Rolling Music Writers' Thread

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.

Well, I'm sorry to hear that about you because I definitely think about things very differently than I did 15 years ago!

No, I mean, sure, I get that. I just meant that clearly me writing this review has followed this person for 15 years. But my review and this band specifically had no bearing on my subsequent 15 years.

like, I've had plenty of experiences in the last 15 years, but they have nothing to do with this person. This person has had plenty of experiences in 15 years, but the fact that they reached out to me shows that what I wrote apparently played at least some minimal part of those 15 years.

Yeah, I think it could actually be interesting to go back and look at a review I wrote 15 years ago. It would be extremely likely that I hadn't had a single thought about the record since filing copy, but if it was a for-real review, not just like a 150-word blurb for Alternative Press or something, it might be interesting to look at it with the artist, listen to the record in question again, and maybe find myself thinking "OK, I hear stuff now that I didn't hear then" and get the chance to ask the artist what they were actually thinking at the time they made the record, and how it sounds to them now. If all they want to do is bitch that you used an adjective they disliked back then, fuck 'em, but a conversation about how your opinion of their art all these years later compares to their opinion of it now could be interesting. Hell, that's the kind of thing I could get a whole newsletter out of. Assuming, of course, that the record was in some way interesting and wasn't just by-the-numbers alt-rock dross.

it sounds like he just wants to lecture you or something… delete

I don't know, I've definitely had conversations with people about old opinions. All you're really doing in these situations is giving that person some clarity about the headspace of where it came from.

Honestly pulling a Don Draper and being like "I don't think about you at all" about some '00s struggle band is a lot weirder to me than just answering a few DMs about what your mindset was at the time and what you would or wouldn't have done differently

Would you be reacting differently if an apparently neutral party, like a journalist, wanted to contact you about this same review for something they were writing?

Also like the "why? why do they care now?" is like ... a lot of musicians pour all of themselves into their art at the moment in life where they can afford to do that! There was a time where this person had all of his or her hopes and dreams on this CD. I imagine they've moved on from the dream but still could wonder why you did or didn't hear what they were hearing... Seems valid!

Yeah i suppose i was thinking from a fan’s perspective there

but I legit don't know! it's been 15 years. maybe I had a bad morning. maybe there was something in the news. maybe I just didn't like the record. (I did listen to it this morning, and my reaction was generally the same.) I really don't know.

if it was a journalist, I'm not sure what I would think. regardless, the guy is writing a book, so it is tantamount to journalism. someone I know suggested I request it be off the record, at least at first, until I get a better feel for what's up.

I don't think this person's inquiry is at all not valid. I totally get it. I'm just weighing whether or not I want to participate. the legitimacy of the request is why I'm considering it at all.

Maybe this is a good hypothetical. if any of you wrote a review that caused a band to break up 15 years ago - not saying that is the case, but let's pretend it is - would you want to talk to someone from that band who asked you, however politely, 15 later, to explain yourself?

I mean, for me, absolutely, if only to let them know it wasn't meant in maliciousness and to give a person some clarity about why I felt a certain way.