new eds. say voice music section "too academic"?

call it New Times NY or whatever, without Christgau to be infuriated and inspired by it's just another handiwipe for yuppie dogshit.

That Pitchfork Media is so hot right now. Pitchfork Media.

I'll look at it in a positive light: Both gentlemen will have little problem continuing making a living at what they do, they will just have to do it elsewhere. And if I ever do make it back to New York (God willing) the Voice classifieds will still be useful at least. Probably.

Seriously, Pitchfork is gold compared to their roster.

-- paulhw (pppso...), April 18th, 2006.

Shit, I had a piece in there last week.

They do. We are.

xpost

NB: I have written for the Voice music section, and Pitchfork wasn't interested in me.

sorry, i thought you were going to delete this thread too.

I'd say plenty of ppls are interested in being the go-to source. The Other Online Site is already well on its way to being that, if it isn't already.

The new direction sounds less like a maverick paper that was sometimes full of shit and mostly way the hell out in front of everyone else in the world and more like "HEY HEY WE"RE THE NEW YORKER TOO" and, y'know, damn, an era is over.

Not like that at all; more like we're the Lampoon or, alternately, we're The Rules: Weekly.

if this is what passes for reading comprehension these days, maybe the whole NT strategy makes more sense.

at least the new yorker still has an interest in covering national politics and stuff outside the purview of just nyc.

Well, he wrote CG for Newsday for a few years in the 70s, so maybe he can take it with him. Personally, though, I'd rather he use this as an excuse to ditch that conceit and write longer for more outlets.

I can hardly think of another serious critic and especially editor who has given more sincere thought and coverage to commercial pop and country music, genres that deeply affect and are loved by millions of people in this country and yet are pissed on by 90% of rock writers.

-- strongo hulkington is a guy with a belly button piercing (wt...), April 19th, 2006.

What am i reading and not comprehending that would lead me to believe you're not going about to go on one of your killing sprees? SRSLY dude.

This sucks. Chuck was the one who took a chance on me as an intern in August 2003, and who thereafter gave me some assignments, ran with some pitches, and above all taught me valuable lessons in music discussion and how to effectively speak in shorthand when constrained by word count. He was a fastidious editor, always turning in his copy well ahead of deadlines (a blessing to those of us copy editors) and paying close attention to all responses and comments. He made it a point to cover all genres of music -- find me another alt-weekly that regularly reviews country and jazz CDs as well as pop/rock/R&B/hip-hop -- and kept in rotation many if not most of the nation's premier music critics. And most importantly, he was genuinely passionate about the music itself and not the celebrity of its industry. When he'd hear something he liked, he wouldn't wonder if they had a picture in a magazine that week, he would wonder what its sonic references were.

His departure also says dangerous things about the state of New Times journalism, indeed, of alt-journalism itself. Chuck's being replaced by a guy at another New Times paper, which portends the hastened transition to using syndicated content. The Voice's film section already has begun to syndicate some of its reviews from other NT papers. This is an awful thing. It's not that the others are bad writers, but they're writing for smaller-market audiences who, by and large, are satisfied with reviews that consist of plot summaries with a single-sentence opinion at the end. New York audiences, especially the Voice audience, expect something rather different, something more intellectually challenging and engaging. That the same seems poised to befall the Voice music section is an embarrassment.

we shouldn't have to read what the provincials get.

Who is his replacement? I haven't seen a name yet.

we shouldn't have to read what the provincials get.

Not meant in the elitist better-than-thou sense, but in the "Quad-A football team versus AA football team" size sense.

ditto. i interned for him the following summer and it was the best experience ever. it was so cool how in addition to established voices he'd always give a shot to lesser known writers. bummer he's gone but hopefully some other pub's smart enough to give him an offer.

Um, why do you have to use the shortcomings of NT critics as an excuse to insult non-New Yorkers? We got libraries and colleges and everything out here in flyover country.

Besides, lots of them ARE bad writers.

xpost
Please share the non-elitist interpretation of your post.

what i said was: that response was the biggest load of horseshit i've ever read. people who don't live on the coasts OMG STILL HAVE BRAINS! and like to be challenged! nyc isn't the center of the universe, nor do they have a lock on people who want to challenge themselves and think about things in an intellectual way.

For the record, you're right. Mr. Van Buren as well. A foolish thing not only to say, but to think.

there, better.

on a cursory search, fave pieces from the recent archives:

Reynolds on early grime

S/FJ on Zeppelin

Tate on Miss E

Consolidation (helped) made radio suck. You hear the stories about how natural disasters are happening while the voice from the radio says things are all lovely because they were voice-tracked 2,000 miles away last Thursday. Do we want that with local newspapers? I hope not.

xp - what Joseph McCombs said.

Not meant in the elitist better-than-thou sense, but in the "Quad-A football team versus AA football team" size sense.

no, i meant that i the most elitist way possible.

While I've occasionally disagreed with both Eddy and Xgau, I've always admired their approach and commitment. I might not have shared Eddy's Big 'n' Rich love, for example, but he did convince me to give the album a chance, which is a compliment to his writing. For one, I enjoy a serious approach to music writing, even if it is sometimes "ponderous." The opposite, which is increasingly becoming the norm, is two-paragraph pabulum, and that's very fucking scary.

