Rolling Music Writers' Thread

Lex: Isn't it the case that it depends quite a lot on the other person. Like you, I see a good interview as being more like a conversation. If you get stuck with some passive aggressive/hates doing interviews idiot, no ammount of 'skill' at your job is going to rescue the piece.

oh yeah, i'm fairly confident that most interviews i've done have been pretty good in the sense that, you know, they worked and i got my quotes and a decent angle and weren't horribly awkward experiences, it's just that odd sensation of having done these things for years without any formal training and with no idea of what my peers think of as the basics in interviewing.

what's a worse interview for you guys? monosyllabic coz someone hasn't prepared & doesn't wanna be there or dog-and-pony media training standard answers?

the first one by SO much. (though it's rarely the interviewee who need to "prepare"!) at the end of the day i don't care how unpleasant or fake or unhelpful or bitchy the musician is - just GIMME MY QUOTES and i can do the rest. anyone with a bit of imagination should be able to deal with the most media-trained, give-nothing away pop star tbh: i actually enjoy this ones for several reasons. a) no pressure on you whatsoever, b) a challenge to see what individuality you can prod out of them - and you ALWAYS CAN, c) thinking about it those super-positive i-am-blessed media-trained pop stars aren't actually boring at all, they're completely mental.

the absolute worst are the interviewees who are super-nice, super-friendly, charming and polite - and monosyllabic. if they're brats or cunts, that's the story even if they just grunt at you. if they smile and nod and then just say "yes!", AAARGH.

lex...have you ever done any guerilla type interviewing where they didn't know you were conducting one. 'hit and run', say the stupidest shit perhaps as an obsessive fanboy to get a quote ?

nope, though i have remembered and used quotes/info from conversations surrounding an interview

has anyone ever had a musician record a song dissing them after giving a negative review?

The John Leland/"Don't Believe the Hype" gold standard!

Sadly, not to my knowledge, though a Queens/Minneapolis rapper, Trama, had a line in one track, "stop askin' if I got beef with Pete Scholtes."

But then I heard the interviewer after me punched one of them

Speaking of guerilla criticism!

many many xposts, but ...

What I mean is: you're creating a false binary about professionalism and enjoyment. They're not mutually exclusive.

yeah no, i much prefer an enjoyable conversation. those are by far my favorite interviews. but i just mean that i try not to get hung up on that, or on having them "like" me, because like lex says ...

i don't care how unpleasant or fake or unhelpful or bitchy the musician is - just GIMME MY QUOTES and i can do the rest.

that's why second-favorite type of interview -- after the actually-enjoyable-conversation type -- is the quote-machine type, people who you barely have to nudge and they just start telling you all sorts of entertaining things. david byrne was one of those. robyn hitchcock. robbie fulks.

dâm-funk was just like that! and i was so torn because i had such limited time but he was so interesting :(

"x-post -- I am eternally glad for the typing class I took in high school."

Absolutely the most valuable class I had in high school. I got lucky because for most it was a Freshman class. I opted to take it my Sophomore year so I didn't know or care about the kids around me. While they chatted and passed notes and goofed off, I learned to type 75+ wpm. Has kept me out of food service and manual labor my entire life.

"There aren't too many metallers writing for WIRE."

Too true! Help a brother out. That would be my first choice of outlets to break into. :)

My business/typing teacher also advised me to meditate. I wish I'd taken more of his advice.

My typing teacher was a sports coach who was forced to also teach easy classes like Keyboarding and Personal Finance. He had married his high school sweetheart, divorced her, married an old woman, divorced her, and was going for round 3 with a former student he'd gotten pregnant. Total winner.

And there was a betting pool for whether the kid would be a boy or a girl that resulted in extra credit. I figured that was beyond ridiculous so I made him promise to give me an A if it was born with 666 on his forehead. It wasn't :(

robyn hitchcock

FANTASTIC interviewee. so very charming and friendly, and very funny too.

I'd like to interview Nate Carson's typing teacher.

I'm having flashbacks to my horrendous interview with Eric B. and Rakim years ago where they wouldn't respond at all with full sentences, and Rakim just kept saying in a montone voice "I want to encourage our fans not to do drugs," while he looked glassy-eyed and on something himself.

obv he'd had some bad shit and was trying to warn the kids off that experience

Ha. But yeah, I felt relieved later reading that he was known for often being a tough interviewee who never provided much in answers back then. So it wasn't just me.

Now I'm kinda glad The Wire didn't take me up on an Invisible Jukebox interview with him. That could have been horrific.

Okay, so I'm looking to do some more stuff now. Anyone need some writing work? Don't care too much about pay, just want to get typing again.

Drop me a line. pdfreeman at gmail dot com.

