OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

also thought the article maura linked to about gawker and linkbait was good.

OK, just clicked through to the observer article she linked, thanks.

i would buy a maura novel

I am no longer writing about music. I am sure that has a lot to do with things changing.

Maura, let me know when you want to interview me for the profound impact my absence has caused.

too soon. We will all need the perspective that only comes with time.

I do wonder if music criticism matters anymore though, and no, I am not trolling.

Technology has kept making it easier for music consumers to check out things before then purchase them without the filter of an expert endorsement. Radio meant you could hear the single though a lot of fringe music and even album cuts from mainstream fare would escape those not fortunate enough to be in close proximity to a college station.

The advance of cable television and the music video still pretty much limited things to the single and with a few exceptions, it was even more difficult for listeners to get a feel for the non-mainstream material and/or genres.

Record labels tried everything they could to get consumers to hear shit - flexidiscs are a perfect example of this mentality. It was easy to get free cassettes at record stores, free CD samplers, and many music publications would make money not by writing about music, but offering free actual music that their readers could listen to.

But now, a listener can stream an entire album - often legally, though it's not difficult to do so illegally - sometimes right after it comes out, sometimes even before. Entire genres of music and subgenres that would never get radio or video play are at the fingertips of anyone who wants to check it out.

In 1971, I would not be able to find out about Sir Lord Baltimore unless the band happened to open up for someone bigger whom I knew (say, Black Sabbath) or I read what Lester Bangs had to say. People read bylines because once you found a writer who you trusted, you would be more likely to use that writer to help you make your purchases.

In modern times, I don't need to look for Phil Freeman's byline. I just need to find the album myself and listen to it. A "responsible" music buyer would purchase things that they liked; someone else might keep the MP3s on their computer or maybe burn a CD.

When it comes to criticism, people still do rely on it when it comes to things that they cannot experience themselves. It's why people still flock to see reviews of a new iPhone if they are not an early adopter who will have it already. Even movie reviews are still relevant since it's a lot more difficult to check out, say, The Hobbit (and you certainly won't in real IMAX quality) then it is the new Witchcraft CD.

Now, I am a Luddite. I still buy CDs and even though I can check things out for free online to decide what I want to buy, I prefer to read the opinions of people in magazines and on this message board - but also in my Facebook feed - and will make purchases based on that even without hearing the music, or very much of it. But I don't count. I'm an old guy who is stuck in his ways. Hell, when a publicist sends me an album download, I will listen to it but either delete it or buy a physical CD (or in rare cases, an LP) because that's what makes sense to me. I have an iPod (that I inherited when my wife upgraded hers) but when I take a road trip, I am more likely to grab some CDs for the car than load up my iPod, even though the sound quality is identical and it's a lot more convenient.

But I am a dinosaur. My way is silly (by my own logic!) and few people even my own age still act like I do, let alone younger people who might have thousands of songs at their on-demand disposal but who don't own a single piece of plastic or winyl or magnetic take with even a second of it imprinted upon it.

It's a sobering thought, but I felt this way towards the end of my writing "career" - why does anyone need to trust me when they can trust their own ears? Why does anyone need to trust any of you?

i started writing something LONG. who knows when i'll finish. probably just throw it on the blog eventually. i have no desire to write for music mags or wherever. i really do have a pretty bad attitude about most music writing right now. and music magazines. and websites. and blogs. and everything. it'll pass.

"I do wonder if music criticism matters anymore though, and no, I am not trolling."

i don't think it does. good writing matters. good writers. i just don't think the majority of people writing about music online or in mags have a great burning desire to write about music! and it shows. its something to do until they can do something else. and that was kinda the case forever, but it just seems increasingly space-filling stuff. could be anything. pictures of kitties. whatever.

but see it's not like ppl really ARE foraging around and listening to everything and letting their ears decide. They're still relying on filters and convenient shorthand approaches and traveling memes.

Also, when I find some quality television program, I like reading reviews online even though I had already consumed the show myself. I equate this to how I will read the recaps of sporting events that I attended or watched. And now that I think about it, I will sometimes listen to some music and then go about looking for reviews.

I do this because I want to see if I missed anything, or to see a new perspective on the art that maybe I missed because of my own biases or vantage point.

Still, I wonder how many people are like me. And this doesn't involve buying something to read the criticism, like a magazine or whatever. If I had to directly pay for it, I probably don't do this. And the indirect ways I pay for it, with advertising I see or click or that pops up or makes me watch before I can get to the content I want to see or through page views that might make someone a tenth of a cent, aren't a huge concern to me.

xpost true that, scott, much more of what's out there is blatantly just filling up space. It makes sense. No one in spending money to print it on paper, and barely spending any money on the writers, so why get uptight and editorial about the pieces you run? I miss editors. Mean, uptight editors.

