Rolling Music Writers' Thread

Since there's no longer (and hardly ever was) an I Love Writing board, and since there are a quite a few pro and amateur hacks here, I thought it might be worth starting a general purpose thread for the dark art.

I don't really consider myself a journo, having only had a couple of things published here and there (mostly for free might I add), but it would be good to get more stuff in print I admit. It would be interesting to hear more from people who've been doing it for longer than I have.

To get things rolling, I thought I'd ask a staple question that I think may have been toiled over before on ILX, regarding use of the first person in gig and LP reviews. Is this generally considered unacceptable in anything less than the most stylistic circumstances? Or does it really not matter too much? What about the use of "this writer" (don't really like this myself, I'd rather use "I/me" than "this writer", but that's just a personal thing).

Anyway, feel free to discuss whatever you like about music writing and journalism here.

I've said before about how I always hated that "The NME was told by Morrissey'" which is fine on the news page, but when it's "Morrissey bought the NME a drink and began .." on an interview, it's dumb.

Wrt first person: depends on who you're writing for and what kind of piece it is. Personally speaking, I've often had issues with the idea of "objective" criticism, so pretty much everything I've written, music-wise, has used the "I." But I've also avoided writing album reviews for publication, preferring to keep to autobiographical essays, short takes on singles, and blog posts, and in those contexts, no one's had an issue with it.

I often use first person, though rarely in a particularly deliberate way. It doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.

Something I've noticed that crops up in features like that, something that isn't necessarily wrong per se, but I feel is one helluva boring way to start one of these goes along the lines of: "It is 3:17pm on a rainy Monday afternoon. The NME sits in a Harringey spit'n'sawdust boozer sipping a pint of Timothy Landlord..." etc. What I mean here is that the intro seems to tell you more about the time and weather and location of the actual interview than about who is being interviewed. Whenever I read features like this I tend to stop reading much past the first paragraph.

3:17pm on a rainy Monday afternoon. The NME sits in a Harringey spit'n'sawdust boozer sipping a pint of Timothy Landlord

^ very accurate summary of state of british indie rock in the 09, though

"It is 3:17pm on a rainy Monday afternoon. The NME sits in a Harringey spit'n'sawdust boozer sipping a pint of Timothy Landlord..."

if you're gonna "set the scene" like this the best way to do it is to say "[the artist] sits by the swimming pool sipping a mojito" - the i/v is about them after all

i mean all obv dependent on what kind of feature, which publication &c &c &c

"[the artist] sits by the swimming pool sipping a mojito"

The Lex interviews Raygun.

I tend to use first person if my experience is an important part of the total picture. If I'm writing a piece that's based on a phone interview and three listens to the album, I don't do it; but if the publicist has flown me to Ireland to spend three or four days with the band, fuck yes I'm gonna inject myself into the story because I am then part of the story. I never use first person in CD reviews.

there's no i love writing board per se but consider this thread. a not-just-music writers' discussion might be fun.

New: "I Love Writing"

the first person thing is tricky. back when I wrote for the village voice many many years ago it was practically required in music reviews. as time went on many publications took the opposite tack, pretty much banning the "I" these days in the NY Times reporters are required to don this pseudo anonymity which I think reads terribly. instead of "so and so told me that..." it's "so and so told a reporter" waht? was it YOU or just some other random journalist who happened to be in the room?

ha, you *are* the room!

Maybe 5% of music writing in the first person isn't hacky. I see it as a huge red flag. Unless it's absolutely necessary to the story, don't do it, imo.

How is it "hacky"?

Maybe 5% of music writing in the first person isn't hacky.

On second thought:

Maybe 5% of music writing in the first person isn't hacky.

o here we are slagging off writers again, that didn't take long at all

there are different kinds of first-person usage. the kind i can't stand is the showy first-person narrative, where the writer becomes some kind of presence. but there's also just the casual "i" where it can be sensible and unobstrusive. "i love the first two tracks" doesn't seem more objectionable to me than "the first two tracks are great" -- they're both obviously subjective statements of personal preference. but i know some editors who will reflexively remove every "I" from copy, so it's good to know the standards you're writing to.

Just slagging off the hacks. If you'd like to defend bad writing, have at it.

My favourite one, (iirc)

"Kirk Brandon formed Theatre of Hate around the same time as I joined the NME. At the time, we were both unknown..."

(Can't remember the writer)

(many xposts)

I mean, I get into this argument all the time. Generally, I don't CARE about the writer. If the writer was an interesting person, I'd be reading an article on THEM, not the artist I care about. Like wow, the Jesus And Mary Chain helped you get through high school. You and America, buddy.

Generally if a piece of music writing has the word "I" in the first sentence, I usually stop reading, real talk. Save it for your dream journal.

The sad shit is now most mag writing is indistinguishable from internet writing because rates are so low.

Not that there isn't exceptions blah blah blah strawman lol flame etc

What about "I don't know about you but I'm fucking sick of this indie-lite electrodribble that permeates every airwave within earshot"?

Whiney, you do realize you just used the first person yourself five times in two sentences yourself, right?

I'm posting on a message board, not writing for a paycheck!

the mark richardson thing about lovely music in stylus is pretty much verbatim all the first person objections ur spoutin btw but imo its top5 great but I suppose its kinda like how it used to be pretty awesome when Buffy had to make some inspirational speech but in the last series she did it every episode and it was really tiresome?

xp (And I just used "yourself" twice in one sentence, duh.)

Anyway, first person is a tool, like any other tool. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. (As an editor at the Voice, I was frequently known to edit sentences from pitch emails back into submitted reviews in part because the emails did use the first person, and sounded less stiff and stilted and more conversational in the process. I.e., sometimes it helps make for better writing just because that's how people talk. So I've never bought the idea that "writing for a paycheck" required "detaching yourself from the subject.")

Again, i'm not saying that it's always bad, but there's not a lot of writers who can pull it off without sounding like My First Fanzine

"The first time I saw Spoon..."

So why would print them (unless it was a really good fanzine?)

Still, especially when space on the page is at a premium -- which it was even when wordcounts could get away with being ten times higher than they are now -- wasted words are wasted words, "I" included. (Though at least "I" is a fairly short word.)

the mark richardson thing about lovely music in stylus

Think you mean Mike Powell, but Mark Richardson is a good example of someone who uses the first person to excellent effect in his Resonant Frequency column.

oops yeah

If you can write entertainingly, I forgive your first person narrative.

xhuxk on point

xp "So why would print them?", I meant.

Anyway, bottom line is, no fucking way does the the detached pseudo-objective tone used in most glossies and daily newspapers make for better music writing than what I was printing week in and week out in the Voice for ten years (though sure, a few pieces I published may have sounded "Internetty" or whatever. Point was to have lots of different voices, so it'd be a miracle if anybody approved of all of them. I didn't want to ban Internetty writing -- which can be good too, sometimes -- either.)

On the other hand, I like the creativity with which guys like Sanneh at the Times have managed to get around the limitations against first person and swear words. A smart writer can work within those perimeters, too, and make it entertaining anyway.

its funny you mention sanneh--his profile of michael savage in the nyer from a couple weeks ago was very careful about not using "i" (which i think is generally a no-go in the nyer, except in the personal essays they publish every once in a while) but still managed to tell a set of interesting stories about sanneh's own encounters w/ savage that sort of hinged on sannehs own specific experiences trying to set up an interview... in the end, though, i thought it would have been a better piece if they had let him use an authorial I

wow that got convoluted

I thought about that, too.

Over the years, Savage has noticed that his disdain for the mainstream media is widely reciprocated ... So when he received an e-mail from a journalist asking for an interview, he was deeply suspicious. He read the e-mail on the air — he kept the writer anonymous, and didn’t mention that the request came from The New Yorker — and then asked his listeners, “Should I do the interview or not?”…

About a week later, Savage revisited the topic — “my continuing correspondence with a big-shot magazine writer.” He quoted the latest exchanges, along with his tart response, in which he asked, “Why must all of you in the extreme media paint everyone you disagree with as demonic? Why is the homosexual agenda so important to the midstream media?”

...

When he invited the journalist into one of his undisclosed locations, he proved to be a first-rate host, chatty and solicitous. A steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation (one of his earliest books was “The Taster’s Guide to Beer,” which was published in 1977), and as the temperature dropped and the sky above Berkeley started to turn orange, he seemed to be working hard to stay suspicious, despite himself. On his next show the next day, a caller asked how the interview had gone, and Savage described his interlocutor: "If I told you he looked like Obama, I wouldn't be far from the truth." Coming from him, this sounded like a deeply twisted compliment.

Sanneh has to resort to speaking of himself in the third person ("the journalist," "his interlocutor") but otherwise does a decent job with passive-ish phrases like "a steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation."

no i think you're OTM, that NYer piece was convoluted. it read to me like sanneh had a personal 1 on 1 reaction to savage that was quite different than what he expected and the resulting article would have been more effective and immediate using the "I" but the NYer has always employed a certain lofty distance from its subjects, even in the 70s it wasn't really into the personal/new journalism thing. well apart from pauline kael I guess.

but journalists do have to meet readers half-way. my problem with a lot of the vintage village voice stuff is that it's so personal to the point of being impenetrable or off-putting.

the best first person stuff illustrates how the subject of an interview interacts with other people, rather than "setting the scene"

i'm guessing whiney's not big on fiction as a rule.

I'm not big on fiction as a rule either, and one of the principles that was drilled into me when I started writing was that first-person is something you have to earn--expecting the reader who's never heard of you before to go along with I-I-I-me-me-me instead of saying "So what?" and moving to the next item is not generally a good idea--but I love first person writing even if (despite whatever reputation I may have for it due to the 33 1/3 book) I don't use it all that often professionally.

matos if you don't mind me asking: you're not big on fiction as a journalistic device or (gasp) you don't like reading novels?

I don't write fiction or about music, but first-person is the default in my area of writing (analytic philosophy). Sometimes we resort to the royal "we" if we're feeling nervous about first-person. But it was made clear to me that third-person is to be avoided, as is passive voice.

hang on, you're not big on reading fiction...at all?!

xp!

xp I don't buy the "have to earn" thing. I'm not even sure what it means. If I listen to a song sung in the first person, I might be able to relate to, and be moved by, the song even if I'm unaware of the singer's specific biography. Not sure why reviews are necessarily different. You don't have to be a famous writer to have a life that creates a context.

i thought he meant less that you have to earn it in the sense of being already famous or noteworthy, but in the sense that you have to earn it through your writing--i.e. you have to justify use of the first person in the piece itself, not necc explicitly, but at least in making your "I" of interest to the reader

When it's well done - and it does have to be superbly well done, and yes, generally (but not always) "earnt" - first-person music writing is my favourite of all music writing. (And when it's pointlessly done, the reverse holds true.)

For my own part, I avoid it at least 95% of the time - but then I come from a personal-blogging background, and taking "myself" out of the equation was a deliberate, sought objective.

My first piece at the Voice (when no reader could've had any idea who I was) and a couple soon after were in the first person, fwiw. I seriously doubt they would have improved if the "I"'s had been edited out. (Whether they stunk regardless is another question, but they wouldn't have stunk less.)

Editorial "we" -- first person plural -- bugs the hell out of me no matter what, though. I never buy it, and I've fought editors to keep it out of my own writing (which usually they've been open to).

And btw, I've also edited at Billboard, where first person is almost never allowed. So it's not like I don't know that drill. I just don't like it much.

Of course, at Billboard, the writing tended to be more news and less review-oriented. (So first person would have probably have made no sense anyway.)

And I come from a journalism (and not fancy dancy "new journalism") background too. I came up covering zoning boards and sewage commissions, where objective detachment is strived for. Not saying I don't understand it there, obviously. When I'm defending first person, I'm specifically referring to criticism (though, when it comes to say artist features, I prefer criticism to be part of the deal.)

i thought he meant less that you have to earn it in the sense of being already famous or noteworthy, but in the sense that you have to...justify use of the first person in the piece itself, not necc explicitly, but at least in making your "I" of interest to the reader

Well, obviously I buy this, if that's what Michaelangelo means. But in that sense, you need to earn whatever you put in your writing -- so first person's no different from anything else.

I mean I don't read novels almost at all. Gasp!

xpost: If there's one thing I hate even more than editorial "we", it's the sort of "we" that includes both the writer and his/her presumed readership. ("When did we all fall in love with Kings Of Leon?")

haha please tell me you made that KoL quote up Mike

Really: What do you mean we, kemosabe? (Those ILM threads titled "What Do We Think Of [fill in the blank]?" are almost as bad.)

Tbh, reading good first-person music writing is what made me want to write about music. (Or even reading bad first-person music writing: some Pitchfork stuff from around the turn of the century, though hard to read now, at least made me realize that criticism need not be all neutral/detached/objective.)

(Which, I should add, was mighty refreshing for someone who just wanted to write about his experiences with music and his reactions to listening to certain songs or albums without the burden of serving as some kind of authority.)

Avoiding first person is a good technique to get beyond the inherent subjectivity of reviewing music- it pushes the writer to find a common ground with the reader, rather than just reporting their personal reaction. I drop it if I start to get grandiose.

lots of reasons here why i generally prefer reading about music on the internet just my personal opinion!

Sanneh has to resort to speaking of himself in the third person ("the journalist," "his interlocutor") but otherwise does a decent job with passive-ish phrases like "a steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation."

Re this, exhaustively shat upon by Eric Boehlert.

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200908030038

Related:

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200908110005

"Avoiding first person is a good technique to get beyond the inherent subjectivity of reviewing music- it pushes the writer to find a common ground with the reader, rather than just reporting their personal reaction. I drop it if I start to get grandiose."

I think this is one of the root issues but it also points to the fallacy of avoiding first person - the technique assumes that it's the specific use of "I" that makes music writing solipsistic or uncommunicative. It also suggests that that the choice is between solipsism and objectivity (I accept that specific publications may have other reasons for disliking it).

But it's not hard to write a review that avoids using "I" but still reads like the writer has never thought to question their personal reactions, their prejudices, their assumptions.

Learning to adopt a critical perspective w/r/t those things has a lot to do with how you relate to music generally, how you try to convey what the music is actually doing etc. etc.

Kogan is a good example of a writer who puts himself into the story but still makes the music's potential to affect different people differently the star attraction.

The tendency to lean toward the first person is usually an indicator of a writer being green but not always of self-obsession. A lot of these throw away 'I thinks', 'I feels', 'as I was saying to x' etc come from a nervousness about stating an opinion without a crutch or without reflexively reminding people that, it's just, like, their opinion, man. All reviews and value judgements are obviously the opinion of the writer. We can tell because it's prefixed with a byline. It's just that if a writer is all apologetic and constantly reminding people that it's all subjective innit, they won't get ripped to shreds on the internet. Or not as much anyway.

But it's a writer's job to be authoritative. In, er, my opinion it is anyway.