Send a cut and a list of interestests to John at The Quietus dot com.

lol

http://spacemountain.tumblr.com/post/380178404/this-man-pictured-above-just-wrote-an-article

looool. presumably he means that shitty article in the guardian

*rummages for link*

Britisher music writers - are you familiar with these guys at all? I just got an email from them which was intriguing but, um, maybe bears more investigation shall we say (and yeah their website is not messively helping their case)

yikes that looks garbage. PRs do more than just post music to journalists.

lol "messively" = inspired typo from me there

Well anyway, you know the 'your reactions to this track/single/whatever' forms that you are sometimes asked to fill in (now generally done online, as you'd expect, and still seems to mainly be the preserve of dance mailing lists)? It's one of them, but they say they'll pay me for my reactions - a small sum, but enough for the amount of effort you'd have to put in. These don't get uploaded anywhere or even shown to the band. The only catch I've figured out *so far* is that I can't imagine anyone decent associating themselves with these guys, so the 12th time you tell them that this song is generic and boring they might start getting less keen to use my exciting opinions

tbh if they pay with cheques that can be cashed i might be up for it

Yeah me too, I just can't figure out how it would be sustainable, or beneficial to their hypothetical clients

if their clients are clueless then the service doesn't need to be beneficial to them to make a bit of cash in the short run

So why pay £1000's every month (plus expenses) to music PR companies for your campaign when it only need cost you a tiny tiny fraction of that!!! We are not like traditional old school PR companies.. with us there's No postage costs, No CD replication costs and No telephone charges or any other additional expenses!

Yet I'm pleased to see they've maintained the same high-level of syntax.

Who is Mr Beach Ball Party?

Anyone hear about this new transcription tool?

http://www.macspeech.com/extensions/store/product.php?pID=1137

I bought this, feeling desperate about the amount of interviews I have to do this year, and I'll apply it to a long interview I just did with Mr. McFeely from Mister Rogers, but it's not looking promising so far. I think I wasted my $150 but will report back.

transcribing is agony but i don't think i could ever trust technology to do it for me sadly...

i think this kind of technology, when it's good enough might serve a purpose as a kind of first draft transcript generator. obviously, you'll have to read whatever text it produces over again to make sure it's accurate, but as long as it's "good enough," it will have saved you a lot of unnecessary typing.

Anyone hear about this new transcription tool?

A friend was telling me about this the other night; he said it worked great. (He's also a programmer and I wonder if the difference between his experience and Pete's might differ because of technical issues.)

was this on ilm already? he's a cheeky monkey:

How to Review Music - a 10-step Guide
Step One: is the band any good? Say so.
Step Two: does the band have an interesting back story? Ignore it.
Step Three: is the band male? Probably not worth listening to.
Step Four: does the band sound like 1,000 other bands? Really? Are you sure? Don't believe you.
Step Five: what sort of music does the band play? Worked it out yet? Good, ignore it.
Step Six: is the band in favour with any of the sites/mags currently in vogue? Yes? Time to get out the scissors.
Step Seven: does the band claim that "It's all about the music and if anyone else likes it, it's a bonus?" Bin them.
Step Eight: does the band sound like Radiohead? Bin them.
Step Nine: does the band look like Radiohead? Bin them.
Step Ten: is the band Radiohead? Bin them.
Steps 11-50,000: is the band any good? Say so.

http://everetttrue.blogspot.com/

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/special/section/whats-the-write-word/

Going to read this now. Thoughts?

happy reading? good luck? best wishes?

I was wondering when this would run. I'll be in part 3 or 4 when it runs, I guess.

lol scott

Caramanica so so so so so OTM.

my long-suffering wife of 30 years has managed to keep herself employed in a manner that I have never had to. So my real advice is this—if you really and truly want to write about only those things that move you, marry above your station.

probably the only truly practical advice given ;-)

Part II is up: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/125994-part-2-kris-ex-to-chuck-klosterman/

You'll notice they didn't ask me for my advice. (Unless they sent me an email, and I didn't notice it, which I guess is possible. Or maybe they're waiting til I've been doing this for 40 years, or something.)

http://www.najp.org/articles/2010/05/the-rockwrite-word.html Christgau mentions it here. You can also find Christgau critically analyzing Wall Street Journal jazz, dance and more writer Terry Teachout in another post here.

I didn't get asked, either, and I've contributed to Perfect Sound Forever a few times. I think he thinks I'm angry with him about something, but I have no idea what.

have only started reading pt. ii, but the series so far is the same stuff again and again punctuated by that occasional really really good entry. would have liked to see xhuxk & unperson in there, too

ksh did they ask you

yeah, but i had to turn them down b/c i have a three-thousand word, animated gif-laced piece on The National i'm trying to finish up so i can offer it up to My Old Gorilla Vegan O_O

Klosterman's ten points is one of the best parts of this feature so far