Rolling Music Writers' Thread

that is a really nice review, but I would have edited the first sentence out if you had turned it in to me since its burying the lede. Ppl are picking up the article to read about DBT, not tipsy mothra.

not to dog yr review, becuz it is a v nice review.

no that's fine, i've had editors who think the same way. i don't have strong feelings about it, it just isn't always a big deal to me as a writer or an editor. (and thanks.)

a pretty large amount of my freelancing is live reviews, and i don't always write in the first person, but sometimes in those situations you kinda have to -- i think when strongo was my editor a more 'editorial we'-or-avoid-it-altogether thing was reccomended, but now that he isn't i get away with straight up first person more. it's just awkward to go by yourself to a show where there's maybe 5 other people in the audience, and then later on not be able to talk about the experience without referring to the obvious fact that you were just a guy in the room and not some omniscient observer. i don't think i've used first person in record reviews much at all, if ever (although i use it a lot in casual, vaguely review-y blog posts because who cares, and also i hate when one-person blogs refer to themselves in the third person like they're Rolling Stone or something).

(should note here the "editorial we" was a diktat imposed from above. there's actually little i hate more than the editorial we. (about six months before i left cp i just gave up and started shoving first person in anywhere it made a piece flow better.))

yeah -- not blaming/crediting you with the policy at all, dog, just saying i think you enforced it more

(that's not to say i wanted people running wild with first-person, either, but it makes anyone sound less goofy than referring to him/herself like the king/queen of a small, bankrupt nation.)

i dunno, i think sentences like "Your Royal Eloquence then retreated to the bar, and ignored the opening band" would really make a piece come to life.

maybe lou-jag can punch up my prose for a fee

I've always liked it when reporters refer to themselves as the name of their newspaper. It's stupid but endearing. "The Observer caught up with Mickey Rourke at last night's charity fandango, but he got away again."

"Stereogum stirred his drink, stifled a cough, and then continued the interview"

I'm always endeared by the NY Times' second-and-subsequent references to a subject as "Mr." or "Ms". . Now and then, when Mr. Korvette ripped into a new song looking as if he was going to eat his microphone, or when the band started a new, messy riff, leaking feedback and channeling Black Sabbath or Black Flag, it seemed that this was going to be a very good gig.

I wonder what the call would be on Mr. Horribly Charred Infant. Mr. Infant, Mr. Charred Infant?

I remember reading an article that read something like "[name of artist] was friendly and demure throughout the evening, even pausing the conversation to pick up Select's sunglasses from off the table to stop them getting scratched"...

Incredible, I didn't know magazines wore sunglasses.

only Fader does

at some point thats really just a branding thing isnt it? publishers want you to think of the magazine as the source of the information, not the writer. saying "steven tyler was kind enough to buy max a lollipop" attaches max to the cool steven tyler story, whereas "steven tyler was kind enough to buy the paris review a lollipop" attaches the paris review to the cool steven tyler story

Ppl are picking up the article to read about DBT, not tipsy mothra.

Does it have to be one or the other? I mean, part of what I like about film critics like Roger Ebert and David Edelstein is that they're smart guys who write in this breezy, friendly, conversational tone. They put their cards on the table -- they admit to their biases, they worry they're being too harsh or too kind, etc. This is all very endearing to me, and I'd much rather read them than most boilerplate movie criticism, since I like the overall effect of feeling like I know them.

dnr u were writing for paris review btw

also, so awesome hanging out with aerosmith and eating candy

ill let u know when the article goes live

i have a similar reaction in q-and-a's, when instead of just Q, it says VF or something. like the entirety of vanity fair is having drinks with penelope cruz.

(altho for all i know, "drinks with penelope cruz" is a monthly staff event at vanity fair.)

one of the many fabled conde nast perks

now downsized to bar snax with jessica biel.

Back to The New Yorker, the Talk of the Town is often the most aggravating at this avoidance of the first person, because half the articles are little observational reports on Manhattan cocktail parties or society events, as though The New Yorker is just a fly on the wall, eavesdropping on people's conversations, which invariably include "a journalist," as though we didn't know it was actually you, Lizzie Widdicombe, with your fancy connections. Thing is, I don't think I'd mind half as much if they went back to omitting bylines, because then I wouldn't be as aware that there was a specific journalist responsible and wouldn't idly wonder "how did she get invited to this?"

yeah i dont mind the third person thing but it would work a lot better if they removed the bylines

i don't really like the omitting of bylines anytime it's not necessary; i hate flipping through the bigger music mags and seeing all these little articles and regular features that might have an interesting voice or perspective or just make me curious who wrote it, and there's either no name or "by staff"-type line at the bottom.

the economist, which is prob my fav magazine out there, certainly the best-written, omits all bylines - and has a hugely distinct, consistent house style throughout - i suspect its quality is at least partly down to this

i love the gossip columns which refer to themselves in character - pendennis, pandora &c (americans won't get those sorry)

The Daily Howler has a habit of referring to "our analysts" and "our staff" when I'm pretty sure he means "me, sitting at my laptop in my underwear."

"I've always liked it when reporters refer to themselves as the name of their newspaper. It's stupid but endearing. "The Observer caught up with Mickey Rourke at last night's charity fandango, but he got away again.""

this has always been fun for me as a reader, though i try not to do it myself. well, when i've interviewed whoever and i have an intro that presages the Q&A, i do the "XXX publication caught up with Katy Perry last week via email and discussed, A, B, and C" thing because it's what a lot of publications i write for do. when in rome, etc.

okay, i'm going to try to steer things in a different direction for a second.

one of the biggest issues i have with some blogs (and even some more 'professional' publications/sites) is the level to which many don't even talk about music any longer. some examples:

A flat sea lit by infinite jetties of Crocketian excess. Sleek yachts deathly still in their moorings. The conspiracy of their impossible symmetry visible only from above, hanging in the cloudless night, or below in the warm throbbing abyssal depths.

