Why would anyone want to be a music journalist RATHER than a musician?

I just got the same email! Yay Money Machine!

Anyway, you're cheating: you define us in ways that make us parasitic, and then when we tell you that in fact we're doing something different from how you define us, you tell us that it's not criticism.

"Indigenous music" is pretty much any music that isn't played in a classical concert hall. In many circumstances (e.g., discos, African celebrations of an infant's first tooth, etc.) music is part of a social ritual that includes everyone who's there. In some languages there is no word for music, since it is not seen as an activity separate from its circumstances. If you ask which came first, the music or the ritual, you're asking a nonsense question. That a song now exists on the wide-world stage rather than in just a village doesn't change the interdependence of all the characters.

Here's a thought experiment: Ask yourself why you come to ILx. Is it to contemplate some third thing, external to us - music! - or is it to converse with your fellows? If your answer in any way takes on the latter role ("conversing with your fellows"), then you are not merely "commenting" on music, you are using music, just as dancers use music, village chiefs use music, preachers use music, congregations use music.

My Meltzer review.

Speak for your own fucking self, loser.

Dumb people = musicians (and racing car drivers)

But not as much as all those fucking mediocre retards copying other fucking mediocre retards playing it.

why would anyone want to be a psychiatrist rather than a loony?

There's a level of, I don't know, powerlessness involved in making music - not so much a matter of talent, this, but almost as if the style of music you write is pre-ordained and nigh-on impossible to change (in my experience, at least). It's much the same with writing style, of course, but when it's a question of what music you're currently interested in and want to reflect, what you write about is the issue, not the way you write (beyond that it be clear and evocative. But I'm imagining myself with writing talent here, so). I've always found it slightly easier to train myself to different styles of writing than to new instruments or styles of music.

I like the potential impact of music criticism, too. If you can write lucidly, explain what you like in something and what you consider shite, you can affect people subtly. It's not the overt 'oh, [musician] likes [other band] so maybe I should check it out', or '[musician] apparently sounds like [other band], why don't I see if I like them too?', which depends on having a fanbase avid enough to care. People who don't bother to read the name on a review can still act on its recommendations - a journalist has much more of an apportunity to turn people on to the stuff they like, seems to me.

Also, writing's fun. When it happens. And you'd get to go to more gigs!

The only thing that would really turn me off the idea of being a music journalist would be having to interview bands comprised of coy brats who have nothing to say, and having to pad it out to make them seem like they've some kind of substance. The fact is, most of the time I'm not that interested in the people in bands, only the music. A lot of musicians don't want to make their opinions known, for whatever reason, and it can lead to sheer dullness. (and the ones who do say what they think about other bands often come across as complete tossers. sword, double-edged.)

Yes. No.

Frank Kogan, though, says playing a record player is NO DIFFERENT from playing a guitar. Which is right in its own way, obviously.

You have to stretch pretty far and have a narrow focus to get to that conclusion. If you write and record a beautiful piece of music, and I go to someone's house and press play, I should then get as much credit as you? Denying the difference between listening and creating is just being dishonest.

This conversation, this criticism, is trivial – but without it there is no music. All music starts in acts of criticism, of selection: one Liverpool boy playing another the latest R&B hits; a musicians wanted sign – “influences Husker Du and Peter, Paul and Mary”; a spike-haired kid wondering which showtune will swing the judges.

which i guess means that its been going on since the cavemen, but obviously - like everything else in our keerazy pomo world - its been sped up 1000x & mutated/perverted in the last 50-60 years.

to clarify: music says because society is THAT WAY then music should be THIS WAY (the way it is). some criticism says the same thing, but I think that criticism is k-lame. i.e. if you wanna say what the artist SHOULDA done then go and yeah pick up a guitar. but if you wanna say what the artist DID do and why that matters, then yr. engaged in something fundamentally different.

good music makes a k-lame critical framework (of music at least) and good musiccrit makes a k-lame framework for production of music coz it accepts as fixed precisely what music seeks to mold (the musical landscape) and regards as fluid precisely what music holds fixed (the landscape of social discourse).

Ug: play it loik this.
Stig: oi wass playin' it loik that!
Ug: no, play it loik you did the first toim...

but, yeah, i take the point

(subthread: what's the difference between writing and just putting words on a page?)

-- Frank Kogan ([email protected]), June 9th, 2003.

I don't know why you're grouping me with oops and o. nate.
I haven't tried to define you and I haven't said music writers are parasitic, partly because I consider myself to be one, eg

Well I'd Fuck Her

which I think has some of the properties others have been attributing to criticism here, in that it contains an idea that is somehow independent of the music and which someone else writing about the same CD would not have come up with. Also it includes social context which you talk up greatly in your piece about Meltzer.

personally , almost every journalist i've met was ugly.
every musician (gets paid variety) ive met had an ugly personality.
i know which one i'd rather be....

"Don't you know how much power you music journalists have?" he shouts at me. I laugh in his face. Power? We aren't even gatekeepers. We're scum, we're the enemy. We're caught in tug-o-wars between editors and PR's and even if we do succeed in writing something beautiful, it doesn't reflect on us, it glorifies inarticulate puppet-actors. Giving good interview, talking about music in a critical and cultural sense is a very different skill from being able to create it.

What if music is your first love, but writing in your second love, and you waste all your greatest moments in lyrics that are mumbled and misheard anyway...

in a fantasy world maybe i'd rather be kali than a rock musician anyway.

However, in moments of great annoyance with her, I would shout at her, "You know, if I work really hard and I practice and I gig constantly, there is a TINY but still quite good chance that I will eventually become a rock star. YOU will NEVER become AN ELF!!!"