Rock critics work for publicists! You just never knew

"I have something to say about this"

I thought Vic was Scouse when I first read this.

NB my friend Joel's idea for a magazine called "24" which consists of only album reviews written by reviewers who adhered to the magazine's single dictum - that the reviewer has to have listened to the album for 24 consecutive hours before setting pen to paper - is better still, but even less practical

..alex beat me to it

An algebraic expression is run on the values in the spreadsheet and a number derived; the number factored against an in-house scale which
loosely rates rock critics on a scale that measures their potential contribution to the marketing of a client. Not to sound vulgar, but
higher numbers equate to -toady-, which corresponds to the best classification in our business. The lowest scores uncover those who are not cost effective.

A word about numbers and values. Yes, date of pub matters! Ideally,
as soon as the review copy is received or even before. If it's a good review, no one cares here if you fabricated it. We won't tell if we're serving you.

Yes, publication matters. One hundred web and print zine zine toadies can often offset a bad review in a name pub by some
supercilious not-with-the-game hermit. Further, they provide a sheaf of hardcopy which can be used to logroll more good press. For many of our partners, I mean journalists, praise by the pound is persuasive.

Of course, this is nothing more than application of the primary axiom of good American marketing: The individual judges the worth or value of something by the number of others he or she sees or hears saying the same thing.

Vic Funk: Um, I generally think that when yr given promo copies by labels/promoters, they're not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts and are expecting the review to run as soon as possible for their marketing plans. You (Christgau, whomever) aren't exactly creating art, Chuck.

To be fair to both sides...

I totally agree with Chuck. And I don't necessarily think Vic Funk's response was meant seriously. I sense sarcasm in Vic's response, and therefore support for Chuck's point. In brief, Vic's sarcasm was meant to support and underscore Chuck's point.

But that was just my interpretation. I think Chuck flew off the handle a little before re-reading Vic's response. Then again, maybe Vic was serious. I dunno.

This raises something I was wondering, how many spins until a review materializes? If I understand correctly, movie reviews are generally written after something like two viewings.

I guess this is what some call cross- or x-post.

No! I think if the magazine required only 6 hours, maybe all negative, but after 24 hours there'd be a fair amount of religious hallucination goin' on. I know when I listened to "Happy People" for 32 consecutive hours recently, I had nothing but good things to say about it right before they hooked me up to the NSIV drip

(mods plz delete everything ever)

i'm sure this was brought up before, but initially i had a really negative reaction to pitchfork revisiting its best of the 90s list -- historical revisionism and all that. but then i realized it made total sense. i loved the Cult's Electric in high school. i pulled it out a couple years back and god did it suck.

haha it's called the internet. and/or white-label promos w/no art, no press release, and (more often than you might think) incorrect track listings.

...haha it's called the internet...

Yes, seconded.

Plus, practically, it was done simpler about twenty years ago. A mentally ill old guy was asked to give his impressions of current altie music selections. Because he was old and mentally ill, he had no damn preconcieved notions about the nature of the artists.

The name of the column, I think, was called Duplex Planet. Yes, I agree, there's definitely a need for more of the equivalent of
incompetent, isolated or just plain stupid and crazy people to write pop music reviews.

Finally! A chance to get published!

Hush! Hush! That's a proprietary secret at my firm! Our tracking in Lex-Nex and search engines is facilitated by Booleans that contain annoying repetitive references like "archduke." We can metrically analyse the penetration of a marketing effort by scoring the number of instances in which such things are published.

WTF?! magazine : I mean, really. WTF?!

In related news, Whatever, Maaaan, the magazine begun by Matos W.K., has folded."

xpost city, you fuxors

Just the opposite, my friend! Seeing it in many reviews indicates the grand success of a marketing campaign. Consumers are comforted by hearing the same wisdoms, even brainless ones, repeated over and over. They might say to themselves, "With so many people writing about this band that is named after an Austrian archduke, they have the same opinion and it is a good one. I shall buy this CD."

Plus, people like to be able to contribute to conversations with their family, friends, peers, even strangers. If they hear someone saying that they've just heard about a new band called Franz Ferdinand, they can just join in the conversation: "Yes, I heard they're named after an Austrian archduke. I'm going to check their CD out."

This is not telling everything. Here at my firm, we maintain a list of journalists. And many we deign not to send review copies. Instead, we send them a great deal of spam advertising on the doings, releases and praises garnered by our clients.

The reason for this is to get them to commit to an article in advance. It is a simple and and psychological tactic: If we can get them hooked up front, we can head trip them into furnishing publicity.

But c'mon man, guitars. They speak to the heart of a generation.