It's more acceptable in features but then the reasoning still has to be solid behind it. I've been stabbed during or around three interviews. Once accidentally by a member of a band while we were larking about, once purposefully by a band member during a play fight that got out of hand and once after getting so drunk in an interview I got thrown out of the hotel by security and got stabbed randomly outside.

The first piece was written third person with only passing mention of boisterous high spirits. The incident was unremarkable. Barely drew blood. The second time was pertinent. The guy was a loon and this helped to illustrate that. Some of the piece was written in the first person. It was impossible to write it neatly otherwise. The third incident was ignored and the piece was written in the third person. A good pub story perhaps but nothing to do with the band or the story.

Once I got to an interview with Matt C from The Bronx to find out that we'd both broken our noses the night before. That was kind of on the cusp. Could have been written either way. Just about interesting enough as a jumping off point to be worth including.

As a rule you shouldn't do it unless it's an on the road/reportage piece or you have a unique involvement in the story that no one else has (or at least your readers don't). That said - and I'm twisting Eric Arthur Blair to my own ends on this - I'd break any rule about writing I have rather than write something barbaric.

(And house style rules. If you can't write a piece around I said/we said/Rolling Stone said and still make it readable, maybe you shouldn't be writing. It's fairly straightforward after all.)

Co-sign everything that guy said about a variety of voices on a magazine.

Re. "authoritative": should music writers attain a certain level of knowledge of music before setting up as arbiters of taste?

Not necessarily because knowing loads about music doesn't necessarily give you good taste in music and beyond that 'good taste' is a bogus concept on its own.

It's up to the individual writer not to make a fool out of themselves/magazine that's hired them. Canonical thinking is the enemy of good music writing but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know about this stuff anyway. I mean, I hate the Beatles and a lot of other big groups from the 60s and won't write about them as a rule but it doesn't mean I don't have a basic grounding in them.

Some writers set up this completely false binary of the job being fusty old rock professors with their "facts" and everything and young, free spirited rebels who don't know about the music but who can "feel" it and "live" it. Somehow suggesting that the more you know about music, the less you can actually appreciate it, which is obviously not true.

good for you for fighting the power

i can't believe people are still arguing this stuff.

^^^ probably listens to the beatles

i'll fight you for that.

with a broken copy of rubber soul.

i dont think u have earned the right to fight me

It's more acceptable in features but then the reasoning still has to be solid behind it. I've been stabbed during or around four interviews. Once accidentally by a member of a band while we were larking about, once purposefully by a band member during a play fight that got out of hand and once after getting so drunk in an interview I got thrown out of the hotel by security and got stabbed randomly outside. And once in the arm with a broken record by the ghost of a well-known music bloggist after I made some heavy accusations.

for example's sake, here's a review i wrote last year that uses the first-person twice in the first two sentences, and then never again. especially writing in that venue, it felt honest and useful to state up front my own skepticism about the band. it tells the reader -- whatever their own position on the band -- where i'm coming from, and also establishes a little bit of critical tension. i'm sure i could have written the same thing without the first-person, but it would have been less direct, and i don't think would have improved anything.

It works fine, tipsy (and your review is first-rate).

that is a really nice review, but I would have edited the first sentence out if you had turned it in to me since its burying the lede. Ppl are picking up the article to read about DBT, not tipsy mothra.

not to dog yr review, becuz it is a v nice review.

no that's fine, i've had editors who think the same way. i don't have strong feelings about it, it just isn't always a big deal to me as a writer or an editor. (and thanks.)

a pretty large amount of my freelancing is live reviews, and i don't always write in the first person, but sometimes in those situations you kinda have to -- i think when strongo was my editor a more 'editorial we'-or-avoid-it-altogether thing was reccomended, but now that he isn't i get away with straight up first person more. it's just awkward to go by yourself to a show where there's maybe 5 other people in the audience, and then later on not be able to talk about the experience without referring to the obvious fact that you were just a guy in the room and not some omniscient observer. i don't think i've used first person in record reviews much at all, if ever (although i use it a lot in casual, vaguely review-y blog posts because who cares, and also i hate when one-person blogs refer to themselves in the third person like they're Rolling Stone or something).

(should note here the "editorial we" was a diktat imposed from above. there's actually little i hate more than the editorial we. (about six months before i left cp i just gave up and started shoving first person in anywhere it made a piece flow better.))

yeah -- not blaming/crediting you with the policy at all, dog, just saying i think you enforced it more

(that's not to say i wanted people running wild with first-person, either, but it makes anyone sound less goofy than referring to him/herself like the king/queen of a small, bankrupt nation.)

i dunno, i think sentences like "Your Royal Eloquence then retreated to the bar, and ignored the opening band" would really make a piece come to life.

maybe lou-jag can punch up my prose for a fee

I've always liked it when reporters refer to themselves as the name of their newspaper. It's stupid but endearing. "The Observer caught up with Mickey Rourke at last night's charity fandango, but he got away again."

"Stereogum stirred his drink, stifled a cough, and then continued the interview"

I'm always endeared by the NY Times' second-and-subsequent references to a subject as "Mr." or "Ms". . Now and then, when Mr. Korvette ripped into a new song looking as if he was going to eat his microphone, or when the band started a new, messy riff, leaking feedback and channeling Black Sabbath or Black Flag, it seemed that this was going to be a very good gig.

I wonder what the call would be on Mr. Horribly Charred Infant. Mr. Infant, Mr. Charred Infant?

I remember reading an article that read something like "[name of artist] was friendly and demure throughout the evening, even pausing the conversation to pick up Select's sunglasses from off the table to stop them getting scratched"...

Incredible, I didn't know magazines wore sunglasses.

only Fader does

at some point thats really just a branding thing isnt it? publishers want you to think of the magazine as the source of the information, not the writer. saying "steven tyler was kind enough to buy max a lollipop" attaches max to the cool steven tyler story, whereas "steven tyler was kind enough to buy the paris review a lollipop" attaches the paris review to the cool steven tyler story

Ppl are picking up the article to read about DBT, not tipsy mothra.

Does it have to be one or the other? I mean, part of what I like about film critics like Roger Ebert and David Edelstein is that they're smart guys who write in this breezy, friendly, conversational tone. They put their cards on the table -- they admit to their biases, they worry they're being too harsh or too kind, etc. This is all very endearing to me, and I'd much rather read them than most boilerplate movie criticism, since I like the overall effect of feeling like I know them.

dnr u were writing for paris review btw

also, so awesome hanging out with aerosmith and eating candy

ill let u know when the article goes live

i have a similar reaction in q-and-a's, when instead of just Q, it says VF or something. like the entirety of vanity fair is having drinks with penelope cruz.

(altho for all i know, "drinks with penelope cruz" is a monthly staff event at vanity fair.)

one of the many fabled conde nast perks

now downsized to bar snax with jessica biel.

Back to The New Yorker, the Talk of the Town is often the most aggravating at this avoidance of the first person, because half the articles are little observational reports on Manhattan cocktail parties or society events, as though The New Yorker is just a fly on the wall, eavesdropping on people's conversations, which invariably include "a journalist," as though we didn't know it was actually you, Lizzie Widdicombe, with your fancy connections. Thing is, I don't think I'd mind half as much if they went back to omitting bylines, because then I wouldn't be as aware that there was a specific journalist responsible and wouldn't idly wonder "how did she get invited to this?"

yeah i dont mind the third person thing but it would work a lot better if they removed the bylines

i don't really like the omitting of bylines anytime it's not necessary; i hate flipping through the bigger music mags and seeing all these little articles and regular features that might have an interesting voice or perspective or just make me curious who wrote it, and there's either no name or "by staff"-type line at the bottom.

the economist, which is prob my fav magazine out there, certainly the best-written, omits all bylines - and has a hugely distinct, consistent house style throughout - i suspect its quality is at least partly down to this

i love the gossip columns which refer to themselves in character - pendennis, pandora &c (americans won't get those sorry)

The Daily Howler has a habit of referring to "our analysts" and "our staff" when I'm pretty sure he means "me, sitting at my laptop in my underwear."

"I've always liked it when reporters refer to themselves as the name of their newspaper. It's stupid but endearing. "The Observer caught up with Mickey Rourke at last night's charity fandango, but he got away again.""

this has always been fun for me as a reader, though i try not to do it myself. well, when i've interviewed whoever and i have an intro that presages the Q&A, i do the "XXX publication caught up with Katy Perry last week via email and discussed, A, B, and C" thing because it's what a lot of publications i write for do. when in rome, etc.

okay, i'm going to try to steer things in a different direction for a second.

one of the biggest issues i have with some blogs (and even some more 'professional' publications/sites) is the level to which many don't even talk about music any longer. some examples:

A flat sea lit by infinite jetties of Crocketian excess. Sleek yachts deathly still in their moorings. The conspiracy of their impossible symmetry visible only from above, hanging in the cloudless night, or below in the warm throbbing abyssal depths.

The purple night laid out before her older self, wooden platforms leading out across the sea offering up each boat’s bass heavy delights. A network of unobtainable ritual dances. Moving between the vessels, stars vibrate as a precursor to the bacchanalian delights on offer.

She pauses, the infinite possibilities of the night on water beneath her feet. Adrenaline bubbling to a peak, managed, subsiding, then surging once more. The anticipation paralysing her in ecstatic indecision…

OR

They’re having boat parties in America! All ‘cross the territories, from Italo-disco glides tracing the very edges of New York to the viney boondocks of Missouri, citizens are hauling bold bodies to the waterside and filling aquaways with bustle and blood, red cells under a transient spell of summer. NPIP, too! - in shilly-shally dock shoes and rolled-up jeans, holidaying in the surf, talking to the faces. Faces to listen to, too! - punk sons of out-of-work raftsmen talking all Tom Sawyer; sons of richer men falling in with the wrong crowd and - better - daughters, chewing on river-reeds and shooting doe; bug-eyed acid kids floating in a cherry-pink spume, vigilant sentries for any angry langoustine and (god forbid) kill-krill. We sang and boister-bought as the light changed over our heads, put bricks through the window of the run-down boat-house and ran off guffawing into the woods to doze like drunken apes in trees.

This is a deck of lies of course. NPIP spent last night on the banks of the Thames, glugging kidnapped cans and looking on as the party boats, pumping stale sound out into the air, pottered up from under London Bridge and far enough past the one that shook ("synchronous lateral excitation") to disappear on the way to Vauxhall or Westminster or Blackfriars, before returning, louder and drunker and, somewhat inconceivably, with even worse music wafting from their tow. YMCA?! Balls to Village idiots. We need our own boat party.

WHAT THE FUCK.

no need to be dry and terribly serious in music writing, but this is just...not good music writing.

thats always sort of been 20jfg's "thing" hasnt it? baroque ott descriptions of the MP3s theyre putting up?

i kind of like it tho i dont blame anyone for skipping over those paragraphs. but that blog i think is better known and loved for its curatorial skills than for its writing--i could be wrong.

well, yes. i still think it is fucking stupid, and hardly ever read a word they post-- i listen to the embedded player, and if i like, i download. the writing does nothing for me.

"glugging kidnapped cans"

I hate when people try to use "colourful" language in this way, "drinking cans" is ten times stronger than the above, if you're investing meaning in drinking cans then say DRINKING CANS.

and let the reader agree or disagree that it merits a mention

yeah table id wager youre not the only one. like i said i can dig on their writing if im in the mood--but if music writing as a whole went in that direction i wouldnt be aboard. at all.

one nice thing about blogs is theres room for everyone!

The Daily Howler has a habit of referring to "our analysts" and "our staff" when I'm pretty sure he means "me, sitting at my laptop in my underwear."

hate this kind of thing even in a blog where it is a group project. "we at blog x...." or "here at blog x we try to...blah blah blah"

the second example i posted is so much worse than the first.. i even had a little email fite with the guy who wrote it, because i thought he did a terrible job of describing a great track.

i admire ur dedication to keeping up the standards of internet writing table but i wonder if ur not needlessly raising your blood pressure

I think you should escalate the email fite into a knife fite.

eh.

perhaps i come across as too strong-headed...i'm not really that pissed or anything about the phenomenon. it's more like a really annoying mosquito-bite-- i just want it to go away.

Whenever I read that kind of writing, I recall the Peanut strips where Charlie Brown is recounting his dreams in detail, and Linus is nodding off or trying to escape.

20jkg is awesome but i'm not gonna actually read it or anythin

Another question for you all, amateurs and pros... What is the best way to get or pitch for freelance work?

I'm currently building a bit of experience simply writing for free, which is all fine and dandy, but I'm only writing about 5 short album revews a month, so it's becoming a bit repetitive and I'd like to eventually get a bit more work, and maybe one day get paid a little for the effort.

Is it better to write a letter to the editor saying "I'm me, I do this, I'm interested in whether you have any freelance opportunities at the moment" or OTOH should I have some ideas for features already prepared that I should pitch directly upon initial contact? Should I send portfolio examples straight away and should they be scans of the edited versions or my own unedited versions? Is it even worth sending complete unpublished articles and saying "here's an article, wanna print it?" or is that just silly?

dl, to everything in yr second paragraph i'd say yes - say you're available, suggest some ideas, include a couple of short examples - short of sending the unpublished article. all of the former are essential in pitching to a new editor.

And I don't want to state the obvious but the majority of people who email me for work spell shit wrong, haven't read the site properly. Come correct, as the boxer dude (who looks like Marvin Gaye) out of The Wire, might say.

I've only ever cold-pitched once. I didn't hear anything back, and I didn't chase the pitch up as a) self-promotion makes me squirm and b) parts of the pitch itself made me squirm. However, the editor did eventually came back to me - nearly two years later, having spotted something I wrote elsewhere - and comissions ensued from there. So, um, you never know...

All my other freelance gigs (such as they are) have resulted from editors making the initial approach to me, on the strength of work which they've seen elsewhere. (Friends who have edited fiction and poetry tell me that this how things normally operate, and that scouting is part of an editor's job, but I don't know how much this applies to music journalism.) This has provided me with enough work to keep me happy - but then freelancing is something I do on top of the day job, so I'm not looking to work constantly, or indeed to earn a living wage from it.

That said, I do sometimes find myself wondering what would happen if I wasn't so shy of pushing myself forward.

I cold-pitch myself every once in a while. Shit, I wrote the editor of JazzTimes an email this very week looking for work. (He said their masthead's overcrowded as is right now, and he's gonna prioritize the roster he's got. Which is perfectly fine; that's what Albert Mudrian told me when Metal Edge went under and he was mobbed by our writers, and I totally understand.)

Speaking as an editor, I have recruited writers whose work I liked...just dropped 'em an email saying "Hey, would you like to write for Metal Edge?" I have not generally hired writers who came to me, because the samples were boring, bad, etc.

