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

i would feel cheated if i read a review of a band called Rotting Christ and it didn't refer to brimstone

jimmywine dyspeptic describes things as they are

(i've gotten a lot of comments over the years that are like "how can x.... be y??!?!?!??!!" and tbh they don't get old)

Most of the imagery I thought sucked in that piece wasn't what Jimmy listed but the main problem is just too fucking much of it

You could put flutes on a rocket and shoot it into the sun, just brainstorming

I actually listened to the Rotting Christ album because of this thread and it's pretty good!

i know what jimmywine is saying, but i kinda like "scorched." one of those words you only read in music reviews! or maybe in like grilling cookbooks.

brb, putting flutes on a rocket

eh it's been done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POMhSZLXR4I

holy crap playing flute in a spaceship that is amazing!

<3<3<3<3<3 Cady Coleman you rule! just chilling in space with Jethro Tull's flute

Academic goes all "jumpers for goalposts" about music reviews, referencing that time, 37 years ago, that a music critic audaciously reviewed an old record. Hard to believe that someone who teaches music crit at a University never read MOJO.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-music-critic-in-the-age-of-the-insta-release

I dunno; I think she's had some good pieces lately.

yeah, i think she's good. people in general get all atwitter about how fast our hurly burly world is. they've been doing that since forever. it's a natural impulse, i think. to say hey slow down there, pardner. people can still obviously wait and write about things decades later. the internet waits for no man, though.

I don't like Petrusich's writing much, but I don't like anybody's writing about music much lately. I hate that thing that went up on the New York Times website today, for example. I think it's probably me.

That said, I have never understood critics' need to be "part of the conversation" as demonstrated by jumping in headfirst to review something as fast as possible so you can tweet about it with all the other music critics you follow, and who follow you. Especially since none of you are going to dare write something negative. Look at the latest Kanye album - the mad rush was all to see who could be first to declare it a work of genius. It wasn't until what, two weeks later that Lex's negative review went up. You should never review art from the perspective of a kid tearing open a present on Christmas morning. You should let an album sit until you're bored with it, then write about the parts that still stick with you.

(Though I once wrote a review of a Derek Bailey album in which I said that since it was improvised music that had only been played once, I was reviewing it after only listening to it once.)

That said, I have never understood critics' need to be "part of the conversation" as demonstrated by jumping in headfirst to review something as fast as possible so you can tweet about it with all the other music critics you follow, and who follow you

i mean simply it is 1) wow i need to get paid 2) how do i get paid 3) oh someone wants me to turn around a review about a surprise release in less than 10 hours 4) guess i'll do that

^^ bingo
i don't really want to be "part of the conversation" either, but it happens, and i can see why people *do* want to be part of the converstaion

Yeah, I just don't get that impulse at all. (I guess that's demonstrated by the shit I do write about, and who I write about it for.)

can we go back to cady coleman and paddy maloney's tin whistle in space? what a rad astronaut.

You don't get the impulse to pay your rent?

I pay my rent by other means. As all sensible writers should.

You Ott to know not to open that can of worms.

that new ben ratliff book is all about the anxiety of everything. and the fastness and the toomuchness and the flavin and the heyladyyyyyyy....

I actually listened to the Rotting Christ album because of this thread and it's pretty good!

check out Thy Mighty Contract. totally great band.

I just dl'd it for listening on my commute home. Will report back about the flutes.

I hate that thing that went up on the New York Times website today, for example.

Yeah. The huge circle jerk things like that trigger among music writers on social media is really ugly to me. I enjoyed reading music writing a lot more when I didn't know who the writers behind it were. Maybe you could say that about any form of writing now, I dunno.

And by "know" them, I mean knowing their social media personalities.

i've been reading old francis davis and whitney balliett. been enjoying them a lot. francis davis said that Kind Of Blue was the sound of one finger snapping. wish i had thought of that.

Davis was really good. I miss Gary Giddins' writing, too.

in the davis book i'm reading he turned me on to this and i am eternally grateful. have listened to it about 50 times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9zK4YtQeUI

yeah that is straight dope

lol tyler did you google "space flute"?

francis davis deserved better from the voice bosses, that's for sure

xp haha, well i had seen that before, but yeah i did google "space flute" to find it ...

Rotting Christ review is the new winner of the thread, if only because this writer uses (and invents) figures of speech without bothering to picture what the hell he is actually saying:

"majesty" cannot be "brimstone-scorched"

guitar distortion cannot be "velvet thick"

a "choral blast" cannot be "grave-scented" (new board description here?)

a backbone cannot be "thickly distorted" (can anything be "thickly distorted?")

a "trapping," almost by definition, cannot be "instantly recognizable"

flutes cannot be "sun scorched" (maybe they can, but how much would that affect the sound of the flute and how many readers would know this?)

Sorry, this sort of writing drives me up the fucking wall.

