OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

almost think this thread should be locked. it's bad mojo. the good music writing thread has cobwebs on it...

Reynolds' line about the nazi helmet is in response to LL comparing himself to Hitler, no?

― Position Position, Wednesday, August 27, 2014 3:50 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not really no

couldn't agree more with "do your own thing! start something good on your own" and yes when that works it is awesome, but it's a cluttered, noisy world out there, it's hard to get something like that off the ground MUCH LESS bringing in revenue and unfortunately nobody's bills are going away. never mind finding the time to do it. again, i agree wholeheartedly but that's just easier said than done.

admittedly, i tend to be risk averse and have a mortgage and two little mouths to feed. doing something cool is a young person's game, i guess.

uh it's still kinda difficult for the single childless renter, too, trust

everything is easier said than done. i quit a union job that gave great health care and benefits to me and my family to open a used record store at the height of a recession. it ain't easy. being young helps. all kinds of things help. having a full time job and working on something else at night is rough. don't have kids if you can help it. it's just that SO MUCH of this internet and print stuff sucks SO bad. websites, free papers, newspapers, magazines. and if you aren't gonna get paid anything (or much) anyway, just do it on your own. if you can make a living as a print or web journalist churning out crap, that's fine. everyone has to eat.

can't remember the last time i did anything cool

I ate some gelato the other day, that was cool

most people will NEVER make a living with music writing, so why not just do stuff that interests you? or think of a cool project for you and your friends to work on. for fun?

i'm not even talking to people here. just...in general.

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it's just all so BAD. nobody with any brains should want to have anything to do with it. i don't care if it's huffpo or buzzfeed or the guardian or whatever. BAD!!

couldn't agree more with "do your own thing! start something good on your own" and yes when that works it is awesome, but it's a cluttered, noisy world out there, it's hard to get something like that off the ground MUCH LESS bringing in revenue and unfortunately nobody's bills are going away. never mind finding the time to do it. again, i agree wholeheartedly but that's just easier said than done.

I've been running Burning Ambulance since 2010. I make no money from it; there aren't even ads on the site. Granted, entire weeks can go by without a post, and our daily pageviews hover in the low hundreds, but I'm happy with it, the artists I write about are happy with it, and that's enough. Monday to Friday, I do other stuff.

Ugh, I don't want to start my own zine.

I'm chewing a toothpick and fixing up my harley as I type. Is that cool?

idk are you getting paid for it

did i mention how bad everything is?

"Ugh, I don't want to start my own zine."

duh, i'm not talking about you slackers. people with energy. and pep.

writing essay-length posts on ilx is probably the easiest way to reach a receptive -- or at least reactive -- readership for your views on music.

nothing is more discouraging than laboring away at a blog or something and having nobody read what you wrote.

writing essay-length posts on ilx is probably the easiest way to reach a receptive -- or at least reactive -- readership for your views on music.

― lars von (Treeship), Wednesday, August 27, 2014 1:00 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Flagged this post.

here, NA. Cheers:

http://img4-2.myrecipes.timeinc.net/i/recipes/ck/03/03/honey-gelato-ck-434637-l.jpg

writing essay-length posts on ilx is probably the easiest way to reach a receptive -- or at least reactive -- readership for your views on music.

― lars von (Treeship), Wednesday, August 27, 2014 7:00 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*throws up all over keyboard*

this college radio DJ writing all over a soft machine record has provided me with my ur-blog entertainment for the day.

https://scontent-a-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/t1.0-9/10632697_10153289057817137_1283090260107719433_n.jpg

even an ur-comment section!

waterface, why don't you start a zine?

he's too busy working on his zing

i used to love reading the write-ups on record sleeves at my college radio station, scott. there too people would often add little addendums to the original texts.

Let's show the sinners that we have the stamina to keep up with this dangerous, tragic, uncertain world! Let's SPREAD CHRIST'S LOVE!!!

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― ra's al goole (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, August 27, 2014 5:49 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

class post

nothing is more discouraging than laboring away at a blog or something and having nobody read what you wrote

I definitely have been there though sometimes something cool happens like the time Andrew W.K. linked to one of my posts through FB and Twitter and I got like a 1000 views overnight

flag boast

(but really, that would be cool. congrats.)

alpine and scott otm throughout of course but there's something a bit sadistic about yelling "the old methods don't work, let us go boldly into the future" to people who just invested ten years diligently and intelligently trying to work by those old methods

The only reason our blog regularly got 100 views a day was because my mate wrote a listicle about the Top 10 beards in rock.

"Old methods"? Who the hell spent their youth thinking writing abt music ws going to earn them money?

there's something a bit sadistic about yelling "the old methods don't work, let us go boldly into the future" to people who just invested ten years diligently and intelligently trying to work by those old methods

its more sadistic to tell them the old methods do work when they patently don't. scott otm, on doing your own thing but also about this thread having bad mojo. i regularly unfollow because it gets me down but every new clusterfuck draws me back. but fuck it, of course there's terrible writing out there. but better to spend time focusing on the good, or doing your own.

"Old methods"? Who the hell spent their youth thinking writing abt music ws going to earn them money?

― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Thursday, August 28, 2014 5:26 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i717.photobucket.com/albums/ww173/prestonjjrtr/Smileys/smily1339.gif

:,(

http://mkalty.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hang-in-there-baby.jpg

the old ways

"the old methods" = getting an internship/freelance gig at a major publication, struggling and honing your craft while publishing wherever you can, getting a staff position at that publication.
It was hardly a failsafe or a given that process could or world work but the presumption was that if you had the talent and diligence and put in the time, you could find a living wage if you were one of the hard-working and lucky ones to break through. cf to that SF job posting.

http://culture.pagannewswirecollective.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/wicker-man-lee.jpg

so normally I'd agree with the "bad mojo" stuff (even if it does veer perilously close to "just get a job making 94K and bennies!") and try to limit myself to the most abhorrent, mean-spirited and/or gross of the worst.

in that spirit, this is just a blurb but somehow condenses so much into three sentences:

http://seattlish.com/post/96123357756/erm-the-weeklys-bumbershoot-preview-for-la-luz-is

It reads like he reverse-engineered the blurb from the Stooges reference

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/jazz-after-politics/

Argh, fuck this fucking guy.

yeah, that was making the rounds among my jazz folks today including a few very incensed people

way way too stupid to bother being incensed about

"too stupid" is not something this thread is concerned about, as it has been demonstrated previously

I find this guy persistently awful. It upsets me that he's the head of a music department at what's supposed to be a progressive college.

Moyer pretty effectively slays one sacred cow implicated in this: not all improvised music is great. Yes, improvisation has produced some wonderful music, but it has also imposed plenty of tedium on audiences over the years.

The strawman of "everyone, everywhere, throughout recorded history has consistently stated that all improvised music is always great" aside, how is he even allowed access to a computer, much less employed by a college?

Also, all music is improvised, but that's another argument.