Rock'N'Roll Writing: Taking Sides: Academia v. Excitement

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I prefer writing to get me excited. Others prefer thoughtful meandering essays about the social ramifications of the music. Which do you prefer?

― robotman, Monday, 20 January 2003 15:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Context us everything.
Just as you like hot water in the bath and cold water in your glass.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 20 January 2003 15:22 (twenty-three years ago)

True, True - but do you find that some writing loses that focus/context. That some writers offer up one at the loss of the other and both ways 'round?

In academic rock'n'roll writing do you think that some writers lose the 'point' (or whatever that could mean) of the idea?

Whilst some 'fun' writing gets mired in poetics to describe the music?

Could you point out examples of either genre?

― robotman, Monday, 20 January 2003 15:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Writing that gets you excited is harder to do well.

http://www.freakytrigger.co.uk/passion.html

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 20 January 2003 15:30 (twenty-three years ago)

(That's not an example of either by the way, that's me talking about this stuff.)

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 20 January 2003 15:31 (twenty-three years ago)

I really like "Passion Victims" - I've never read "Careless Talk Costs Lives" and would probably sympathize if I did. I mean, it's sometimes a difficult thing when I find I really do care for a moment and feel at the same time like rock music (say - I know it's a small part of music writing) in the culture I'm closest to is probably one of the least hopeful areas I could be involved with.* I mean, that could make me wish for a more intensely passionate involvement with it - at the same time, I know that's just wishing for something else out of passing frustration, and, even though it often seems pointless, it's because I love music that I don't give up on it. I realize I just wrote something about Arno Hintjens not long ago that probably says next to nothing as a piece of writing - is it that some people just feel motivated to write when they're excited, do you think? What hell that would be as a job.

*I guess that's because, on some level, I do think about art as having something to do with the possibility of social change, and I sort of do think about rock music as a kind of art, and I also tend to think that Richard Meltzer has something when he describes rock music as a kind of crowd control, and I feel jaded when I read about how peoples' heads explode every couple of weeks when some new CD comes out that sounds like something else they like.

― tom (other one), Monday, 20 January 2003 17:01 (twenty-three years ago)

What the Meltz told me (when asked if there was any point in trying to write "seriously" about rock/roll):

"Well, sure. The problem is not so much the music-the music has become a very non-specific thing. It's just a big inescapable aspect of culture now. We're in a state of what you might call Rock Surround. You can't get away from it! When I started writing about it you had to seek it out, you had to find it You had to meet it at least half-way.
In 1967 there weren't 20 good bands in the world. And then in the seventies, they realized they could make a killing off this and it went from 20 bands to a thousand. It was really hard to be focused anymore. You were forced to pay attention to just too much and it was impossible.
One of the problems now is you have to write your way out of the Rock Surround. You certainly have to write about how it impacts on your own life. But systematically, it's important to be distanced from it, not so much because you want to be an objective journalist-whatever the hell that is-for your own sanity you have to be not owned by it. Not under its thumb.
I just think that with the notion of truth, subjective, objective, whatever, the only thing you can be truthful about is what you know, the shadow of the stuff in your own playpen, things you have a palpable sense of experience of. That's what you should write about.
I think a lot of work has to be done in ignoring the immensity of it and writing about any little particle of it. It's a big monster, rock. And it exists for certain pre-ordained reasons that were not part of the package once. Part of what it's there for is to make people stupid. To make people cease to resist. It's crowd control."

I think a lot of people on ILM are "owned by it"

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 20 January 2003 17:12 (twenty-three years ago)

That's such a wonderful quote, I think. Thanks for posting it.

― tom (other one), Monday, 20 January 2003 17:21 (twenty-three years ago)

OK so part of it's crowd control: so's part of organising an anti-govt march

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 20 January 2003 17:34 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh hell, I don't get why I sort of love Adorno (even though he really *punctums* me), yet I totally abhore GrAil Marcus. Maybe because the latter is too overtly academic? Or maybe because Adorno is like that grumpy old fart you can not stop listening to?