Chuck is, after all, one of the only music journalists out there who actually went to j-school. He could have performed NT's brand of insanity ... which is to say, two or three previewy (poorly) reported pieces, a weekly iconoclastic-bullshit editor's column and several "eh" reviews, with a quota of having to write 20 music features and one main feature yourself per year. And he could have done it very, very well.

This guarantees that any music writer with any sort of pride will never write for the Voice again. Or any of the other NT papers, for that matter. It's really fucking heartbreaking.

how many emails/phone calls/voice mails do you think he probably gets a week about stupid quibbles over his consumer guide? good to see he has a sense of humor to respond "and this robert christgau is busy."

You have a right, but it makes you come off like a pompous asshole (not that you probably care about that- just sayin). Anyways, like anywheres else in the music writing arena there are good writers and bad writers at every publication. At least be fair.

http://www.rockcritics.com/interview/christgau2small.jpg

which isn't so much that its a terrible imposition on writers as that there seems to be an idea that editors are nothing more than robots to send writers lists of upcoming local shows and then traffic articles recieved to typesetting machines.

essentially this has everything to do with maximizing profit by minimizing costly human creative labor (also related is the practice of publishing each article everywhere) and in practice amounts to stamping out some of the last grounds for creative voices that were imbued with some readership and cred. nothing in the internet "revolution" can or will replace this.

Chuck, Xgau and the writers they sought and published together (and esp Xgau, obv, since he's been at it longer) have been not only major influences on me, but pretty much played a key role in establishing rockwrite insofar as such a thing came together in a genuine way at all and had any sort of history, stability, ahem "canon" to aspire to.

i don't wanna get all mushy and gush about these two more here, but they deserve plenty of gushing.

Ultimately, this has far less to do with the Voice than with a generational shift occasioning the mass destruction of whatever shards of cultural literacy America's been able to scrape up for itself (and, yeah, of which the Voice music section in that scheme is a minor component).

i'm the last one for high-modernist cries of "the sky is falling" but goddamn if it doesn't feel like it.

i sincerly hope that chuck and xgau land on their feet, and financially i'm sure they will -- they have talents that'll sell anywhere. but what i don't think will land on its feet is what they managed to DO at the voice (though increasingly less as the word-count wars went on, etc.) because, honestly, the people that do smart musiccrit can do smart other things to, and especially now, what smart person would want to keep doing musiccrit? rockwrite's always lost a share of its more talented voices to other sorts of journalism, to fiction, etc. this is gonna happen more than ever.

No, that's some serious soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations balogna right there. First off, yeah, I'm cynical enough to believe there are plenty of venues with NO good writers AT ALL, and secondly, c'mon, make me smile, point me to something *good* rather than middling or hackish from those two (admittedly small) samples I linked to above.

http://www.thoughtfulmoments.net/intmoments/images/items/114014lg.jpg

-- Michael Daddino (epicharmu...), April 19th, 2006.\

I think the Ray Cummings review of Islands is good, so is the art galleries as music space thing, but of course you will tell me that they suck and I have no taste.

what about robbins?

their target audience is probably composed entirely of the christopher hitchens demographic.

Ha, OK, got me there twice.

The Islands review really suffers from a compressiveness borne from the tiny word quotas, though (A PROBLEM I KNOW ALL TOO WELL FROM MY OWN EMBARRASSING 250-WORDERS).

i've never thought that alt weeklies were all that vital; for many reasons alt weeklies can't take on even large local issues because they rely too much on real estate ads to criticize development and the grit of local politics. in fact, living in philly it's like our weeklies were the template for dumbing down every section of the paper. but it's just strange and disheartening to see an institution/fading dowager (your call) like the voice gutted in this way.

Yup, Michael, even the best suffers from the changing rules of the game.

I might as well use that mental energy on pitching to other places and finding a better job. You're right, there's no reason to be party to this shit.

Careful, NT might wanna hire you as a replacement. :-) One positive thing I can say about NT is that it does possess a strong dedication to anti-corruption reporting -- it's coverage of dirtbags in Phoenix, Texas and Florida has been astonishing in recent years.

i'm thinking particularly about some of the writers that have especially great and unique voices, and i sort of doubt they'll find almost any other outlet almost anywhere, outside of just, y'know, the web.

Also: would it be too lame/worth starting one of those online petition things? It may not end up as a six-figure list, but if it's a two- or three-figure list of music freelancers, who knows

also erm foax i don't think xgau has been fired

Dude, no one needed that image in their heads.

“All that chatter, all that blogging—it’s people writing about what other people have reported. We can our wrap our hands around the throat of the beast, find out what happened, and give that to readers,” he said. “It’s fun. It’s a kick-ass way to make a living. We have found a way for all the troublemakers at the back of the school bus to make a living. You want to sit in your room and ruminate? Not on my nickel.”

I can't read this without seeing Lacey as a guy with a moustach and a stopwatch in his breast pocket slamming his desk to punctuate every word of the last sentence.

WTF

xpost:

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/3027/filesa1ld.jpg

they banned "'meta'".

the ad department, eh? what a trustworthy newspaper this sounds like!

(Emphasis mine)

Isn't a "media critic" not reading the media the kind of thing that seems to get this Lacey guy's nostrils flaring?

Wasn't me who put that up here, Matos. Plus, it's bullshit, btw.

out: interrobangs.
in: double bangs.

out: semicolons.
in: commas.