I'm at a point where I've got as much freelance as I can handle without going insane - and this is after losing some gigs because (a) places have gone under, (b) space is sphincter-tight, or (c) editors have revealed themselves to be either inept at corresponding or severely overworked (and i'm talking about editors who I'd worked for for years before, suddenly, my submissions and pitches vanished into the ether and my inquiries after same began to be roundly ignored).

Have I sent cold-pitches in the last year or so? Sure. I've even gotten some feedback. But until one or two outlets disappear or don't need my services, I'm not gonna bother. There are only so many hours in a day, and I have a family and friends, and I have a super-demanding full-time job.

(And I'm starting my own online concern, because I am insane.)

I used to get several writers pitching me every week at the Voice. Always got back to them, and always told them I needed to see examples of their writing, preferably as published. Then, if they didn't send ideas, I sent them back to the drawing board.

Never understood writers who figured an editor would just stumble on their byline somewhere and they'd be called out of the blue, but then again I don't understand people who buy lottery tickets, either. I already had scores of writers to choose from; the idea that I'd go hunting for new ones who hadn't even contacted me is, well, really wishful thinking.

Well actually, once in a while, I would see somebody's writing somewhere else and be impressed enough to track them down, or I'd really be in a pinch for some obscure genre specialist and I'd go out hunting, but those were exceptions to the rule.

Anyway, if I still had that job, here's what I'd say: (1) Send clips first (I prefered hard copies to links, because I didn't want to do your work for you, but then I'm old); THEN (2) send specific pitch ideas, in an email convincing me that the topic is worth covering. Not "if you ever need somebody to write about something, I'm here."

I mean, obviously if you're already a household name (if you can be reasonably sure the editor would know your work without googling), sending clips might not be necessary. But when I was editor, that applied to fewer writers than you'd think (and at the Voice, since I ran Pazz & Jop, I probably had the most extensive database of music critics on earth. So I can't imagine it would be different anywhere else.)

Chuck, I'm one of those writers who pitched you and received a thorough, welcoming, quick-turnaround reply! You never were into my pitches, but I appreciated you taking the time to say "no thanks."

I've never been recruited, probably because I don't write for super high-profile outlets.

Before the Collapse of 2006, I sent cold pitches all the time, with clips attached (xhuxk actually gave me the second fastest turnaround I've ever experienced).

Writers thought I was really efficient at getting back to them! But really I just neurotic; figured if I didn't answer right away, I'd never get around to it. (Billboard was a little different, btw, since the stable of freelancers was smaller, and the pay was less than it had been at the Voice, and since people who can write about the industry are rarer, especially certain segments of the industry. So there, I did spend more time looking for writers. At the Voice, they came looking for me.)

xhuxk was the the fastest turnaround in the biz. i did do my best to always reply in a timely fashion to pitches, but my "best" varied widely. to be kind.

jess, you were pretty fast, man!

we should start a thread on the slow, cruel death of the print music review? or just talk about it here?

i think it's been discussed on a few threads (weingarten's recent speech at the twitter conference raised a lot of discussion) but feel free to talk about it here. that said i'd prefer if this thread could focus more on positive discussion, hints and tips, solid examples rather than hundreds of people moaning into their pints about shit bloggers etc.

sorry man.

i'll try to think of some advice.

oh, wait, here's a chestnut: don't delete your article from your email system's "sent messages" queue (or your hard drive) until it's seen print. why? because your editor could inadvertantly delete it.

this sounds like common sense, but i lost some stuff forever because i was young and foolish.

if we're going to talk about it, better to focus on how (and if) it is possible to get printed reviews back on track.

i still buy magazines from time to time, but there's nothing to really get my teeth into on the news stand these days. i either feel that i'm being patronised by feeble indie weeklies (NME) trying to force things down my neck, being reminded how great old music is (MOJO, Uncut etc), or am subject to amateurish attempts at hip design values cabled together with very dry reportage (Artrocker, Notion whatever other upstart rag'll end up collapsing within a couple of months) that purposefully avoids the yellow-journalism of the aforementioned indie weeklies by avoiding all humour and interesting points.

Select was my bag back in the day, and I felt they got everything right - knowledge, subject matter, humour, diverse content, subjectivity etc.

xpost :-) cheers

I don't buy magazines, either. At this point, I'd only buy the Wire, but it's just way too expensive, so I read it in the tsore then leave.

bea, who are you? i've been gone too long to keep up with the namehopping.

ray cummings

Didn't pitch my first thing at the Voice, or at Creem many years ago, for that matter. Just sent them in. xhuxk told me he probably couldn't use it. I forgot about it. A bit later he e-mailed back and asked me to resend it but I deleted it. At the time, my e-mailer was one which didn't stash a copy of everything sent.

Anyway, stopped pitching in music for two reasons: The pitches were getting half as long to as long as the paragraph reviews. Got tired of the quid pro quo required to get review copies in a timely manner.

"Got tired of the quid pro quo required to get review copies in a timely manner."

i actually wrote a few reviews for a mag a year or two ago, then stopped, because the editor a) wouldn't send review copies and b) wouldn't pay me.
(which is to say he just stopped writing back to me. i called and left some messages, no dice.)

which sucks because i no longer have copies of the reviews - which i was really proud of - in my email and flat out refuse to subsidize the mag by buying it.

anyway, that's more hatorade, and i should chip in with advice, right?

here's a basic one: spell-check your copy. when you're swamped and in a hurry, it's easy to not do this. i'm guilty of it myself. but if you do it, that's less work for your editor, and your editor will appreciate it. (probably.)

when people were talking about pitching mags and papers i got a shiver when i thought about the only time i actually sent e-mails and letters to people (i was a baby daddy at the time and not working so i thought i would have more time to write) in order to get more work. the only magazine that got back to me was magnet. the less said about the stuff i wrote for them the better. oh, and blender contacted me and asked me to send them more stuff and i did and then i never heard from them again. (for which i am eternally grateful) anyway, i realized then and there that i could never hack it as a freelancer. and that i was much better off not worrying about and writing for fun. or occasionally writing for people i liked if they asked me. mostly ilxors! (i got my job thru the ilx!) it was hard then and now i imagine it is a LOT harder. i mean, it's hard for everyone in the print biz now. my advice - i have advice! - to anyone with a, um, burning desire to write about music is to d.i.y. as much as possible. get together with like-minded people and start your own website. put out your own books with an e-press and hawk them on the street. or whatever. use the cheap and easy tech available. if it's good stuff, maybe someone will notice. or maybe they won't. in any case, try and have fun with it. start a zine! zines are on the rise! no, really. cuz there is almost NOTHING good on newsstands these days. NOTHING. when i think of a perfect world where i could write for a cool magazine - other than the cool magazine i write for every month - i draw a blank. if mojo or the wire called me up and asked me to do something, i would. i like them. that's about it. for real. so, there IS definitely room for something cool out there if you are willing to work it.

The tricky part is getting people to buy it. For reasons which escape me, Mojo and Classic Rock can exist in the UK. But stuff like that fails here, discounting the fact that they work as imports at urban bookstore mag racks.

Well, maybe they don't really escape me. I'd guess the audience for Mojo and Classic Rock is older and still familiar with the idea of paying for stuff. Kind of like the base for Guitar Player.

xp Yeah, George was definitely an exception in the pitching (or even assigning) department -- He pretty much sent everything to me on Spec, and I wound up printing most everything he sent eventually. Thing is, George had an extremely good grasp of wordcounts (he sent lots of sidebar-length reviews I could use to plug in holes on pages), my sense of humor, my musical tastes, subjects other writers wouldn't be writing about and could be fairly evergreen (in other words, the records were so otherwise unnoticed that nobody else would notice if I ran the reviews five months after he sent them.) I wouldn't necessarily recommend that anybody follow his lead -- certainly not now; in fact, I have no idea where you could get away with it now, with alt-weekly editors seemingly operating under limitations I never had to deal with.

Scott may have sent stuff on Spec now and then too, come to think of it -- Or maybe we'd at least exchange emails about it first? Maybe he remembers.

it has always amazed me that those magazines exist. when i see one of those special uncut issues devoted to one band especially. the things are massive! on really nice paper! they are as handsome as books.

but when i said do it yourself, i meant the real deal of olden tymes. handmade. hand stapled. an old xerox machine! if you put out a cool rock zine you could sell it to every smelly record store on the planet. there is almost nothing to choose from these days.

xhuxk-post

Actually, I had a similar experience with you, Chuck - everything I sent on spec got printed, while everything I pitched got rejected.

Maybe Dave Queen sent stuff on Spec, too? But those guys are weirdos. (And George, especially, is a really fast writer; he can churn stuff out in his sleep.)

One thing related to Beatrix's posts: Use Google Docs. that's what we use at XLR8R, and it works like a charm-- not only can you share with editors easily, you can also go back to previous drafts of things to do comparisons, etc. i've been using the Docs system since it was in beta, i guess, and it has saved my ass numerous times.

I think I'll download that program, table! Was just reading about it in Chris Anderson's new book, had never known it existed.

also, i am gonna rep for xlr8r here and say that it does a better job that 95% of the music magazines that i read.

you don't download it! you just use it on the web-- easy uploads, too, so you can write something sans internet and then just zip it on up when yr connect is together.

He pretty much sent everything to me on Spec, and I wound up printing most everything he sent eventually

Very true, but everything else I wrote for the mag -- and in toto I wrote for every section except movie reviews, including a cover piece -- I pitched. And that was quite a lot.

The other good thing was being able to invoice the Voice for the CDs if they weren't review copies. Which took the publicists and the quid pro quo arrangement right out of the loop, very good things.

the first one or two things I wrote the voice were done on spec, but that was seven years ago and i dunno how many places are looking for reviews that aren't mega timely now

the demise of pop music criticism reflects the general decline of print media overall and as Gorge says the disinclination to "pay for stuff" w/r/t music

not just downloading and filesharing but streaming leaks and previews -- all the ways legal and ill that people can access music now has radically changed the role of critic as gatekeeper and tastemaker. getting an advance copy of a new release no longer gives writers a leg-up on consumers. and in the internet age I think music aficionados actually read MORE about music but they do so from a variety of sources rather than one trusted outlet like a magazine or alt weekly or authoritative critic. pardon the cliche but the playing field has been leveled. and over-run with people publishing their own opionions theories rants and discourse on blogs messageboards online publications what have you. scott is right: at this point you have take in your own hands and DIY. figure out something people want to read about and give it to them. the money will come eventually, maybe. better that then making a million compromises and getting your copy shred to ribbons and then getting stiffed just so you can say you're published. it's meaningless.

yeah if I was a young person determined to make a concerted effort to "break into" what's left of rockcrit, I'd just blog a lot, interact with other blogs/forums and send out specs that, if rejected, could easily be worked into my DIY stuff. that infamous ying yang twins piece i did for the voice was originally going to be a blog post until i decided to throw it chuck's way just in case.

xp Yeah, as Anthony says, the timeliness factor ("pegging" everything to release dates, or maybe local shows in the case of alt-weeklies -- in a bogus attempt to be "newsworthy" when really it usually just means kissing music biz butt) is something else I didn't have to worry about much at the Voice.

"Music Biz" in this case meaning "record labels who want publicity on the day a record is released" and "local clubs who advertise in your paper."

I'm kinda amazed that the sinking-ship record companies would have that kind of clout anymore; you'd think publications would be freed up to run reviews when they want.

fifteen years ago in my nightmare final few months at R0lling $t0ne I nearly got fired for suggesting reviews not be tied to release dates and daring to run a review of a three-month-old album that had belatedly surfaced near the top of the charts.

i think i've just convinced myself to put out a zine. anyone want to write for it? for free? i'll put out a hundred copies. or more, if needed. i know a cool guy at forced exposure. maybe they can sell it. the aquarius guy is really nice too. maybe he could sell it too. i need a new fun project. um, aside from the new fun record store that i just opened.

scott, i'll write for your zine if you promise to send me a copy.

seriously!

xpWell, for years (in pre-Entertainment Weekly days, so through the end of the '80s at least) running reviews of albums weeks after their release was more common than not -- especially if, say, the album was ignored on release and now had a couple hit singles. Some albums have to be lived with a while to sink in. Nobody thought twice about doing it then, because it was the sane way to do things. And I'm guessing that, now, it's not so much that the companies have clout as that the practice became commonplace when they did have clout, so suddenly editors (and their bosses) started worrying about being "scooped" if everybody else reviewed an album first, and nobody wants to go against the grain, especially since lots of editors haven't been around long enough to remember when it was any other way. (As if reviewing an album first has anything to do with scooping; as if reviews are even "news.")

scott, if you do do that, i would be happy to cover some weirdo new music/electronic stuff.

this thread kinda makes me want to do some music writing, y'alls professional woes sound kinda fun

eating ramen noodles is not fun

what about tweeting about ramen noodles?

"eating ramen noodles is not fun"
even though you probably don't literally mean that, them's fightin words!

xpost to some dude

I set you up for a subway gag and you bring that? ^^^

if i'm gonna bring it i'm not gonna bring subway gags

hey i keep my ass in cheesesteaks well enough.

...

I Love Style is over here

I'm guessing that, now, it's not so much that the companies have clout as that the practice became commonplace when they did have clout, so suddenly editors (and their bosses) started worrying about being "scooped" if everybody else reviewed an album first, and nobody wants to go against the grain, especially since lots of editors haven't been around long enough to remember when it was any other way. (As if reviewing an album first has anything to do with scooping; as if reviews are even "news.")

the result, invariably: a whole lot of reviews that have the exact same sets of impressions that anyone would have from a few early listens. (my own writing certainly included.)

Aww, I can't believe I missed conversation about the odd overconstructions that sometimes have to go into the journalistic "there is no I" POV thing -- for whatever reason I find it charming when a piece says "at 4pm a reporter arrived at his house" and we all know pretty precisely who that reporter is. (And I actually do find it profitable, to be honest, because the introduction of an "I" into an article really is a major thing that brings forth expectations; there's an actual benefit to avoiding it that's not just rule-based. If Kelefa says "I arrived at Savage's place" you are more immediately led into the frame of thinking okay, what did you, Kelefa, think of him, which is not the article you're reading.)

Totally Different Subject xpost - the opposite problem = late-breaking reviews that seem to mostly be responding to the conventional wisdom / response of earlier reviews and public reception

i use I in my record reviews all the time, it is I who is listening, right. fuck the reader.

is that a problem, per se, nabisco? to me it seems like the same thing as the first-person thing: good writing is good writing no matter what pov it takes.

i use I in my record reviews all the time, it is I who is listening, right. fuck the reader.

classy

thx. (i don't get paid for it either) ;)

I kept trying to read that sentence like Ludo is in full on "I and I" rasta speak

lol.

haha I think understand what ludo means though; my worst writing usually comes when I try to "put myself in a fan's shoes" or something like that.

i think that in the post internet age, ppl probably read more reviews for things they have heard, and really want longer expanded bloggy reviews that help parse a record or pinpoint what it is they like about it. I mean, I enjoy reading a review that just gets something 'right' for that flash of recognition, but if i read a review as a buyer guide, I'm just skimming for words that will pull me in and once i've seen enough i'll myspace/youtube/rar depending on my interest and if I like it buy it.

that's true...in the 90s i would devour these big review sections full of albums i still have not to this day heard, now i tend not to read reviews of anything i'm not either already listening to or planning to get.

maybe a good writer can avoid using "I" and still write personal reviews, but often those fake objectivie reviews lead to newspaper men praising a hiphop/world music/techno record while you can easily read between the lines that they don't even like the genre.