― nathalie (nathalie), Monday, 20 January 2003 18:09 (twenty-three years ago)

(Maybe because Adorno is actually BOTH academic and excited)

― nathalie (nathalie), Monday, 20 January 2003 18:10 (twenty-three years ago)

True (to mark s) - I don't think of art, or rock music, for that matter, as something akin to organizing an anti-government march, either. My feelings about that aren't very resolved, though. It could be that I think that art isn't really functional in the same way that a march is, or that rock music seems to be - I think of art as something seperate from propaganda. Of course, where I may just be going off by myself is by holding to the idea that rock has all that much to do with art in the first place. That's probably why I'm not cut out to become a writer about rock music or a rock musician; at some point I'll just pull a sulk or get fed up and go off and make recordings that practically no-one will hear.

― tom (other one), Monday, 20 January 2003 18:18 (twenty-three years ago)

I agree with Horace; context is everything -- AMG tends toward the academic, which, as with most reference materials, is fine. Periodicals and arenas centering on "New" music should be as engaging as possible. ¥

― christoff (christoff), Monday, 20 January 2003 18:43 (twenty-three years ago)

Check this out:

http://www.portlandmercury.com/2003-01-16/music3.html

haven't read the first piece yet though

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 20 January 2003 18:50 (twenty-three years ago)

That's pretty depressing on several counts, and makes me feel a bit stronger about the 'crowd control' idea; at least the idea encouraging people to be stupid in a fairly controlled way - potentially as controlled as, maybe, unreported spousal abuse in the suburbs.

Here's something that I think is a good example of how 'passionate' writing can also be really 'dispassionate' writing.

http://www.anti-complacency.org/features/0209yeahyeahyeahs.html

― tom (other one), Monday, 20 January 2003 19:19 (twenty-three years ago)

In an ideal world, you'd have both. I like to read really brainy knowledgable accademics getting totally excited about something. Just because you are overcome by passion does not mean that you surrender your intellect.

― kate, Monday, 20 January 2003 20:28 (twenty-three years ago)

the meltzer quote is the standard get-out clause for writers who can't do their job properly. yes, it was so much easier in '67 when there were only 20 groups (name them please) to keep track of. not so easy when there's more music to keep up with. easier to fall back on the excuse of it's all gone pear-shaped/commercial/standardised/apolitical/whatever as opposed to DOING THE JOB YOU, AS A JOURNALIST, ARE PAID TO DO, WHICH IS TO LISTEN TO AND ASSESS EVERYTHING SO THAT THE READER DOESN'T HAVE TO. if you can't handle that responsibility you shouldn't be a professional music writer. end of story.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 08:13 (twenty-three years ago)

hear, hear. yay Marcello!

― M Matos (M Matos), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 08:49 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't think you can separate the two, but if you can, both approaches can be used as ways of talking around the music, rather than actually dealing with it. So-called "academic" discourse on pop is usually limited because most academics don't have a particularly good understanding of pop. Any writing that's genuinely "fun" - exciting, amusing, thought-provoking - pretty much justifies its own existence, I think.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "academic" writing: Meltzer has a background in philosophy and it certainly informs his work in an obvious way - he may hate other intellectuals but that doesn't mean he's not one himself. There's a very charming moment in "Let It Blurt" where DeRogatis explains the difference between Christgau and Marcus - "academics who wrote in a dense and sometimes unreadable style" - and Bangs and Meltzer, who presumably never had any ideas that they didn't express in an absolutely clear and lucid manner. (JDeR also mentions the Lisa Robinson crowd: "peddling salacious information about the stars," oddly unaware that as a biographer he's got more in common with this lot than any of the - I hate this term - Noise Boys.)

I think Mark Sinker's piece on the etiquette of punk is more thrilling on every level than anything in "Please Kill Me," so excitement really is where you find it. I also find it hard to understand how anyone could think Greil Marcus lacks passion for what he writes about; if anything, he's SO passionate at times that it's almost a little frightening. ("Walking the aisles of Winterland as the Sex Pistols played, my eyes went to the ground and I saw small children and thought of smashing them...")

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 09:15 (twenty-three years ago)

i like my passion to be intelligent and to be brilliantly articulated. album reviews, for instance, which say little other than 'THIS IS THE BEST ALBUM EVER EVER EVER!!' - as well meaning as they may be - leave me cold. i think part of my problem with that kind of writing is perhaps also because you get the suspicion that the writer isnt being completely honest with themselves in drawing such hyperbolic conclusions.

these kind of reviews also tend to be written by writers that pay the most attention to press releases.