Music coverage should be predominantly local. The person I spoke to complained that the Voice wasn't vigilant enough about covering "local" music. I'm not sure if the Voice's jazz coverage, principally devoted to people who live in New York after all, was sufficiently provincial in this person's view or not.

New Times likes "humor" and loose-limbed, conversational stuff and dislikes "intellectual stuff." My problem with the satiric music pieces I've seen in the New Times papers is that they're not funny, though I've probably missed some good stuff. I'm sure this preference for comedy is what kept Nick Sylvester, who has made me laugh, in good standing with NT.

With respect to coverage of "non-local" music, the New Times preference is to generate one piece from a New Times music writer/editor and syndicate that piece throughout the chain, often of course following a touring act's path from Phoenix to St. Louis to Minneapolis, etc. They enforce syndication either by a straightforward demand or by slashing freelance budgets, which has been happening.

Either the piece is about a local band, a recent local concert, or an act playing in town during the week covered by the issue or it's not worth running. Unless it's really short or allegedly funny.

With the exception of blurb-length reviews and humor pieces, reported articles (features, profiles, music-industry pieces) are favored--strongly--over essays.

Those were the main points, filtered of course though my biases. The tales I heard about their corporate culture were pretty scary, though I've also met good writers who've gotten on well at their papers.

As editor I was constantly replacing the word/prefix "meta" with something less tired, so I guess I'm on board with New Times there.

One of the things Chuck did very well as an editor was to keep the Voice's music section somewhat reflective of the country as a whole, both in assigning pieces about disparate music and by assigning pieces to writers from all over and with divergent styles and backgrounds. I've read lots of mediocre and worse pieces in the Voice and written a few for good measure, but even after the depleted word counts and everything it's remained essential for those of us hooked on records and smart music crit. If you see a decline in quality in the Voice's music section, and most certainly you will, the problem won't be that barbarians have replaced New Yorkers but that bad writing has replaced good.

Sorry to ramble. Eddy's next book will rock!

xpost: the VVM/NT brass apparently doesn't give a fuck about the web, so dr_j is probably right

As far as Express' national coverage, who needs national coverage when you're in Berkeley?

the premise for all this is the mass "democracy" of low expectations -- nothing should go over the head of anyone, everyone has their own opinion and there's no point in challenging it, every opinion is both valid and pointless, and writers don't need to think, just to transcribe.

Now Detroit rock and the Dirty South ... well, now those may take a hit.

FWIW, Harvilla is an unabashed fan of Cake and Grandaddy ... not the most traditional of rockcrit mancrushes, right?

what its about is a lack of ambition -- a declaration that yr. gonna run cute local copy, act as a weekend guide, and ok yeah occasionally "dig" something up (but, christ, what *isn't* corrupt in ny, and what story wouldn't already have reporters at the ny dailies chasing it on a tip-network more efficent than anything the voice'll ever acquire + reporting every little rumor about that story as tho it were fact anyway and etc...) but really yr. gonna stake your claim with the minimum resources in the area where you don't have to worry about competition -- the stuff that's too local for the national pubs to cover and below the radar of the dailies (sometimes but not always for good reason).

doesn't the SAME logic apply tho -- like, hello, we have the internet, so if i want to hear about the band opening for whoever that're coming thru town then i can go to their MYSPACE PAGE instead of reading a rewritten press sheet i have to lug around in my bag all day?

(ok, marit doesn't fit there, i'll grant, except she does if we're talking "people in the world" as opposed to "people in new york" and she does if we're talking "music like music ppl actually listen to" as opposed to "music which is precisely music ppl actually listen to" [the other thing about a local scene being generally it is 'music ppl drink to and talk over with occasional exceptions'])

Obviously for non-musical concerns, there's a different perspective but for most entertainment, national concerns *are* local concerns.

My take on it is that weeklies can be an advocate and a guide, to be a one-stop shop for folks without the time to wade through all the shit on the net. And the most interesting stories are the ones you find on the street, if you're willing to take the reporting challenge. I love covering local stories, man.

I wouldn't say that local focus narrows the demo so much as change it a little. A little, as in if you focus one week on a local subgenre that never gets love, you'll get a few more people to pick up the paper that perhaps wouldn't have. Harvilla ran a piece in Oakland on the rise of the sea shanty, which I'm sure had local appeal out there.

So for all my bitching upthread, the local focus at least is something I can dig.

Of course, NYC might be different, since a lot of NYCers think they're the only people in the world who matter and that they might as well own the world (LA has the same complex, right?). :-)

as a sophomore in college, i'd like to say that the new times is total garbage, with what seems like a 30-70 content-to-ad ratio. mr. lacey is confusing 'informed' reporting with 'important' reporting (not that i'm defending trad. village voice, either, never having read it). each week, the new times devotes 10 pages and their cover to some local official or incident like "Man's Dog Killed at Train-Crossing When Local Police Enforce Anti-Pitbull Law, Forcing Him To Walk It Somewhere Else," then retelling every dirty little detail about mr. pitbull and mr. police chief and how their wifes hate each other and how mr. & mrs. pitbull once had a domestic dispute where they screamed at mr. police chief and how mr. police chief might appear too cozy with local merchant number one from local merchant number two's point of view and how much mr. pitbull misses his dog and how sometimes when he's alone he wonders why god gave us little toes and why the sky is blue and why he isn't fucking the police chief's wife and on and on and on.

