Rolling Music Writers' Thread

other people have probably said this, but it bears repeating, and chuck's thing reminded me of it: if you are quick and your copy is clean, you'll get more work. duh. simple, really, but if you send your stuff before deadline and an editor has extra holes to fill, its a good bet that they'll ask you to fill some of them. and, in general, if someone needs something quick and they know you are reliable that's a big plus. (i'm guessing most good editors started out as writers who were quick and clean.)

Do you need to "learn to cook" to make a meal out of chickpeas and frozen spinach?

a can of chickpeas, and some frozen spinach

I actually eat stuff like this all the time for full meals. Bean + veggie!

Do you need to "learn to cook" to make a meal out of chickpeas and frozen spinach?

Well, it does help to have perhaps some olive or coconut oil on hand, maybe some garlic and fresh spices and black peppercorns, and some form of citrus... then it could be delicious. Otherwise you're likely just eating a heap of microwaved spinach...

I digress.

Ed Ward's paragraph just visited me like the Ghost of Christmas Future

Whiney, could you explain why you meant by: "If you were in the slightest bit interesting to me, you’d probably be in a band. And if you were any good at playing music you probably wouldn’t be writing about it. "

Genuinely curious!

(Hope you don't mind my pasting that here...)

music critics who are also musicians

how many of the ILM critics are frustrated/failed musicians?

Writers who became writers after their music careers failed.

Anyway, Scott is right. Editors tend to like writers who will make their jobs easier. Not that hard to figure out, but lots of writers never do.

Yeah, I've seen threads like that. I was just thinking that some people probably genuinely do prefer to write about music than to play it.

I usually play it first. Then I write about it.

oh i have no fucking time for this hand-wringing, doom-saying shit - as someone who started full-time freelancing at the end of 08 (just when the recession started to hit - gr8 timing there) i haven't had to resort to eating on 70p a day or whatever yet. nowhere near. it's a grind, you have to get your hustle on, there are fallow periods that can be immensely dispiriting, but the idea that you'll live out your days growing increasingly bitter about music while scrabbling around for coins in the gutter is just ridiculous (as is the idea that you can't diversify out of music journalism, completely ludicrous).

xpost

loooooool

Lex, with respect you haven't been doing this for very long. Look at the experience of most music writers and it's hard to argue with the point about being pigeonholed. You have to work very hard, and get very lucky, to break out of that. Ed Ward overplays the gloom but it's good that somebody's pointing out the pitfalls.

ksh, the number of music writers who are failed musicians is staggering. I count myself among them.

cf. the number of publicists who are failed music writers

Yeah, that makes sense! It just seems like, as many of the writers in that series said, you'd have to really want to be a music writer in order to have any sort of a successful career in it. So, if someone was in the game just because they couldn't pull off a career in actually playing music, they probably wouldn't make it as a writer.

Not that someone couldn't be passionate about both playing and writing about music, but it seems like most people wouldn't love to do both equally.

whiney, do you consider yourself a "failed musician" because you didn't make a living doing it? because i mean...

(sorry xposts) But are you a music writer because you're a failed musician? In an ideal world, would you have preferred to be a musician?

I ask as someone who's done both, neither to any great extent, but I was always more covetous of a career as a writer.

xp Also, I get the idea most music writers do grow increasingly bitter about music! I wouldn't say it's inevitable, but it's definitely more common than not. It's hard not to, to some extent. Like I said in my essay, I still hear a couple hundred records I like enough to hang onto every year. But I'm kind of bitter about music anyway! From my observation of the Pazz & Jop electorate at the Voice, I'd say the real hump writers have trouble getting over, for some reason, comes in their early 30s. That's when lots of music crits seem to pack it in. (I know, for me, that's when I thought most everything I heard sucked. Of course, in my case, my early 30s coincided with the early '90s, when most everything did suck. But that wasn't my fault.)

Also, I've said it before, on other threads, but if anything, I'm way more a frustrated DJ (in my head) than a frustrated musician. (But then again, I don't need to be a musician, since I married one.)

I'm way more a frustrated DJ (in my head) than a frustrated musician

haha yeah, this rings way more true

"If you were in the slightest bit interesting to me, you’d probably be in a band. And if you were any good at playing music you probably wouldn’t be writing about it. "

I take it Whiney's not really a fan of Saint Etienne, Yo La Tengo, etc.?

whiney, do you consider yourself a "failed musician" because you didn't make a living doing it? because i mean...

That is exactly what I mean.

But are you a music writer because you're a failed musician?

I was a struggling music writer and a struggling musician for many, many years and I just slowly leaned more and more into the one that kept giving me steady paychecks.

In an ideal world, would you have preferred to be a musician?

Absolutely.

Not to sound sorry for myself! I basically wanted to live in a pipe dream and I just traded down for a more realistic pipe dream!

