"[Music writing] attracts people whose primary interest in it isn't necessarily in the 'writing' part"

I don't agree with the assessment on an at-face or visceral level, but on the other hand my slightly-greater interest in writing than music is one of the (many) things that keep me from aspiring to be a serious/actual/professional critic.

Still, no, no, I think it's pretty far off-base; there's more resonance for me in this idea that music writers read a lot of music writing, as is to be expected, and so what develops is a particular inbred music-critic style and aesthetic that can be impenetrable and irritating and unfriendly and just plain ugly to people who haven't already made their way into it. (Hello, Village Voice!)

I always choose informative over stylistically fresh/hep/cool/whatever. And that's what I want as a reader, too. I'm definitely one of those people not interested in the "writing" part of music writing. Fuck your style. Tell me whether I should be giving this artist (or his/her label) my money. Once that message has been gotten across crisply and clearly, then you can start masturbating.

BTW, I also hate most celebrated young novelists, who are just as up-their-own-asses as the worst of the word-game music critics. Just tell the goddamn story.

Not in rockcritland, it doesn't.

I became interesting in writing music writing when I realized you could do it in an interesting way, in a way that was enjoyable to read, no matter what you're writing about.

Generally, I find the best pieces of music writing are of the "could be writing about anything" variety. The introductory nature of a lot of pieces hampers them.

xpost

Two quick points:

1. I didn't just "come along," I've been writing about music for money since 1996, and there are places I won't even bother pitching because they waste so much space on masturbatory idiots.

2. The problem is just as widespread in fiction/lit - remember that "Reader's Manifesto" that The Atlantic ran a few years ago?

Franzen's weird little piece didn't apply to literary criticism, it applied to actual novels. The equivalent would be complaining about the Decembrists' lyrics.

xpost

This may be what readers want, but the burnout rate that this approach produces among writers is amazing. At some point, you invariably begin to feel like a copywriter. There's just way too much product coming down the pike way too fast. Hence, "meta" reviews wherein the reviewer pretends he's writing a medical progress report or some such; it may be annoying but it's a way to let off steam. And when they're great, they're great (Christgau's infamous "skid marks" piece).

(And for the record the problem is only "just as widespread" in fiction among a celebrated top tier of young white-male novelists; the problem that's actually widespread is the massive production of crisp, clear, spare and immaculate short stories that will bore you half to death. Most people get to avoid those.)

I understand what you mean. We are in agreement. But it doesn't matter what other types of writing are doing right, all that matters is that music criticism - the subject under discussion - is so consistently doing it wrong (and it is). For whatever reason, a mix of puns 'n' namechecks 'n' obfuscation has become industry standard, to the point where someone like Richard Meltzer, or to use a more current example, Dave Q (who I really like, as a one-on-one human being), is lauded as a genius music critic, when in fact his stuff is damn close to unreadable, and utterly useless when one has $15 in hand and is thinking about heading on down to the record store on a Tuesday afternoon after school.

That's probably all I will be able contribute to this thread, so it needn't die just yet

A Reader's Manifesto: Classic or Dud?

Folks who think they can't hack it should try writing copy for a porn magazine for five years, like I did. How many different ways can you come up with to describe the exact same intersections of male and female genitalia - ten pictorials an issue, thirteen issues a year?

I dunno: sometimes I'm depressed by the number of critics I know who don't really read a ton outside of other criticism; sometimes I'm depressed by the number of critics I know who are better-versed in literature than I am.

For the record: I think genuine high-level literary criticism (i.e., not the book-report reviews in papers) does the best job of getting inside the work itself. But then it has any number of advantages: addressing words with words, having a relatively concrete world-image to talk about, having hundreds of years of development time, etc. Film criticism has certain problems of audience, I think. I dunno what would have to happen to strip the industry-standard jargon out of music criticism -- the internet surely isn't helping things. Possibly Tom Ewing has to edit everything ever, and instead of covering new releases, publications would be full of writers who just happened to have interesting thoughts about some songs from last year.