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic, Thursday, March 10, 2016 11:40 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also not sure you can have a "smattering of years"

That said, I have never understood critics' need to be "part of the conversation" as demonstrated by jumping in headfirst to review something as fast as possible so you can tweet about it with all the other music critics you follow, and who follow you.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, March 10, 2016 2:36 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

does the phrase "publish or perish" ring any bells

signed,
someone who perished four years ago

like, even if you're not being paid for that particular album and you're just shitting out quick opinions on twitter, if you are not part of the conversation you and by extension your future and your career (which involves money, and which most people probably have to find some way to keep going for 30+ years) do not exist.

and given that people routinely use the last time someone wrote something as a way to insult them, that the fucking lead singer of chvrches still gets referred to in articles about her very successful band as a "failed music journalist," I would hope you understand how most people would want to avoid these things happening to them.

"failed" cannot be applied to "music journalist", really, as anybody who stops doing it has succeeded

just splitting hairs? idk

genuinely surprised that anyone could make it to the end of that New Yorker article without skimming

"It is a valuation, passed on as a gift" - uh ok

Even the bangs quotes are boring

it appears I misquoted, the actual quote is "the double indignity of a law degree and a failed career in music journalism." She was 26.

Well, if I was at risk of consuming art made by a fucking lawyer, I'd want advance warning, so that's a valuable description.

More seriously, I understand the fear that if you're not constantly "on" you'll disappear - I used to feel that way. But you know, I managed to carve out a 20 year "career" without writing about any big pop records, so when I see people who only seem to do that, and then worry about falling out of "the conversation," I feel like it shows a lack of imagination on their part. There's a whole world of music out there, and it's my belief that it's actually a better strategy to be the only person pitching the story you're pitching than to be one of 1000 writers pitching an insta-review of the album "everyone" is talking about that week.

being in "the conversation" isn't even a necessary condition of being a functional journalist, never mind a functional writer

"More seriously, I understand the fear that if you're not constantly "on" you'll disappear - I used to feel that way. But you know, I managed to carve out a 20 year "career" without writing about any big pop records, so when I see people who only seem to do that, and then worry about falling out of "the conversation," I feel like it shows a lack of imagination on their part. There's a whole world of music out there, and it's my belief that it's actually a better strategy to be the only person pitching the story you're pitching than to be one of 1000 writers pitching an insta-review of the album "everyone" is talking about that week.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, March 10, 2016 7:44 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure, if it's 20 years ago

I think in the current environment katherine's right - you are unlikely to get read at all if you're not established and your beat is anything other than what everybody else is talking about

sure, if it's 20 years ago

I still do it! It can still be done! I did it in 2015, for editors I'd never written for before!

I'd feel really sad if I thought you two were right—but that's mostly because I don't think of myself as "established." I think of myself as "old." Which actually puts me at a disadvantage in the market. There are writers I think of as established—Chuck Eddy, Rob Harvilla, Maura, Weingarten, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Jessica Hopper, plenty of others—but I definitely don't count myself among them.

And here's the other thing: If you're writing about the exact same thing everybody else is writing about (worst of all if you're one voice in a "critical roundtable" convened for the purpose of saying "Wow, Beyoncé's awesome!" six different ways), nobody's reading you for you—they're reading you because yours is the first link they came across covering the subject they're interested in. And that's not a path to getting "established"; that's a way to make sure you're 100% replaceable. It's like having no voice at all. Which makes me wonder, why do it? Do you have so little pride, as a writer, that you're willing to just anonymously fill a content hole? For $20, or $50, or whatever people are paying for blog posts now?

I would not necessarily say that's true but I do think the idea of "reading you for you" and "having a voice" is different than what you're saying. plenty of writers have people who read them for them, but largely on the strength of their online brand; what they write is secondary. in a way this is great, but not every voice is easily translatable to a demographically targeted brand, nor every person good at this sort of self-promotion

also, it's a little strange to say people are only writing about pop music because that's where the conversation is. those people do exist, but they're generally very easy to tell by their tone of barely concealed disdain (which isn't criticism) and faulty assumptions

jimmywine dyspeptic describes things as they are

― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson), Thursday, March 10, 2016 1:34 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry, been away all day, just wanted to briefly address this: I will admit that I retain some pretty traditional, Strunk & White-y ideas about grammar, but I remember being taught that it is important to understand the literal definition of (metaphor) words before using them in a sentence. This helps to avoid nonsense like "grave-scented choral blast." If the writer had thought about it for even a second, he'd remember that sounds do not have an odor.

My problem is not with figurative speech. Obviously, when you write that a person "threw the gauntlet" (and my using this example should by no means suggest that I approve of this phrase), you aren't actually imagining someone throwing an armored glove at someone's feet, but it helps to recognize that a "gauntlet" is, in fact, something that can be "thrown." That's all I was trying to say. The above review is, to me, a perfect example of thoughtless writing.

Totally agree with Jimmywine on this.