WHO GIVES A SHIT? SELF-RESPECTING VV WRITERS GET OUT NOW!

That content-to-ads ratio you describe, lf, is pretty standard for a free weekly.

That sounds about right, Chris. Peter Scholtes, who does a lot of local-music coverage for as well as national-music criticsm for City Pages, is pretty masterful at it.

If anything, I bet it was more of a financial move, going with the younger guy over the one in his 40s with kids. Easier to lowball ...

Either way, Chuck is a great guy who, like others here, gave me my first big break as a rock critic, who respected a sonicnet.com cowboy enough to take his pitches seriously. Without his counsel and encouragement, I wouldn't have it to PHX in the first place. He's a huge talent and a creative original who'll come out of this in a better spot.

I'm in love with Melissa Ivey, and I don't care who knows it.

Actually, allow me to clarify that for the benefit of my wife, who's probably on the phone with the divorce attorney right now: Ivey's a lovely gal, easy on the eyes and all that, but really I'm in love with the first single from her forthcoming EP. "Lovers and Stars" (check it out at myspace.com/melissaivey) owns me. I can't stop playing it. Although I've always dug Ivey, this delicious pop ditty hits a sweet spot with me like no recording since the Fray's early demos. It's a quantum leap beyond anything she's produced before.

So, what's the story behind this stunning progression?

"I've had time to focus," Ivey says plainly. "And I've had really great people in my life who are showing me different choices to make and some paths to attempt to go down as far as songwriting. And just bringing all those tools together."

Ivey credits much of the growth to time she spent in Los Angeles working with the Knack's Berton Averre, who's served as her mentor. "He's not impressed easily," she notes. "I'm just some artist who got hooked up with him. So he's telling me straight up, this is why you know this type of song, because it has this, this and this. These are the elements. And it's like, 'Oh, man. Okay.' So now when I'm writing my songs, I'm not just going, 'Oh, well, that rhymes,' but really being a stickler, like, 'Is that the imagery that I really want to get across? Do I need to sit here for five more minutes, or do I need to sit for another three hours figuring one line out?'

"So every line in 'Lovers and Stars' has a well-thought-out process behind it, from the first to the last," she explains.

Helping with that process was New Jersey transplant Christopher Jak, who co-wrote and also produced the record. "Jak is really the mastermind behind that song," Ivey declares. "I supplied the seed, and he definitely fertilized it and honed it and kicked it up. We got together and let the whiskey and the wine flow. I had been working on this little riff, and I played it for him. We tweaked it a little bit and made some changes to the different arrangements that I already had going on. From almost start to finish, we wrote this song in maybe two or three hours. I would never have thought to do anything like what it's become. That's definitely Jak. I've never worked with anybody who has the confidence and the charisma. He has an idea, but he has that motivating kind of charismatic charm to go, 'Just trust me on this. Here's what I'm going to do, and here's why.'"

Speaks for itself, unfortunately. (To be fair to Westword, I should point out that Michael Roberts, who's been the music section's workhorse for years, has a personality, good values, and a brain. But he doesn't use his brain to any real effect, in that I don't recall his having an original idea in his life. He's the sort who complains that Ricky Martin's music is "watered-down" and the sort who mocks Celine Dion. Which is to say that his sneer aligns with his readers', not necessarily by design, but by thoughtlessness. However, I don't read Westword much anymore, so perhaps Roberts has has slipped an idea or two in there that I've missed.)

Strauss-on-Jewel still gives me shudders, shit's burned into my cerebral cortex for life.

xpost

I almost said the same thing early on but I didn't want xhuxk to take offense... I'm such a pussy.

"Too pedantic" is what I heard (as a description of the section, not necessarily of Chuck). But Chuck is most certainly an intellectual, which means that he wants to inspire thought in his readers. Michael Lacey doesn't seem to have that desire (though I can't say I've seen a representative sample of Lacey's ideas, should he have any).

There may be some truth in this. I don't suppose ILX has any investigative reporters on staff who can ferret out how the deal went down.

But I did hear the same when I started working for a small burg daily in Pennsy years ago. Not enough local, local, local was the jibe from the higher ups in newsroom corporate, scared by polls and studies that alleged readers -- a big IF, they were often polling the wrong people -- younger than them weren't finding the newspaper compelling. Even when 90 percent of what was done was local. It's a blindspot, a superstition, or something the higher ups come up with to levy a criticism when none other can be thought of. That criticism is a sham.

Me? "Academic"?!? WTF.

Chuck was the most fine editor, among fine ones I've worked with from the WSJ to the Voice. And he is my friend. More to the point, he is a warrior for the things we argue over in trivial detail but value greatly in music journalism. And it doesn't matter how much people say someone with his talent will quickly find a new home. This is a hurt.

Anyone who has written for the Voice regularly for the past half decade can go into Lex-Nex, call up their pieces, and see the inexorable retrenchment. Criticism that the music section was not pithy enough, or too talky and academic, don't hold up under a strict graphic plot of word counts/year. Reviews, interviews and spots for coming local gigs have, as my experience, been laundered to smaller and smaller size until two and three grafs are normal. Many people, it seemed to me, strived to comply mightily with this no matter how they felt about it personally. Sometimes I discussed it with Chuck. And I can say with his writers, he coiled as much for the money as he could into the space.