Aaron is one of the top eds at Spin, and there's a lot of editing all the pieces go through, so his mark is going to be on a lot of stuff as a rule.

David Sheehan

David Sheehan >------- my angry hands

Hahah xpost!

Sheehan talking to Janet Jackson about her 'new sexy image' during the promo rounds for janet

http://www.popcultmag.com/passingfancies/bottomfive/moviecritics/moviecritics1.html

http://www.candidcritic.com/criticizing_the_critic.htm

ARGGGGG

* this means not nick hornby or ben greenman.

Since my background is English lit I want my critical prose to honor my education. Henry James is as much an influence in my work as Xgau, for instance.

Some people may make complaints about reviewers that have a more obfuscated style.. but, when I was a kid reading about my favorite bands in zines and higher profile magazines, the prose didn't really matter to me. I was going to take a chance on the band, either way. However, it was hearing about them -- and more importantly -- those OTHER bands that gatewayed me to more musical discovery.

And also to reviewers that can't help name-drop band comparisons.. we all feel tired and/or guilty of them. But I discover a LOT of music through this indirect promotion that these bands get. For example, I would have never discovered Skinny Puppy had it not been for a review of Cabaret Voltaire's Code back in 1987 that mentioned "key influencees in the industrial scene".. and so on. Skinny Puppy -- for better or worse -- ended up being my very first live concert a year later.

I know I'm limiting this particular sidetrack to reading music journalism when young.. but I think music writing really shapes the way one who is part of TEH YOUF approaches and, inevitably, enjoys music later (College radio is another, in different ways, of course
), and the type of prose used to talk about the band, informatively or not, just doesn't matter as much as it does to us impatient old codgers... who gives a fuck about us? We're not so much the target demographic!

(xpost)

Singles [from fall 1989, not sure which month]

Around the time Rolling Stone asked a panel of writers to name the 100 best singles of the last 25 years, I asked role model and sex goddess Roxanne Shanté for the Top 10 jams of all time. The Rolling Stone crew, eulogizing the single in the past tense, came up with a quarter century of brilliant music, most of it from the mid-to-late-Sixties; Shanté didn’t name anything older than Keith Sweat’s album. (She loves the whole thing.) I put the question to my friend Professor D; he said he didn’t care, as long as Public Enemy’s “Night of the Living Baseheads” was at the top.

The differences here concern not taste but orientation: to the average hip hopper, the best record of all time might be the one that slapped him/her in the face this morning. While the Rolling Stone bunch came up with devastatingly good records, their list is stillborn, the blueprint for a classic rock format that most of the panelist no doubt consider the music’s enemy. Shanté’s list, on the other hand, is a springboard into the future. This may explain why, at a time when mainstream rock’n’roll really needs a good argument for its continuing relevance, hip hop leaps beyond relevance and into the center of peoples’ lives. No looking back, no hagiography to weigh you down; hit it and quit. And if you’re lucky, ascend to godhead. The legacy of the music is up for grabs every time an act enters the studio. Is it any wonder that Stetsasonic sounds so much more urgent than Bruce Springsteen?

---

It seemed like a joke at the time (D’ja hear the one about the rapper with the speech impediment?), but as the summer ground down toward the Tyson-Green bout, the No. 1 Black album in the country was EPMD’s Strictly Business (Fresh), an adventure in creative pronunciation. Strictly Business is possibly the most consistently low-keyed hip hop album ever, a deadpan drone that extends a minimum of samples into effortless funk. Hip hop renaissance man Fab Five Freddy likens it to the early Miles Davis albums; taken a minute at a time, it sounds indistinct, unimpressive, but taken as a whole, it is a remarkable triumph of attitude. The new single, “Strictly Business,” reduces the funk to a simple guitar riff and the chorus to Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff.” The rappers juxtapose an innocence that no doubt exceeds their own with a homicidal chill that’s probably just as exaggerated. Best and most surprising lyric: You sniff blow--hell no/I got my whole life ahead of me/No time to be sniffin’/My parents find out/Then they start riffin’.

