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

I'm pretty sure I did the worst piece of music writing at some point in my life.

I'm sorry about that.

When he finally gets to describing the actual performance, it's a lot better: his imagery is tied to some sense of impressions of particular sounds and how they were generated. If he'd concentrated on the sense of his KV quote, rather than just slapping it up there, could've been really powerful: here is this outer awkardness, this crap sound system, ths bit with changing guitars, maybe stage fright of people who in any case are no longer used to the vagaries of live performance if they ever were--but here comes this MBV reach for transcendence, this stubborn audacity. Anyway, some of that did come across. I'd say start with some backstory, telling the noobs why and how the band mattered in the first place, without boring or pandering to the old fans, the kind of balancing act you gotta/should do do with this stuff. (Some of this may also be the anxiety of writing long by today's usual standards.) And yeah lose that ending.

I just went and downloaded the Holopaw promo and discovered, yes, the ID3 tages were correct, so this writer probably sorted them fucked up in their own iTunes

A friend who works on an online title said she was horrified that one of her fellow editors thought that writers filing long (because no word count) were going the extra mile and giving them value for money, when in fact it can take longer to edit a piece than it can to write the first draft - cutting extraneous words is how you go the extra mile. The freedom of online may be better than stubby little 80-word magazine reviews but it needs to be tempered by some kind of awareness of the appropriate length. Pitchfork, for example, is much better now at not letting writers ramble on ad nauseam. Even the tiniest limit on this review's word count would have meant removing the worst bits and tightening the best sections and if editors won't impose those limits it falls to the writer to exercise a bit of self-censorship, otherwise a potentially excellent review can become a florid mess.

The Quietus - which is generally a useful site - does seem to be a little light in its editing. Even the good pieces feel like drafts.

I enjoy reading The Quietus a lot

me too, but it does have the occasional wtf piece on there, and is no worse for that.

cutting extraneous words is how you go the extra mile Exactly. A lot of the overdone opening, in my experience, is revving up the engines, and sometimes the self-confidence/motivation/will to write. Once I get the whole thing "done", can see it, often happily, as a first draft (not that I always cut enough, or well enough).

The thing that causes me most shame - and that is the correct word I'm using - about the Quietus is the standard of editing. There is no subbing because there are no subs or production people because we don't charge a cover fee like, for example, the old Melody Maker or the Guardian. I work 6am to 1 or 2am at the moment to do the second job that allows me to do the Quietus. World's smallest violin right?

We'd need to be twice the size we are to afford a production editor and even then I wouldn't hire one, the money would go on making sure all the writers got paid, rather than just some. This is simply what it's like now and will remain like for the foreseeable future. We'd need an audience of tens of millions per month to be able to afford one sub editor part time. And this is not going to happen given the lack of click throughs, listicles, lowest common denominator features, features on MUSE and Mumfords etc.

So if anyone wants to lend their skills to a "useful" site and do us a few hours of subbing gratis we'd love to hear from you. It's a problem that I'd really like to get on top of. John at the quietus dot com.

I'm not going to say anything about Calvert other than I love his writing. For all it's madness and gauche purpleness etc. he nails MBV for me. I first went to see them when I was 16 when Isn't Anything were out. This is exactly how I felt about them.

I totally get why people hate him though... it's not like there aren't plenty of other dry pieces to read on the site.

thanks for the thoughtful response D. As I said, I never mind the occasional o_0 post on The Quietus, it's part of the fun, and you have so many great writers there's always something worth checking out IMO. Keep on keepin' on!

To be fair to Calvert, he's got a regular slot reviewing live shows for tQ. I wouldn't like to imagine trying to write an original, interesting medium/long-form live review once every couple of weeks - think I'd go a bit mad.

XP: We want him to write shorter pieces on the whole. And this is my favourite one of his. If we saw it as a "failure" we'd discontinue the series. And a lot of people read him.

Seriously, we totally expect to get the grief over Calvert! We'd be idiots if we didn't! I'm not bothered about it but the editing thing ruins the little sleep I have. Also, the way I see it is everything is pretty much in balance. So at the other end of the scale from Calvert we've got Matthew Lindsay who is such a forensically brilliant journalist.

I don't know if you saw his pieces on Nico: The Marble Index Trilogy Kate Bush: The Dreaming and David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust. I'd stand these pieces against anything published in MOJO, UNCUT etc. In fact I'd say they're a lot better.

Secular Divinity would be a great name for a terrible band/album.

(re reviewing live gigs so often)True, and it would be hard to deal w finding yourself finding patterns, however useful to yourself and readers; plua a lot of live bands present songs in very predictable arcs. Good to see that the New Yorker's Anthony Lane has found fresh ways to entertain/console himself and his audience, even/especially while slogging through blockbuster movies.

And, before heading out the door, I meant to just glance over Linday's Marble Index Trilogy piece, but got hooked. Wow! Would like him to indicate sources for some biographical stuff (the Nico Icon documentary, perhaps?); also, the pre-VU Jimmy Page-produced single, "I'm Not Saying/The Last Mile" and Chelsea Girls are already Nico as hell--she always needed a producer, but even pre-"trilogy", she came across pretty strongly (would also have liked to see him talk about her performances on VU albums, since it's long anyway). But she really, really comes across vividly in this, and he's got details that even old Nico junkie me never saw before. Thanks!

