smoe.org mailing lists
ivan@stellysee.de
| From | Stewart Mason <flamingo@theworld.com> |
| Subject | Re: obscure critic reference points and Stewat's soapbox |
| Date | Thu, 17 Jul 2003 00:59:43 -0400 |
[Part 1 text/plain us-ascii (2.8 kilobytes)]
(View Text in a separate window)
At 09:28 PM 7/16/2003 +0000, thisispop@comcast.net wrote:
>Regarding MTN HIGH's post Stewart wrote:
>>Hmmm...I sense a bit of hostility here
>
>Stewart - your opening paragraph has more hostility than MTN's whole post.
>And then you ratchet it up from there. Reviewers getting lots of free music
>was a small part of MTN's post - a side point relegated to parentheses.
>Hmmm...I sense a bit of guilty conscience here. And if after all of these
>years of writing and networking you're only getting three free CDs a month
>you've made a misstep somewhere. Yes, it's impossible to support and follow
>the indie scene without buying music (and often lots of it), I find it hard
>to believe that you're averaging 36 promos a year.
Can't help what you do and don't believe, but the only outlet for which I
consistently review new albums is Amplifier, where I average out about half
a dozen reviews per issue, sometimes more, sometimes less. Most of my
music writing is for reference databases, none of which give their writers
promos, and at least half of my writing in general these days is related to
food and cooking...and believe it or not, food magazines don't hand out a
lot of freebie CDs either. So: no guilty conscience here, but thanks for
asking. And in re-reading Pat's original post, I recognize that I was a
bit harsh, for which I apologize, but the point I was making still stands:
the fallacy that music writers never pay their own way is pernicious, and
it's a load.
To address another point, a decent music writer knows his intended
audience: one must assume that someone who reads Amplifier or the like on a
regular basis has at least a working knowledge of some fairly obscure
reference points, or at least can work out an idea from the parts they do
recognize. (For example, in a recent review of a new album by a new group
called Bronwyn, I mentioned a string of very similar late '80s college rock
bands that they sound an awful lot alike: Salem 66, Downy Mildew, Vomit
Launch, the Cat Heads, early Barbara Manning. But I also made a point of
describing the general sound shared by all of these bands: moody female
vocals buried low in the mix, inscrutable "poetic" lyrics, minor-key
melodies, guitars that go jingle-jangle-jingle, a lot of vaguely
neo-psychedelic echo and reverb, etc. If you know those '80s bands, great,
you know exactly what Bronwyn sounds like now -- and by the way, if you
like those bands, get this, you'll plotz -- but if you don't, you know not
only have an idea what this new band sounds like, you know that there are
all of these other old bands with a similar vibe and if you like this
album, there's a lot more stuff to keep an eye out for in the used bins.)
When I'm writing for a more general audience, I use more general reference
points.
S
For assistance, please contact
the smoe.org administrators.