I'd wager that it's more about liking records that reviewers, be they newspapermen or whomever, don't have a ton of context for. (Again speaking from experience.)

Wait, I'm not sure which thing you mean, Matos. The late-breaking review thing? I don't mind reviews that have interesting things to say about how a record's been received, so long as they acknowledge that's what they're about. I'm usually less hot on reviews that sorta purport to be about the record but are actually really reactive, like they're really more opinions about reception of the record, and not the thing itself.

(Or the POV thing? I agree that writing's good from whichever perspective, but sometimes the difference between those perspectives is huge, so it makes sense to completely separate them -- like "Kelefa Sanneh writes a journalistic NYer piece about Savage" is surely violently different from "Kelefa Sanneh writes a personal narrative about his interaction with and opinions of Savage.")

could be true.

anyway, i do enjoy reading reviews, but moreso when i actually already heard the record or saw the movie. if not it's more like a fast check to see if i should get this thing on my "to download"-list heh.

record reviews are tough, for example a lot of bands always complain about being compared to artist x and genre y, and when i review a record and drop like 10 different artist names it even bores me. on the other hand if it does sound like the entire bunch and a reader might actually check this album because i mention that it sounds like (god this gets confusing) blablaba.

i guess a good review is a combination of all kinds of thing, comparisons, maybe a little personal feeling and a description of the music. (the latter would be true objectivism i guess)

I've gotten a lot more diligent over the years at not saying anything in print that I can't somehow back up if asked about, by an editor or via email or in real life. I delete endless amounts of stuff that might read well or be interesting or provocative, if I realize I'm just saying it to say it, or just because it sounds good or whatever. I try very hard not to do it, and it drives me nuts when I see other people do it. The opposite tendency is just as bad--taking the easy way out, being nice just for the sake of not unnecessarily ruffling feathers. That's the Midwesterner in me, and I delete tons of that shit too. And my favorite writing tends to takes chances and goes for the jugular; I want to do that too (not that I get near it even 10% of the time) but I want it to be as real as I can make it, and that takes a lot of work. I'm not complaining about this at all: I think I'm a much better writer than I used to be and this is the reason why. But when I'm writing about an area I'm less familiar with it can be a hurdle, definitely.

Nabisco: we're on exactly the same page here.

some key words have lost all meaning so if some band gets described as a noise band I'm not gonna really know what they sound like, so i'm looking for Lightning Bolt or No Age or Giffoni or Excepter or Wolf Eyes all of whom sound completely different and that clarifies a lot of the other descriptions

I've gotten a lot more diligent over the years at not saying anything in print that I can't somehow back up if asked about, by an editor or via email or in real life. I delete endless amounts of stuff that might read well or be interesting or provocative, if I realize I'm just saying it to say it, or just because it sounds good or whatever. I try very hard not to do it, and it drives me nuts when I see other people do it.

Yeah, I totally go through this same thought process. I think I have such an aversion to quippy reviews and clever angles that it probably makes my copy a little too dry sometimes, but at the same time bending the truth (or my honest opinion) for the sake of a cute one-liner can come out pretty awful.

"in the 90s i would devour these big review sections full of albums i still have not to this day heard"

me too! and i was happy not to hear them. a lot of times i just wanted to read good reviews. SPIN used to be great for this, if, you know, i wanted to know what Mikael Wood thought about some overhyped indie BS. that guy is amazing. i can never say it enough.

i like pitchfork reviews

What do all yall music writers think of gina arnold re: injecting oneself into the review.

i kind of miss zany/showy/creative writing exercise pfork reviews sometimes

Matos is way OTM about something there -- it's funny how writing well sometimes asks you to be both (a) confident enough in what you're saying to put out frank opinions, and (b) open-minded and curious and fair. Those things are by no means mutually exclusive; the whole point is they go well together (and often it's fun and exciting to see someone just do one, so long as they're honest about it). But sometimes, especially with criticism, the stuff that allows you to do one of them can be on a pretty fine and confusing line with not doing the other. Personally I think I often err toward the latter and don't do enough of the former.

anyway, i do enjoy reading reviews, but moreso when i actually already heard the record or saw the movie.

I think that's universal, and it's also a reason there's less and less of an audience for music criticism, or so it seems: fewer widely shared experiences. It isn't that music all sucks now; film seems to suck a lot more than music does these days but there's a lot fewer of them, which makes it easier to talk about. And people get mad if you're covering something they're not likely to encounter without seeking it out--they think you're trying to pull a fast one. It's disheartening, especially when, as I've experienced, your bosses basically think this as well.

I always thought Gina Arnold was a better writer than her detractors thought, a worse writer than her champions thought, and way too romantic about rock generally, but I wish I still had my copy of Route 666. (Kiss This isn't very good, though.)

I am ending my self-imposed retirement from music writing (except for Singles Jukebox) this weekend. I got disgusted with my own bullshit for too long, but I just have too much to say and no one to say it to.

I don't think I'm the best writer nor do I have the best taste in music but I do okay on both fronts. I know I'll never make money writing again but I'm fine with that now, plus I like getting discs in the mail from strange places so there you have it.

Matos OTM upthread about supply/demand

ILX had some huge argument of whether a 6-graf Clark review was any good because [the argument was] that it was just an extended metaphor. And I was just thinking today, how i'd be more likely to read it/care about it if it was a 6-graf metaphor about Green Day or Animal Collective or something that more than 4 people on the earth care about.

which is generally why I think the Voice runs the best extended music reviews.

whiney, can you hook up a PTW best-of book?

or is that wishful thinking on my part

haha I mean, one reason I've been enjoying my Stranger singles column more is that I feel less obligated to go long or even longish on everything; say what you've gotta say and get out (but hopefully not to the point where it's just hieroglyphics). (column archives, if anyone cares: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Author?oid=1708&category=247534. end of plug.)

like, before I figured I should try to be substantive with each one. now I'm a lot more relaxed about it and I think that shows up.

speaking of columns - one reason i love doing 5ingles in the Minn City Pages every week is because it gives me license (not very much given that i have a space limit but some) to write about all kinds of things, to riffle through the zillions of promos and downloads and zero in on stuff that's great or ok or outright terrible. i mean, if i didn't have that column, i don't know where i would write about all of this music.

and i can sorta veer from being serious to being dismissive to making up dumb stories to offering horrible prescriptive advice.

x to ray

I don't know how much demand there will be for an omnibus of stuff that happened in 2006-2007.

I was planning on waiting 20 years and seeing if i could package it all on a nostalgia thing, but I highly doubt we'll be that well remembered by then

I was thinking about a "So Tell Me A Story" book curated by Jessica, Kory and myself--maybe even pitched to a book company. But I doubt I could get anything beyond lifehacker/kickstarter pay-to-play bs, and that isn't worth the time of a bunch of 30 year olds already struggling to stay afloat, imo afiac

what i love about writing for pitchfork is that it is the most popular outlet for long form music writing with relatively good editorial freedom

meaning that i feel like im writing for a large audience, which i like because i want to communicate with lots of people & think my ideas about music are worthwhile. this is probably pretty egotistical, but i think in order to be good at criticism in general you have to be at some level

i want to communicate with lots of people & think my ideas about music are worthwhile.

fwiw, the problem is that pretty much everyone in the world from age 17-35 REALLY TRULY believes this and have since flooded the earth with their shit writing

you can also replace that with "I think my band is worthwhile," I think my photography is worthwhile," "I think my DJ skills are worthwhile" and "I think my opinions on food are worthwhile"

thank god you pointed out this brand new phenomenon

i think my twitter is worthwhile

i dont care for whiney's twitter personally

devastated to hear that a guy who posts Gucci Mane lyrics to twitter 20 times a day doesn't like my writing

some people think their bands are worthwhile, deej thinks gucci manes lyrics are worthwhile

devastated to hear that a guy who posts Gucci Mane lyrics to twitter 20 times a day doesn't like my writing

clearly, since you "deigned" to reply

matos, your steady stream of "WELL ACTUALLY" zings on ILX are like an eighth grader who just discovered sarcasm.

LOL

What are the responses of everyone else who clowns you around these parts like, then?

Usually about sandwiches

Actual Question Time: What is the longest you have sat there staring into the abyss of a piece you knew would be fun to write when you pitched it and then found out it was exactly the opposite? I'm going on four days on one right now, and it's interrupted almost everything else in my life. Ugh.

Well, I've been working on my 33 1/3 book for about two years...

I'd imagine that's every book, yeah.

Usually when there's an article/review that I realize I DON'T want to do, I clear my schedule, chug a coffee, sign off AIM and try to burn through it and put it behind me... Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't

I can't drink coffee most of the time--it really screws my nervous system up--but yesterday and the day before I'd gotten so little sleep I had to resort to it or else pass out mid-afternoon. (Up late trying to finish w/no luck, get up early a.m. to try again.) It helped with bursts of plow-through-it, which is usually enough; once I get a bead on something it can be pretty easy to follow through to the end. Not this time.

A lot of times I'll work on other, smaller stuff as a break from whatever's giving me trouble, and I got a few things done I needed to, so that's been nice. But this is pretty ill-timed: I have more assignments right now that I have in a while, which is a relief, or would be if this roadblock weren't in the way.

i don't think i've ever met a writer who doesn't leave the writing until the last possible minute. i know i need the deadline to focus my thoughts, whether its a 150 word album review, or a 160,000 word book.

Ever since I went fulltime freelance that shit ended fast. Now I just bang out shit as fast as possible in hopes of having time to pitch more stuff..

Yeah, fuck that hanging around waiting on the muse bullshit. This is work. Get it done, and start the next thing.

http://www.gao.gov/about/history/articles/images/wecan.jpg

http://www.steverrobbins.com/getitdoneguy/get-it-done-guy-traveling-notepad.jpg

i need the deadline to focus my thoughts, whether its a 150 word album review, or a 160,000 word book.

a 160,000 word book? jesus that's 600 pages! i couldn't even review a 600 page book at the last minute.

xp Yeah, I've never comprehended the wait until the last minute thing. That'd drive me into the crazy house to work that way (and as an editor, writers working that way drove me even more nuts, usually because they tended to go way past the last minute.)

Actually, that's the reason editors work up fake deadlines, without telling writers they're fake.

have recently returned to freelancing after a few yrs off, and have recently clued in that my longest-term editor has been feeding me fake deadlines for a few months. But I have been actually meeting them, so I'm not going to tell him I'm hip.
what xhuxk said "I came up covering zoning boards and sewage commissions, where objective detachment is strived for", likewise (sorta). Objective detachment is practically a survival technique in that environment.
Also, writing mostly in a newsy-style, record reviews used to be great no-one's-looking chances to play around with different writing ideas/styles/whatevers. Y'know, 150-300 wds once a week with which to play.

Actually, that's the reason editors work up fake deadlines, without telling writers they're fake.

i've been on both sides of this equation. found that fake deadline usually don't work from either direction. writers can sense where the real deadline is. but it does help focus the mind.

(i think of it as sort like keeping my clock 10 or 15 minutes fast. i know it's not the real time, but it still reminds me that the real time is coming up soon.)

probably biggest part of my hitting deadlines is less editor faking me out, more maturity/concerted effort

a 160,000 word book? jesus that's 600 pages! i couldn't even review a 600 page book at the last minute.

by the last minute, i mean of course the last month or two of an 18 month project! though last time i had loads of interview sources holding out on me and meaning i *couldn't get started any earlier...

Yeah, fuck that hanging around waiting on the muse bullshit. This is work. Get it done, and start the next thing.

this is so much easier said than done. i wish i could be one of those writers who could just sit down and bang words out, but...no :(

yeah... i'm not revelling in my slothfulness, i wish i could be more 'professional' too - but have been full time freelance for eleven or so years now, and this is just the way i work, so.

BTW, who said anything about waiting for the muse until Phil brought it up?

I'm just not the type to wait until the last minute. Depending the length of the piece, I'll usually have started three days to a week before, in large part because I allow myself time for revision. The number of assignments I'm working at once is another factor.

Music writing shouldn't be about crimping the stuff out but it is for a lot of people and you can always tell. That said ^^ it is a job; so if I get stuck on one thing I move immediately to something else. So if I've always got a list of ten or more things to be writing there's no need to stop.

It was hard to train myself to stop downing tools the second I couldn't think of anything to say about Marillion. Just move on to something else; it's not an open invitation to have half an E and play guitar hero for the rest of the afternoon.

What Alfred said actually made me curious about how other people handle revising their own work, before sending it in. Give or take certain haiku-length reviews for Rhapsody or wherever, or if I have very very very tight deadline (which I usually find ways to avoid) I almost never file copy the day I finish it. I generally prefer to sleep on it overnight -- or, for longer pieces, maybe over a weekend -- before making final tweaks/overhauls/ massages to it and sending it in (which tends to be the first thing I concentrate on the next morning, before moving on to other work). How common is that? I honestly have no idea how others handle this. (As an editor, though, I got the impression that certain writers even more neurotic than myself had a tendency to worry and overthink pieces into oblivion and missed deadlines. I really hated that.)

yeah, i always, always, always finish at least one day before; sleep on it; look at it with new eyes; revise and turn in.

writing a bi-weekly record review column in the early 90s I established a pattern of waking up around 5:00 AM on deadline day and pulling together all my rough drafts and notes into finished copy and sending it off by early afternoon. otherwise I tried to follow xhuxk's method of sleeping on a finished piece and doing some revisions/tweaking on deadline day. of course this often didn't happen and I rushed to finish at the last minute.

the last few years I've been reviewing books (non-fiction/not on music) and for me it's a completely different process, more time-consuming and labor intensive, perhaps because I'm less experienced in this arena. i need to finish a 1000 word book piece days before deadline and do several rounds of revision/tweaking before sending it off.

by the last minute, i mean of course the last month or two of an 18 month project! though last time i had loads of interview sources holding out on me and meaning i *couldn't get started any earlier...

i think this must varies w/the type of book you're writing and I certainly didn't mean to cast aspersions on yr work habits. clearly it worked for you!
and yeah, for a reported book you are at the mercy of your subjects to some extent and as we all know, looming deadlines are merciless.

sometimes i work way ahead of schedule, sometimes right on it, occasionally a little behind. usually my secret blessing is if i know i'm going to be busy or not home much in the coming days, and get a lot of stuff done early and then have time to actually go over and revise and nitpick a few times, which is a luxury i don't give myself a lot anymore.

of course, my schedule is also a product of what and where i write -- sometimes i do concert reviews and movie reviews where i have a window of a couple days to write after seeing the subject, so it's not like i can do those early eithert way. and sometimes if i have a big piece on my plate but don't feel ready to give it the concentration it needs, i'll knock out a couple short blog posts instead.

