Rolling Music Writers' Thread

oops yeah

If you can write entertainingly, I forgive your first person narrative.

xhuxk on point

xp "So why would print them?", I meant.

Anyway, bottom line is, no fucking way does the the detached pseudo-objective tone used in most glossies and daily newspapers make for better music writing than what I was printing week in and week out in the Voice for ten years (though sure, a few pieces I published may have sounded "Internetty" or whatever. Point was to have lots of different voices, so it'd be a miracle if anybody approved of all of them. I didn't want to ban Internetty writing -- which can be good too, sometimes -- either.)

On the other hand, I like the creativity with which guys like Sanneh at the Times have managed to get around the limitations against first person and swear words. A smart writer can work within those perimeters, too, and make it entertaining anyway.

its funny you mention sanneh--his profile of michael savage in the nyer from a couple weeks ago was very careful about not using "i" (which i think is generally a no-go in the nyer, except in the personal essays they publish every once in a while) but still managed to tell a set of interesting stories about sanneh's own encounters w/ savage that sort of hinged on sannehs own specific experiences trying to set up an interview... in the end, though, i thought it would have been a better piece if they had let him use an authorial I

wow that got convoluted

I thought about that, too.

Over the years, Savage has noticed that his disdain for the mainstream media is widely reciprocated ... So when he received an e-mail from a journalist asking for an interview, he was deeply suspicious. He read the e-mail on the air — he kept the writer anonymous, and didn’t mention that the request came from The New Yorker — and then asked his listeners, “Should I do the interview or not?”…

About a week later, Savage revisited the topic — “my continuing correspondence with a big-shot magazine writer.” He quoted the latest exchanges, along with his tart response, in which he asked, “Why must all of you in the extreme media paint everyone you disagree with as demonic? Why is the homosexual agenda so important to the midstream media?”

...

When he invited the journalist into one of his undisclosed locations, he proved to be a first-rate host, chatty and solicitous. A steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation (one of his earliest books was “The Taster’s Guide to Beer,” which was published in 1977), and as the temperature dropped and the sky above Berkeley started to turn orange, he seemed to be working hard to stay suspicious, despite himself. On his next show the next day, a caller asked how the interview had gone, and Savage described his interlocutor: "If I told you he looked like Obama, I wouldn't be far from the truth." Coming from him, this sounded like a deeply twisted compliment.

Sanneh has to resort to speaking of himself in the third person ("the journalist," "his interlocutor") but otherwise does a decent job with passive-ish phrases like "a steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation."

no i think you're OTM, that NYer piece was convoluted. it read to me like sanneh had a personal 1 on 1 reaction to savage that was quite different than what he expected and the resulting article would have been more effective and immediate using the "I" but the NYer has always employed a certain lofty distance from its subjects, even in the 70s it wasn't really into the personal/new journalism thing. well apart from pauline kael I guess.

but journalists do have to meet readers half-way. my problem with a lot of the vintage village voice stuff is that it's so personal to the point of being impenetrable or off-putting.

the best first person stuff illustrates how the subject of an interview interacts with other people, rather than "setting the scene"

i'm guessing whiney's not big on fiction as a rule.

I'm not big on fiction as a rule either, and one of the principles that was drilled into me when I started writing was that first-person is something you have to earn--expecting the reader who's never heard of you before to go along with I-I-I-me-me-me instead of saying "So what?" and moving to the next item is not generally a good idea--but I love first person writing even if (despite whatever reputation I may have for it due to the 33 1/3 book) I don't use it all that often professionally.

matos if you don't mind me asking: you're not big on fiction as a journalistic device or (gasp) you don't like reading novels?

I don't write fiction or about music, but first-person is the default in my area of writing (analytic philosophy). Sometimes we resort to the royal "we" if we're feeling nervous about first-person. But it was made clear to me that third-person is to be avoided, as is passive voice.

hang on, you're not big on reading fiction...at all?!

xp!

xp I don't buy the "have to earn" thing. I'm not even sure what it means. If I listen to a song sung in the first person, I might be able to relate to, and be moved by, the song even if I'm unaware of the singer's specific biography. Not sure why reviews are necessarily different. You don't have to be a famous writer to have a life that creates a context.

i thought he meant less that you have to earn it in the sense of being already famous or noteworthy, but in the sense that you have to earn it through your writing--i.e. you have to justify use of the first person in the piece itself, not necc explicitly, but at least in making your "I" of interest to the reader

When it's well done - and it does have to be superbly well done, and yes, generally (but not always) "earnt" - first-person music writing is my favourite of all music writing. (And when it's pointlessly done, the reverse holds true.)

