Rolling Music Writers' Thread

Also since I very clearly admitted to not putting maximum though into every album review I've written, I just want to say that I spent 15 years following this exact model at a small regional publication ... except I would say that instead of trying to find something novel to say about the small fries, I usually just tried to focus on a strength or two - a moving lyric, a sticky vocal melody, guitar tone, whatever - and be fairly neutral about the rest of the music:

When I worked on staff for TimeoutNY, I could write about what I wanted to, and I very quickly figured out that I would only do negative reviews of acts that were established or incontrovertibly huge (Pearl Jam, Rancid, Grateful Dead) and in my view needed to be taken down a peg. If I didn't like a small fry band's record, I saw no reason why I should heap negativity onto a thing that was likely going to sink into obscurity. I also very often did not say "this record is good/ bad," but tried to say something about the band or act or scene or genre that was novel (I was often rebuked by readers, publicists, musicians, friends, acquaintances, saying 'b-b-b-but you're not telling us whether the Verve Pipe's 2nd record is good or not!")

at TONY, the front of the music section was devoted to live previews, in which you were free from assessing a recording, and could talk about what a band is like, what they mean, and what they are like live. Much Much preferred doing previews to album reviews,

The entire universe of high-stakes reviews, career-making-or-breaking PR campaigns, pressure from publicists, angry calls from artists, etc., etc. that I read about from critics at big pubs in big cities is largely foreign to me.

Wonder if the review I'm thinking of that fits the profile is the one you're referring to (pitchfork review, female solo artist)

Probably not, they’re actually no-profile. I don’t want to drop hints at the risk of “outing” them.

Gotcha, I was referring to the Brian Howe review of the last Edith Frost album in Pitchfork because that was a contributing factor to her quitting music. Not the score, but the nastiness. I've mentioned it a number of times on relevant threads because it deserves calling out, since she was one of my faves at the time and it was published during the era of peak pitchfork influence.

Do individual works of great distinction occasionally break through? Yeah, but they're so exceptional in that regard that it's almost a miracle when it happens.

― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Thursday, December 21, 2023 12:09 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is exactly right. And even this phenomenon reinforces the bullshit bootstraps narrative that lends false hope to many struggling artists who can't afford to hire one of the handful of PR firms who are guaranteed to actually get a response from an editor

The overall homogeneous nature of even individual year-end lists makes the writers who actually truly dig deep and find great albums through research and deep listening are all the more valuable. Usually when I'm looking for year-end lists to check out, I prefer genre specific ones because that tells me the writer has a singular focus and interest in that area. Lots of lists just feel touristy and they're just scraping off the top of the pr pile.

Whiney's list, unperson's list etc

(positive examples, obv)

:)

it gets depressing when you see the same record labels over and over on lists. with magazines its always advertisers. so much stuff out there gets ignored in favor of the same names/labels. but its always been like that. that's money for you. whatchagonnadoo?

I’m really happy about the Aftab Iyer Ismaily reception, yay Motormouth

the Brian Howe review of the last Edith Frost album in Pitchfork

Ah no not that. Hadn’t read that one. Reading it made me feel a lot of things I’ve already felt before/typed about endlessly

I’m really happy about the Aftab Iyer Ismaily reception, yay Motormouth

Yeah, I don't know if Shore Fire (who's been handling Iyer's ECM records for several years) could have gotten the record that kind of crossover attention.

One of the nastiest side-effects of the movement toward “online content only” and especially “tailored content” has been a tunnelvisioning of arts criticism consumption. I remember six years ago, moving back to a city that still had a free weekly, picking it up and reading it and thinking “wow it’s been years since I read about Theatre and Dance and Visual Art”— things within my purview of interest, but not part of the Games Books Music Food hegemony to which my algorithms had restricted my diet

Even a decade ago I asked my publicist to pitch to non-music magazines for an album cycle; they replied they didn’t have the contacts (I’m sure they do, now). I’ve spoken to a dozen musicians who benefitted this year more from “a blurb in an architecture magazine” or whatever than any coverage from actual music media

It's been 10 years since I wondered why smaller acts don't just premiere their songs and videos and stuff through larger acts (friends, other bands on the label or PR roster) rather than through "media" ... seems like that would be much more impactful than, like 2 tweets from Paste, but I'm sure the PR pros know better than me. Or maybe the larger acts wouldn't be willing.

One of the nastiest side-effects of the movement toward “online content only” and especially “tailored content” has been a tunnelvisioning of arts criticism consumption. I remember six years ago, moving back to a city that still had a free weekly, picking it up and reading it and thinking “wow it’s been years since I read about Theatre and Dance and Visual Art”— things within my purview of interest, but not part of the Games Books Music Food hegemony to which my algorithms had restricted my diet

My day job has me working with visual arts writers regularly, and the landscape gets more and more dire every year.

More cross-pollination between genres of media journalism would work wonders imo

Was really happy to read two high-profile pieces on unsung-hero friends this year (Rob Moose in The Star, Shahzad Ismaily in The Times)

Todd L Burns is ending his Music Journalism Insider substack

https://www.musicjournalisminsider.com/

Baltimore Sun newspaper was bought by right wing Sinclair Broadcasting exec so that likely means even less music coverage there.

pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Pitchfork demise on Pitchfork thread

LA Times laid off a lot of staff including Suzy Exposito

Music editor and one or two music writers included in the LAT layoffs.