Almost all of my gig reviews have a deadline of 6:00 am the following morning, so I have to write them as soon as I get home. As a natural procrastinator, I find this concentrates the mind wonderfully. (It also means that none of them are written stone cold sober, but I found my optimum level of consumption quite early on.)

yeah, i used to do gig reviews for a daily paper, with a 3am the next morning deadline, which i actually really loved - it focused my mind, and meant i didn't have any 'homework' hanging over me.

otherwise, though, i think i spend the time between 'finishing' a piece of work and the deadline just honing and fiddling with every detail. i had a relatively quiet week last week, and spent five straight days polishing every line of a 1000 word blog piece for MOJO - but i was aiming for being 'funny', which i don't do terribly often, and whcih, for me, is always a matter of swapping a dozen possible jokes in and out of every line.

xp Actually, that raises another question. Somebody just mentioned to me last month that they write for a publication where the policy is that critics are not allowed to consume alcohol at the concerts they're covering. There's some logic to that rule, I guess, but I'd honestly never heard of it before. (And it's hard to think of a show I've been to, including ones I've reviewed, where beer was available that I haven't had some. Also, since it's likely that most people don't watch shows entirely sober, I'm wondering whether not drinking might unfairly skew opinions about the music.) Anyway, I wonder how rare this policy is.

can someone email maura@idolator dot com and tell her what publication that is?

Wow, that's unimaginably harsh! For me, the right amount of booze helps rather than hinders the review - easing me over the initial hump, so that the words start flowing more freely. My regular intake: two pints of ordinary lager. Not a drop more, not a drop less. I've become quite superstitious about it.

There's been one recent change, which for me has worked out very well: about a year ago, my newspaper lifted the word count restriction for the web versions of gig reviews, retaining it just for the print versions. So we're now asked to "write freely" for the web version, and to submit an edited print version at the same time. This has improved my whole attitude to the editing process.

the number of offices i've worked in where intoxicants much stronger than alcohol seemed to fuel the entire production team...

Somebody just mentioned to me last month that they write for a publication where the policy is that critics are not allowed to consume alcohol at the concerts they're covering.

I would think sports writers would find the idea of such a 'restriction' hysterical.

And how does one enforce it, other than having a snitch who know what you look like and is near you at the show?

Now I'm curious. The name of the pub needs publishing so that we can be supercilious with those willing to work for a fifteen dollar or less review and be teetotal.

Let's just say it's a daily in Texas. Don't want to get any more specific than that without actually verifying the rule first-hand -- sounds really far-fetched to me, and I'm still kind of incredulous.

And yeah, apparently the theory is, if you drink at a show, a friend of your boss's might see you there.

Let's just say it's a daily in Texas.

Now you know -- in Texas (!?), of all places -- that is just wrong and anti-'Mercan. How would anyone survive during college football season?

concert reviewing: the last bastion of socially accepted drinking on the job (bartending excluded)?

I don't drink, so I get a few editors assigning me for festival coverage because they like how I have the energy to stay on my feet and watch bands for 10 hrs at a time

I don't drink either, and I find it can occasionally make concert reviewing difficult, because most acts don't have a solid 75 minutes in 'em, frankly, so by around a half hour into the headliner's set I'm usually thinking, "get me the fuck out of here already," and maybe if I was slightly drunk I wouldn't feel that way.

Nah, you'd feel that way anyway. Or at least I probably would. But then, that's part of why I've never done many live reviews.

Actually, one of the few times I got chewed out by my bosses in my decade at the Voice was when a writer said in a Sound Of The City review that they'd left the show they were reviewing before the encore. Seemed like a valid response to me, if the band was sucking, but my bosses thought otherwise.

what if you bailed early from one of those zoning-board meetings you covered as a cub reporter? what if something HAPPENS during the encore. doesn't a reviewer have some responsibility toward the readers or is all about yr vaunted tastes & opinions.

at least r. meltzer making things up in a concert review represents some attempt at, you know, being entertaining. writing that you left a show early because the band sucked is pretty fucking arrogant IMO. yr bosses were correct.

It depends on the show. I walked out of an Eagles concert I reviewed in 2003 when the band showed no inclination to stop playing after two encores and three hours.

meanwhile every Pearl Jam concert I've attended has pulled out some weird, unexpected shit in the last third (the first time I reviewed them though was when Sleater Kinney opened for them).

Well, I'm not really saying my bosses were wrong, in retrospect. Just saying what my thoughts had been when reading/editing the review (in which the leaving-of-show was entertaining, until I got called out on it.) (For what it's worth, I've never personally left a concert I was reviewing before it was done, no matter how much I hated it. And I'm pretty sure I've never reviewed an album for publication that I hadn't actually listened to all the way through -- though there's a Nirvana album in my metal book I didn't have a copy of on hand when I wrote the review. But I've definitely written show previews of bands based on just a few songs.)

didn't mean to come off like moses up there. an embarrassing number of albums i reviewed in the old RS record guide got only a cursory listen or two. a classic case of biting more than you can chew. previews or listings are exempt from review standards.

I've walked out early from two shows that I've reviewed (from a total of around 150), because a) I already had all the information I needed and b) I couldn't stand to be there a second longer. One was Seasick Steve, and the other was (to my surprise) Manu Chao.

you have to be some sort of wizard to get me to read a review of a live show. so, hats off to the people who have to write them. (i can think of maybe one in the last decade that was actually memorable. greg tate's springsteen show thing in the voice.)

(but then my gold standard might actually be bukowski's stones review in creem: http://beatpatrol.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/charles-bukowski-jaggernaut-wild-horse-on-a-plastic-phallus-1975/)

i always stay till the end of a show. what if someone died?? also, i like concerts.

Well, there must be daily papers that still, at least on occasion, run reviews the morning after certain "important" shows, right? Which might well mean pages close early enough to require reviewers to file before shows end. (The dailies I read most seem to stick to the two-or-even-three-days-after rule, but I get the idea that that's a convention that's evolved over time. I could be way off on that, though; never tracked it very closely.)

And Scott is right -- of all the kinds of music criticism, live reviews are probably the most boring to read, and almost definitely the most boring to write (and to edit, which is why I delegated Sound of the City to sub-editors when they were available.)

Well, in the Lehigh Valley they didn't sell beer at the big venues, so you could maybe have a
soda. Since many of these had to be filed for publication in the morning newspaper, and they occured at night, they often mandated that the reporter had to leave the venue -before- the show was over.

This was before well before you could have a laptop with you and file wireless. Hard to imagine, but yes, lots and lots of people did it this way.

Anyway, the small clubs in the area were fairly dire. Most of the time the newspaper was interested in reviews of locals for special section on Saturday which would publish an anthology of reviews from the seven days +1 previous. Then you could always stay until the bitter end. This led to many situations in which having a beer was one way to get through the night. I recall one time being assigned to cover stand-up comedians performing at a local club, one in which the promoter had neglected to inform them was gay. One of the comedians, who was rather inobservant, had a routine based on gay slurs and homophobia.

It takes little imagination to realize ordering a drink in such a situation is the human and rational thing to do.

xhuxk you've blown my mind with this no-alcohol policy.

xpost: I mostly write for a regional "evening" daily (which actually appears around 10am), and we run all live reviews - no matter how big or small - on the website the morning after. Until around 6 months ago they also ran in print the day after, but that's now slipped back a day. And, um, live reviews are easily my favourite to write!

I don't drink, so I get a few editors assigning me for festival coverage because they like how I have the energy to stay on my feet and watch bands for 10 hrs at a time

is this something you've been told or something you're guessing?

or maybe a little of each (probably the correct answer)

i wanted to revive this, but perhaps kind of ironically, i don't know what to write...

well i guess that's a fair enough question - when you're deciding to pitch an idea, how do you decide what to cover? if it's reviews etc, do you just have a look at what you've been sent that month from the flacks and pitch those, or do something else?

That's usually how it goes, or I call an editor and threaten to kidnap his cocker spaniel if he won't publish me.

music writers (especially for free weeklies), what is the worst pun-based headline you/your colleagues/your editors have committed to print?

another question please: how many listens to an album in average before writing a review?

oh god i've cranked out so many weak headlines -- don't know if any were particularly outrageous puns but i've had some dogs to be sure

another question please: how many listens to an album in average before writing a review?

Ha -- I just wrote a single review after listening to 1:30 of the song.

it's probably pretty shitty ?!

Zeno - for me it really depends on how much I like the album to be honest. If I've got, say 5 albums to review and 2 of them are awesome, one is just fine and 2 of them are shit then it's only normal that I listen to them as I'd listen to CDs normally. Biased? Maybe so. But I always always try to give even the most awful stuff at least two full listens. That said, if the PR company can't be arsed to send me the CD until a day before deadline then that's just tough.

but there are lots of albums where it takes a number of listenning to figure out if you like them or not.
it's probably very hard on a deadline (and with a potential of regreting what you wrote later on)

I'm not a big 'repeat listener' as a music fan in general -- putting something on more than once in a week is considered heavy duty listening by my standards. With a tight deadline I might listen to it a couple times in the space of a day, if I have a week or more it'll be at least 3.

it's probably pretty shitty ?!

lol weezer

related to puns, but how about using lyrics from other bands (or even other genres) to headline a feature story -- like say "the kids are alright" for Kriss Kross or Smoosh? any confessions?

if i was writing reviews i would probably regret at least a little of them because of those traps:
Holy Crap, this is amazing! Actually, no hold on.. it's shite!
vs. the opposite

i have used lyric-based puns more often than i care to admit

haha since so many of them post here i almost feel like asking my former stable of writers to chime in on the worst punning headline i ever inflicted upon them.

lol i'll have a look and let you know if i find anything

i wrote one a bit back that is so stupid: Poker Flat Lets the Chips Fall .

god. headsmack.

Pun-wise, probably my review of A Grand Don't Come for Free: "Whither Thou?"

another question please: how many listens to an album in average before writing a review?

yeah, this tends to follow how often I'd listen to the album anyway. You can recognise a really terrible record in a few songs, so I once reviewed an album based on two half-listens (because I couldn't bear to get through the whole thing / the second half-listen was for specifics while I wrote). I'll want to keep listening to a good record anyway, and the time it takes me to get bored of it is relevant to "how good" it is. Usually 4-6 times for a decent record, 8+ times for a really good one.

I've got a techy question... I'm going to be conducting a phone interview soon. What are the ideal ways to go about recording the intervew? I've heard some people use Skype, others use adapters to hook up a recorder to a phone (I only have a cell phone... is there such an adapter?).

I do it real low tech holding the tape recorder up to my cell on speaker -- not the best way to do it (and you get that weird clicky noise that happens anytime a cell phone's near a recording device), but in a pinch it works.

i have a device which is similar to this - does the job perfectly

another question please: how many listens to an album in average before writing a review?

depends on the album, on the deadline, on when the PR deigns to send it to me. ideally, until i feel i have a handle on it.

Lex, thanks for the suggestion.

Does that Voice Memos thing on the latest iPhone software allow for this to be done easily? (This = recording phone interviews)

there's some conference call services that let you call in and they save the conversation to an mp3 or wav -- i'll bet one of them must be free somehow. (if you're technically nerdy and got a lot of free time, you can jerry-rig one up on your own computer for free.)

Do any of you who are paid for your music writing have any general writing advice for people who want to get better at the craft? How did you go from sucking to excellence? I'm not a music writer, but I do write and am looking to improve. Thanks everybody!

And by "the craft" I mean writing as such, not writing about music necessarily.

Writing often and having people call your shit awful.

^^this

or, write often and re-read the writing two months later and make sure that you think it's shit

Don't get too wrapped up in reading crit, but read enough to work out your likes and dislikes about other writers and what you want or don't want to read, put yourself in the shoes of your own reader.

I would go farther and say you need to take a look at the crit that you like and really try to figure out what makes it tick...try to analyze and isolate those elements which really make your motor churn. then try and figure out how to incorporate it into your own writing without being called a biter.

Write when very drunk, very late at night. Then, after a few years, write when very sober, very early in the morning.

wrote a really shitty review of some crumby 8-bit ironic post-IDM game music thing, along with a bunch of others. they got published, the bad one didn't - are people finding that mags less likely to publish bad (as in low-marks) reviews these days? i noticed the album had been given impartial column space in the news section of said mag, so maybe this had something to do with it?

I had an editor specifically request a positive review of something last week. Fortunately, I was able to deliver one honestly.

dog latin, i've noticed a sort of imperative to play nice w/r/t reviews and live previews over the last little while.

not EVERYWHERE, per se. but in some places it's like "let's just review stuff that's good"

"if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"

I once had a review changed from ultra-negative upon submission to oddly positive in print. I complained, but it was allegedly a genuine subbing error... still felt queasy about the whole thing though.

ads be hard to come by these days

Pubs are so desperate for readers these days that I can imagine a desire to cut down on the negativity and snark. After all, no one likes to be told their favorite band sucks.

I can actually understand a publication's wish to only run positive (or at least thoughtfully negative) reviews. But that's harder on the editor, who must do a much more meticulous job of pairing writer and subject. If you're willing to run raves and teardowns more or less in equal measure, you can almost assign anything to anyone.

Too bad pubs (and blogs, too) fail to understand that it's the negative reviews (or the balance of positive/negative, more accurately) that build their reputations as trustworthy sources.

xpost

Yeah, but the only way to stay alive now is to be a niche publication, and niche publications' readers want their tastes validated, not challenged.

otm

Which I don't have the slightest problem with, btw; I've always been a big believer in critics being experts on one or two things rather than trying to be generalists who know a little bit about "everything" ("everything" being its own kind of parochialism anyfuckinway; it always boils down to liking mainstream pop, hip-hop/R&B and half-assedly nodding in the direction of country, metal, etc.).

I think there are a few different scenarios being swept together as one here: a publication pushing for positive reviews of particular albums (maybe because they're high profile or advertisers or just a favorite of the editor/publication) vs. a publication wanting to keep it positive as much as possible and have a more "up" tone vs. a publication dealing with limited review space and preferring to use it to recommend good stuff instead of trashing bad stuff

If you wanna see the utter valuelessness of the "generalist" approach, check out Slate's music writers' roundtable that's happening this week and count all the different types of music that are being totally ignored.

