Rolling Music Writers' Thread

The Austin-American Statesman has eliminated the music/arts writer position of Joe Gross who had been there full time for 18 plus years, and writing for them for nearly 20. Joe also wrote a 33 & 1/3 on Fugazi ‘s In on the Killtaker

I haven't had contact with Joe for 25 years, but he contributed to a couple of issues of a fanzine I put out in the '90s--hasn't he been with Rolling Stone, too?

yes.

have been more or less continuously burnt out since 2013 but lately it seems particularly bad (not helping: all the opportunities I've squandered that might have improved outcomes for me)

Sorry about that. It's rough out there

there just seems to be no winning. either you write a lukewarm-to-negative review and are yelled at for years (I'm still hearing from j*hn m*yer fans) from stans, or you write a positive review and are yelled at because you couldn't force yourself to dislike an album by an artist the internet has deemed a "plant" (a label that seems to be applied incredibly selectively, out of the pool of people it could be applied to). and that too has no statute of limitations

(or you don't write a review and then are yelled at because you aren't approaching it the right way and aren't "grounded in music," as we have seen)

The internet is full of idiots who will yell at you regardless. The only person you need to please as a critic is yourself (and obviously your commissioning editor).

A shitty Britpop band started a hate thread about me on their official Twitter page last week in response to an NME review I wrote 21 years ago. The thread was full of people saying horrible, shitty things about me that bore no relationship to reality, and a few of these numbnuts started posting messages on my personal website. It was annoying, but it died out a couple of days later, and it doesn't matter. Don't let these assholes get you down, Katherine - you can't win with them, and they don't deserve your concern or attention. Just write the review that aligns closest with how you feel in that moment. That's all you can do. If they don't like it they can choke on it.

that's awful, I'm really sorry

(that said, in the latter case, it isn't coming from "idiots" but colleagues I respect. and yet I cannot force myself to dislike the artists in question or think their music is bad. shaming has not accomplished it.)

You shouldn't! And if those colleagues aren't idiots then they'll respect that you won't dislike those artists just because they won't. I know this sort of thing can be rough, especially as a freelancer. But in the end, the only thing you can do is be true to yourself and let the chips fall when they may. You have to believe other people will respect your fidelity to your own beliefs, and if they don't, well, you could never have won them over anyway.

The Shed Seven thing was more bizarrely amusing and a depressing index on how thick huge swathes of people can be, really. The thing that bummed me out was this insinuation that, even 21 years ago, I was some kind of cynical hack out to take bands down and be cruel, when actually I've spent most of my career championing lost causes and leftfield artists. (Also, the review they were pilloring me for was legit awful, so I didn't even want to defend myself). But at the end of the week I had a conversation with one of my favourite artists who told me that a question I'd asked him and his bandmate in an interview a year before had helped them confront issues in their relationship, and led to them making music together again. It's that sort of thing that really matters, not the yelling from people who don't like what you like.

https://www.startribune.com/city-pages-is-closing-ending-the-era-of-alternative-weeklies-in-twin-cities/572897771/

City Pages is being shut down in Minneapolis. Occasional ilxor Ke*th H*rris was an editor there. Bad decision, partially Covid driven.

this sucks all around but yeah keith is one of the best living music writers and it sucks to see him out of the job

sorry should've google-proofed

The biggest of bummers.

I don’t think anyone should publish a year-end list in 2020. The plague has completely fucked the musical ecosystem. Artists who can't tour are out the money they'd have spent publicizing their albums, which skews critics' attention even more heavily than usual toward the shit that bigger labels can afford to push their way. If you *must* run a list this year, run it like a mutual aid society. Draw attention to artists who really, really need the spotlight to shine on them for just a minute. Pop acts already have all the money and most of the attention; do they really deserve the critical love, too? In my heart of hearts I believe that if more than 25% of your year-end list is made up of major label releases, you're a lazy hack and should get out of the game, because you're not helping artists.

That doesn’t really work in the pop/r&b space, where majors sign cool/interesting/offbeat artists pretty quickly these days.

https://memecrunch.com/meme/C3S7I/guess-whos-back-back-again/image.jpg

"I’m not going to say we’re retarded, or slow, although both things have definitely been said about us and, sadly, more than once, but we just haven’t grown up much."

https://www.spin.com/2020/11/times-flies-when-youre-having-fun-spin-is-35/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/arts/music/minneapolis-city-pages-music.html

Keith H in NY Times on legacy of music critic writing in the now shut down City Pages in Minneapolis

Cool.

I write one album review a month for a publication that has to cover certain "big" albums, which means often I'm reviewing something to meet the publication's priorities. Which is fine! I fully understand how this all works, and I appreciate that they let me hang around.

But I'd like to find a place to review smaller, more underground / fringe stuff. I'd really love to avoid a super competitive pitch environment and just find a low-key / DIY-type spot that will let me do a review or two per month on stuff I'm interested in / excited about. (While I believe strongly that writers should get paid for their work and have been doing so for many years, I'm willing to do this for free for a place that's trying to cover cool stuff on a shoestring budget.)

Anyone write for (or know of) a place that sounds like it fits the bill?

Aquarium Drunkard?

I run Burning Ambulance and am very open to contributions. What have you got in mind? Email burning ambulance at gmail if you like...