The purple night laid out before her older self, wooden platforms leading out across the sea offering up each boat’s bass heavy delights. A network of unobtainable ritual dances. Moving between the vessels, stars vibrate as a precursor to the bacchanalian delights on offer.

She pauses, the infinite possibilities of the night on water beneath her feet. Adrenaline bubbling to a peak, managed, subsiding, then surging once more. The anticipation paralysing her in ecstatic indecision…

OR

They’re having boat parties in America! All ‘cross the territories, from Italo-disco glides tracing the very edges of New York to the viney boondocks of Missouri, citizens are hauling bold bodies to the waterside and filling aquaways with bustle and blood, red cells under a transient spell of summer. NPIP, too! - in shilly-shally dock shoes and rolled-up jeans, holidaying in the surf, talking to the faces. Faces to listen to, too! - punk sons of out-of-work raftsmen talking all Tom Sawyer; sons of richer men falling in with the wrong crowd and - better - daughters, chewing on river-reeds and shooting doe; bug-eyed acid kids floating in a cherry-pink spume, vigilant sentries for any angry langoustine and (god forbid) kill-krill. We sang and boister-bought as the light changed over our heads, put bricks through the window of the run-down boat-house and ran off guffawing into the woods to doze like drunken apes in trees.

This is a deck of lies of course. NPIP spent last night on the banks of the Thames, glugging kidnapped cans and looking on as the party boats, pumping stale sound out into the air, pottered up from under London Bridge and far enough past the one that shook ("synchronous lateral excitation") to disappear on the way to Vauxhall or Westminster or Blackfriars, before returning, louder and drunker and, somewhat inconceivably, with even worse music wafting from their tow. YMCA?! Balls to Village idiots. We need our own boat party.

WHAT THE FUCK.

no need to be dry and terribly serious in music writing, but this is just...not good music writing.

thats always sort of been 20jfg's "thing" hasnt it? baroque ott descriptions of the MP3s theyre putting up?

i kind of like it tho i dont blame anyone for skipping over those paragraphs. but that blog i think is better known and loved for its curatorial skills than for its writing--i could be wrong.

well, yes. i still think it is fucking stupid, and hardly ever read a word they post-- i listen to the embedded player, and if i like, i download. the writing does nothing for me.

"glugging kidnapped cans"

I hate when people try to use "colourful" language in this way, "drinking cans" is ten times stronger than the above, if you're investing meaning in drinking cans then say DRINKING CANS.

and let the reader agree or disagree that it merits a mention

yeah table id wager youre not the only one. like i said i can dig on their writing if im in the mood--but if music writing as a whole went in that direction i wouldnt be aboard. at all.

one nice thing about blogs is theres room for everyone!

The Daily Howler has a habit of referring to "our analysts" and "our staff" when I'm pretty sure he means "me, sitting at my laptop in my underwear."

hate this kind of thing even in a blog where it is a group project. "we at blog x...." or "here at blog x we try to...blah blah blah"

the second example i posted is so much worse than the first.. i even had a little email fite with the guy who wrote it, because i thought he did a terrible job of describing a great track.

i admire ur dedication to keeping up the standards of internet writing table but i wonder if ur not needlessly raising your blood pressure

I think you should escalate the email fite into a knife fite.

eh.

perhaps i come across as too strong-headed...i'm not really that pissed or anything about the phenomenon. it's more like a really annoying mosquito-bite-- i just want it to go away.

Whenever I read that kind of writing, I recall the Peanut strips where Charlie Brown is recounting his dreams in detail, and Linus is nodding off or trying to escape.

20jkg is awesome but i'm not gonna actually read it or anythin

Another question for you all, amateurs and pros... What is the best way to get or pitch for freelance work?

I'm currently building a bit of experience simply writing for free, which is all fine and dandy, but I'm only writing about 5 short album revews a month, so it's becoming a bit repetitive and I'd like to eventually get a bit more work, and maybe one day get paid a little for the effort.

Is it better to write a letter to the editor saying "I'm me, I do this, I'm interested in whether you have any freelance opportunities at the moment" or OTOH should I have some ideas for features already prepared that I should pitch directly upon initial contact? Should I send portfolio examples straight away and should they be scans of the edited versions or my own unedited versions? Is it even worth sending complete unpublished articles and saying "here's an article, wanna print it?" or is that just silly?

dl, to everything in yr second paragraph i'd say yes - say you're available, suggest some ideas, include a couple of short examples - short of sending the unpublished article. all of the former are essential in pitching to a new editor.

And I don't want to state the obvious but the majority of people who email me for work spell shit wrong, haven't read the site properly. Come correct, as the boxer dude (who looks like Marvin Gaye) out of The Wire, might say.

I've only ever cold-pitched once. I didn't hear anything back, and I didn't chase the pitch up as a) self-promotion makes me squirm and b) parts of the pitch itself made me squirm. However, the editor did eventually came back to me - nearly two years later, having spotted something I wrote elsewhere - and comissions ensued from there. So, um, you never know...

All my other freelance gigs (such as they are) have resulted from editors making the initial approach to me, on the strength of work which they've seen elsewhere. (Friends who have edited fiction and poetry tell me that this how things normally operate, and that scouting is part of an editor's job, but I don't know how much this applies to music journalism.) This has provided me with enough work to keep me happy - but then freelancing is something I do on top of the day job, so I'm not looking to work constantly, or indeed to earn a living wage from it.

That said, I do sometimes find myself wondering what would happen if I wasn't so shy of pushing myself forward.