NYCN, this is true of lots and lots of us. Our synapses were molded by the way information flowed in print. We'll always digest the net this way.

tbh I think the biggest "development" in "music writing" this year, if we are restricting it to this year as in 2012 (and maybe parts of 2011), is the rise of these text articles with a youtube embed or full-size photo or gif or whatever between every paragraph. I mean I don't even dislike these on principle! they can actually work, maybe if there's some sort of wry humor being pulled off, caption writers with pulses, you know. or it wouldn't be the BIGGEST objection if the piece is supposed to be a listicle in the first place, but more often you tend to see articles that would be ~*longform*~ but whose 15 embedded speed bumps don't lend themselves well to close reading, or to bothering to sustain an argument. (if the writer originally wrote it text-only and then had a bunch of stuff embedded, most freelance commissions etc, it's not to bad, but people are starting to write for this format.)

like, in print design you sometimes hear about the dollar-bill rule, or that if you can put a dollar bill down on the page and hit only text, you need more art. (obviously this is more toward the USA Today end of the spectrum.) this is like that jim cramer.

(plus these things always crash my browser. and it is 2012!)

(and I should clarify this is not a shot at any outlet in particular, nor is it about embeds in general but then I feel like everyone pretty much knows what I'm talking about.)

can I go back to Perpetua's tumblr post for a second and ask if he is honestly arguing that the job of a music critic is to curate other people's opinions?

curated, small batch

katherine otm, the tendency toward constant visuals/streaming media in the middle of articles instead of just at the top or even every few articles is i guess inevitable but unfortunate

dan, the argument seems to be that being a music writer is doing whatever someone will pay you do to -- regardless of how little it has to do with anything 99 percent of humanity would define as "writing," "effort," "insight," "journalism," "originality," or "criticism" -- before that publication either goes under or decides to change its approach based on whatever new plan is apparently going to squeeze a few more advertising bucks out of whatever suckers are left advertising in music publications.

and then ideally you roll with that. and the next one. and the next one.

le guin novel that originally came with a tape of original new age folk in a made-up language is really good though if you ever see it.

― scott seward, Thursday, December 27, 2012 3:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whoa what

i love how so many musicians on my facebook preface a link with: I USUALLY HATE ALL MUSIC REVIEWS BUT...

and then they link to something where they, themselves, are mentioned.

and then the first comment will be: THAT WAS SURPRISINGLY NOT HORRIBLE.

granted this is just a small sampling but it seems like there is a lot of animosity out there. and maybe my facebook is skewed toward old cranks and noise musicians but there is little love for the online rockcrit standard - sooooo much pitchfork hate - and even lots of hate for stuff like the wire. maybe people always hated the wire, i have no idea. and most of the links - like i mentioned earlier - are of the GET A LOAD OF THIS MORON - variety. not a lot of love in the room. so maybe perpetua does find insightful tumblr stuff every day, but the average person doesn't seem filled with wonder at the state of discourse. (again, my small crowd and the people they know, etc, not a proper cross-section. maybe its different elsewhere.)

there is a lot of nerd rage out there against critics in general, across all forms of media. Genre movie nerds DESPISE film critics with a knee-jerk venom that gets really depressing to me.

i do get some of that too, scott. and yeah, mostly from folks who own shops or are in bands or etc. otherwise my feed seems evenly split between people who couldn't care less about any of this shit, and rock critics discussing some twitter feud or dumb article or some other thing where they might as well be speaking esperanto.

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/pop_singer_samantha_fox_reviews_the_fall_1986

"whoa what"

original edition of Always Coming Home came with a tape of folk music and poetry. (sadly, though i love le guin, that book a little too new age-y earth mother-y for me. i don't think i ever even read the whole thing. cool concept though. lots of illustrations too of tribal stuff/customs/etc.)

see, i love sam fox reviews! would read all day. and she's right too.

i'll be honest, i much prefer to read musicians talking about music than any rockcrit these days. i always kinda want to subscribe to the wire JUST for their jukebox feature. its my favorite part of decibel too when they get a band to listen to songs blind. i love mojo's stuff like that. i love Q&A's with musicians. long interviews about music. that is the stuff for me. i almost always learn more. they're more illuminating even when filled with the usual prejudices and blindspots. there will always be music writers i like, but watching artists interact with art (same goes with filmmakers on film, writers on writing) is my preferred brand of criticism.

totally agree. Quietus should do an antho of their pick 13 pieces, love that shit so much.

Artists on other artists are totally untrustworthy in a certain sense but that's part of why it's so rewarding to read.

I mean it's not true of all artists, for instance Brahms was able to look at just about all music around and preceding him with great insight, but Debussy, if you read all his writings on music you'd think no one worthwhile had ever composed except for a scant few oddball choices.

and i love that.

dusted site does that listed thing. those are really good. haven't looked at that site in forever. should check out new ones.

for some reason i ended up with all these back issues of Performing Songwriter magazine and i was just gonna throw them into the store but i ended up keeping them in the back to read. they're great! long q&a's with people you never see interviewed. i mean, a lot of them are people i don't even listen to, but i love reading them anyway. even their record reviews are pretty good. i mean they'll interview j.d. souther and mavis staples and darryl hall and chrissie hynde and tony visconti in the same issue. love it.