---

On their way to No. 1, EPMD displaced Al B. Sure, whose string of hits--“Nite and Day,” “Off on Your Own (Girl),” “Rescue Me” (all Uptown/Warner)--mark him as one of the players in the new black pop. Group him with Keith Sweat (“I Want Her,” “Make It Last Forever”), Johnny Kemp (“Just Got Paid”), and Guy (“Groove Me”) and call the music b-boy pop: pop songs that take their sound and attitude from hip hop. Full Force defined this genre a few years ago with the formative “Aice, I Want You Just For Me!” but moved on to other things, leaving the field open. Now it has exploded. Teddy Riley, who produced seriously funky pop b-boy records for Kool Moe Dee, Spoonie Gee and Heavy D. and the Boyz, had a hand in more of these b-boy pop records than I’d care to mention; his own group, Guy, looks like the most promising of the bunch. But taken together, and discounting Public Enemy, these acts made the definitive music of the summer. Ask me on the right day and I’ll call these the best records of all time. Really, I will.

---

A local radio talk show host said recently that, like Charles Manson, Mike Tyson has a song he believes speaks to him, and which explains some of the turmoil in his brain. The host then began reading selected lyrics from Public Enemy’s “Don’t Believe the Hype”: The minute they see me, fear me/I’m the epitome of the enemy and so on. Tyson was at Dapper Dan’s, 125th Street’s most celebrated fake fashion entrepreneur, having a leather jacket designed with the song’s title on the back, when Mitch Green declared their impromptu bout. The talk show host spoke with righteous alarm. Maybe Chuck D is right; maybe he really does scare people. As for Dapper Dan, he probably didn’t need the publicity.

THE A-LIST
Ziggy Marley, “Tumblin’ Down” (Virgin)
Audio Two, “Hickeys Around My Neck” (First Priority/Atlantic)
Jesus and Mary Chain, “Surfin’ USA (Sumer Mix)/Kill Surf City” (Warner)
Joey Kid, “Broken Promises” (Bassment)
KMFDM, “Don’t Blow Your Top” (Wax Trax!)

Not much changes. *dodges brickbats* Nice to see the KMDFM mention too!

there was nothing wrong with the preview. it was fine. but, like a shocking amount of capsule-format clean "here's what it is like" reviews (and even lengthier pieces) it didn't make me interested in the music at all, and to some degree even turned me off.

so yeah, i think music-crit that describes music may be overrated. i mean, good god it gets boring quick!

Singles: Temporary Music
by John Leland
[late 1989, I think]

The drum machine and digital sampler propose a new metaphor for making music, a new equation for the transferal of energy. According to the old equation, sweat is currency, traded in a tacit contract between the performer and the audience. The musicians promise to work hard, and we promise to dance hard, or whatever. On a good record, you can feel the musicians working hard. Conventional as it might see--Protestant work ethic and all that--we get actual satisfaction from a sense of other people’s physical exertion in their labors. It is a contract fulfilled: They sweat, we sweat. Endorphins make the rounds. Can the wild thing--or some thinly veiled metaphor for it--be far behind?

This may explain part of rock’s romance with amateurism, and part of the appeal of punk: once a guy can play those four or five chords without trying, what good is he? “Slick” music is just music without the sweat. There is no contract, and the music, in the end, comes off as patronizing. It also explains part of the appeal of classic rock. Listen to “Baba O’Riley” by the Who or Jackie Wilson’s “Lonely Teardrops.” They were built on hard work, on sweat and muscle, just like the pyramids--not built for speed, but built to last.