But I guess in some situations, a negative review is good press, if the critic describes something I'd like!

Subjective measures of crap aside, what happens is that a good publicist has sorted all the crap by knowing exactly what the freelancers and editors are equipped to understand. A good publicist knows what you like, and what you are likely to like, and keep the stuff you won't like away from you. That stuff gets sent to someone who is steeped and fanatical about *that* *other* corner of the music world.

How do you know you are dealing with a *good* publicist? You are happy to get the call because someone has done the pre-sorting for you and genuinely believes there is some merit to what they are sending you. They *know* who your heroes are, and they know what you hate. Which is why I used to send Ned everything. He hates nothing.

Since one man's crap is another man's treasure, I always operated by finding out who liked what. I did not send an Iggy reissue to someone who didn't seem to understand the genre. But I had the luxury of being at a small label--major label publicists pretty much order their drones to spew shit in all directions seeing what will stick to what mag.

So, are publicist driving records reviews? At all levels yes, but I think bad major label publicists are the ones who make it particularly annoying by making editors and freelancers slog thru crap. But they pay you indirectly for your trouble of slogging thru their piles of crap by letting you sell the promos to used CD stores.

Small labels and good independent publicists also need your review to sell some records, so they can tell their distributor "there's a review coming out" so maybe the distro will order a few more copies BUT they are also more likely to pay attention to who they send stuff to. I always tried to hook up freelancers *with* editors. If I knew a freelancer was really into a genre/music movement, I would send *him* a copy and send the editor a copy, get on the phone and put them together. Oh and I sent thank you notes to reviewers and editors. A small thing but sincere. And then there were the cookies.

This is why I was called the Promo Goddess ;-)

one tip: in some cases, asking editors which writers they know who are likely to like/be interested in certain things is a pretty good way of gathering info.

And I occassionally take publicists' money to write bios, press releases. They've always approached me after I've published a positive review of an earlier album though. Plus they pay better money.

I wish I had gotten in on this thread earlier.

haven't read the whole thread but, I tend to think the reason labels want their music reviewed is in the hopes that it is positive and will sell records, so we send our records out as part of an over-all marketing plan.

and

This is not telling everything. Here at my firm, we maintain a list of journalists. And many we deign not to send review copies. Instead, we send them a great deal of spam advertising on the doings, releases and praises garnered by our clients.

oh and I sent thank you notes to reviewers and editors. A small thing but sincere. And then there were the cookies.

Well, Acute has given crisp 100 dollar bills to people who positively review our records! There was this one writer named Alan Freed...

ATFT’s keys for success:
1. Create films that are easily marketable.
2. Acquire smaller quality production companies for access to their
inventory and cash flow.
3. To put well-known stars in their features. Burton Gilliam, Farrah
Forke from "Wings", Super Bowl MVP Larry Brown, NFL stars Michael
Scooter McGruder, Terrance Mann, Professional Baseball Player Jose Guzman,
and recording artist Chap Chesee.
4. ATFT’s management’s years of experience in producing and
distributing TV content will be the driving force behind their success.

Networks and producers are now exploring reality reruns, which until
recently were believed unmarketable. But, with recent rerun success, a
few companies, including Fox, are talking about launching a cable channel
devoted to reality shows.

"There's an aftermarket for reality in the same way there is for serial
dramas," says David Davis of investment bank Houlihan Lokey Howard &
Zukin. "After a period of time, people will forget who The Bachelor
picked."

I love publicists like you. It doesn't necessarily mean the next thing you send me will get a good review or even a review at all, but I will make a point of opening your mail (I stopped opening mail from on major label because for some reason they sent me nothing but klezmer reissues for three months) first and making a point of giving the enclosed music a good listen. There are some letterheads that make my heart beat a little faster when I see them on an envelope in my mailbin.

i would have sent them cookies

I would rather be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance. If indeed publicists are paying journalists indirectly by sending them barter for the cast-off racks, then they've been spending mighty cheap for a long time.

and btw doing promo mailings IS expensive for a label, unless they happen to be Megabucks Records, and I never worked at those places so every CD I sent out basically had your name on it. No mass mailings were done ever. (And I wasn't an independent publicist, I was in-house at an indie)

It's not the whole story, of course, but it is part of it.

-- Orbit (cstarrcstar...) (webmail), April 21st, 2004. (Orbit)

and then i realized it was true. i would rather by slain by manatees than have to read heavy rock crit. I did promo to make people happy. There is nothing like seeing the light in a writer's eyes when you pull out something special by his fave band. It's like a cat having its tummy rubbed. Yeah, I think that was the hook.