― david mc, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 09:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Em, in fairness what the hell kind of criticism is that? Do those kind of reviews even exist? Do they ever get printed? Is ANYONE on this entire forum going to defend them? As for press releases, well again I really think it's a for granted that if there exists such a writer who is reading them and ripping them off for his reviews then yes that's not right but christ almighty does that sound implausible outside of the "marketing sucks" delusion world.

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 09:46 (twenty-three years ago)

Where exactly are the publications that play journalists to listen to and assess everything? Christgau gets to do this, sort of, but probably only cos he sets the terms himself. It's an interesting idea in theory but I don't see it happening.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 10:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, I guess I've been dreadfully guilty of passion over thought in my stuff before, you only have to look at the stuff I wrote on here when I first arrived to see that, but it's a trap I'm getting myself out of. Tom's Freaky Trigger piece is definitely OTM as far as my reasoned opinion goes, and I'm certainly pissed off, shall we say, with the amount of third-rate Lester Bangs clones clogging up the internet at the moment, most of whom seem to be trying to appropriate the style and tone of Bangs without giving any consideration to the thought which seemed to inform his writing. He wasn't just bleating hyperbole all the time, there was a great deal of insight within the passion. I hope that's what I get close to, it's certainly what I'm aiming at. But I can't be passionate about all the music I hear or write about, and even the stuff that I am passionate about, I'm not passionate about all the time (I'd put 'all the time' in italics if I knew how). Certainly as I get older I feel less obligated to go mad about things I hear, and it's happening less and less that I look at something I've written and think "shit, went OTT there." That Week In The Musical Life article I did for Stylus certainly made me think about how to approach writing about music in the context of how I actually listen (again, 'listen' would be in italics) to music most of the time (ie; while playing football on the playstation!). But still, when I read about music, I want to be entertained as well as informed, and the entertainment part seems to most commonly come from the passion part.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 10:54 (twenty-three years ago)

my point is that saying that music's gone to pot, there's too much of it, etc, is very often a convenient excuse for not writing abt it or raising yr journalistic game. most punters essentially use mags as a ticksheet and rely on the writers for expert guidance, so it's not unreasonable to expect anyone who goes into professional music writing to have done their homework if you are seeking an informed opinion abt whether something's worth listening to or not. so, for example, phil larkin's all what jazz? anthology of his reviews for the telegraph probably would have worked better as a blog, because it's obv autobiography/self-psychoanalysis thinly disguised as being a column abt jazz. but in the telegraph, and as a published book, these pieces, though largely inaccurate and based on the flimsiest of critical assumptions (viz. no good jazz after 1942) has been deemed as having some "authority" and so probably set back the course of british jazz by a couple of decades.

by all means, meltzer is entitled to rove abt in his playpen, but not to pass his expressionism off as authoritative musical criticism.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 11:07 (twenty-three years ago)

Ah OK got your point now. I think part of the big problem is that most mags have somehow internalised this Meltzerism themselves and circle their editorial wagons round a fairly tight stylistic area with occasional forays out to prove to themselves that they've chosen the right campsite, as it were - they're asking the punter to trust in this pre-filtering of material before the reviews even start.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 11:15 (twenty-three years ago)

But why can't 'academic' writing be exciting? Why is it incapable of being so, I mean there seem at least to me fewer restrictions on 'academics' than there are for journalists. There is no reason why academic writing about pop music shouldn't be good, or why there should be a rift between 'academic' prose and 'exciting' prose. Academic writing done right should be sparkling and exciting and relevant and well-written and enthused and etc, shouldn't it? God I need sleep

― geeta (geeta), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 11:26 (twenty-three years ago)

There is no reason why academic writing CAN'T (someone teach me to do italics, please!) be passionate/entertaining, it's just that much of it tends not to be, simply because the process of academic writing and thought is a slower one more given to rumination and deliberation, and the exorcism of passion from heart to page/screen is generalyl (if it's to be any good) pretty spontaneous. That's not to say that people can't have really rather profound and academic insights whilst puking passionate guts up, by any means, but they are less likely to be structured and more likely to get lost in the tumult.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:16 (twenty-three years ago)

italics - start the italicised bit with < i > (minus the spaces), end it with < / i > (minus the spaces)

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:17 (twenty-three years ago)

Apart from which, academic writing is de facto utilitarian (research, exams) so conveying the facts is by definition more important than whatever (if any) emotion is put into the writing.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:28 (twenty-three years ago)

b-b-but journalism is utilitarian as well!!