This is a fraudulent conceit, at least as far as records are concerned. As a document of an event, a record captures only what the musicians made, not how they made it. But the contract between the performer and the listener also involves trust: we’ll accept that if a record does a lot of work--if it makes a speaker cone move a lot of air--then the musicians must have put a great effort into it. It also involves our willingness to be deceived: we accept that it takes more human energy to play a loud guitar than a quiet one. We confer the power of the amplifiers onto the players, making them something more potent than mere mortals.

Digital music confounds this metaphor. Listen to Milli Vanilli’s “Girl You Know It’s True” (Arista) or Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” (Virgin)--two of my favorite singles from 1989, both better than the acts’ current hits. Both are built almost entirely of samples or other computer data, constructed out of undigested matter. And both generate as much energy as the average Who or Guns N’ Roses Song. But neither feels like a monument erected for posterity, and neither conveys the sense of work on the part of the performers.

If Bobby Brown is the major star of the year--sexier and more charismatic than anyone else out there--and Soul II Soul’s “Keep on Movin’” (Virgin) is the single of the year, Milli Vanilli’s “Girl You Know It’s True” still seems like the year’s most telling musical moment. Constructed on the fly, built on a beat lifted from another record, it seems more like a snapshot from an ongoing process than a finished artifact. The group’s two members, complete in the moment (even their hair conveys the immediacy of a digital bite, rather than the analog process of growth over time), are the human equivalent of samples. The record is temporary music, and if 1989 has a theme--despite all the old guys’ comebacks--this is it.

Peter Hook of New Order calls digital technology and the music that has risen around it the new punk. And while it’s hard to consider “Girl You Know It’s True” a modern-day “Anarchy in the U.K.,” Hook has a point. The sampler opens the process of making music to anyone. More significantly, it accelerates it and dramatically reduces the cost.

The metaphor is changed. Computers remove the element of work from the equation; because they process information instantaneously, they eliminate the idea of time. In its place, computers offer access--instant access, not just to notes but to whole musical constructs--and by the same token, instant and total erasure. Get a piece of data, use it, erase it completely, with no messy paper debris left over; once it’s gone, it’s gone. This is the new metaphor, the basis for the new contract. Milli Vanilli can make a great record and not add anything new to the world, or repeat anything old.

There’s nothing new about music that’s fun for a few weeks and then disappears without a trace. There is something new about music that foreshadows and maybe even dictates its disappearance in its construction. This is the contribution of the new machines. As much as rock’n’roll is a product of the technology that delivers it, digital samplers made Milli Vanilli inevitable.

The thing that strikes me about “Girl You Know It’s True” is Milli Vanilli’s sense of history. To make their record, they sampled the beat from the 1987 Coldcut remix of Eric B. & Rakim’s “Paid in Full.” Eric B., in turn, had already sampled it from the Soul Searchers’ “Ashley’s Roachclip,” a 1974 obscurity that Bronx hip hop DJs like Jazzy Jay or Afrika Bambaataa used to cut up back in the days. Milli Vanilli couldn’t trace the beat past 1987. I asked them about this; they said that the way they heard it, the Soul Searchers sampled the beat from Coldcut. I was appalled, or at least amused. But dang me if it wasn’t me being the doofus. I was living in the past. Milli Vanilli’s real talent may be their ability to recognize that beat as a piece of information, without author or history, accessible at the push of a button and gone with a second push. They do more than embrace their mortality; they embrace their own nonexistence.

It’s easy to write Milli Vanilli off as insignificant--as much as anything else, they traffic in their irrelevance. But the listening process they pair up against is probably here to stay, at least for awhile. And it is generally a mistake to underestimate the influence of dance music and rap in projecting the future of other pop musics. This morning I listened to A Taste of Honey’s “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” a classic 1978 disco record, against John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Pop Singer,” which I expected to be relatively free of disco influences. The drums and bass, once thought to be oppressively dominant on disco records, were actually louder on “Pop Singer.” It felt like I could draw the history of pop music just from those two singles. Maybe next month.

