How many music reviewers/journalists in here?

i started out by (a) doing a zine, from ages of 14/15 to...god, maybe 23 when I was done with college and too busy with work. in this zine i wrote about music. i read a lot of music magazines, focusing on reviews. got an internship with baltimore city paper in college and started writing for Lee G, who is now their main ed and posts here. internship ended continued writing sporadically for Lee until 2002 when I decided to get more serious. now i get promos every other day and am drowning in music and write for two other alt-weeklies and have little time to think about much else besides music, which is fine. it ain't what i do for a living, though.

I told you to stop hitting the cough syrup so hard.

Lester Bangs:
Jesus of sippin' syrup, savant, muse and toper.

Come some of the work get's kind of hard
This ain't no place to be if you planned on being a star
Let me tell you it's always cool
And the boss don't mind sometimes if you act a fool

I recommend becoming a rock hack. There's a pretty low threshold for entrance, no union dues, and low stakes since only a half dozen people really read what you're writing anyway, and their sputtering, outraged letters of response can often brighten up an otherwise crappy day. The trick is to become a specialist: write about one kind of music. This way, you can get on the promo lists of only the labels that put out music you like, and avoid getting a lot of really, really shitty records in the mail. I mostly write about metal and out jazz. Somehow, I wound up on the Arista list, so I get crap like Outkast and Usher sometimes, but otherwise, my mailbox is full of envelopes from Century Media and Relapse and Eremite and other quality labels.

One other good trick I have learned while being a rock hack is: deal with publicists only by phone and e-mail, whenever possible. This way they don't know what you look like, and you can get on the guest list and hang out at a show in peace without anybody coming up to talk to you about the next band they're gonna try to shove down your throat, or to complain about the review you wrote the week before, or whatever else. Facelessness is probably the best thing about being a critic. Embrace it.

Yeah, hate mail is often the best mail you get. And music writers get great mail.

I also started doing zines in my early teens (sounds like a Belle & Sebastian lyric), but before that, I was the 'Arts Editor' for something called the "Teen Advance" in my local paper. I wrote reviews of Pungent Stench, Bob Marley and Cycle Sluts From Hell, to name a few. I was 12. My mom still has the clips and I will post them here if I can procure them - the photo of me alone is pretty hilarious.

So you could say I've been writing 'professionally' for almost 15 years.

It totally sucks, and I've given it up many times (i'm currently on hiatus except for a few magazines that are dear to my heart).

At the height of my 'career,' I wrote a weekly column and wrote for six or seven publications. I was forced to get a job developing film, which pays $7/hr, because I couldn't pay my bills by writing. Naturally, after doing this full time for awhile, the last thing i wanted to do when I got home from a hard day's work was to have to sit down and write about why the Subtonix CD sucks. You time becomes too valuable for such piddling nonsense, and that PBR ain't gonna drink itself, yaknowhutumsayin?

One day you'll wake up, as I did, and realize that even if you reach the apex of your goal - say, editor in chief at a newspaper or magazine, with salary, benefits, etc - you still won't be making half as much as the folks who wave orange plastic flags at construction sites all day. Some job.

J-school? If you have the means, sure. But it's not a guarantee of anything, and nothing beats on-the-job training with good editors and the motivating pressure of real deadlines. It may just be a function of the writers I worked with, but j-school grads tend to have a more stilted writing style, leading to a lot of by-the-numbers reviewing ("On their second album, Band X's album features 12 new songs with their familiar guitar-bass-drums arrangements..."). J-school apparently teaches a lot, but humor and imagination isn't a big part of the mix.

Getting your foot in the door is always a unique process; there's no right way to do it (for me it was a matter of some dumb luck, meeting people, and a lot of sending clips around). But once there, impressing editors isn't that difficult. File on time, within the word count, and produce sensible prose. Doing music features? Here's a simple thing to do that writers are stunningly resistant to but which made my heart sing when it happened: make phone calls. You talked to the band, great. Did you talk to the producer? Label owner? A&R guy? Club owner who got them their first gig? A little bit of enterprise on your part invariably makes for better stories; that sort of access can be difficult with, say, 50 Cent, and flacks can be real pricks about this. But there's really no excuse not to do it on a local beat.

My apologies if this sounds too lecturing. Regardless, it can be worth it. Give it hell: A life of encyclopedic musical knowledge and grinding poverty awaits!

Unless you live with mom, the only way it's gonna work at first, though, is with supplementary income (i took tech/biz writing gigs...seriously, a good way to make the bills go away and to practise writing for different audiences.) I'd say my best writing skills were developed while popping out a monthly column for a video production trade pub.

Anyhow, do what you love and the free CDs will follow... in truckloads.