Thanks Dow. I'll ask Matt about his sources. He's working on a Kraftwerk related piece for us at the moment.

No prob; I guess some of his references might be from Cale's What's Weish For Zen, which I'm finally about to read, rather than skim; also of course he mentions Young's memoir. Looking fwd to the Kraftwerk-related!

I'm late to this but Zadie Smith's Joni piece is one of the most incoherent pieces I've ever read in the New Yorker and it tells you nothing at all about why she came around to Joni's music (or specifically Blue - she seems to have written the whole piece without venturing any further). When she began a long aside about Kierkegaard that took up most of the penultimate page I gave up on expecting anything useful from this piece. Is it about Joni Mitchell? Or her childhood? Or race? Or how to deal with overwhelming cultural choice? Or insecurity about artforms you don't fully grasp? Or why you change your mind about certain art? It's all of these things and yet none of them. I can't imagine a less famous writer getting something so garbled past an editor.

haven't read it but i'm pretty sure the piece is about Zadie Smith.

Yeah I think we talked about it extensively in either a Joni thread or the NYer thread or a Zadie thread, don't remember. It was very childishly narcissistc, like "I used to not like pizza, but then, one time, I went to my friend's birthday party, and there were like 8 different kinds of pizza..."

or like "it bums me out that my friends know more about pizza than i do. I guess it's because I spend all my time knowing everything about french cuisine"

So why do you think you like pizza so much now? Is it the cheese? The crust? The toppings. "Uh… oh… I… Kierkegaard?"

BAN NOVELISTS FROM MUSIC WRITING

I've been so bitter about this lately I think there's maybe only about ten people who shouldn't be banned from music writing.

I think a great side-effect of the internet is that it has devalued merely having an opinion about an artist or piece of music as being worthy of extended writing.

Like it already used to be boring enough when the NYTimes or NPR would ask a bunch of random people of note what their ten dessert island discs were and why, and they'd fumble through their thin musical vocabularies for an explanation, as though just being who they were and liking something mattered. That might have been tolerable when I didn't have a million better pieces of music writing at my fingertips, not to mention spotify.

*desert island

JUST TELL ME WHERE TO FIND THIS DESSERT ISLAND DAMMIT

easier ways to get music recommendations

i know right if I were on dessert island I wouldn't need music cuz I'd be too busy eating DESSERTS

"#10: Chocolate Lava Cake. This just has this really great, like, chocolatey flowy-ness."

whipped cream and other delights mirit

I like how Zadie keeps saying "open tuning" because she heard that's what Joni did and it sounds technical.

Piece doesn't know whether it wants to be Hornby or Morley. Doesn't tell me anything about the music because there's obviously no technical knowhow.

I can't imagine a less famous writer getting a better piece past the editor of the New Yorker, unfortunately. I wonder whether I should tell them about Then Play Long, or whether they'd just go ho-ho-ho like Santa on the cover if I bothered.

Well it's bloody hard for anyone to get anything into the New Yorker, but they do publish good music articles by people less famous than Zadie Smith. James Wood's Keith Moon piece was fantastic - knowledgable, passionate, funny and illuminating.

Harder now that Anna Wintour's going to be running the New Yorker, as I understand it.

started reading the zadie smith piece and ended up bailing after this line:

In the passenger seat of a car, on the way to a wedding, I no longer had the excuse of youth: I was now the same age as Christ when he died.

pretty sure she's confused as to what a bat mitzvah is there

A good unit of time. "It's been two christlives since they've won the Super Bowl"

for years (and still kinda) i would measure long events in "Seven Samurais". As in, "that line was half a seven samurai wait".

I am one and quarter Jesuses old :(

(Jesii?)

Noun
Jesuses pl
Plural form of Jesus.  
Usage notes
Care should be taken to establish context when using this term as some Christians find the notion of more than one Jesus to be blasphemous.

Jesuses just alright with me

Plus, if you go to only Catholic Christian Churches then they believe in the doctrine of Transubstantiation, whereby the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus. So far, taking Jesus to be the size of an average Nazarene man, I have eaten nine whole Jesuses plus one of Jesus legs. This is more whole Jesuses than anyone has ever eaten. Neil Petark says he has eaten 12 Jesuses, but he includes bread and wine consumed at Protestant Churches, and Protestants do not believe in Transubstantiation so he is wrong and I am still the Jesus eating King. Neil Petark has really only eaten 4 Jesuses which is rubbish.

started reading the zadie smith piece and ended up bailing after this line:

In the passenger seat of a car, on the way to a wedding, I no longer had the excuse of youth: I was now the same age as Christ when he died.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, March 14, 2013 7:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Christ was already "done with early Joni" by the time he was 25 and would only listen to Hejira and maybe Hissing of Summer Lawns if he "was in a poppy mood"

xp

lol i have that book

what book is that?

Fist of fun I'd guess

just googled it up and the whole pdf is online! great stuff. the section on challops seems particularly prescient.

link?