The "MUSIC WRITING SUX FUK PITCHFORK" etc. attitude seems to come mostly from non-pro musicians. It's a perennial complaint, the people who're most excited about a blerb are the squeakiest wheels about how this or that Institution is ruining everything.

BUT this isn't meant to be a dis toward so-called "amateurs"-- I have the opposite opinion and think amateur musicians have made good decisions in life--

If you are to consider that maybe this animosity toward Music Writing is coming from people who just aren't covered by anybody (or covered very effectively), might it not suggest a paucity in local coverage?

I mean it makes me sad whenever WGW is like "you don't know how many fucking promo copies are on my desk right now" bc my favourite columns this year were those "Yes in my backyard" things

scott, think I agree w/you regarding most music writers doing that until something better comes along. I think even *I* did this, but the better thing to come along was me growing up and realizing I just wanted to make music and not write.

However, imo that's not the main reason why music criticism might not "matter". To me, it's because people who read about music aren't looking for a discourse on anything, they're either using reviews as filters to find new music, or they just want to know what's cool in general, to fill some inner quota of current events (ha, in much the same way I read CNN). Also, I notice a lot of writers who seem to write because they want *their* voice out there as a content generator, rather than because they feel any great desire to service a community w/info or analysis. And really, that's not news. People are people, they do things out of self-interest.

Music criticism (or any criticism of the arts) is by my guess pretty low on the totem poll of journalistic career ambition, lower still for literary career ambition. It's often a gateway for writers, much as their reviews are gateways for readers. I don't mean to suggest that all the writing is bad or unimportant, but sheesh, it seems a lot of it is unnecessary beyond the "here is an item you should be interested in" way, even to the people writing/reading it.

i feel like the best mindset for musicians is "do what you're passionate about, try to find and audience but don't get angry or lose motivation when the one you find isn't especially large or lucrative" and critics could probably do well with that as a motto too

Pipe dreams imo

some dude OTM here I think. The problem isn's that criticism doesn't matter, it's its that a larger and larger group of people don't find it matters to them. Meh. If writing about music is something you want to do, is the art you want to make, then make it, let it matter to those it matters to (even if that might be a small group of fellow music writers.)

editors, plz give Samantha Fox a regular column.

she used to have a whole page

give her a magazine then

maybe i'm just getting further inside the bubble but it kinda feels to me like there's a lot of good energy in the music writing world at the moment? obviously as a profession and as a medium there are some unfortunate economic and cultural trends afoot, but in terms of people getting riled up about what they're listening to and what other people are writing, and the amount of interaction on twitter/tumblr/etc. that is actually substantial conversation or argument and not just shallow networking.

Yeah, obviously The Collapse of the Monoculture as well as the entities that used to allow writers to eke a decent living has had consequences, but the climate feels simultaneously more AND less insular. Thanks to the interwebs, we can comment on each other's FB, Twitter, Tumblr; conversations take place which couldn't fifteen years ago. On the other hand I'm more aware than ever at how small the rockcrit/music writing community is. It was small in 1995 and 1983 too but now that we're forced to engage in what is essentially niche marketing the chances of any supra-cultural impact are slim.

A Day Without Rain [Reprise, 2001]
Pondering the fate of post-September 11 pop, everyone predicted what they already wished for--Slipknot undone, Britney in hiding. What happened instead was the unthinkable--sales of Enya's first album since 1995 spiked 10 months after release. (And she thought that movie where Charlize Theron fucked Keanu Reeves and died of cancer was a promotional coup!) Two years in the making with the artiste playing every synthesizer, the 11 songs here last a resounding 34 minutes and represent a significant downsizing of her New Age exoticism since 1988's breakthrough, Watermark--it's goopier, more simplistic. Yanni is Tchaikovsky by comparison, Sarah McLachlan Ella Fitzgerald, treacle Smithfield ham. Right, whatever gets folks through the night. But Enya's the kind of artist who makes you think, if this piffle got them through it, how dark could their night have been? Like Master P or Michael Bolton only worse, she tests one's faith in democracy itself. D-

Assholy in the last two sentences, but no, it's not the worst music writing ever, esp. compared to many other specimens submitted.

Assholy vs her fans, that is

oh, c'mon, that's funny!

Zingers on target up the last couple couple sentences (a little too much stage blood there), and "treacle Smithfield ham" is a great punchline for the comparisons, maybe he shoulda quit there? Brevity is the soul of wit, but I guess he wanted to emphasize the fact that he was really really upset!!

So pretty funny after all--tell us how you really feel, 'gau.

how terrible that he wrote a bad review of an Enya record.