And he more or less revived as well as he could his "Selectric Funeral" column from old CREEM into the Eddytor's Dozen. That, in itself, is something of a magic trick if you like consumer guides with rock criticism at this juncture.

A perfect comment.

The whole thing is just fucked up. Everyone who has contributed to this thread is good at what they do ... but, again, that doesn't really matter to a punk company like NT.

I want to say something about Christgau: It was his basic balls-out courage and integrity that helped set the standard back in the '60s and '70s. The fact that rock criticism isn't altogether one vast attempt to jerk off the readers has a lot to do with so many people having worked with him.

The question in regard to Lacey and Harvilla is this: are they going to let us speak our truth, or are they going to muzzle us. So far, Lacey comes across as Big Blustery Mister Pretend.

I wish I worked with him as often as you guys have. Maybe at his next gig I might, if I'm lucky.

As for Frank wondering "are they going to let us speak our truth," from what I know about Rob, most likely. From what I know about Lacey, it depends on your definition of the word "our," I suppose.

I've been saying it for couple years now -- being a rock critic is like re-eanacting the Civil War. It's a fascinating exercise, but it ain't really a viable career anymore.

-- Chris O. (oconnorscrib...), April 19th, 2006.

Poor metaphor. No one ever made a career out of re-enacting the Civil War in the first place.

Though if it makes you feel bett, run with Anthony's thing on the muskets. :-)

?

i am writing an academic text, and reading academic work for it, and i keep wondering, people who use the word academic as a perjoritive, do they actually do the work before playing the game

but pop music has never become as much of an academic institution so using ideas gleaned from academia still might have or can have a radical edge. in film it's just boring orthodoxy.

on-topic: but yeah, I agree that pop music is still a young field in academia & that some of the folks in my generation are prone to sneaking academic flourishes into pop music criticism (reminds me of a comment in another thread, possibly by/in response to Nitsuh, that the hyper-aestheticized Voice style amounts to ADORNO + FUCK = TRUTH)

Ah it's late & I'm rambling; sorry everyone

1st reaction: I'll stop reading the Voice for realz but obv if Xgau stays I'll keep picking it up and shaking my fist at the changes.

even if I argued with and laughed at the Voice music section it MADE ME THINK every week, and while my disagreements probably doubled over the last five years Chuck clearly pulled his pages out of the late 90s doldrums and deserves every bit of praise posted here.

as editor Robert Xgau taught me and Chuck and RJ Smith and dozens of other young people not just how to write abt music but how to really think and question your own assumptions. clearly Chuck Eddy brought this tradition forward; everybody who worked with him can consider themselves graduates of the top school in the field.

if Chuck Eddy is "too academic" then I'm Jacques Derrida.

People who play that card never do the work beforehand; that's precisely the reason why they are making asinine statements like that in the first place.

I don't read a ton of music criticism but what little of the VV I've read has been only slightly more academic than R.A. Salvatore.

anyway this sucks -- i've spent the last 10 weeks at work firefighting the survival of the mag i'm (freelance) sub at, in at least something like the ghost of its present form, while the editor who made it what it is is off sick w.stress, depression and exhaustion: *she's* been firefighting for the same thing (her conception of the mag) for the least two or three years, in the face of an impossibly malicious and incompetent management -- it's really hard to describe how grim and demoralising these kinds of battles can be, precisely bcz the thing being fought for is so impalpable (you kinda get it or you don't, and you ALWAYS discover midway into the argument that yr senior-management foes never actually READ the mag, they just have some vague idea of what it "seems" to be about, and what can be done to make it "better"*; in other words, the fact you put yr heart and soul and mind into, to make as GOOD AS IT POSSIBLY COULD BE, is completely irrelevant to them: yr fighting a phantom)

*where i am the magic fix is "the net" -- ok well i love the net but the fix requires more than just sayin those two words, "the net"

my heart totally goes out to anyone who's kept for the walls from closing in for any appreciable time, on any magazine (ie even mags i hate) (as much as mags like the voice, which i kinda love): at the moment i'm of a mind to argue that ALL MAGAZINES MATTER, and killing any one of them is a crime

haha Frank, i guess if we could have agreed which war we were fighting, maybe it wouldn't have been such a pushover. [as i see it though, they're sorta the same thing in the single sense that music ppl. actually listen to also tends to be music that is smart, or at least cleverly stupid, because contrary to what the vibe from NT management seems to be, ppl. aren't dumb]

one of my fav. things sinkah said btw -- "my friend dr. v used to get peeved at me calling things 'too academic' until she realized that what i meant by that was 'not academic enough'" -- that's sorta what chuck pulled off with the voice section as best he could, something that wasn't too capital-A academic, but that was written by ppl. that cld. levy the same criticism sinkah did at stuff that was.

haha psychic xpost with mark!

I write for a bunch of NT papers and love love love the VV music section (and have since I first came across the paper in the mid 90s) and have made respect for its writers and editors. The idea of it becoming another NT adjunct after these dismissals – and I say this with respect for NT’s music writers/editors, most of whom aren’t anywhere near as bad as some make them out to be – has straight up ruined my day.

If they try to run it without him I think the voters should organize massive protest voting.

