Rolling Music Writers' Thread

#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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http://listology.com/user/109704/content

Writing these is definitely harder thahttp://blog.devstone.com/images/emote_ellipsis.gifhought they'd be, obviouslhttp://blog.devstone.com/images/emote_ellipsis.gifnow fuck all about writing, but this is pretty fun to do

nas?

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

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what the fuck?

http://blog.devstone.com/images/emote_ellipsis.gifa nhttp://blog.devstone.com/images/emote_ellipsis.gif nhttp://blog.devstone.com/images/emote_ellipsis.gif he-ey -eh good-bye

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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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What the hell? I'm confused.

xp But also, with the miniature kind of haiku-reviews most publications assign these days, keeping hard copies seems kind of pointless to me anyway, just not worth the trouble. Those longer Voice pieces, obviously, were an exception to that.

whatever it was it got taken out, sigh thats' what i get for trying to plug my shit lol

nas

still, http://i54.tinypic.com/11l4yvn.gif anyway.

I do own a scanner

wtf

OK AARGH.

Got a rather attractive commission at the end of Aug, both in terms of "a new place I want to write for" and "a subject i want to write about".

It hasn't happened yet partly because of technological issues on the editor's side (didn't see my reply accepting it for 2 weeks) then because I've been covering the UK party conferences for 3 weeks with no spare time at all. And now I have a US press trip from Mon-Thu next week so that's out as well, because the piece would involve research and ringing round UK organisations for quotes - I'd basically have to get those by the end of the working day today, which is in three hours. Plus, I'm not 100% sure of the line of argument of the commission, I don't think it quite works.

So I already know that I'm going to say I can't meet a deadline of next Thu which is really unfortunate. What I want to know is, from an editorial perspective, does this make me look really flaky? Because this will be the second time I've had to email back asking for the piece to be pushed back. And I keep thinking, y'know, don't news journalists get features complete with quotes turned round in less than an afternoon? I think I could cobble something together quote easily today but it just wouldn't be as strong as it should be.

tl;dr I could've done with some of this work coming to me when I was having a fallow period with nothing to do earlier in the year rather than when I have LITERALLY NO SPARE TIME and had been looking forward to some actual sleep :(

When was the commission agreed on both sides? That's the crucial thing. If you both knew you were doing the piece even two weeks ago, then saying now you can't do it for next week isn't going to look madly impressive. Sorry.

I agreed at the end of Aug, was only given deadline/wordcount/full commission mid-Sep, at which point I said that I couldn't do it then b/c of the conferences and could we hold off a few weeks. I guess it's the sudden US trip throwing a spanner in the works now, which is a bit #firstworldproblems really. Agh this is literally the only 4-week period in the whole year when I'm away so much. I'll think of this in two months when I haven't left the house in a week and work has dried up.

Sorry Lex, it looks bad if you knew about this mid-Sep and didn't start making calls in and around the conference commitments. If the full commission had only come in today you'd be well within your rights to say you couldn't do it until the end of next week.

yup, there is no "in and around conference commitments" during this period, which is why I don't typically take on work this big during it and had a bad feeling the minute she got back to me just before it started. HATE that freelancing thing of not knowing when to say no.

though weirdly it looks like it might be able to happen thanks to people actually coming through!

Have just emailed you Lex.

xp Fantastic news. Good luck.