― geeta (geeta), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:29 (twenty-three years ago)

b-b-but journalism is utilitarian as well!!

That's a debatable point!

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:36 (twenty-three years ago)

Also the TS isnt academia vs journalism.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:36 (twenty-three years ago)

WOW! Italics! I am God!

Cheers Tom!

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:36 (twenty-three years ago)

that's true, it's TS: academia vs excitement

journalism != excitement as i have proven by science tonite QED

― geeta (geeta), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:41 (twenty-three years ago)

"so conveying the facts is by definition more important than whatever (if any) emotion is put into the writing."

Aaah. But portraying the Columbo attitude of "just the facts, ma'am" with music is a flaw; without emotion, music becomes a dry topic of discussion. Emotion is the achilles heel of music. A fact, mind you, that many miss whilst writing their academic essays on music. If it fails to engage the reader, they have failed, de facto.

However if the writer were to submit engaging and original thought into the writing or new ideas not present or previously discussed, then, it is exciting.

It's a quagmire. Many academic 'pieces' I've written are self-referential and intellectually mired that it would fail to inspire or excite anyone!

― robotman, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:50 (twenty-three years ago)

Ah hell, who cares if the writer is excited, as long as I (the reader) am.

― nathalie (nathalie), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:52 (twenty-three years ago)

The excitement in an academic piece is in seeing new ground broken, an interesting new argument posed. It's not an excitement like a riff or a yell might inspire, it's a kind of slow-burning thrill at seeing pieces fit into a puzzle and a new picture emerge. But it's excitement nonetheless and can work for music writing as well as it can for anything.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, quite right Tom. Look, italics round everything! (But it takes me twice as long to type anything. I ought to stop.)

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:55 (twenty-three years ago)

But Tom many attempt academia in rock'n'roll and many fail. The question would be why?

And when you mentioned 'filtering' - I find that ridiculous - is it not known that certain magazines filter various subcultures of music? NME, Careless Talk Costs Lives: indie. No Depression: Country. Vibe: Dance Culture. The reader of each magazine knows what 'filter' they are getting. Without the filter each magazine would be disorienting and would not 'gel'. The question being is this...what magazine does offer this 'non-filtered' attitude?

― robotman, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 12:57 (twenty-three years ago)

Of course in most cases the readers know what filter they're getting - I dislike it when that filter is unspoken, when there's pretensions to non-filtering (eg Q, Mojo, even NME, maybe the Wire).

Academic writing fails when it can't convince - if the argument is interesting but the facts dont back it up; if the insights are weak or nothing new is presented.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 13:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Ultimately it comes down to whether you want to be conveyed knowledge or wisdom in what you choose to read.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 13:04 (twenty-three years ago)

Ultimately it comes down to whether you want to be conveyed knowledge or wisdom in what you choose to read.

And how do you think knowledge and wisdom is ultimately achieved, Marcello? By choosing emotion with facts or facts.

― robotman, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 13:07 (twenty-three years ago)

I didn't ask how either was achieved; I asked which of the two you preferred to be conveyed. Domesday Book or Tristram Shandy.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 13:10 (twenty-three years ago)

Wisdom!

Factual emotions! Emotional facts! Defeat of the passion / academia duality which is a lie!

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 13:13 (twenty-three years ago)

haha john ruskin to thread!!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 13:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Intelligence vs Wisdom? Gary Gygax to thread, mate!

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 13:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Tristram Shandy; I would rather connect than impress with my maps and legends.

― robotman, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 13:18 (twenty-three years ago)

I like writing that always sends me back to the music. Christgau is a perfect example. I disagree with him a lot but he's always making me listen to something over again.
Marcus, on the other hand, bores me to the point where the music isn't fun anymore.

― Jim M (jmcgaw), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 13:41 (twenty-three years ago)

maybe gm is actually interesting but just fooling you into thinking he's boring?