2005:
http://www.villagevoice.com/pazzandjop05/ballots.php?cid=3284
2004:
http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/04/critic.php?criticid=3284
2003:
http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/03/critic.php?criticid=3284
2002:
http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/02/critic.php?criticid=3284
2001:
http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/01/critic.php?criticid=3284

no sufjan, either.

I work at a university and wish more "academics" wrote like Eddy.

Speaking as a Miamian the music section of the NT has really become a stopgap between The only things I stop to read are by a couple of hometown crits who've covered the local scene for years and Miccio's occasional pieces (which only appear online more often as not).

Above is a humor piece Rob Havilla wrote about overused words in rock writing. The piece ran in several New Times papers. As it turns out, I had pedantic (got me!) complaint with it. You'll notice that his description of the allegedly hackneyed word "coruscating" reads "really, really angular" (the description follows his notes on the inarguably hackneyed word "angular"). It's possible that folks have used "coruscating" to mean something like "corrosive," since those words sound alike and all, but I can't recall having seen the word misused in that way. It means "brilliant." Now, I've misused words and made lots of other mistakes in print before, but if you're gonna act like the William Safire of rock criticism, shouldn't you be using a dictionary?

either way, him and Xgau are real fucking dudes, no matter what you think about them. genuine article music-freak nutcases that were damn passionate about music and wrote about ideas and could write well....i doubt we'll be able to say the same about their replacements.

this maybe does feel like the end of an era...like these guys were the last living link to the old world of creem magazine, bangs, etc...

Above I indicated out of ignorance that NT's preference for humor is what kept Sylvester on board, but now I realize that he was eventually terminated.

In a parallel universe...

try this:

Village Voice recognizes the importance of Dubstep music in 2006, in particular the expectation of Burial's debut album on Hyperdub next month needs to communicated to our readers. This album is a "Key Decade Changing" album, I am seeking a writer that communicate this excitement framed in a postmodern context.

I am now seeking a writer to pitch for this feature article:

3,000 - 5000 words ...Dubstep the Postmodern Music of 2006.

Conditions:

Must be familiar with Dubstep music, i.e Dubstep forum, downloads all the latest dubstep mixes etc

Needs to know Cultural Studies Theory

Deadline for copy: April 30th

reference on postmodern music:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_music

Well, they're right.

As for the business reasons for the change in emphasis, I doubt that there are any. I think this is all about Lacey's self-image, his compensating for his intellectual insecurity by imposing a big blustery capital J "We go out and get the stories" journalism bullshit on everything. That's based on how he comes across in the few interviews I've seen. I could be wrong. But if Westword is any indication, the man actually has no interest in getting the poop on how "the deal went down," despite what he says. Westword's office is six blocks from both the Colorado state capitol and the Denver city hall and has rarely covered either (I was going to say "never," but I really don't read the thing enough anymore to say this for sure). So there's been little attempt to probe into how power and authority actually work anywhere, though Michael Roberts has reported on Clear Channel's attempts to bully their way into dominance of the local concert scene. Basically, Westword is lifestyle, consumer guides, and human-interest stories, none of which I have any objection to in principle and none of which preclude actual ideas, if only the writers had any; the artist profiles end up as puff pieces, mostly.

It's a shame that this country thinks "academic" is an insult. I want more academic pop music crit, not less!

“Well, I think all journalists should check their ego at the door,” Mr. Lacey said, when asked if Voice staffers might be angry about giving up national ambitions. “The history of this business is filled with people who have to turn their heads sideways to fit through a door because their ego is so large. Humility never hurt anyone.”

You certainly can't argue with Lacey's humility.

My guess is if they thought the music section was too "academic," the film, visual art, books, dance, and theatre sections may be undergoing some changes as well.

Personally I'm lamenting the imminent destruction of VV film criticism - the best at a weekly I've ever read, even going back to when I started reading it in the mid-80s.

coming soon to the VV film section: leonard maltin!

The dumbing down of America continues... Soon to be the hot topic of a reality show near you.

the obligatory "use other facts please" fact: clinton was a rhodes scholar.

Yeah, but Clinton didn't write highfalutin' music criticism for the Village Voice, so he didn't come across as an egghead communist.

Really real reason for music section overhaul?: Not enough Bravery coverage.

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/images/wolfowitz-140-mug.jpg

And I remember Chuck acting as the link here between Ward Churchill and Teena Marie:
http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individual.asp

Movie critic
Claims that George W. Bush stole the 2000 Presidential election
“[W]e’ve had a concerted policy of taking money away from the poor and giving it to the rich wholesale, and at the same time, we have the runaway corporations and the greed.”

In the August 2003 issue of The Progressive, Roger Ebert, perhaps the best-known movie critic in the world, spoke his mind about George W. Bush, Republicans, and the evils of American capitalism. Asserting that Bush stole the 2000 Presidential election, is simultaneously a religious zealot and disrespectful to the Pope, and is both devious and unintelligent, Ebert expressed disappointment and bewilderment over the fact that many Americans disagree with him.

“I think a lot of working-class people don’t understand,” said Ebert, “their money is being stolen. . . . [W]e’ve had a concerted policy of taking money away from the poor and giving it to the rich wholesale, and at the same time, we have the runaway corporations and the greed. I feel ordinary people really should be angry.”

