IS ROCK CRITICISM DEAD?

I'm not complaining about the loss of writing jobs!

"just trying not to be pessimistic. listening to a lot of writer-types get all depresso is bringing me down lately. feel like we need more positive energy to be successful"

amen, man. i'm among the bitchers, and i need to quit bitchin'. personally, i HAVE started my slow, methodical creep away from crit as a side-career, but i still hope to be at this when i'm 50 (i'm 32, now).

great, great thread that, ironically, is distracting me from rock-crit shit i should be writing about yellow tears on my lunch break. ah well.

hey yall, 23-yr-old here, lyfe sucks, its hard to make a living, no worries tho, itll all turn out OK in the end

i find your youthful zest a comfort in my declining years max

"but then it's not a VVM paper and is probably more an exception that proves the rule than not"

VVM's on hard times, too, believe me.

i just graduated and am sort of dancing around the concept of writing-to-make-a-living since it seems so difficult & i dont want to end up writing myself into a corner. on the other hand--doing stuff that isnt writing kind of sucks, and i dont want to spend 40 hrs/wk doing stuff that sucks.

i am developing my personal brand tho

ray, my point was that our paper priveleges local music coverage more than VVM-owned papers, not that one's doing better or worse than the other

dude there's all kinds of writing jobs out there - i mean, i'm a technical writer right now, before that i was a proofreader, and before THAT i was a general assignment journo

music/books crit is something i've done on the side over that whole time (in college i did way, way more of it)

ah, ok - sorry i misread you, al.

fwiw max i spend 40 hrs/wk doing stuff that sucks, and the only way i've been keeping my head above water the last couple years was also freelancing a lot. now that's disappearing, and my wife is pregnant, and the "itll all turn out OK in the end" philosophy i used to share is a lot harder to come by now.

i guess what i'm saying is -- wear a rubber?

times change, don't they? i remember the days when people were constantly bombarding our paper with hate mail cuz it wasn't
"covering the scene" with enough zest or whatever - but that was when there was 2x or 3x more overall copy in there, when it would take a few hours to read everything

god, i need to stop with all the "back in MY day BS," i sound like an old man

al yr wife is pregannat/??????

congratulations man!!!!

oh and also freelancing a lot means you usually end up owing a TON in taxes that you wouldn't otherwise with a 9 to 5

haha yeah thanks

(congrats some dude!)

"i guess what i'm saying is -- wear a rubber?"

good advice universally!

and hell yeah on the tax thing, it gets brutal and wipes out the gains you would've made from your taxable day-job earnings

btw that was a horrible post for you guys to find out that news from -- i thought i had alluded to it enough that it was semi-common knowledge by now

I had heard it mentioned elsewhere but hey, congratulations again anyway!

Name of kid if a boy: "some little dude"

ya congratulations. talk about burying the lede!

Congratulations, Al.

some babby

"some dudeito"

i'd join in the congrats, but i already congratulated you on yr blog

as a guy who's made MAYBE four grand on music writing in the past decade, i've never really entertained the idea of being a full time critic/writer. as others have noted, it requires a certain amount of hustle that I've found I just don't have. i'd just say to anyone who really enjoys writing to try to enjoy writing about any topic, music or otherwise. I've gotten to the point where I like the activity of writing, regardless of whether it's about some psych folk dude or a business report on Denver. And this attitude is what makes me able to pay my bills without wanting to kill myself.

i should have been born rich

some dude can u change yr name to some dad

not yet!

(congrats)

― some dad (some dude), Tuesday, March 17, 2009 9:15 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ i thought this qualified as an announcement guys

I thought it was self-deprecation.

gay dude is the drummer in some dad

hater dads having hater babies and shit

j/k congrats, al!

look at this thread, it was all depressing, and then al had a baby

in a lot of ways, music criticism, is the baby, of writers, making people happy

Let's all get shitty jobs so that Al can afford to take his kid to Starbucks in a couple of years.

"3,000 rock crits and a baby"

rock criticism is dead, and will be reincarnated as my scion

some scion

congratulations!!

"When rock crit is reincarnated as a Scion, can I borrow the keys?"

i am enjoying this good cheer because tbh the past 24 hours have been about the most pessimistic and hopeless i have felt about the whole situation since i found out

christgau is risen

lol was toying with christ/gau puns for the past 5 mins but yours was better than any i had

congrats!

which ringtone cru member are u gonna name it after? I propose HOOS

also: congrats!

some brood

true story: once a few years ago the mrs. looked over my shoulder at an AIM window as said "ethan...i like that name"