The waste basket always works. And often it's the only thing that works.

I am frightened by Hill Knowlton's firm.

"Don't you be frightened. I am not and neither should you be." -- Comical Ali, publicist of Saddam Hussein, Baghdad, 2003.

it not pay, it's a perk...

Tie up the libertine in such a field of feasts.

Exactly! Didn't these people understand simple averages at school?
If you averaged all the reviews over, say, a year they should come out to about 5/10 and there should be as many below 5 as above.

And don't say that mags should only review the 'better' albums, because if they do that they should still normalise the scale so that the average 'better' album gets 5.

How can you trust their judgement on something as ephemeral and complex as human communication through sound if they can't even count to ten properly?

AAARRGGHH!!!!

Brilliant idea!

I'd add that reviewers shouldn't pay for the music up-front BUT if they want to keep the album, if they like it that much, they should have to pay the usual price.

Whether or not they choose to buy it should be mandatorily included at the end of the review. That would stop rave reviews where the critic never listens to the album again - I know this goes on a lot.

I would barely be able to afford to, accrding to the amount i get paid for kerrang! reviews.

ou might not get paid at all for a review, but if you rave about a record and want to keep it, you should have to pay, just like anyone buying it on the strength of what you've said.

Basically: put you money where your mouth is!

But that really doesn't work for me. I'm not reviewing on a curve; a 'good' year for music (which seemes to be every year) doesn't mean I'll be less likely to give a high grade to a great record, because the 'competition' is too high.

Personally, I think the whole concept of the consumer guide is pretty damaging to magazines. Yes, I agree, aiding the consumer in their purchase choice should be a key to reviewing, but it shouldn't ever be the be all and end all. Reviewers should also be conscious of delivering entertaining copy, of engaging with and contributing to some form of discourse on music, etc. Regarding a review as nothing more than advice on whether to buy or not demeans these intentions.

When writing a review, my thought processes are mainly focussed on writing to *myself*; that is, the *myself* who hasn't heard this album. To confuse matters, I have a number of different *selves* I write to in different mags - like, when reviewing for Kerrang!, I think of myself when I was the age of the typical K! reader, and what guidance the *me* of today would offer the *me* of then, with regards to the records I might wanna check out, the contextual references, etc. And that *self* is a different, though related, *self* to the one I might be directly communicating with when reviewing for Mojo, The Times, Loose Lips, etc...

The problem is, the Consumer Guide approach assumes all consumers are the same, which, even within a specialist mag's narrow demographic, is nonsense. That's why such reviews to me seem utterly pointless, especially with the development of the microscopic downpage review in mags like NME and KerranG!, which are too short to develop much of an argument beyond 'BUY THIS!' or 'DON'T BUY THIS!' - which, again, doesn't get us very far when you consider that someone who shares one reviewer's tastes might not (probably won't) share another's. And the development of such reviews is a direct result of considering the review nothing more than a Consumer's Guide.

DJ Mencap otm.

This goes beyond any one approach to reviewing.
It's a problem with the whole idea of rating a record out of 10 (or 5 or whatever) or even saying is it any good or not.

(Though I don't really get the bins thing. Think it's somewhere over in Llandaff though!)

(Er, and I've _still_ got yr *cough* free Shesus CD and Turbonegro DVD).

Also, I keep meaning to bring over a CD of pics from that gig you put on, and ask you do you want some prints, like.

Hmm, I shld email this.

I daresay that if I went through all the stuff I've reviewed over the past five years, I'd be nonplussed or embarrassed about some of the praise I've given to CDs. There again, trying to gauge the impact of something five years or 20 listens on is at best futile and at worst wholly contradictory to the actual, y'know, experience of being a music fan. Consumer guides is for the stereo systems y'plays them on innit.

Scott and Dan should know that Don Allred sent me a Metal Boys review on spec two days ago, and we'll probably run it sooner or later.

But this is a delusion: "bad major label publicists are the ones who make it particularly annoying by making editors and freelancers slog thru crap." I have to slog through just as much, if not more, crap, from indie publicists & labels, who often tend to be even more pesty, and more clueless about what Voice coverage entails, not to mention about what kind of music I might like. The most pathetic publicists are the ones who clearly have never read the publications they're pitching too; if I'm in a crummy mood, I've been known to be merciless to them. One of these days, too, publicists will learn to stop asking me what date I plan to run a review, since the more they ask, the more I want to hold the frigging thing for ANOTHER six months (and since I never KNOW when I'll run it til maybe two weeks before it runs)...On the other hand, yeah, I like when publicists or bands send thank you notes. It's very nice, and it makes me happy.