For my own part, I avoid it at least 95% of the time - but then I come from a personal-blogging background, and taking "myself" out of the equation was a deliberate, sought objective.

My first piece at the Voice (when no reader could've had any idea who I was) and a couple soon after were in the first person, fwiw. I seriously doubt they would have improved if the "I"'s had been edited out. (Whether they stunk regardless is another question, but they wouldn't have stunk less.)

Editorial "we" -- first person plural -- bugs the hell out of me no matter what, though. I never buy it, and I've fought editors to keep it out of my own writing (which usually they've been open to).

And btw, I've also edited at Billboard, where first person is almost never allowed. So it's not like I don't know that drill. I just don't like it much.

Of course, at Billboard, the writing tended to be more news and less review-oriented. (So first person would have probably have made no sense anyway.)

And I come from a journalism (and not fancy dancy "new journalism") background too. I came up covering zoning boards and sewage commissions, where objective detachment is strived for. Not saying I don't understand it there, obviously. When I'm defending first person, I'm specifically referring to criticism (though, when it comes to say artist features, I prefer criticism to be part of the deal.)

i thought he meant less that you have to earn it in the sense of being already famous or noteworthy, but in the sense that you have to...justify use of the first person in the piece itself, not necc explicitly, but at least in making your "I" of interest to the reader

Well, obviously I buy this, if that's what Michaelangelo means. But in that sense, you need to earn whatever you put in your writing -- so first person's no different from anything else.

I mean I don't read novels almost at all. Gasp!

xpost: If there's one thing I hate even more than editorial "we", it's the sort of "we" that includes both the writer and his/her presumed readership. ("When did we all fall in love with Kings Of Leon?")

haha please tell me you made that KoL quote up Mike

Really: What do you mean we, kemosabe? (Those ILM threads titled "What Do We Think Of [fill in the blank]?" are almost as bad.)

Tbh, reading good first-person music writing is what made me want to write about music. (Or even reading bad first-person music writing: some Pitchfork stuff from around the turn of the century, though hard to read now, at least made me realize that criticism need not be all neutral/detached/objective.)

(Which, I should add, was mighty refreshing for someone who just wanted to write about his experiences with music and his reactions to listening to certain songs or albums without the burden of serving as some kind of authority.)

Avoiding first person is a good technique to get beyond the inherent subjectivity of reviewing music- it pushes the writer to find a common ground with the reader, rather than just reporting their personal reaction. I drop it if I start to get grandiose.

lots of reasons here why i generally prefer reading about music on the internet just my personal opinion!

Sanneh has to resort to speaking of himself in the third person ("the journalist," "his interlocutor") but otherwise does a decent job with passive-ish phrases like "a steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation."

Re this, exhaustively shat upon by Eric Boehlert.

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200908030038

Related:

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200908110005

"Avoiding first person is a good technique to get beyond the inherent subjectivity of reviewing music- it pushes the writer to find a common ground with the reader, rather than just reporting their personal reaction. I drop it if I start to get grandiose."

I think this is one of the root issues but it also points to the fallacy of avoiding first person - the technique assumes that it's the specific use of "I" that makes music writing solipsistic or uncommunicative. It also suggests that that the choice is between solipsism and objectivity (I accept that specific publications may have other reasons for disliking it).

But it's not hard to write a review that avoids using "I" but still reads like the writer has never thought to question their personal reactions, their prejudices, their assumptions.

Learning to adopt a critical perspective w/r/t those things has a lot to do with how you relate to music generally, how you try to convey what the music is actually doing etc. etc.

Kogan is a good example of a writer who puts himself into the story but still makes the music's potential to affect different people differently the star attraction.

The tendency to lean toward the first person is usually an indicator of a writer being green but not always of self-obsession. A lot of these throw away 'I thinks', 'I feels', 'as I was saying to x' etc come from a nervousness about stating an opinion without a crutch or without reflexively reminding people that, it's just, like, their opinion, man. All reviews and value judgements are obviously the opinion of the writer. We can tell because it's prefixed with a byline. It's just that if a writer is all apologetic and constantly reminding people that it's all subjective innit, they won't get ripped to shreds on the internet. Or not as much anyway.