Have written for Aqua Drunkard, which I love and am proud to have some bylines there and hope to have more. And thanks for the heads up, unperson. What you're doing is (and always has been) awesome. I may very well take you up on that.

I probably wasn't very clear. I'm not so much saying "Who's taking pitches" ... more like trying to get a sense for what other sites are out there that do something like this: http://post-trash.com/reviews

But not, like, Pitchfork and other big places that everyone is trying to crack.

Hit me up too if interested.

You mean for Humanizing the Vacuum, or something else? (Sorry, I don't keep up with the Web these days.)

RIP Ed Ward---good interview from the Fresh Air archives, replayed this week: can read, stream, download (incl.one of his early faves, by the "5" Royales)https://www.npr.org/2021/05/06/994267788/fresh-air-remembers-rock-historian-ed-ward
He was our rock historian from 1987 until 2017, sharing music he loved. Asked if he listens to much recent music, he replies,Oh, I listen mostly to contemporary rock music. It's only when I have to do these shows that I pull out...

GROSS: (Laughter) We make you go back to those old records.

WARD: I pull out the old records and go, geez. This happens to other people too,

Oh, somebody just sent me this:
John Wojtowicz

hey there

There's a discussion about the recently deceased Ed Ward, along with links to obit here:

https://www.metafilter.com/191367/This-year-I-have-made-just-over-1000-from-writing

So now here's my question, which is an issue taken up in the discussion:

In this article:

https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/music/2021-05-05/the-table-ed-ward-built

There's this passage:

I asked whether the first volume of his remarkable rock history – which reported events sequentially, annually, starting with the advent of the phonograph and popular music, rather than a series of profiles of the major artists – had sold.
“No, it was sabotaged,” he reported from across the table. “Fresh Air refused to have me on after 30 years of talking about this particular subject on the air for very little money for them. It killed the book and killed my career. No idea if this is true or how true except lack of their coverage no doubt didn't help the book. But: there are a lot of rock music histories, and 30 years of using his stuff, even for very little money (it being NPR), seems like it would have helped some re exposure, during the decades in which his byline was no longer often spotted(but as noted in the Mike Bloomfield thread, his already-good bio of MB was refreshed w updates by ilxor eddhurt a few years ago).

Obit in the NY Times today:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/business/media/ed-ward-dead.html?action=click&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage

Anybody watch some of those panels associated with the writer Dave Marsh event Land of Hope and Dreams?

https://greilmarcus.net/2021/05/08/listening-past-the-myths-dave-marsh-panel/?fbclid=IwAR2nL5ynvKQh0NLuK6ghwfEPACZuS2GdKi_EdAwuxPj-G2jCtpgf6B-UiF4

Greil Marcus joined Robert Christgau, Greg Tate, Ann Powers (w/ moderator Lauren Onkey) to discuss Dave Marsh and his work, one of many panels in the Land of Hope and Dreams event taking place throughout the month of May (still ongoing, more details here)

The funniest part for me was some of the captioning. E.g., "See if we can get Greil and Greg back on" =

https://phildellio.tripod.com/zoom.jpg

Uh oh . Ha

After this week, Goings on About Town will shrink from six pages to two and be written entirely by staff.

— Michaelangelo Matos (@matoswk75) July 22, 2023

New Yorker magazine cut coverage of music and arts events and drops freelancers

The New Yorker thread on ILE has covered this

Ugh

Terrible. Current print issue is down to 1 page with just 1 pop music event .

👎🏾

Who's out there paying well right now, and also reasonably attainable for a non-"name" writer?

I'm not talking about The New Yorker or wherever won't return my emails.

I'm looking for the hidden gems that are either paying more than they should and don't know it, or maybe they just value writing but aren't super big/competitive for some reason.

I know y'all will want to keep them to yourself - I get it - but man, I'm looking at some bills I can't pay. Trying to scrape every barrel I can.

Bandcamp's always done right by me.

"I'm looking at some bills I can't pay."

That was always my music journalism experience.

Thumbs up to Bandcamp here, too. Looking for more of those, tbh. :)

I totally realize I might be grasping at ghosts here ... I just think there historically have been outlets that aren't P4k, S'gum, RS, SPIN, etc., that run music stuff and pay pretty well, but not too many people know about them.

Like, does The Creative Independent pay / pay well? SHFL? How about, like, the Grammy site or the Discogs blog or some other retailer that isn't an actual journalism operation and therefore has a damn budget? I'm trying to pitch more target-edly and also not waste my time with places that never reply.

Shfl is chugging along well but Caleb did have to set a specific budget plan for it to make sure it remains viable. (He funds it all himself.)

again, i get that this is akin to giving up the sweet fishing spot. i get it.

Thx Ned. Hope it continues to chug!

I’m gonna think about this, AP! But the field isn’t what it used to be.

I haven’t worked there for a while and some of the work is less word based than data based, but Third Bridge Creative paid really well. You might reach out and see if they’re looking for folks.

Yeah, a lot of my spots dried up completely during the pandemic. They didn't pay great anyway, but still.

Thanks for the idea, Raymond!

yes but who is looking for a forgotten 80s dollar bin album column and will pay $$$. weed gummies don't grow on trees! $150 a column should cover it.

$150 a per is what I was getting for each Village Voice noise blog column!

Man, those were the days