Rolling Music Writers' Thread

Did it. Don't think it sucked but I could be told otherwise.

Hey - can anyone point me to some live reviews they've particularly enjoyed? Seems to be a bit of a dark art compared to cd reviews.

much prefer writing live reviews compared to album reviews, myself.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/02/_lady_gaga_madi.php

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/blogs/pop-life/highlights-from-all-tomorrows-parties-the-perfect-rock-festival-20100908

much prefer writing live reviews compared to album reviews, myself.

Me too. I respond well to the immediacy/urgency of having to file a live review straight after the gig; the pressure energises me.

yeah i love writing live reviews, and they present a set of challenges and pleasures totally different from album reviews

I've enjoyed live-review-via-Twitter lately, which is much different than a formal review but is a great way to get the impressions together in one place.

I enjoyed writing live reviews although getting them done and going to my dayjob the next day was often tiring. I wish my review of Haitian Sweet Micky for the Washington Post was not hidden in their paid archive now that he just got elected President of Haiti.

It's been archived for awhile I should say.

I've enjoyed live-review-via-Twitter lately, which is much different than a formal review but is a great way to get the impressions together in one place.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, April 5, 2011 10:38 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol @ the twitter exchange right after this post

http://twitter.com/#!/NedRaggett/status/55279463725928448

Quite so!

Indeedly doodly!

i didn't want to post it in the thread, but there it is.

#shotsfired #raggettseesall

Me too. I respond well to the immediacy/urgency of having to file a live review straight after the gig; the pressure energises me.

― mike t-diva, Tuesday, April 5, 2011 2:11 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, totally. it's also always nice to rediscover that yeah i can bang out decent words in a short space of time when i have to, absolutely no scope for procrastination or staring at a blank screen for 4 hours. they often come out pretty well too.

I have never really enjoyed doing them! Guess I'm alone in that. (Then again, I might like going to see live music less than most critics do, too.)

Anyway, I'm pretty sure my favorite live review I ever wrote is also my favorite Live review I ever wrote. (Okay, probably the only one, but still):

http://books.google.com/books?id=I4irI6O3Ko8C&pg=RA1-PA46&dq=Live+Philadelphia+Chuck+Eddy&hl=en&ei=WzObTdbkDdHPgAflwJ2BBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Live%20Philadelphia%20Chuck%20Eddy&f=false

i really dug your south by ssouthwest gig reviews, chuck! totally entertaining. most live reviews are zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Thanks, but yeah, live reviews are the most boring subset of music writing, always have been. I never liked editing them much, either. Really, what always seemed to work better for me is to talk about live shows in the course of longer essay pieces or features about the act in question; I've done that okay a few times in my life, I think.

greg tate springsteen thing you put out is, like, the most recent review i can even remember that i really enjoyed.

http://www.villagevoice.com/1999-08-10/music/tear-the-roof-off-jungleland/

LIVE review that i really enjoyed.

So, I just moved apartments and I have TONS AND TONS AND TONS of old magazines with my clips in them. If my name was in a mag, I just tossed the mag on a pile in my office. Well, the pile is huge and I'm not really sure I need it.

I keep telling myself I'll go through with an xacto knife and cut out all the whiney pages, but we all know that will never happen. (This is like those people on Hoarders who are like "I can fix all these broken toasters and sell them" When, exactly?)

This is especially complicated because now all those CMJs and SPINs are basically digitally archived on Google Books and Village Voice is pretty good with its digital archiving too. If I need to reference an old article, 100% of the time just go to the site. Should I just throw all these out? Should I keep them in case Google Books or the Voice site dies?

For a while I used to scan all mine, but it soon became a pain in the arse.

wrong thread, whiney:

The Bragging Thread

hahahaha!

xp: I scan my tearsheets and save 'em to a folder on my desktop. Do you own a scanner?

Note: I don't scan everything, just features, and don't even bother trying to keep track of my online-only stuff.

I don't owhttp://blog.devstone.com/images/emote_ellipsis.gifcanner. That seems like it would be even more long and boring that just cutting them out withttp://blog.devstone.com/images/emote_ellipsis.gifnife!

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nas?

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Cahttp://blog.devstone.com/images/emote_ellipsis.gifice pie

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what the fuck?

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d'oh

wow i'm trippin'

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WHOA

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Up to maybe 2000 (around the time I started edited at the Voice), I painstakingly kept hard copies of everything I wrote, and filed them according to years (and often according to publication, if there were enough in one year to justify an individual file folder.) I've still got all those -- they take up one drawer of a file cabinet -- though as I pull old articles out for reference, they more and more just wind up back in a increasingly expanding "to be filed" folder of stuff that will probably never be re-filed. Starting in 2000, though -- maybe because I was writing less when I started editing, but also because I figured it was mostly all on the Internet anyway, and because at the Voice I was surrounded by hard copies that I could get to if I needed to -- I stopped making a point of keeping copies of most of what I wrote. Meanwhile, publications more and more stopped sending out comp copies of issues to writers (giving free subscriptions, whatever), and I am too cheap to pay for subscriptions myself or (99 times out of 100) buy issues at a newsstand. So, even since returning to freelancing. I have copies of almost nothing I wrote for, say, Spin or Blender or Rolling Stone, unless a copy of an issue just fell into my lap somehow. (For longer Voice pieces, a few of which I did per year for Harvilla, he sent copies of the issues when I asked, which was great of him, so I do have most of those.) So anyway...what was the question again? (I guess I don't see the point of scanning if you already have hard copies of the articles in question in your hand, especially if the article is findable on line already, but maybe I misunderstood that part. My wife, who does have a scanner, did scan some old articles for me when I was putting together my anthology book.)

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oh what, it didn't work that time?!

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