THE A-LIST:
Coldcut, “People Hold On” (Tommy Boy)
Blue Jean, “Paradise” (Top Secret)
Exposé, “What You Don’t Know” (Arista)
L.L. Cool J, “I’m That Type of Guy” (Def Jam)
Kool Moe Dee, “They Want Money” (Jive/RCA)

Madonna: "Angel" b/w "Into the Groove" (Sire)
Here's an interesting way to extend a dance mix: add a bunch of useless dudes chanting the singer's name to the beat. "Angel" is Nile Rodgers doing what he does best: turning crass product into cash product. A rehash of "Lucky Star" with an even lamer melody and punch. But you probably didn't care anyway. "Into the Groove," however, is dandy pop disco, the most, er, real thing she's done to date. It gathers honest momentum and doesn't insult your intelligence. I hate her, too, but this sucker is as tight as her navel. She knows a good deal more about grooves than about virginity.

Vitamin Z: "Burning Flame" (Geffen)
Vitamin Z may change the way you listen to music: you may give it up entirely. This "specially priced two-cut maxi-single" (actually two mixes of the same cut--amply precedented, but why lie about it?) tries to stretch its obnoxiously whiny and lightweight self over a totally unjustified seven-plus minutes. Nothing happens in the song or in the mix. The band hasn't got enough ideas to fill the tune, let alone extend it. Plus the dreary melody and self-pitying lyrics are pathetic. How dare they call this wet rag "Burning Flame"?

Red Hot Chili Peppers: "Jungle Man," "Nevermind," and "Stranded" b/w "Hollywood (Africa)" (EMI)
Last time out, the Chilis were an exceptionally inspired bad band, singing bad songs with stupid lyrics and attitude to spare. They made you feel like you just stepped in dog-shit, but they also made you feel okay about it. This latest disc finds them working with George Clinton and moving closer to the nut. Not necessarily a good thing. Take away the Chilis' glaring flaws and they're just another band. Much of this record sounds like a bunch of white guys playing funk. They do it with some elan, and Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns help, but they sacrifice some of their identity for the sake of competence. They get it together on "Hollywood (Africa)," a schizophrenic song about roots (Clinton's and the Chilis') that grabs the essence of this collarboration by the nuts with a groove that transcends.

Chip E. Inc. featuring K. Joy: "Like This" (DJ International)
Hated this thing at first because it was such a blatant rip-off of "Moody" by terminally wonderful ESG, Bronx girlhood's answer to Public Image Ltd. Now I'm just pissed that I didn't think of it first. "Like This" is an exquisite post-disco dance record. Like ESG, this group trims its pop funk down to the basics: simple, repetitive bass and drums and lyris that reduce themselves to mantras. "Like This" adds some garden-variety sound effects, but both songs bounce on that same economical bass line. In fact, K. Joy's vocals are so anonymous that after a few listenings, you don't even notice them; they fade into the background with the stuttering tape cliches. Which is a good thing. "Moody" is a much better song, but hell, that's like slagging Husker Du 'cause they're not the Sex Pistols.

The Jesus and Mary Chain: "Never Understand" b/w "Suck" & "Ambition" (Blanco y Negro/Warner import)
All rise and hail the Emperor's latest set of threads, the Jesus and Mary Chain, currently the liveliest buzz in Albion. The Chain rings England's chimes with light surf pop tunes that bounce along under a layer of grating guitar noise. Sort of like when the dentist's drill obscures the Muzak; the noise bears no relation to the other elements of the song. The effect is striking, but it has no depth and doesn't go anywhere after the first few seconds. In Husker Du's music, the buzzing guitar and pop hooks enhance one another; Jesus and Mary Chain never puts the two together. Yo, Emp, I hate to tell you, but . . . .