But it's a writer's job to be authoritative. In, er, my opinion it is anyway.

It's more acceptable in features but then the reasoning still has to be solid behind it. I've been stabbed during or around three interviews. Once accidentally by a member of a band while we were larking about, once purposefully by a band member during a play fight that got out of hand and once after getting so drunk in an interview I got thrown out of the hotel by security and got stabbed randomly outside.

The first piece was written third person with only passing mention of boisterous high spirits. The incident was unremarkable. Barely drew blood. The second time was pertinent. The guy was a loon and this helped to illustrate that. Some of the piece was written in the first person. It was impossible to write it neatly otherwise. The third incident was ignored and the piece was written in the third person. A good pub story perhaps but nothing to do with the band or the story.

Once I got to an interview with Matt C from The Bronx to find out that we'd both broken our noses the night before. That was kind of on the cusp. Could have been written either way. Just about interesting enough as a jumping off point to be worth including.

As a rule you shouldn't do it unless it's an on the road/reportage piece or you have a unique involvement in the story that no one else has (or at least your readers don't). That said - and I'm twisting Eric Arthur Blair to my own ends on this - I'd break any rule about writing I have rather than write something barbaric.

(And house style rules. If you can't write a piece around I said/we said/Rolling Stone said and still make it readable, maybe you shouldn't be writing. It's fairly straightforward after all.)

Co-sign everything that guy said about a variety of voices on a magazine.

Re. "authoritative": should music writers attain a certain level of knowledge of music before setting up as arbiters of taste?

Not necessarily because knowing loads about music doesn't necessarily give you good taste in music and beyond that 'good taste' is a bogus concept on its own.

It's up to the individual writer not to make a fool out of themselves/magazine that's hired them. Canonical thinking is the enemy of good music writing but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know about this stuff anyway. I mean, I hate the Beatles and a lot of other big groups from the 60s and won't write about them as a rule but it doesn't mean I don't have a basic grounding in them.

Some writers set up this completely false binary of the job being fusty old rock professors with their "facts" and everything and young, free spirited rebels who don't know about the music but who can "feel" it and "live" it. Somehow suggesting that the more you know about music, the less you can actually appreciate it, which is obviously not true.

good for you for fighting the power

i can't believe people are still arguing this stuff.

^^^ probably listens to the beatles

i'll fight you for that.

with a broken copy of rubber soul.

i dont think u have earned the right to fight me

It's more acceptable in features but then the reasoning still has to be solid behind it. I've been stabbed during or around four interviews. Once accidentally by a member of a band while we were larking about, once purposefully by a band member during a play fight that got out of hand and once after getting so drunk in an interview I got thrown out of the hotel by security and got stabbed randomly outside. And once in the arm with a broken record by the ghost of a well-known music bloggist after I made some heavy accusations.

for example's sake, here's a review i wrote last year that uses the first-person twice in the first two sentences, and then never again. especially writing in that venue, it felt honest and useful to state up front my own skepticism about the band. it tells the reader -- whatever their own position on the band -- where i'm coming from, and also establishes a little bit of critical tension. i'm sure i could have written the same thing without the first-person, but it would have been less direct, and i don't think would have improved anything.

It works fine, tipsy (and your review is first-rate).

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.)

Facebook post:

Bandcamp Daily is retiring my Experimental Music Column. I have two more to do (March and April) before it's gone for good. Bummed but it lasted 7 years so I can't really complain, that's like 100 in internet-writing years.

He also put it in an Instagram story where he did a follow up saying that 80% of the experimental music he covered is not really covered anywhere else .

Masters is not on Bluesky anymore. He does a Music Books podcast, and the Spindle - a podcast about 7” singles ( mostly old punk I think)

from Bluesky: "I guess the only thing I can add to the recent BC discourse is that the writing on the site has not been good since the union folks were laid off"

people just write anything that pops into their head on the internet, man

I mean Marc M is absolutely a killer writer but I'd like to think that when various folks no longer wanted to write for them after that layoff the overall quality suffered no matter what. (Obv. I was one of said folks, granted.)

Franz from The Hold Steady's Substack

https://pianofighter.substack.com/p/more-like-cut-and-paste-magazine

NY Times pop music editor for 11 years Caryn Ganz announced on her socials that she is quitting the Times. I didn't see any details on why, just her posts about what she is proud of over her time there.