I'm having a hard time seeing the utter value in keeping a bingo card w/ genre names on it at hand every time I read anything about music.

the older i get, the less i feel the desire to generalize. doing so feels so insincere, you know? because unless one is omnicient it's impossible to know EVERYTHING about stuff happening in EVERY genre.

at this point i write about noise, experimental, indie, some rap, and some pop. and i don't even feel like i've giot a handle on all of that a lot of the time.

Please don't use Jonah Weiner as an example of what it means to be a generalist.

generalist/specialist isn't an either/or, most writers are situated somewhere on that spectrum and can play generalist or specialist as appropriate

totally

and notwithstanding the (very few) critics who can pull these extremes off, i don't think there's anything particularly appealing about either a) pretending to be "above" genre and refusing to acknowledge different cultures' values and traditions, or b) immersing yourself so far in a scene that you stop being able to see the wood for the trees

The problem with genre experts is that they often focus on things that aren't necessarily of concern to me as a "casual" listener.

or alternatively, genre experts sometimes point out things that i wouldn't have noticed as someone not attuned to that particular style, which i find tremendously valuable in finding my way into enjoying it

Oh, to be sure. I guess it only becomes a problem for me when they get hung up on a set of internal rules for what makes their genre work.

I couldn't even skim that Slate thing, btw. My brain just glazed over.

Please don't use Jonah Weiner as an example of what it means to be a generalist.

Why not? (Genuine curiosity.)

I just hate his writing, that's all.

Ah, OK; I was thinking the exact opposite, that you thought he was somehow better than a mere "pop critic" or something like that.

No, if anyone is a mere pop critic, it's him!

In generalist publications, the problem with specialist writers is that they can start to cheerlead for their genres, sometimes regardless of the quality of the record they are reviewing. And one reason why you tend to read more good reviews than negative ones is that there is so much released that any title reviewing fewer than 150 titles a month will see its editor think: "I have 25 slots this month. There are 10 albums that have to be reviewed. There are 10 that my writers are desperate to write about. So the other five ... shall I just select some crap to take down, or maybe try and steer readers to something I rate?" Doesn't seem an unreasonable impulse. Better to review, I dunno, Cold Cave than just rip on a Def Leppard album for the sake of it. Your review will not change anyone's opinion about Def Leppard, but it might make someone check out Cold Cave.

I used to notice a pattern with 'in-house' mags such as Tower Pulse! where each issue they'd do a harsh takedown of a hot new release that was destined to sell bazillions anyway; it almost seemed like a deliberate 'see? This mag is an organ of a retailer but we're impartial!' kind of thing.

I wonder if that's still a thing, aiming all a mag's darts at things that can't be hurt anyway while keeping it positive re: vulnerable 'sprout' artists?

(Sorry if I'm not supposed to post here-- I'm not a music writer but I am a writer. Just found the subject rather interesting).

We don't seem to have 'done' http://ripfork.com/ yet so this seemed like the best place to put it

The purpose of RipFork is to hold music critics to the same level of snarky, loquacious abuse that they dole out to the artists actually making the music. My ultimate goal is to uncover how and why we allowed music writing and the keys to aspiring bands’ futures to be dictated by these critics in the first place. To those writers I criticize on the site: this is meant to be a humbling experience. Take from it what you will.

To everyone else: Have a good time.

It's just all a bit tragic really, even when I agree w/ him I just feel bad that he's gone to this much effort for something of such scant significance (and that's before you get to his whole 'thinking too hard gives you wrinkles' steez or his refusal to accept that niche music reviews are sometimes written with niche music fans in mind)

Whitest Words: cloying, oeuvre, orthodoxy, affectation, ubiquity, overwrought, incongruence, authorial, Sapphic, relegated, mimicry

fuck this dude for real

hoo boy I missed that he has a "whitest words" category!!

:o

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the thought of someone not from the UK (no bio so I dunno where he's from but he has never heard "amongst" and wonders if it's a UKism) poring through drownedinsound daily and going "you know, this writing is not always very good"

"there's a tendency for music writers to write about dub and its endless sub-genres as if more than 0.00001% of the internet-cruising world knows what the hell they're talking about"

Yeah, I think this might be more than 0.00001% of the people who go to music review sites, never mind click on dub(step)-related reviews.

(Oh, dub is so obscure! Is that the same as all this wobblestep-wonkwave-core that the kids like? I don't know, I tell you garage is where I PARK MY CAR amirite, next it will all be "living room" and "conservatory" ho ho.)

Some of the entries are just incredible - his 'deconstructions' actually are like Mr Logic from Viz. It tips over into heartbreaking pretty quickly :(

problem is that anyone who really was a good enough writer to provide the kind of takedown that landfill criticism sites like DiS or p4k require would not actually be bothered to do so

im not sure that they require a "takedown" so much as this guy requires "a sense of perspective" and "a cure for butthurt"

This was much better when it was just Brian May ranting uncontrollably about DiS hacks on his blog.

Yeah but that was better than nearly everything

landfill criticism sites like DiS or p4k

DiS is totally a landfill site but p4k isn't, I've read dozens of great reviews on that site

What print publications do people here contribute to? I much prefer seeing my writing in a print magazine to on the web.

I thought I'd ask a staple question that I think may have been toiled over before on ILX, regarding use of the first person in gig and LP reviews. Is this generally considered unacceptable in anything less than the most stylistic circumstances? Or does it really not matter too much?

I'm going to try a different tack: Suppose you are an aspiring musician, and the question is the use of guitars in creating musical recordings. Is this generally considered unacceptable in anything less than the most stylistic circumstances? Or does it really not matter too much? Well, those would be the wrong questions. The question I'd pose to you first would be: Do you like music that has guitars? Obviously, you'll like some and dislike others. But is there some guitar playing that inspires you to want to play guitar yourself? Who is making such music? What guitar techniques are they using and, most important, to what effect? That last question - to what effect? - is crucial because what might happen is that you'll discover that the effect they got with guitars isn't the effect that you're getting with guitars, whereas when you switch over to trumpets or keyboards or jew's harps, well then - blam! - that's where you've got it. But you'll start with guitar, seeing what you can do with guitars.

Same is true with any literary device: irony, alliteration, first person, subordinate clauses, etc. You use them because you've learned them from models you admire, and if they help you say what you want to say, you keep using them.

This is a long-winded way of saying that no editor knows in advance whether you should use the first-person singular until he or she has seen how you use it. There are a few publications where you might find it outright forbidden, but we're not likely to be welcome at those pubs anyway. The important thing is having something interesting to say.

Xhuxk's forgotten that most of what I wrote for him was on spec too; same with what I wrote for Levy or Simmons. This is mainly because I was too scared to pitch things that I didn't know in advance I'd do well, and of course you can't know in advance, so the way to find out is to sit down and write it in the first place.

Of course, I'm not a good model for how to earn a living.

DiS isn't 'totally' a landfill site. Or at least it wasn't a couple of years ago when I used to read it regularly. No site that had Kev Kharas, Mike Diver and, dare I say it, the charmless but occasionally brilliant Dom Passantino writing for it amongst others could be considered so.

To elaborate on what I said above: I doubt that someone who hasn't "earned" the right to use the first person has earned the write to bore us with adjectives and genre designations either. Someone who falls asleep at my use of the first person isn't interested in my ideas anyway, whether I'm in the first person or not. To go back to my analogy, the phrase "guitar band" is a red flag for me these days, indicating that I'm likely to dislike what I hear. But the problem isn't with guitars themselves; guitars don't kill music, musicians kill music, and if you had the same guys playing keyboards or xylophones they'd probably be just as dreary. "Electric guitar" meant electric excitement in '66, it means drudgery now. But there's plenty of electric guitar excitement in music today - great stuttering Keith Richards-style guitar chords at the start of Martina McBride's "Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong," for instance - it just doesn't usually come packaged with "guitar band" on the label.

The first person is a red flag for Chris because he associates it with a style of wandering P4k writing c. 2000 that I never paid much attention to anyway. But that's not an inherent problem with the first person. Any reader who sees the name "Kool Moe Dee" in the kicker and sees Kool Moe Dee's picture at the top of a review is gonna know that the piece will get around to Kool Moe Dee even though the lead is "I transport myself into rage a lot." And editors who think that "Kool Moe Dee transports himself into rage a lot" would be as good an opening as "I transport myself into rage a lot" probably should re-evaluate their career choice. But then, which opening to use depends on the piece as a whole; by starting it the way I did I put the rage closer to the reader than if I'd assigned the rage only to Kool Moe Dee. But then, I wanted to put the rage close to the reader. If I hadn't, I'd have started the piece differently. Doing what I did, I was immediately able to call my record player a rage machine and put Kool Moe Dee in the context of other performers on my rage machine (Stones, Stooges, Sex Pistols, Big Youth, Spoonie Gee), so the piece isn't about these misogynist black youth out there in hip-hop with their rage, but about something basic in a lot of music that - problematically - attracts me and potentially the reader too. But it wouldn't be as problematic as I want if it isn't the writer's and the prose's rage that is at issue, and potentially the reader's, not just that of the guy I'm writing the review about. (And if you don't want reviews that read like that, why in the hell would you listen to music that sounds like that, either?)

By the way, my use of the first person back then was heavily influenced by Mick Jagger's use of it in "Under My Thumb" and "Back Street Girl" and "Street Fighting Man" and so on, the way he made himself problematic. But I wasn't sitting down and going, "Oh, I'll use the first person in the way that Jagger does." I just was someone who'd analyzed a lot of Jagger and then wrote the way I wrote.

"Earned the write"

(But I haven't earned the right to proofread my own writing, even if I'm pretty good proofreading others'.)

i actually wondered if that was intentional coz i thought it were a funny pun

Sometimes my unconscious pulls off some expressive bloopers that I end up keeping, but this one has more to do with senility. As I get older, more and more I'm typing in sound-alike words for the words I mean.

By the way, Chris actually allowed all sorts of shenanigans at PTW. E.g. this.

The unwritten rule at PTW was that no one was allowed first person unless they had a book published, so I def let Frank and xhuxks first person narratives roam free in the wild while I cracked down on others!

Here's a music writing question for all yall.

Is there a reliable alternative to doing phone interviews on anything besides a landline? I'm currently paying appx $40 a month to keep a landline (which, to be fair, is actually really cheap compared to, say, five years ago) so I can continue to do phone interviews at my house.

So far the alternatives I see are
a) Cell Phones - Which, as anyone who uses AT&T knows, are subject to dropped calls, bed reception, and sketchy changes depending on fluctuations in the weather. The cell phone coverage in my part of Brooklyn isn't the best in the world to begin with, and even in the best neighborhoods, I would rarely describe ANY cell phone call I get as "crystal clear" enough to make me want to trust phone interviews that make up my livelihood

b) Skype/Web phones - "The future" as it were, but subject to sketchy wireless internet farts (which are less predictable that even cellphones in my experience), but the possiblity of your computer freezing, corrupting, or simply crapping out and losing the entire interview you just recorded.

god knows i'm wary of the vagaries of technology crapping out at the most inopportune times, but phone interviews via mobile/skype have always been fine for me. w/the former, plant yourself in an area of good coverage. the latter are pretty rare, only done one skype interview...iirc, it screwed up the first time (either the artist's or the pr's end), we arranged, it went smoothly the second time).

i record phone/skype interviews w/the usual dictaphone so there's no more risk of the i/v being lost than usual. wouldn't know how else to record them tbh.

I use AT&T and I don't have a problem, so that might be an area issue. Over the last few months of doing cell phone interviews I've only dropped one call (the person was very understanding and called me right back). And if you jailbreak it, you can record the phone conversation with an app, which fixes the problem I have of trying to transcribe phone interviews -- on my old cellphone I'd have to put it on speaker phone and hold a recorder to it.

(And if you jailbreak an iPhone, that is.)

i was hoping this wouldn't turn in "my cell phone sounds awesome wtf is wrong with u" because cellphones never sound awesome to me, even when i use someone elses

I've been interviewed three times in the last two weeks, and all our conversations (3 hours at a time) took place on my cell phone. I thought I was going to ask him to call my land line (which I still pay for and love), but the reception was first-rate.

It could be that I haven't used a landline in so long that I forget how superior they sound. At this point tho cell phone works well enough for me.

as far as first-person goes, I'm more comfortable using it now (better than the first person plural or second person at any rate). Hell, I may even have used it for one of my PTW reviews.

mobile phones don't sound particularly worse than landlines to me? more than good enough anyway, it's always more of an issue doing face-to-face i/vs which end up having to be done in some noisy public space

I do the majority of my phoners via cell these days - I put the cell phone on speaker and plop my Olympus DM-20 digital recorder right next to it on the couch. I have perfectly sufficient reception and excellent recordings. Sometimes if the artist is calling me, I'll do it on my land line, but more and more it's cell phone speaker into recorder. Recently I thought I was gonna have to do a Skype interview w/a guy who lived in Berlin but we wound up doing it by email instead (cleared this in advance with my editor).

ugh speaker phone is the worst, you people are savages!

In regards to first person discussion, I use it when it seems that my personal experience in the matter will carry some weight. I write a lot of music previews in Portland, OR and I've become known as an authority on metal around here. Since I play music, promote shows and festivals, and write about it, I know that there's a local audience that trusts my words to some degree. So even though I haven't published a book (yet), I feel no guilt in using first person voice when it actually lends something of use to the writing.

I am all ears about more good interview recording solutions though. Sounds like I should jailbreak my iPhone. I like that solution best so far.

I'm more curious about others' steps AFTER recording, especially transcribing in the mp3 age.

Here's my process at the moment:

1. Do interviews on a land line, mainly because that's what I have a jack for. Record on an Olympus digital voice recorder DS-330, which my brother gave me. I should probably upgrade.
2. Download to my Mac using DSS Player, which I have set to automatically make an AIFF copy.
3. Take the AIFF and plop it into Switch, then convert it to an mp3.
4. Label and plop the mp3 into iTunes for safekeeping (and make sure it's set to actually import to iTunes).
5. Put the DSS and AIFF "originals" in a folder for backup.
6. Plop a copy of the mp3 in ExpressScribe for transcription. ExpressScribe lets you slow down recordings, but it's still nowhere near as handy or as good-sounding as a manual cassette tape recorder.

The only good thing about digital transcription is fast-forwarding and rewinding, but I have yet to figure out "hot keys" or buy anything like a foot pedal or whatever, which sucks because I'm planning on doing 100s of interviews this year...

just make stuff up.

i mean, i still do my shit on TAPE and still am fighting the move to go digital.

The way I see it, your interviews are the most valuable part of your job, and if I get hit by a car or drop my recorder in a puddle or whatever, that tape is gonna survive. I've heard too many stories about digital recordings just "corrupting" with no rhyme or reason.

When I interviewed Negativland they told me a story of a friend who went to mexico and did a weeks worth of digital recording and then the whole thing just crumbled into corrupted digi-dust

Sometimes artists laugh when I pull out my big cassette recorder, but I've been doing this 10 years and have had exactly one mishap, which was with a wire, not the recorder.

go analog!