Kronos Quartet: "Purple Haze" (Elektra)
This novelty record is just what it sounds like: a string quartet doing Hendrix's "Purple Haze." Not the most promising idea--at this point, who's going to be surprised that classical musicians grew up on rock?--and the Kronos crew starts off bound for the Penguin Cafe Orchestra's bland hipness. Until the guitar solo. Or in this case, the violin solo. The center disintegrates, the joke elevates, and the record becomes less an excuse than a translation. At this point, who's going to expect classical musicians to play a Hendrix solo note for note? When they leave behind the song and the pronounced beat, the quartet actually rocks. Even if it is still a dumb idea. Like frozen margaritas, a valid asset of yuppie culture.

YOU GO, SIMON!!!!!!!!

[edited via request.]

"the return of ROCK"

When I started editing music reviews and features in the early 90s, after writing 'em for ten-plus years, I was struck by the emergence of some music journalists whose primary interest appeared to be neither music nor writing. Not that they didn't care about music (or good writing) more like they just weren't totally GEEKED OUT about it, as though they were smart young people who wanted a career in journalism and thought "hey writing about music would be more interesting than covering the police beat or the financial scene."

It's probably different now w/the internet etc is the feeling I get.

The sheer volume of music available dictates that artists would still need to be championed by tastemakers in order to be noticed.

Well, if we look at film writing, it officially falls into two categories: one that assumes that you haven't seen the film yet - "reviewing" - and one that assumes you have - "criticism." It's harder with music because there's no real body of academic work (on the level of Eisenstein, Basin, Lacan, Laura Mulvey etc.) to prop up the second kind.

also, people who want pitchfork to be a crisp, clear consumer's guide: you realise you're describing cmj right?

Think of IM's awesome and exhaustive 1981 collection. Heck in 1981 only a handfull of people in the world -- critics recordstore owners & rich collectors -- would've had access to half of that. Even for an old fart like me, the last couple years have been incredible in terms of new music discovered/old music unearthed via the computer. And I think this creates a huge demand for more music WRITING, more information and ideas and cockeyed theories, we need to sort out all these sounds. And as Blount suggests, people tend to get their information from multiple sources now, everything from traditional MSM to blogs and the web's coolest message board. The days of brand-name loyalty to a single print magazine -- whether it's Spin for the indie cred Blender for the babes or Rolling Stone cause you've subscribed since college -- are fading fast if not over already.

In the words of the poet: We created it, so let's take it over.

I presumed Nabisco was taking it to mean that most music writers are more into music than writing.

I DO think that that has a certain truth to it aswell, there's no point becoming a music writer just because you like music, but not writing!

Yeah, but you know what, lots of people do. I don't think anyone is sinking any boats. speaking for myself, I love writing for money, i don't give a shit what happens to the music industry, and i think there is plenty of room for print journalism and on-line journalism.

**if you're a "professional" music writer, you are part of the market economy of the music industry. You have a vested interest in doing whatever's necessary to keep the music biz going**

these days, that's quite a double-edged sword. another vintage quote: you're either part of the problem or part of the solution.

**Don't be so quick to sink the boat you're floating in.**

COME ON IN, THE WATER'S FINE!

*scrounges*

Some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this

Bullshit three ring circus sideshow of
Freaks

Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any fucking time. Any fucking day.
Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay.

Fret for your figure and
Fret for your latte and
Fret for your hairpiece and
Fret for your lawsuit and
Fret for your prozac and
Fret for your pilot and
Fret for your contract and
Fret for your car.

---

Fuck retro anything.
Fuck your tattoos.
Fuck all you junkies and
Fuck your short memory.

Learn to swim.

Fuck smiley glad-hands
With hidden agendas.
Fuck these dysfunctional,
Insecure actresses.

Learn to swim.

Cuz I'm praying for rain
And I'm praying for tidal waves
I wanna see the ground give way.
I wanna watch it all go down.
Mom please flush it all away.
I wanna watch it go right in and down.
I wanna watch it go right in.
Watch you flush it all away.

Time to bring it down again.
Don't just call me pessimist.
Try and read between the lines.

I can't imagine why you wouldn't
Welcome any change, my friend.

I wanna see it all come down.
suck it down.
flush it down.

