has guitars? Obviously, you'll like some and dislike others. But is there some guitar playing that inspires you to want to play guitar yourself? Who is making such music? What guitar techniques are they using and, most important, to what effect? That last question - to what effect? - is crucial because what might happen is that you'll discover that the effect they got with guitars isn't the effect that you're getting with guitars, whereas when you switch over to trumpets or keyboards or jew's harps, well then - blam! - that's where you've got it. But you'll start with guitar, seeing what you can do with guitars.

Same is true with any literary device: irony, alliteration, first person, subordinate clauses, etc. You use them because you've learned them from models you admire, and if they help you say what you want to say, you keep using them.

This is a long-winded way of saying that no editor knows in advance whether you should use the first-person singular until he or she has seen how you use it. There are a few publications where you might find it outright forbidden, but we're not likely to be welcome at those pubs anyway. The important thing is having something interesting to say.

Xhuxk's forgotten that most of what I wrote for him was on spec too; same with what I wrote for Levy or Simmons. This is mainly because I was too scared to pitch things that I didn't know in advance I'd do well, and of course you can't know in advance, so the way to find out is to sit down and write it in the first place.

Of course, I'm not a good model for how to earn a living.

DiS isn't 'totally' a landfill site. Or at least it wasn't a couple of years ago when I used to read it regularly. No site that had Kev Kharas, Mike Diver and, dare I say it, the charmless but occasionally brilliant Dom Passantino writing for it amongst others could be considered so.

To elaborate on what I said above: I doubt that someone who hasn't "earned" the right to use the first person has earned the write to bore us with adjectives and genre designations either. Someone who falls asleep at my use of the first person isn't interested in my ideas anyway, whether I'm in the first person or not. To go back to my analogy, the phrase "guitar band" is a red flag for me these days, indicating that I'm likely to dislike what I hear. But the problem isn't with guitars themselves; guitars don't kill music, musicians kill music, and if you had the same guys playing keyboards or xylophones they'd probably be just as dreary. "Electric guitar" meant electric excitement in '66, it means drudgery now. But there's plenty of electric guitar excitement in music today - great stuttering Keith Richards-style guitar chords at the start of Martina McBride's "Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong," for instance - it just doesn't usually come packaged with "guitar band" on the label.

The first person is a red flag for Chris because he associates it with a style of wandering P4k writing c. 2000 that I never paid much attention to anyway. But that's not an inherent problem with the first person. Any reader who sees the name "Kool Moe Dee" in the kicker and sees Kool Moe Dee's picture at the top of a review is gonna know that the piece will get around to Kool Moe Dee even though the lead is "I transport myself into rage a lot." And editors who think that "Kool Moe Dee transports himself into rage a lot" would be as good an opening as "I transport myself into rage a lot" probably should re-evaluate their career choice. But then, which opening to use depends on the piece as a whole; by starting it the way I did I put the rage closer to the reader than if I'd assigned the rage only to Kool Moe Dee. But then, I wanted to put the rage close to the reader. If I hadn't, I'd have started the piece differently. Doing what I did, I was immediately able to call my record player a rage machine and put Kool Moe Dee in the context of other performers on my rage machine (Stones, Stooges, Sex Pistols, Big Youth, Spoonie Gee), so the piece isn't about these misogynist black youth out there in hip-hop with their rage, but about something basic in a lot of music that - problematically - attracts me and potentially the reader too. But it wouldn't be as problematic as I want if it isn't the writer's and the prose's rage that is at issue, and potentially the reader's, not just that of the guy I'm writing the review about. (And if you don't want reviews that read like that, why in the hell would you listen to music that sounds like that, either?)

By the way, my use of the first person back then was heavily influenced by Mick Jagger's use of it in "Under My Thumb" and "Back Street Girl" and "Street Fighting Man" and so on, the way he made himself problematic. But I wasn't sitting down and going, "Oh, I'll use the first person in the way that Jagger does." I just was someone who'd analyzed a lot of Jagger and then wrote the way I wrote.

"Earned the write"

(But I haven't earned the right to proofread my own writing, even if I'm pretty good proofreading others'.)

i actually wondered if that was intentional coz i thought it were a funny pun

Sometimes my unconscious pulls off some expressive bloopers that I end up keeping, but this one has more to do with senility. As I get older, more and more I'm typing in sound-alike words for the words I mean.

By the way, Chris actually allowed all sorts of shenanigans at PTW. E.g. this.

The unwritten rule at PTW was that no one was allowed first person unless they had a book published, so I def let Frank and xhuxks first person narratives roam free in the wild while I cracked down on others!