I still use cassettes as well, I swear by it. Has never let me down.

Used Skype a few times now and it has worked very well, recording to computer HD. It's a little scary because it's not as easy to trust as tape, but as long as you see the VU meters going, it's recording. Helps to have a headset, the sound quality is outstanding, much better than any phone. Right after I make a copy of the file on another drive. Recording cell phone conversations sucks, period, and I never figured out how to do it with an iPhone.

I helped someone on my student magazine's staff run an interview last year, and we just put her cell on speaker and recorded the whole thing using GarageBand. It went fine, but there were a lot of ways it could have easily went wrong, and I could totally see why people would feel safer using a tape recorder or something like that.

It's true, cassettes are hardy. But I don't do more than one interview on a digital recorder before ripping it to the computer and my external hard drive. And the convenience of organization, searchability, and space is considerable.

I just archived all my old interviews on cassette into digital format -- but I haven't gotten rid of the tapes because, well, why? Might as well keep the ultimate backup.

still pete, if anything happens from the time you record that interview to the time you get it on your computer...

especially since sometimes you do interviews on the road or at shows and not always at home!

6. Plop a copy of the mp3 in ExpressScribe for transcription. ExpressScribe lets you slow down recordings, but it's still nowhere near as handy or as good-sounding as a manual cassette tape recorder.

The only good thing about digital transcription is fast-forwarding and rewinding, but I have yet to figure out "hot keys" or buy anything like a foot pedal or whatever, which sucks because I'm planning on doing 100s of interviews this year...

not sure if its the same on mac, pete, but on pc the espress scribe hotkeys are f4 for stop, f9/10 to restart, f7 rewind and f8 ffw... lovelovelove that program...

sound quality of digital over analogue is an incredible improvement, tbh, and while my minidisk was scarily unreliable, my cheap mp3 recorder has never let me down yet...

i can't believe we're having a digital vs analogue debate in 2010. even a massive luddite like myself has long gone digital.

still pete, if anything happens from the time you record that interview to the time you get it on your computer...

anything could happen to anything! tapes get chewed up inexplicably! someone could step on them! i could be run over by a bus! digital dictaphone puts my mind to rest re: clarity of recording and relative ease of transcribing. if bad things happen i'll deal.

I use a horse to get to jobs. There's just too much that can go wrong with the combustion engine.

I transcribe my interviews straight from the recorder - don't even import 'em into the computer anymore. And when they're transcribed, I erase the original recording.

Speakerphone + Garageband works a treat for me. Just export to Itunes so it's easier to pause and go back.

tapes get chewed up inexplicably! someone could step on them! i could be run over by a bus!

Yeah, you joke, but seriously digital recordings can just "go away", if a tape gets chewed up or stepped on you can still salvage it.

I remember when U2 recorded their last album. They finished, tried to play it back and it had just 'gone away'. Bummer.

Just make sure to keep those tapes in their cases. Who knows who's out there roving for binders filled with your interviews!!

Yeah, you joke, but seriously digital recordings can just "go away", if a tape gets chewed up or stepped on you can still salvage it.

or maybe you can't. analogue tape is a hella vulnerable medium, and i can ruefully say i've lost interview cassettes on tourbuses, had them doused in liquid and left em in my car on a rilly hot day before, and that's pretty much been the end of that.

is harder to misplace a file on a digital recorder i'd protect with my life anyway.

I love my digital recorder. Done a few interviews in noisy restaurants--seriously, at one point someone started vacuuming in front of our table--and I was shocked to find that the audio was perfectly discernible.

I too just transcribe straight from the recorder - use the playback function where the speed is slowed down a little bit (though it always makes me sound like a pothead) and it works pretty swimmingly.

yeah, i do have to say the one real drawback to my cassette tape system is that the audio is often a lil wonky

Done a few interviews in noisy restaurants--seriously, at one point someone started vacuuming in front of our table--and I was shocked to find that the audio was perfectly discernible.

I interviewed the DJ at a bull riding competition on Friday night while a band was playing in the center of the arena and his voice was perfectly clear.

So what model digital recorders are you all using?

...not a music writer, but have somewhat similar purposes - I use a Sony PCM-D50.

Olympus DM-20.

olympus ws-210s

Olympus WS-100

Sony ICD-UX71 - I really like it. I've also used the Sony ICD-B510F (low end model) which does the job but has a few less features (like background noise reduction and slow playback) that feel essential now that I have the UX71.

I erase the original recording.

I forget what the statute of limitations is on libel, but I'd wait that out. And people might be interested in your actual audio someday (or now!).

olympus vn-3100pc. it works fine but it was a panic purchase from radio shack, when i arrived in LA with two weeks worth of interviews booked, and discovered that my minidisk recorder hadn't survived the flight.

I use Olympus WS210s at work.

tapes get chewed up inexplicably! someone could step on them! i could be run over by a bus!

Yeah, you joke, but seriously digital recordings can just "go away", if a tape gets chewed up or stepped on you can still salvage it.

― ke$nan (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, 11 January 2010 14:27

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^this, sadly. Over the weekend my PC arbitrarily decided to "lose" the first 20 minutes of my 40-minute St3phin M3rritt interview. Gutted ain't the half of it - every other interview I've ever conducted has been recorded on cassette and is still in immaculate condition, and the moment I switch to Audacity...

I recorded a little less than a half hour of audio on Audacity about five years back and I thought it was going to blow up. So much can go wrong between pressing record and hitting save without the user even doing anything wrong.

Audacity is an amazing program, but it is buggy freeware-- not something I would trust to record an interview. Plus its real strength is multi-tracking.

Exactly.

i have an olympus 960, which i guess is practically ancient now. (i've had it i think 4 or 5 years.) it works great, i've never had a problem. i'm very aware of the potential to easily erase or lose data, but so far i've avoided that -- which puts it ahead of the various problems i've had in the past with cassettes and microcassettes.

and here's a question on transcription: do most people really transcribe their entire interviews? i almost never do that. i generally know the parts i'm interested in, so i transcribe those first. then if it turns out there's more stuff i think i need i'll go back and pick and choose. the average 60 minutes of conversation has about 5 minutes of really good quotes, maybe 10 minutes if you're talking to somebody especially smart and articulate, and anyway you're only going to have room for a handful of direct quotes as it is.

(the obvious exception is q&a's. which is one reason i really don't like q&a's.)

i usually transcribe "the good parts" and pick and choose from there

ditto, who on earth transcribes the WHOLE THING? the process is distressing enough as it is

man do i hate transcribing

yeah that's the only way that makes sense to me. i've had some friends and colleagues who for whatever reason feel compelled to transcribe everything before actually getting down to writing -- i guess maybe it helps them to hear it all again -- but that's just so time consuming, especially if it's a full-bore feature story where you've talked to a bunch of different people. i keep pretty good notes while i'm interviewing, so that i can use them as sort of an outline of what's on the recording. (plus i'll write down especially good quotes as i go, if possible, as a backup against something happening to the recorder.)

We have this argument all the time in the newsroom – that's why notebooks will never go out of fashion. Better to jot down pithy phrases than to waste time rewinding and fast forwarding.

i do LISTEN to the whole tape again, but certainly dont write anything down

I transcribe everything, or damn close to it, but I use a lot of quotes in my features. I like to let the artist speak for themselves a lot and only throw in bits of narrative and/or interpretation between, rather than unloading some huge personal thesis and scattering a few quotes on top to support what I'm trying to put across.

I do both. Depends on the interviewee.

We have this argument all the time in the newsroom – that's why notebooks will never go out of fashion.

when i was a daily beat reporter, i almost never taped anything. just notepad and pen. when you're writing short news articles you can get everything you need that way, and it's a lot faster. but when i started writing longer-form stuff, especially profiles where you really want to give a sense of a person's voice, how they talk and think, i eventually realized i really needed recordings. and one thing i've found is that no matter how good you are at note-taking, you very rarely get direct quotes accurate at anything past about two sentences. you can get the meaning of them right -- and as long as you do that, almost nobody will complain about being misquoted -- but you're going to lose or change some words. (i guess i should say "i" instead of "you," because some people are probably better at word-for-word recall than me. but i bet most people can't accurately write down more than a few sentences at a time while also conducting an interview.)

That's all true. We've had the other extreme here, though: students walking into offices, plunking down a tape recorder in front of a source, and sitting back, not taking a single note. Tape recorders work best when used as an archive or quasi-database, from which you can pluck information as needed.

i bet most people can't accurately write down more than a few sentences at a time while also conducting an interview

well exactly - i'm sure i'd be capable of it but to get the best interview i pretty much want to be wholly focused on what the interviewee's saying, listening out for interesting hooks or details that i can pick up on, and if half my mind and one of my hands is concerned with transcribing accurately and legibly, that's not going to happen. an interview should be like a conversation, and taking notes during one would be the equivalent of fiddling with your blackberry while talking to a friend.

i mean i already get the whole "fuck's sake why didn't i pick up on that" feeling when listening back enough as it is, can't imagine that being less focused would improve on that

Taping is the only way to get the true flavor of the way somebody speaks, and the amazing thing is that it's never exactly how you remember. I think the little differences matter.

But yeah, for news stories, where what someone says is more important than how they say it, notes are way better, especially, in my case, if it's over the phone and I'm typing. I stopped writing in cursive at a young age and never learned shorthand.

my new year's resolution is to learn how to type :/

I'm one of the psychos that usually transcribes everything -- although more and more I tend to cherrypick out the stuff I know I might use, especially if I'm pressed for time, but if the whole thing is less than one 45-minute side of a tape I like to get it all down, if only to have a complete transcript in my files.

I got a nice digital recorder for my birthday last year and I've been still using my cassette recorder and putting off making the big switch ever since, mainly because I'm a slow learner with new technology and the thing intimidates me. You guys are making me even more scared, but I really do want to start using it still.

x-post -- I am eternally glad for the typing class I took in high school.

Taping is the only way to get the true flavor of the way somebody speaks, and the amazing thing is that it's never exactly how you remember. I think the little differences matter.

this is absolutely positively otm. if I was ever an interviewee and someone sat down in front of me with a notebook and no recording device I'd be totally certain of being misquoted and would instantly lose a lot of faith in the writer.

I used to type 80 words a minute, but my keyboard promiscuity (three or four different Mac keyboards around the office, a PC laptop at home) has destroyed my speed. The keyboard really does make a difference.

I am eternally glad for the typing class I took in high school.

Eighth grade for me. I can't imagine doing this for a living and not being able to type like 80 wpm (which is about where I'm at).

I actually think I sped up a lot... by transcribing a lot.

I taught myself to touch type in 1996.

Mind you I lived in Harlow in Essex. There wasn't much else to do.

I transcribe everything and save it as a raw text file on my PC and back it all up once or twice a year onto a portable hard drive. It's pretty anal but I guess you never know when you'll need that quote from so-and-so about that seemingly trivial subject - until you really need it.

I email most of the raw text files to myself as well so that wherever I am I can access them. Just in case, like.

ditto, who on earth transcribes the WHOLE THING?

unless i'm in a hurry i try to - the times i haven't, i've usually regretted it and gone back to the tape to hear what i've missed, in case there's some game-changing morsel on there

i also transcribe every (laughs) in there too, tho sometimes that's just so i can console myself that they laughed at my lame joke

One of my writers bollocked me for taking loads of their [laughs] out of the piece that they'd filed. It didn't, they told me, reflect the general levels of hilarity that had taken place in the interview.

ill transcribe a whole interview if im still feeling kind of lost about how to write the piece. usually i know my angle by the time the interview is done so ill just cherrypick.

x-post -- I am eternally glad for the typing class I took in high school.

this was literally the only class my parents insisted i take in high school, and i've thanked them for it many times.

back on transcribing/listening to interviews: is there anyone who doesn't hate listening to themselves conducting an interview? if so i envy you. there's the "sound of my own voice" part, which is annoying and awkward, but there's also just all the little things i do or say to keep people talking or to try to draw them out on one thing or another, some of which inevitably end up in dead ends or nonsequiturs. and even though i understand what i'm doing, the strategies of trying to adapt to the personality or whatever of the person i'm talking to, i just tend to think i sound like an idiot.

back on transcribing/listening to interviews: is there anyone who doesn't hate listening to themselves conducting an interview?

i think it has seriously damaged my self esteem, no lie. i sound like a huge putz, and also a toady, and also sometimes i don't know EVERYTHING about the person i'm interviewing and they get mad.

It didn't, they told me, reflect the general levels of hilarity that had taken place in the interview.

"Sure it was about how the mysterious death of his entire family due to throwing themselves backwards on forks inspired him to write a despairing three CD masterwork but it was REALLY funny!"

is there anyone who doesn't hate listening to themselves conducting an interview?

Hahah, having dug out those old cassettes I'd mentioned and relistened to them over the past month: eurgh.

Love the one you're with.

i also transcribe every (laughs) in there too, tho sometimes that's just so i can console myself that they laughed at my lame joke

I tried to quote Ron Mael saying I was a smart guy in an interview once but the editor was having none of it

in retrospect he was probably mocking my eagerness to prove I "got" his band anyway

"ournalists who try to spell an interviewee's laugh"

Read that as 'onanists' and thought "Well..."

haha i'd misquoted and edited the j out with the preceding a...i'll never make a music-writer

i like how when someone says, "nobody's ever asked me that before," it can either mean, "huh, that's a good question" or "jesus you're an idiot" depending on their tone and inflection.

(i inferred the latter from a sighing iris dement.)

Probably shouldn't have asked her "So what do you think of the Goo Goo Dolls song about you?"

Yeah, I tried to sneak Mark E Smith saying "They were alright guys. Cool guys like you John" past some subs but to no avail.

I mean journalism has broken my body and come close to snapping my mind. All I wanted was a quote of The Fall lead singer saying I was cool in print - even if he said it because he was pissed and I'd just bought him two pints of San Miguel - but would they grant me that one indulgence? Would they fuck.

Transcribing is the fucking bane of my life. I've only ever said "LOL" out loud once. And that was to Polly Harvey. You can almost *hear* her looking at my like I've just beamed down from planet Daft Cunt.

is there anyone who doesn't hate listening to themselves conducting an interview?

One of the worst mistakes I ever made was agreeing to surrender the audio of one of my interviews to The Wire, who posted it on their site.

the weird thing about interviewing - given that pretty much all of mine have been one-on-one - is that you never quite know whether you're good at it or not* - no one ever listens in or grades you or is able to give you specific tips for improvement

*re: the actual interviewing process, not the ability to write up a good feature based on the material you managed to get

I used to take "That's a great question" at face value and feel really flattered until I realised it was a hedging tactic and often meant nothing of the sort.