Ebert became politically outspoken in the fall of 2000 with his enthusiastic raves for “The Contender,” writer-director Rod Lurie’s story about a female senator (played by Joan Allen), nominated to replace a dead vice president, who nobly refuses to address Republican-spread rumors that she had been involved in college orgies. Lurie’s labored attempt to equate the treatment of his heroine under fire with the treatment received by Bill Clinton after he was caught in the Monica Lewinsky scandal was widely panned – except by Ebert. In his print review in the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert called “The Contender” a four-star classic; he also devoted part of his review to criticizing Republicans and Clinton Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

Since then, Ebert has used his media platform numerous times to speak out on political matters:

-- His depiction (in a July 2001, Sun-Times general-news column) of presidential daughter Barbara Bush as an ignorant “yob” on the loose in London. Given her idiot father, Ebert reasoned, what could one expect?

-- His relentless championing of “Bowling for Columbine,” the Michael Moore documentary.

- His tirade about George W. Bush’s alleged vicious insensitivity toward those on Texas’ Death Row in his Spring 2003 print review of “The Life of David Gale,” a melodrama about an anti-death-penalty crusader.

-- His likening of the Bill the Butcher character in “Gangs of New York” – a cleaver-waving, mass-murdering thug – to Florida’s former Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, whom Gore supporters condemned for what they perceived as her partisan role in the 2000 Presidential election controversy in Florida. Ebert’s point, which he expressed on “Ebert & Roeper”: Both Bill the Butcher and Harris used whatever means possible to take and keep power.

Everyone in America not named M. Biondi, it seems.

That's Attorneys General of Funk. Much like Hillary's brief noize dalliance in The Surgeons General.

I lolled.

"Thanks, but I prefer it my way."

"I am the resurrection and I am the light
I couldn't ever bring myself to hate you as I'd like

I am the resurrection and I am the light
I couldn't ever bring myself to hate you as I'd like"

In case you didn't see it, this blog has some excerpts from the letter to Lacey, written and signed by Eddy and other Voice staffers, in protest of James Ridgeway's firing.

1. Paul McCartney Barely qualified to carry John Lennon's roach clip while both toiled with a grotesquely overrated boy band known as the Beatles, Sir Paul's true colors have reverberated loudly and horribly since Mark David Chapman put a tragic slug in Yoko's hubby. "Band on the Run" could have been written by a third grader, and McCartney's duets with alleged pedophile Michael Jackson -- and the ensuing public pissing match over Wacko Jacko's savvy purchase of the Beatles' catalogue -- cemented McCartney's legacy of poor taste and idiocy.

Oh fuck this shit...

nice that the sf weekly supported local music with that feature on journey, though.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0674000781.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.gif

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b360/bassbookie/muse-band-6500037.jpg

Good comment from Raymond ... I genuinely like and admire most of the folks in those editing jobs, and some of the regular contributors (Mikael Wood, Katy St. Clair, Robert Wilonsky, Abagail Clouseau, Phil Freeman, Michael Alan Goldberg, Serene Dominic, Eric Arnold) are top-notch pros. And Harvilla will become an absolute superstar here, mark my words.

These folks prove that anyone can make a template sing and dance, even if the template is kinda butt.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0465026567.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

I'm sure that Lacey would appreciate my actual reporting if nothing else...

"That's just the sort of scrappy gumption we need around this newsroom, lad. Grab the beast by the neck! Kick ass!"

And by way of clarification: My beef with NT ain't with their reporting style and penchant for investigation and civic rabblerousing. That stuff will be a welcome fix for the Voice. I just think the way they treat their people is deplorable ... there's just no respect among the assholes in the Mothership for diverse voices or -- let's face it -- talent. General contempt for certain styles dehumanizes the place.

Yes, my views are clouded by personal experience, but I've also just observed what's happened to friends and colleagues over the years. Lacey told an art director in Phoenix that he "wipes his ass with design elements." And then the beautiful thing is, when they tried to once of their dishonest "you suck" firings/actual layoffs on him, the guy had a job offer from Vogue in his pocket. The ultimate in "fuck you," don't you think?

but 4serious anyone that thinks ny is lacking in civic rabblerousing obv. doesn't follow the tabloids.

So at least the Voice will have some FOB and feature well teeth again, I would presume.

Course for our purposes, the music section figures to go mostly yickie-yick.

So at least the Voice will have some FOB and feature well teeth again, I would presume.

Course for our purposes, the music section figures to go mostly yickie-yick.

new yorkers, tho not the current voice demo maybe, tend to already know lots of bits about city politics and have fairly strong and angry opinions about it.

in boston, the murdoch property there was generally better at this stuff than the phoenix (no relation to NT) for the same sort of reason -- more frequent, more real reporting resources, and unlike the other daily, very much in political opposition to the local governing establishment. the phoenix generally just could do longer stories putting more of the chain of events in a single narrative, and dead-dull interview work. i'm totally befuddled by what sorts of civic investigation in particular ppl. think the voice not even should, but could possibly do. the civil liberties cases (bikers, cops at protests, RNC arrests) are sort of a niche for them, but they already have made a focus of covering them and a little instict tells me that somehow the NT estab. will manage to argue that that isn't "real reporting" (by which they will mean that stories like that are about people that -- they think nobody takes seriously.)