Anyone want to conjecture about the economics that allow GQ to (presumably) pay to send Gr*yson C*rrin to Portland for four days - across two different trips w/ flights and (I assume) lodging - to write a 13,000-word feature on Modest Mouse?

I'm genuinely curious. That's a level of freelancing at which I have not worked and I guess I'm a little surprised it exists, but what do I know?

Grayson is a hiking/outdoorsy dude and is always going all over the country to go on cool hikes. Would not be surprised if he was RV-ing it or camping.

The level of freelancing you're describing was pretty common in the '90s but even the biggest places are rarely doing fly-outs for anyone not on staff these days

Yeah, I added "(I assume) and lodging" at the very last second, but thought that might not be part of it. He could also have friends w/ a spare bedroom in Portland.

Maybe there were other cost reductions for the mag, too. I guess I'm just surprised anyone wants 13,000 words on Isaac Brock that bad.

I feel like GC is the last man standing for this kind of thing (except for, say, New York Times or New Yorker staff writers). But I also feel like he's the new Cameron Crowe - I mean, he's not someone you hire to write a hard-hitting exposé. He's the guy you hire to share Indie Rock Vet #4080's Deep Thoughts on Maturity and Art.

I have no idea how any of this works, so apologies if this is a naive question, but is it possible an artist's label / publicity team is footing the bill for the expenses on big pieces like this? I mean providing it isn't a hit piece or something, a longform advertorial in a prestige glossy seems like it would be mutually beneficial

Oh yeah, that absolutely happens. Roadrunner Records flew me to Sweden to interview Opeth in 2008 or so and they paid for the plane tickets, hotel, meals, etc.

I don't know much it happens any more. Record labels are almost as broke as magazines these days.

But that's the kind of thing I was interested in kicking around in here ... how does this happen? Is GQ somehow the last outlet that's rolling in dough? Is GHC paying most of the expenses himself cuz he was gonna be there to climb Mt. Hood anyway? Maybe it's all-expenses-paid by Modest Mouse's label/publicist?

All possibilities.

GHC's bio for Outside online, one of the sites for whom he writes about hiking and such, says "He and his little family are currently roaming the continent by Sprinter" van.

Anyone want to conjecture about the economics that allow GQ to (presumably) pay to send Gr*yson C*rrin to Portland for four days - across two different trips w/ flights and (I assume) lodging - to write a 13,000-word feature on Modest Mouse?

I don't know how it works in the US, but in the UK, record labels or management would always pay for flights/accomodation, not the magazine/site. I was being sent to the US from London every few weeks in the 00s when I was writing for Kerrang!, and being put up in v swanky hotels, etc - I know budgets are much, much, much lower now, but I'm imagining this trip cost less than transatlantic flights, etc, and 13,000 words in GQ would, I'm sure, be much more impactful for the campaign than the Kerrang! stuff I was doing. And pre-Covid, I was still being sent to the US on a fairly regular basis for MOJO; I haven't done it since then, but was offered a US trip late 2024 for a MOJO feature, so these trips are more rare, but still happen.

Grayson's a fantastic writer, and a really good dude, and his roaming lifestyle also possibly means he's making his way to these shows on his own steam. And that new MM record is a great listen, and I've not really been plugged into their stuff for a long time.

I remember reading lengthy features by Tom Junod in Vanity Fair in the 2000s where he'd go on tour with the Flaming Lips or hang out with Michael Stipe in LA for a week. He'll have been on a handsome retainer, while the record companies would have paid for the travel/accommodation, right? Either way, it seems a thing of the past. Not looked at VF in a long time - do they still do that kind of thing?

I don't tend to cover major label acts, and most interviews are done on Zoom these days, so I can only dream of the kind of press trips Stevie and colleagues had back in the day. I do get to go to some nice European festivals though, so can't complain.

The most ludicrous press junket I've been on was getting sent to the press launch of Montreux Jazz Festival in Feb. One night in a grand hotel, getting wined and dined in Claude Nobs' alpine chalet and admiring his collection of jukeboxes and terrible Ron Wood paintings. Watching his Great Danes galumphing through several feet of snow... The best bit was getting shown the archive and seeing the tapes of Miles Davis, Aretha et al pulled out. All this for a programme announcement preview!

The New Yorker used to publish and occasionally still does these kind of pieces. Esquire too.

All this for a programme announcement preview!

Forget it Jake, it's Montreux!