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 14:35 (twenty-three years ago)

the thought had crossed my mind, but sadly every time i opened invisible republic they had to send ronan keating round to sing me out of my coma. he said that just because ian mcewan anticipates in his novel that atonement will get slagged off as bad v woolf doesn't mean that it ain't so. he further quipped that it was to benjamin what ken colyer was to lester bowie.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 14:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Sorry Marcello, I don't believe Meltzer - or any other rock crit - has any kind of sacred 'duty' to music, thought, the critical trad, the audience, the idea of journalism/criticism as science/art - ie some of my fave Meltz pieces ever are when he totally MAKES UP STUFF abt whatever act/alb he's been given to review - his LIES are funnier (and often more 'insightful') than 'the truth', and out of it you get a GRATE new piece of conceptual comedy rather than yet another ho-hum consumer guide.

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 14:56 (twenty-three years ago)

Ho Hum Consumer Guides v. Writing?

― robotman, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:00 (twenty-three years ago)

andrew, as i quite clearly said upthread, meltzer is entitled to write what he wants. but as professional music journalism it is not informative; as sub-kerouac abstract writing/outpouring it is not even particularly wise. and is he prepared to refund anyone who goes out and wastes £15 on a cd because of some sub-debord/leroi jones bullshit he wrote? his is the worst kind of cop-out which condemns as unutterably bourgeois and decadent the application of any form of structure or point towards writing about music. being out of step is not in itself enough.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:10 (twenty-three years ago)

or: New Ways of Writing v. The Handy and Trust yet Ho-HUM Consumer Guides? Classic or Dud.

Are either forms a matter of settling: with one you get either poetry or third-form Bangs material and the second, yet, another dry, ironic take of writing that kills few brain cells before work?

Should we preserve the new way of writing or not bother, sticking with the conformity of the post-stamp review?

― robotman, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:11 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't see how it's a particularly "new" way of writing. But "academia" and "excitement" work more practically when applied to different disciplines. Thus when writing in consumer magazines you have no option now but to stick to the facts. Writing in blogs is where the "excitement" tends to go. But if one is good enough to lead the reader to the other, then both fields have done their work.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:14 (twenty-three years ago)

I have to disagree. The more exciting publications and journals tend to lean for 'the new ways of writing' than marginalising it to the blog ghetto. Still, depends on a) who you work for and b) the chances of an editor.

― robotman, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:19 (twenty-three years ago)

"The more exciting publications and journals" - examples please, because I can't think of any. And what exactly are "the new ways of writing"?

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:21 (twenty-three years ago)

Why is it a good thing for a blog reader to be led to a consumer magazine? I completely get that it's a good idea for some blog writers to make the trip, but readers...?

(i.e. I read Church of Me every morning - what's in it for me reading the 100 word versions in Uncut?)

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:22 (twenty-three years ago)

As a sideline and quantifying: I do agree that if structure is retained with 'sub-keroauc' leanings - that the review or article is retains more interest than a straight facts article.

I was reading a Manchester music reviews column and was excited by the rhyme and reason of the words within the review but the writing lacked structure and framework and failed to hold my attention.

― robotman, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:22 (twenty-three years ago)

to be fair to meltzer his actual writing on music — far and few between though it now is — has often been much more disciplined and creative and informative (and informed) than his overall sub-debord position (which is anyway contradictory cf quote above) allows his fans to assume: his avant-jazz reviews at addicted to noise were genuinely some of the best writing abt same i've ever come across (a route baraka signally failed to take)

his piece on cage (collected in "whore") zeroes in exactly on the moment of philosophical cowardice in cage: in all the years i've been fending off bad pieces on cage (pro and con), i've never seen this so neatly summarised or dealt with (basically, by taking cage's thinking absolutely seriously and forcing it to come apart from within)

when RM says above "I think a lot of work has to be done in ignoring the immensity of [rock] and writing about any little particle of it", that seems to me to overlap with marcello's approach: my problem w.RM today wd be that he no longer really cares to do this work, at which point marcello's crit kicks in totally