Everyone I know, in good bands and mediocre, loses money playing in bands. Often quite a lof of money.

yeah i don't know if making money is a good gauge of whether or not you are a successful musician. a working musician, i guess, would be the better term. and, man, that is a hard hustle just like any other hustle.

i'd seriously love to get all hippy-dippy about it, but making money is a good gauge of how you pay your rent, as the last time I checked my landlord does not accept "indie cred" and "cool travel experiences" as payment

i'm sure if you wanted to, you could have made a similar living as a working musician but it would probably would have involved teaching, playing music you might not be that into and that certainly doesn't involve indie cred, etc.

not criticizing, everyone's ideas of success are different, etc.

When was the last time you checked?

xp

right, just saying you aren't a FAILURE if you don't make money at it.

x-post

i mean yeah, the word FAILURE is a little hyprbolicm but on the most basic level, i think most people go into music with the dream of it being their life's work and then fail to realize it

way to project

I got drunk a few nights ago and sang a song into the recording thing on my cell phone before I fell asleep

xpost
uh, i straight up admitted it up thread, but nice "zing"

when I heard it later I realized that I am a musician

Sorry, better things to do than read entire thread! xp

show all messages (757 of them)

Know who you're writing for ?...and who exactly is that ?...other writers seems to be who, as they are the only ones reading about music ?...yeah or nah ?

The rest of us just listen to it, having been quietly put off reading about it by tastemaker journo types of the past amping shit up or tearing shit down, which when you check out the actual music, you think...WTF ? that was meh or conversely, that was ace.

I tend to just hear the music on a tune by tune basis. No albums, no artists, no genres. I guess i'm not a fan of them and i'm defintely not a writer.

Very little music or artists would inspire me to want to write about them. So yeah...dance about architecture while the band plays on and on and on...

"Know who you're writing for ?...and who exactly is that ?...other writers seems to be who, as they are the only ones reading about music ?...yeah or nah ?"

nah.

I like -- or should I say I relate to -- parts of both Ed Ward's and Richard Meltzer's blurbs in that feature -- they're mining similar territory, emotionally speaking -- but they both lose me by turning their kvetching entirely outward, blaming their bitterness on the genre of music writing itself, refusing to hold themselves at least somewhat culpable for their own inability/failure/whatever to carry on. I feel their mood in those pieces 100% right now, but they both kind of collapse under the weight of their own bullshit, Meltzer with his Burger King reference, Ward saying "If you have writing talent, for heaven’s sakes, use it for something worthwhile." (Well, what the fuck do you consider "worthwhile"? You want to write articles about feeding the hungry? Go for it!) (Meltzer, as I've said elsewhere on many occasions, is such a monumental figure to me, he can say anything he likes in print -- especially about music or writing -- and I'll always dig it. But I still think he's evading something here.) When I say I loathe the very idea of music writing, which I do right now -- and no, I'm not pretending to place myself in the esteemed company of Meltzer, Ward, et al -- what I'm really saying is, I loathe parts of myself. I loathe the world too, sometimes, but that's such a pat answer in a way.

If you don't mind my asking, why do you "loathe the very idea of music writing," at least "right now"? Genuinely curious.

I loathe the act of doing it and rarely enjoying the results of it, I loathe the fact of speaking into a void, most of all I loathe the fact that I can't seem to shed it as an interest and a genuine passion despite having made a real effort to drop it. It's fucking weird, it really is in my bloodstream -- a transfusion is maybe the best way to go, I figure. (I dunno if I've answered the question. I'm bitter as fuck about wasting years of effort for naught, and not exercising other muscles, so to speak, to make adjusting to the real world a little easier.)

I loathe the fact that I will surely regret just having posted both of those when I wake up tomorrow!

I'm just surprised, I guess! At the same time, though, I've been wanting to read less rock criticism for the past three years and haven't stopped. \(O_o)/

I barely even really listen to music anymore -- always half paying attention to everything.

Seemed like back in the day y'all wrote for genre specific print magazines and the fans. Now, there is a dearth of magazines and fans have equal access to the music as much as the writers, so can form their own opinions.

It's like you're on a hiding to nothing in trying to build up a fanbase of readership who admire your style and respect your opinion.

Do y'all writers know who you're writing for anymore or is it pure folly and you're just doing it for yourselves because you must ?

It parallels musicians who make music that continues a tradition knowing most of the music has been done before and usually so much better that theres nothing original about what they try to do anymore.

one day you come to the realization that it's all been for naught ?

I think xhuxk is dead on re there being a hump to get over in your early 30s. That is when I was very close to packing it in, and I probably would have if I hadn't started writing a column then.

xhuxk said something similar to me in private email some years back in my own early thirties -- pretty perceptive, I realized!

fans have equal access to the music as much as the writers

you mean that 800 lb gorilla on the couch over there? just ignore him

Ian MacKaye once said that his goal with any band was to play one show. I think that's a pretty good standard of success. Lord Scotch once said real hip-hoppers have a day job. I don't agree with that notion of realness, but I sympathize. The idea that the market is the only measure of your worth, or even of actual demand, is absurd.