Rolling Music Writers' Thread

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

A 150 column when I payed 450 for rent would have been great

i used to get a dollar a word from the village voice! that really helped me. its also the reason why for a brief moment in time i thought maybe i could really do it for real. as a job. but i couldn't. i was no good at hustling. and i was a diva. i had been spoiled by an eddytor who didn't edit me much at all. then some twerp at magnet wants me to rewrite a two hundred word review five times to make $10? i was happier at the corner store slangin' malt liquor and merit ultra lights.

Here's one to suss out. I got a message from someone that used to be in a band that I reviewed many, many, *many* years ago. So long ago that I don't remember the review or band. The review is not as negative as the person makes it out to be, imo, but it's not exactly positive, either, and I can see why they'd consider it negative all the same. Anyway, they want to talk to me about the record, what might have set me off, etc. I'm a little torn. They seem nice and promise it's not some sneak attack thing, but at the same time I'm thinking, 1) what can I possibly offer after so many years? and 2) why? why do they care now? isn't it alarming that something I wrote (and promptly forgot about) so long ago has stuck with them? Anyway, not sure what I should tell them. I'm a nice enough person, too, and like to talk, but I'm not sure what's ultimately in it for me besides a conversation with a stranger.

Someone needs to find stuff for Mick Jagger to do with his time.

Ha. I'd tell Mick to kick rocks.

I do know writers that have been contacted by high profile musicians, directors, etc. This person that contacted me is not that.

Yeah, that's weird. Not necessarily bad weird, but weird. This person should 100% move on, and unless they'd somehow become my friend in the years since the review, I'd ignore them.

They aren't even in the band anymore?? Or the band doesn't exist anymore?

In another era, you might have been hounded by Harry Truman.

https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/trivia/letter-truman-defends-daughter-singing

xpost Band hasn't existed for close to 15 years. I think they are working on a book. Maybe My review broke up the band? I would feel terrible if that were the case.

They were pointed in my direction by a mutual friend, by the way, if that changes anything.

What exactly did they say in the message?

Anyway, they want to talk to me about the record, what might have set me off, etc.

I'm puzzled as to what they think they might learn that isn't already in the review.

xpost I don't want to doxx the person, but more or less how I put it. A nice note saying they're working on a memoir or some project about their time in this band, and that they've always wondered what the person that wrote this negative review many years ago was thinking at the time. Basically, "what was it about our music that rubbed you the wrong way?" They stress they are not picking a fight or anything, they just think it would lead to an interesting conversation.

So yeah, I'm a little puzzled, too. I have a draft response that says/asks as much, like, what do you expect to learn from me? Even if whatever was driving the review is not in the review, it's not like I remember anything about it (album or writing the review) at all.

Huh. Working on a book seems like a feasible reason for reaching out that I hadn't considered.

Still ... not your problem. And if that's the case, they should say so and what they're hoping to do / get out of it.

xpost that's the thing ... if i were in the same situation and some band wrote me about a review i wrote 10 years ago and wanted to know what i was thinking and all that, i'd have to be like "i was thinking 'goddammit it's 11:30 pm and i haven't started the review i have to write about music i don't care about by a band i know nothing about that was due earlier today and i really want to have it in the editor's inbox when they open their email in the morning so i guess i'm cranking out another one of these from midnight to 3 a.m. in return for a $25 check. at least i have established a little formula i can use to make it easier/quicker, get this done and get 4 hours of sleep before my kid wakes up.'"

obviously not all are that way, but a lot are.

Reading my old review, clearly I put some thought into it, at least a little. But then after that, no thought. Into the ether it went. I don't feel particularly good about playing a part, any part, in someone else's story, and I feel particularly weird that this thing I did then promptly moved on from has stuck with someone else for so long. But I also feel bad leaving this person hanging. Like I said, they seem nice enough.

Chasing someone up about a bad review they gave your band years ago is ludicrous behaviour and should not be dignified with a response, imo. You make a record, chuck it out into the world and some people like it, some don't. Best to accept the opinions, whatever they are!

I think it's nice to have a convo about something like this if theres like 15 years of experience behind it

For them there clearly has been, but for me there's been nothing but the passage of time.