Ugh. Exposito I guess had shifted away from music to another area there. But all bad. Another billionaire owner I think worried that he's losing millions on this one thing that won't significantly impact his bottom line

Not really about the music writers here, but more about the LAT layoffs.

Editor Craig Marks was at Blender and Spin aways back. Billionaire owner’s massive cuts are brutal

Wow, I remember his name from Blender! That's the only mag that ever published my stuff, as a "freelancer" (in college)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/30/pitchfork-q-music-reviews-critics-songs

That’s J. Doran from Quietus re Pitchfork and Spotify

NPR radio station , WAMU , at American University had taken over the DCist news website years back. Suddenly they just decided to kill it , and are blocking access to the site . Years of articles including my freelancer 2020 interview piece with Ethiopian musicians Hailu Mergia and Selam Woldemariam, who are both based in the DC area. 15 people got laid off.

https://www.axios.com/2024/02/23/wamu-dcist-layoffs-npr-washington

Sheesh, how miserable.

Someone checked and my article I referenced above is still luckily enough available if one places the url in the wayback machine of the web archive, but one has to know that. Management shut down Dcist because they said they wanted to focus on the radio station (but many of the dcist reporters also did audio stories, and the station gets lots of money from listeners and from the University , so it's not a funding issue).

Is it OK to plagiarize your own words from a story you wrote 10 years ago for a publication that no longer exists (and whose website is long gone)?

Hmmmm, do you feel comfortable doing that even if few will know?

Firmly of the belief that reusing your own words is not plagiarism. I don't know the context you're using it in, but you could always say, "as I once wrote ..." or something. But morally/ethically, I personally don't have a problem with it.

I think it's fine. I literally don't think the words I wrote exist anywhere anymore, unless they're in the artist's mom's scrapbook or something.

Story published in 2017. Publication ceased to exist in March of 2020, both in print and online. When I Google phrases from it, nothing comes up. The artist even has an extensive "press" section on his website and it ain't there.

Doesn't really matter anyway - as is often the case, I think I have an idea and then when I start writing it goes a different direction.

But! I have enough defunct outlets in my past that this question comes to my mind a few times a year.

We should ask Bill Ackman what he thinks.

Oh, and I've done the "As I wrote back in..." thing before. Rarely, but a few times - a couple times in the same pub as the earlier reference, and a couple times linking to something I wrote for someone else!

If the 2017 publication still existed, I don't think I'd be comfortable with lifting directly, even my own words. That might be too cautious, I don't know.

Googlability does seem like a pragmatic metric.

The clincher: Some right-wing group bought this alt-weekly a few months before COVID and was in the process of turning it into "the conservative alternative" to the bigger alt-weekly in town before just shutting the whole thing down in March of 2020 with no warning whatsoever. Fuck 'em!

(Although they were *not* the owners when I wrote the piece in question.)

I recycle all the time. Magazine or web articles get expanded into book chapters, etc. No such thing as self-plagiarism IMO.

I recycle too.

I haven't had a new thought in 17 years, so I quote myself all the time, here, there, and everywhere--as tipsy said, usually prefaced by "as I once wrote ..."

worse is when you write down yr insightful and amazing present-day comment on some phenom from a decade or four ago and then find you wrote abt it at the time except you forgot, and when you check what you said last time it's identical

all creative people recycle.

I would be very pleased to have a current-day thought and then find that past-me had the same thought, as opposed to (as is typically the case) something infinitely more stupid, embarrassing, annoying, and long

oh man i would gladly swap one of my old long embarrassing thoughts for one of yours any day of the week. i find that not looking back at all is the key.

I know at least one really great ilxor writes for the site and I'm a dedicated daily reader so I don't want to bash them for a touch decision but, uh, seeing that Aquarium Drunkard is transitioning to $10/month for future access makes me really fucking depressed about the future of the internet.

Like, maybe that's not much, but when I'm suddenly being asked to pay $10 a month for every site I read? That's unsustainable.

"tough decision"

Don't get me wrong, paying writers to provide good, thoughtful criticism is totally valid!

Maybe it's just fatigue of being constantly bombarded by substacks and other outlets asking for money as well. I get it, the media landscape is fucking bleak. I don't know the answer. Just looking through my inbox right now, to buy in to all the great writers and thinkers I'd want to follow in an ideal world it'd cost me over $100 a month. That's not a sustainable solution, for anyone.

I grant that AD posts a lot of stuff, and it's mostly really good, but $10 a month is a lot.

I had a dream last night that a conglomerate that owned a lot of different media brands was going to be hiring writers for their publications and, I think, Chuck Eddy gave them my name. The thing was, you didn't know what publication you would be interviewing to write for. I got a call and I was interviewed with two other people. They were both much younger than me. One of them mentioned that their favorite live concert performance that they had ever seen was by Kelly Rowland. I felt totally unprepared. I was hoping i didn't have to answer any questions. Finally, they did ask what people thought about a release being "overhyped". I said that manufactured enthusiasm for a release was as old as time and a PR firm's number one priority but that the internet had created a monster of hype for EVERY release and that there weren't enough eyeballs or enough money to make that anything more than noise that people learned to ignore in favor of algorithms that did all the consumer's thinking for them and thus took chance or even possible disappointment out of the listening equation. The interviewer looked at me like I had three heads. i shut up after that.
The name of the magazine I was possibly being hired to work for: Formica Magazine