Rolling Music Writers' Thread

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

Klosterman's #1 took the words right out of my mouth as I went through this. The most common thing I disagree with among these is the idea that you need to be obsessed with something to be good at it. What nonsense!

you need to be obsessed with something to be good at it

I actually wanted to ask everyone here what they thought about the idea of "obsession" that kept creeping up in a lot of people's comments in the first two parts of this series. I think it's a given that you should be pretty obsessed w/ music if you're going to be a music writer, but what is it that turns a music obsessive into a music critic?

You start writing sentences in your head and you can't wait to share your thoughts with people.

Or, in a more personal register, what made any of you who are music critics want to channel your obsession w/ music into criticism?

xpost

I've mostly skimmed this but I'm not reading "you have to be obsessed with music to write about it well" in it so much as "you have to be obsessive in order to try to make a living at it, especially now."

Okay, I'll ask the question (for Pete and others): Can you name some examples of people who are not obsessed with music, yet write well about it? (I might have a couple in mind -- people who, say, know how to work writing about music into the course of writing about other stuff -- though I'm not sure they're music critics, per se'. And of course, being obsessed with music doesn't preclude obsession with other things as well.) In general, though, I'd say being obsessed helps a lot; it's hard to write with a strong voice about something you don't care about. Curious why Pete would think that's such a crazy idea.

And maybe that goes along with what Matos just wrote: I can name individual, isolated pieces about music that I love, written by people who only have a casual relationship to music. But it's hard to think of people who have made a career out of it, and who consistently made me care about their writing, who didn't seem like they had to be writing about music, and would be doing it even if nobody paid them.

Some of my favorite music writers are friends who, while they don't see themselves self-consciously *as* music writers, nevertheless write very well and perceptively -- they turn their own appreciation of music and its impact into something that is meant for private communication and discussion rather than the public sphere (none of them are employed as writers in any capacity). This said, I'd guess this doesn't reflect a difference in music obsession so much as it does a difference in how to channel it.

"but what is it that turns a music obsessive into a music critic?"

chuck made me do it.

re :interviews...surely in the blogging age, the hard and fast rules don't apply anymore ?

I like the idea of a conversation between equals rather than a third person distancing of the writer and the pedestaling of the subject ?

or is that part of maintaining the mystique, the symbiotic relationship between music makers and music press, the smoke and mirrors of trad writing/hype ?

chuck made me do it.

Too true.

re :interviews...surely in the blogging age, the hard and fast rules don't apply anymore ?

I like the idea of a conversation between equals rather than a third person distancing of the writer and the pedestaling of the subject ?

or is that part of maintaining the mystique, the symbiotic relationship between music makers and music press, the smoke and mirrors of trad writing/hype ?

Fuck the "mystique" of an artist... they're just a person who makes music, good or bad. I never try to put the artists I interview on a pedestal. I will admit some don't like that — some want to be thought of as cooler, more interesting, more mysterious than you — but I don't care.

xpost: I meant you don't have to be obsessed with writing, or writing about music, to be good at it or enjoy it. I interviewed Christopher Hitchens 18-odd years ago, and he said something to the effect that you should write because you have to, not because you want to. I never felt that way.

Or maybe I just write enough that I never go through withdrawal.

Guess I'm not really grasping Hitchins's point there; seems ambiguous to me -- by "because you have to" does he mean "to pay the bills" or "because you're compulsive about getting your thoughts out there"?