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:26 (twenty-three years ago)

no tom you're (perhaps purposely) misreading what i wrote. the direction is from mag-to-blog. one sells the other. just as the poet or novelist will pay the bills by writing a travel book...however, the writer's "deeper half" cannot help but make itself evident - if the writer is good enough - and the enterprising reader will ultimately want to check out more of this stuff at the root source. admittedly this is not always easy to achieve with just 100 words, but one does one's best.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Marcello, I think calling Meltzer sub-Kerouac/Debord/Jones is more than a bit harsh, and not esp. accurate either - the only writer who I've ever felt had much in common w/Meltzer - attitude/stylewise - is Terry Southern, who was doing the whole abbrev/satire thing pretty early on. And I wld be surprised if anyone went out and bought an alb on the basis of one of Meltzer's more obvious piss-takes (ie hyperbolic praise taken to extremes - THIS IS EASILY THE BEST ALBUM EVER MADE etc. etc. - in order to - maybe - make a satirical point abt the general worthlessness of so much rockwrite blowjob puffery.) I can see why, as a pro music writer yrself, Meltzer's 'copping out' might rankle - and when done badly, yes, it stinks worse than Neal Cassidy's rotting bones - but as I reader I do like a laugh, and on that basis, Meltzer delivers better than any other crit I know of (while, as Mark S sort've says above, doing lots of the work of a 'proper' critic - ie he doesn't let anyone, inc. himself, OFF THE HOOK)

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:33 (twenty-three years ago)

new ways of writing = txt?

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:34 (twenty-three years ago)

Does a rock-writer have a chance today?
I mean between all the blogs and the oversaturation of the mag market and the romanticization (through Whore/Tosches Reader/Blurt/Almost Famous) of the rock-crit as lone defender of truth/honesty vs. vile commercialism, rock-crit has become just as much white noise as rock-itself.

you. pieces. of. shit.
(jack palance style)

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:34 (twenty-three years ago)

naturally, of course, i avoid the entire issue because i do not like rock 'n' roll hah!

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:37 (twenty-three years ago)

Misreading corrected, Marcello - mag-to-blog yes exactly (START MORE BLOGS YOU FRUSTRATED WRITERS!), I thought your post implied a two-way thing rather than a bills-paying thing.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:40 (twenty-three years ago)

oh not at all. it's strictly one way (mind you, ipc media do pay surprisingly well - i don't know abt "pocket money," but what i'm currently getting per month virtually covers my rent! then again i have written a lot of reviews for uncut). i think i'm becoming their "non-filtered/write abt everything else" writer - i.e. send him out to territories we as a magazine are unsure abt covering, which does have its own advantages; not having to pay for yr cds for one!

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:49 (twenty-three years ago)

I bought Uncut yesterday. I don't like it. I don't like any magazines. I don't normally buy magazines. Where's Marcello's bit?

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 15:55 (twenty-three years ago)

In the reviews section - three lead reviews (Bill Hicks, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle) and two smaller ones (it was a quiet month).

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 16:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Er...I just write what comes to mind? Depends on who I'm writing for, depends on how I feel at the time? That's about the only answer I can give for what I write, and I guess it reflects what I like to read in that I am sometimes in the mood for one thing, sometimes another.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 16:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Really like the Hicks review, plus the "Stephen Hawking impersonating Jay-Z" line in the small review caused a chuckle. I know nothing about TG and Cab Volt though, so they passed over my head I'm afraid. Thanks Marcello.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 16:20 (twenty-three years ago)

Perhaps we should ask "is music writing (or should music writing be) utilitarian?"

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 16:34 (twenty-three years ago)

Mad Magazine always claimed that it was perfect for lining bird-cages with; is this what you mean?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 16:47 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess so.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 16:50 (twenty-three years ago)

maybe when you declare that you're less than worthless to begin with - from a certain critical angle, that is - it gives you a whole new sort of utility

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 17:19 (twenty-three years ago)

I still haven't seen anyone explain what "academic" writing is supposed to be in the first place.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 20:01 (twenty-three years ago)

Dude, if I had to explain it, you wouldn't understand.

― Nick A. (Nick A.), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 20:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Academic writing is in academic journals, exciting writing is in Penthouse Forum

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 20:52 (twenty-three years ago)

what if you reprinted something from an academic journal in Penthouse Forum? would that make it exciting?

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 21:05 (twenty-three years ago)

only if it had the word "splooge" as a verb

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 21:06 (twenty-three years ago)

"in this masturbation i attempt to splooge..."

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 21:07 (twenty-three years ago)

Italicise ~~everything~~ most things Marcello has said above, then have me say, "Meep!"

― Cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 22:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Or "ouch?"

― Cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 22:20 (twenty-three years ago)

Meep!

― Cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 22:22 (twenty-three years ago)

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