I don't write for you, for the market, for other critics or for tortured monkeys in hell such as yourself; I write for myself and hope that potential readers will connect, emotionally or otherwise, with the thoughts I express. I mean, I could bang on about my book deal, how many hits Koons gets a day, or even how many hits Church of Me still gets every day, 18 months after I stopped writing there - but that's not really the point. Doing things because you enjoy them. Money not being your god. That's more the point. Or even writing to live, as opposed to writing for a living. I'm not doing any blogging at the moment, but if/when I restart, I'd still do it if nobody read it. Some of us are funny that way.

Do you even understand why I called my first blog The Church Of Me? Do you understand even who the "Me" is in The Church Of Me? Perhaps you ought to try reading it before revelling in your gleeful asinine bovinity.

I don't actually have to hope about readers connecting. I have concrete and continuing proof that they do. Some of the greatest writers and musicians in the world among their number. And it's going to be published. I have a book deal. Do you have a book deal?

How much money did you make last year?

Now slope back to your creaking Wordstar Database and knock out 150 words on the Killers' searing guitar riffs. There's a good boy.

>Do you have a book deal?

My second book is coming out in November, and I'm dropping my third off to my agent on Tuesday.

Well that's a shame. Never mind! There are thousands of other blogs and magazines out there which will be extremely willing to agree with you and tell you what you already know! Happy reading!

It's this last bit that's the most interesting to me. Personally, I don't whole-heartedly agree with it, but I think it absolutely applies to anyone who *first* gets into music via written pieces about music. I never really cared how "well" the music article was written when I was an adolescent. I just wanted to read about my favorite band! The more words, the better.. period. This POV will vary greatly from person to person, but I feel confident my first experiences aren't that different than those of most.

that's true, at first. but even early on my reading of the press, there were writers whose turn of phrase i loved, who made me laugh, whose pieces held me rigid and riveted - as a teenaged pearl jam fan, i'd read lots of vedder interviews, but allan jones' pieces on the road with the band 94-95 were amazing *writing, and i knew that, even then.

Re: that, & other choice pdf tidbits (from yours truly, a 10th-rate-hack that you know whats):

1) Many college campuses have high-speed Internet connections built into dormitories, & college kids (a large demographic, no doubt) presumably consume tons of music, either through the old analog model of trading money for goods, or grabbing it on the DL / SLSK.
2) Internet access (of the high speed variety) is becoming more commonplace, as providers infiltrate previously non-wired areas, and the service becomes more affordable.
3) Just because lots of people don't have high-speed access or computers doesn't mean you get to conveniently forget that "lots" DO have these things when you're on the ad-hominem offensive.
4) If music journalists / consumer guiders are truly "vested [...] in doing whatever's necessary to keep the music biz going", then either a) it's amazing the music industry has managed to survive as long as it has or b) maybe the music industry can actually survive with a myriad of writers following their own particular muses! Holy shit I think I just said there's more than one way to skin a cat!
5) There's something to be said about the non-music-geek & their interest in reading informative consumer-focused writing about music (noting, of course, that ANY AND ALL writing is consumer-focused, regardless of the size of the pool of consumers) (and also noting that the 12 CD fucker can a "music geek" as much as the 5000-CD hording type), but fuck if being a condescending rude Kruschevian (sic) shoe-banging asshat about it is the best way to kick off that topic of discussion.
6) Really, if you want to have a discussion about this, by all means, break off some of that shoulder chip & go for it - if you want to just piss folks off and rant about What You Think And Why It Is Right w/out engaging in the damn conversation, go post it on your blog.

How the Other Tool Half Lives by Ned Riis

Arguably most of my writing has been consumer-blurb style via the AMG. But you know, I try and make what I do write there interesting as well as informative, and if someone sneers because it's too short or something, that's their problem, not mine. You get an opinion, you often get sound clips -- how much handier can it be?

*pic of Jaz ROFLING in jester cap X 10*