I was, however, chuffed beyond measure when Lemmy said, "I enjoyed that. Good questions. Not like most of these idiots." Thing is, they were the kind of fairly basic questions that most people would ask Lemmy so maybe it was the Jack Daniel's talking.

has anyone ever had a musician record a song dissing them after giving a negative review?

Lemmy's a straight shooter. I think you can take him at face value.

Lex: Isn't it the case that it depends quite a lot on the other person. Like you, I see a good interview as being more like a conversation. If you get stuck with some passive aggressive/hates doing interviews idiot, no ammount of 'skill' at your job is going to rescue the piece.

That said there are some notable exceptions where this becomes part of the game. Lou Reed. J Mascis. Kevin Shields etc.

interviewed Mascis twice - the first time was a nightmare, for-reals five minute gaps of silence between question and monosyllabic answer. interviewed him again a few years later, with really specific questions, for a MOJO piece on Dinosaur, and he was great, talked at length about stuff, was endearingly un-self-conscious (and certainly didn't strive to make himself look like a nice guy re: how he treated Lous bitd). i now wonder if, a la Andrew WK, it was actually an impostor J.

people, especially creative types like musicians, are ALWAYS the same in every single situation. even if they've been drinking, if they're high, if they're jet lagged, if they're having a bad day or a shitty soundcheck has just blasted out their hearing or if their girlfriend has just dumped them. every experience of that same musician will always be the same. always

not being challops, but if interviewee is the same every time i'd suggest that's the robot imposter not the dude who's grumpy and monosyllabic one time and chatty and friendly another time

sorry i hould have typed LOL at the end of my sentence to signify i wasn't being entirely serious i guess

no i know yr joking

but maybe there should be a special rolling musicians hating on being interviewed/critiqued thread

so we can bitch and be all 'omg i just stepped off a plane in vancouver jet lagged out of my mind and couldn't find any weed and some interviewer dude asking me really obvious questions straight out of the press kit and i can't keep my eyes open yet he gives me beef coz i'm monosyllabic' as a companion thread to this one

i haven't done an interview in a couple of years and always prefer email over f2f but sheesh this thread. brings back bad memories ya know

XP: There are ways and means of getting shit out of monosyllabic people in most situations but not all.

I had the lack of humility to presume that I'd be the one to break Lou Reed. That I was so well researched he'd just take to me. He'd break down in tears and end up sobbing on my shoulder and tell me everything. I had the fucking chops to get anyone talking. Fucking bawling. Spilling the fucking beans.

There, there Lou. You can tell me.

On listening back to the tape it wasn't as transcendentally unpleasant as it seemed during the actual experience - when I wanted a black hole to suck me out of existence to safety beyond the event horizon - and we even had a pretty funny exchange about tinitus and listening to music in the bath but it was still useless and the piece got spiked.

That was my only one where I felt like I'd failed to get 'the piece' or 'the story' however.

There are ways and means of making sure that even with people that act like they hate you, you can come away with enough to cover the basis of a feature/news story.

But the people we're talking about on this thread have longstanding reputations for being difficult. Interviewees who are monosyllabic or outright hostile year after year, with interviewer after interviewer, can't really pull the stupid-questions/jetlag excuse.

Email interviews are usually horrible - dry and stilted and too easy to evade or fudge questions. What's so hard about a face-to-face conversation?

i like it when you click with someone and have a legitimately pleasant conversation. it's more enjoyable and you get better quotes. but i also just try to keep in mind that it doesn't matter whether or not they like me or think i'm smart or clever or any of that shit -- as long as i can get some reasonably interesting things from them on the record, that's all i need. in most cases i'll never talk to them again, and if i do they almost certainly won't remember me. we're both just doing our jobs.

That's very admirable. But if I found out that, say, David Bowie, liked me, I'd be made up, despite it being a silly thing to worry about.

Part and parcel of me being a music fan. Although this would only really count with about six or seven people.

i'd definitely love to hear about what it's like from the other perspective, not least because it'd probably help me be better at doing the interviewing...

i'm generally pretty respectful and well-researched, even though i know i might be able to get better results froma different approach. winning their trust is often my aim, though, and i never want it to be a destructive experience. "difficult" subjects often mellow if you show 'em you know nearly as much about their group as they do, and you're genuinely curious about the rest.

xp yeah lou seems like the exception to pretty much every rule, john!

But if I found out that, say, David Bowie, liked me, I'd be made up, despite it being a silly thing to worry about.

i fall into this trap far too often, i fear.

XP: to Mothra. What I mean is: you're creating a false binary about professionalism and enjoyment. They're not mutually exclusive.

I'm having flashbacks to my horrendous interview with Eric B. and Rakim years ago where they wouldn't respond at all with full sentences, and Rakim just kept saying in a montone voice "I want to encourage our fans not to do drugs," while he looked glassy-eyed and on something himself.

yeah point taken dorian but for those people why bother doing interviews at all? it's not like lou reed needs to do interviews at this point why go through the motions?

obv i can't speak for all interviewees but i'm not a verbal person. if i had good conversational skills i probably wouldn't make music at all but that's another story. i often feel very put on the spot if i'm f2f. if i'd had media training maybe i'd know how to field questions and have prepared answers for those dog-and-pony-show interviews but i put that shit in the press release coz i don't wanna talk about it any more

what's a worse interview for you guys? monosyllabic coz someone hasn't prepared & doesn't wanna be there or dog-and-pony media training standard answers?

xp to Doran - The problem with coming away from an interview with the idea that the artist personally likes you is that you're set up for the disappointment of meeting them again somewhere down the line and realising they have no idea who you are and having to remind them that you've met and then they go, "oh yeah" and smile weakly and then you wish you'd never said anything. Goddam these celebrities. You open yourself up and then they break your heart.

For this reason I've always liked the prostitute comparison - you meet in a hotel room for an hour and pretend you know each other better than you do. Although obviously with a prostitute nobody's expected to transcribe the tape afterwards.

xp to curmudgeon - Rappers are the best for this kind of stuff. Prince Paul once fell asleep on me during a Gravediggaz interview (but was lovely on the phone years later so maybe it was just lethal jetlag) and Jay-Z conducted a whole interview (fluent, friendly) while watching TV over my shoulder.

xp to Karen - That's Hobson's Choice. I guess I'd still rather someone showed the courtesy of coming up with some kind of answer, however generic, rather than making the interviewer feel like a prick. It's basic politeness. I think artists sometimes forget that the journalist could be doing other things with their time, and might have flown some distance themselves, and merits a little civility. But tbh, this is kind of the reason I was glad to leave the dance press - no more interviews with people who plainly didn't want to talk about their music.

xp to curmudgeon - Rappers are the best for this kind of stuff. Prince Paul once fell asleep on me during a Gravediggaz interview (but was lovely on the phone years later so maybe it was just lethal jetlag) and Jay-Z conducted a whole interview (fluent, friendly) while watching TV over my shoulder.

i had a memorable interview with can ox's vast aire where he kept up a fascinating spiel while flicking through a copy of the bible, a copy of the sunday mirror and a copy of Hustler's Hottest Teens (page open to a tres graphic blowjob scene), while keeping one eye trained on a TV news bulletin covering the opening salvo of the Iraq war

XP: I know what you're saying Dorian and it always feels like you're doing the wrong thing by either ignoring the person again or bounding up to them enthusiastically. I made the executive decision never to go backstage at a gig or a festival or to go to an awards ceremony or an aftershow party or to any kind of event where I know that these sorts hang out unless I was doing paid work and now the problem never raises it's ugly head.

I've got a signed copy of Raining Blood and my photo with Chuck D and that is enough for me. As much as I detest Almost Famous, the "they're not your friends" line should be tattooed on all aspirant music writers.

"Media training" is ok, because most of the time it's easy to get people out of that mode. Alright, they might not answer 'that question' but I feel you should be going in with multiple angles or possible objectives.

If someone is a passive aggressive, hates-the-press-but-doesn't-have-the-fucking-balls-to-tell-his (because it's always a bloke) record-label-that-they're-not-doing-any-more-interviews wanker, then there's little you can do.

I've tried the tactic of saying this straight out to people: "You haven't got the fucking nerve to tell your label's PR dept. that you're not doing press and now I've come here all the way from X to talk to you and you've just wasted everyone's time. You cunt."

And it has had a wide range of results. Some of them unpleasant. However it's always given me something to write about.

xp to Karen - I should say that, not being a musician, I have no idea how bad some interviewers can be. I'm sure some of them can drive you to distraction.

Doran, who have you actually said that to? I've often wanted to but never quite found the right moment.

it's usually the publicist who forces you to do interviews and they're almost always wimmins

Reign In Blood I mean.

Mainly metal bands. Killswitch Engage - they suddenly became very charming. Machinehead. One of them punched me. Then we got on really well. Mogwai. But I said it as a joke and they took it as a joke and we got on pretty well after that. Minus. One of them later attacked me with a pair of scissors. Something a bit more toned down to Editors. No discernible change whatsoever. (I was so desperate not to let this band make me turn in a boring feature I reinterviewed them twice and ended up saying off record: Look, you're putting me in a position where I will have to make you look like a fucking cunt and I really don't want to but you're refusing to answer any of my questions properly. Again with no change whatsoever. There's something almost psychopathic and sado masochistic in the way their front man deals with the press.)

The two guys from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. My first band interview as an adult. They made me feel like fucking shit. They were fucking horrible. And I came out of it thinking 'What have I done? I'm terrible at this.' But then I heard the interviewer after me punched one of them so I think they were having a not-getting-on-with-the-press day.

I said it to them and then walked out. It was like a year or two later than I realised that by saying it earlier in the interview I might shake the 'dynamic' of the meeting a bit in order to get some better results. I'm a slow thinker like that.

I should say that a lot of people I know are appalled by this story (including some who post here) and say that I must have got them on a bad day as they're generally really nice people.

I saw Reign In Blood on that Quietus flyer last Friday and had to be reminded who it was by heh

One of them later attacked me with a pair of scissors.

Holy shit.

I can't believe shit like that really happens in the context of a music interview.

I should say that a lot of people I know are appalled by this story (including some who post here) and say that I must have got them on a bad day as they're generally really nice people.

appalled on your behalf though john!

friend of mine and sometime ilx lurker has just reminded me of the following: http://thequietus.com/articles/00104-black-sky-thinking-kanye-west-sensitive-soul

XD

john can you please be installed as ilm's official uncle and tell more stories

I made the executive decision never to go backstage at a gig or a festival or to go to an awards ceremony or an aftershow party or to any kind of event where I know that these sorts hang out unless I was doing paid work ... I've got a signed copy of Raining Blood and my photo with Chuck D and that is enough for me.

I admit it; I've had my picture taken with three artists: Lemmy, Rob Halford and Ozzy. Oh, and a couple of the guys from Amon Amarth, but that was actually for a story in Metal Edge, not out of gushing fanboyism.

XP: Kshighway. I was on tour with a small band who have or had well documented drink and drug problems. I'm talking the story up a little. We ended up wrestling. Then fighting. He was holding a pair of scissors. I got cut. It was only a small cut but I bled quite a lot so it probably looked worse than it was.

Unperson: do I know you? I've got Kerry King, Frank Black, Chuck D, Julian Cope and Sonic Youth which is pretty good I reckon!

Oh man. Still!

First of all I have to sign forms saying I will mention various mobile phones in whatever I write about it.

delete kanye west

Unperson: do I know you? I've got Kerry King, Frank Black, Chuck D, Julian Cope and Sonic Youth which is pretty good I reckon!

We've never met so far as I know. My real name is Phil Freeman and I'm the former EIC of Metal Edge and I write and have written a whole bunch of other stuff for a whole bunch of other outlets. I blog here.

Ah, I was wondering who you were! There aren't too many metallers writing for WIRE. Pleased to virtually meet you.

Is there a reliable alternative to doing phone interviews on anything besides a landline? I'm currently paying appx $40 a month to keep a landline (which, to be fair, is actually really cheap compared to, say, five years ago) so I can continue to do phone interviews at my house.

so getting back to the nerdy tools talk, t-mobile has a wifi calling service now, which means if you have a wifi connection in your apartment (or anywhere else), you can make phone calls over it. quality is crystal clear, and a bonus is that it counts as a local call even if you are phoning mongolia to interview kongar-ool ondar.

verizon is signal king, it's not just marketing hype.

Lex: Isn't it the case that it depends quite a lot on the other person. Like you, I see a good interview as being more like a conversation. If you get stuck with some passive aggressive/hates doing interviews idiot, no ammount of 'skill' at your job is going to rescue the piece.

oh yeah, i'm fairly confident that most interviews i've done have been pretty good in the sense that, you know, they worked and i got my quotes and a decent angle and weren't horribly awkward experiences, it's just that odd sensation of having done these things for years without any formal training and with no idea of what my peers think of as the basics in interviewing.

what's a worse interview for you guys? monosyllabic coz someone hasn't prepared & doesn't wanna be there or dog-and-pony media training standard answers?

the first one by SO much. (though it's rarely the interviewee who need to "prepare"!) at the end of the day i don't care how unpleasant or fake or unhelpful or bitchy the musician is - just GIMME MY QUOTES and i can do the rest. anyone with a bit of imagination should be able to deal with the most media-trained, give-nothing away pop star tbh: i actually enjoy this ones for several reasons. a) no pressure on you whatsoever, b) a challenge to see what individuality you can prod out of them - and you ALWAYS CAN, c) thinking about it those super-positive i-am-blessed media-trained pop stars aren't actually boring at all, they're completely mental.

the absolute worst are the interviewees who are super-nice, super-friendly, charming and polite - and monosyllabic. if they're brats or cunts, that's the story even if they just grunt at you. if they smile and nod and then just say "yes!", AAARGH.

lex...have you ever done any guerilla type interviewing where they didn't know you were conducting one. 'hit and run', say the stupidest shit perhaps as an obsessive fanboy to get a quote ?

nope, though i have remembered and used quotes/info from conversations surrounding an interview

has anyone ever had a musician record a song dissing them after giving a negative review?

The John Leland/"Don't Believe the Hype" gold standard!

Sadly, not to my knowledge, though a Queens/Minneapolis rapper, Trama, had a line in one track, "stop askin' if I got beef with Pete Scholtes."

But then I heard the interviewer after me punched one of them

Speaking of guerilla criticism!

many many xposts, but ...

What I mean is: you're creating a false binary about professionalism and enjoyment. They're not mutually exclusive.

yeah no, i much prefer an enjoyable conversation. those are by far my favorite interviews. but i just mean that i try not to get hung up on that, or on having them "like" me, because like lex says ...

i don't care how unpleasant or fake or unhelpful or bitchy the musician is - just GIMME MY QUOTES and i can do the rest.

that's why second-favorite type of interview -- after the actually-enjoyable-conversation type -- is the quote-machine type, people who you barely have to nudge and they just start telling you all sorts of entertaining things. david byrne was one of those. robyn hitchcock. robbie fulks.