As many of you have probably heard through the grapevine, I am leaving the Village Voice tomorrow, after seven often wonderful years here as the music editor. To make it brief, I have been "terminated for reasons of taste"; if you're wondering what that cryptic phrase means, my advice would be to look at just about any random music section in one of the many other New Times alternative weekly papers around the country, compare it to any random music section I've put together here at the Voice, subtract the difference, and draw your own conclusions. To also be brief, I need a new job now, so if you have any leads, don't hesitate to say so.

well, such is the way of the world, no? honestly, it just seems to be the dominant trend everywhere. and i have no fucking idea where i'll fit in that world, especially without editors like chuck eddy to occasionally throw me work. (i only wrote for chuck once, if i recall correctly, and while i rarely agreed with his taste and we've squabbled more than once on this board, at least he gave me a chance - and was a great editor to work with, too.) and while i had plenty of gripes about what got covered in the voice, at least it was different, at least it took some kind of position, some stand -- thereby espousing a value system that assumed value lies in the aesthetic object itself, and not simply in what the prefab conventional wisdom says. but difference doesn't stand up when maximizing profit is the only name of the game.

yeah, i agree with this assessment (and i, like philip, wonder about my place in that world).

for me, the question that comes to mind based on that analysis is this: 'will nyc support a second version of new york press?'

xpost

I read the LA New Times, which had been the LA Reader, when it was still being published prior to operating agreement with VV that killed it years back. The biggest thing I remember was a cover story that was a hoax, allegedly about a burgeoning hotbed of young movie production talent in the high desert towns on the nothern
periphery of LA County. It was fairly obviously bogus but some people were apparently taken in which became reason for a laff riot.

There was also a column called "Bad Teeth" which was for shitting on stuff. Now, there's certainly a lot to be shat upon in LA but... one example, an interview/lunch with the manager of Guitar Center on Sunset in which the man was made the fool, like pulling the wings off a fly.

Not a patron, but an investor, with a clear view of the core audience he's after (i.e., people who'd be interested in having their attitudes examined and their tastes shook) and who believes that "accessibility" means "communication" not "pandering."

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200506/?read=article_mcmillian

HA! Well, Herbert, the same people shedding tears for Eddy and Christgau (who is on his way out as well, make no mistake), are the ones who actually fired Meltzer (from the Seattle Weekly) and basically shut him out of the Voice to begin with.

Karma's a bitch, no?

Besides, hasn't the whole myth of Xgau persecuting Meltzer been pretty much debunked?

Whoah there Dylan! I'm not going to get into who is "more" anything. All I have said is that Rob is not some junior accountant. He was good at what he did in Columbus, he was good at what he did in Oakland and I'll bet he'll be good in New York too.

None of this means he'll be "better," per se, nor does it mean that Chuck getting let go is in any way "good." It's not. Rob will have tough shoes to fill and my money's that he is keenly aware of this.

I don't think you need to blast Rob - who hasn't even stepped into NY yet - quite yet. I'm pretty sure that none of this is his doing. He was simply the best guy they had to take over. He will have a hard enough transition without people blasting him unfairly.

Chuck rocked it, he got fucked over. Chuck will land on his feet because he's fucking amazing at what he does. Rob will hopefully do a good job under a rather intense microscope. No need to start angling the sun through that microscope, I don't think.

Be pissed at Lacey and the NT folks for their short-sightedness, corporate cluelessness and whatever else you care to blame them for, but don't take it out on Harvilla.

Also, most job replacements happen either through resign-search-replace or fire-search-replace. How often does anyone really use the "Colts move to Indy in the middle of the night" approach? Wall Street banks and pro sports teams generally don't even do that.

THAT BASTARD!

Guess who that very young, very green rock writer from Columbus was?

Yep, Rob Harvilla. Like I say, karma is a fucking bitch.

The Voice's ivory tower is under siege and the barbarians from Phoenix are at the gates. Deal with it...

Here is the bad-karma-engendering smoking gun the anonymous New Times staffer or supporter has zinged us with. Perhaps his reading of its inclusion in the P&J personals is paranoid.

I've heard about you guys for awhile—some sort of critics organization. Can you give me more info about it generally? I like your work in various publications I've read, and would be interested in whatever you're runnin' here.

Rob Harvilla
Columbus, Ohio

I'm sure this gave Christgau and Chuck a good old laugh at the time. Who's laughing now?

Uh, we are. At you.

"So one time this friend of mine was at a dentists' convention and he introduced himself to an older dentist (a known liberal, by the way), who briefly said hello and then excused himself to go to the bathroom. Well, I'm pretty sure my friend felt slighted and a touch embarrassed, though of course it's possible that the older dentist just had to urinate and meant no disrespect. Probably, though, he was in that john laughing his socialist ass off. Well, later some fellows set fire to that elitist dentist's home. I reckon he wasn't laughing then."

http://blogs.philly.com/blinq/2006/04/former_philly_g.html

Actually, Chris, I do have to correct a couple things -- particularly since the circumstances surrounding my departure from Seattle Weekly were reported falsely by The Stranger at the time (talk about irony, the company I work for now is part owner of that paper).

Anyway, back in late 2001 I was hired by one editorial team at Seattle Weekly, and personally by David Schneiderman -- while he was acting as day-to-day publisher of the paper. The editors that brought me on were let go after a couple months and a new administration came in and changed the direction of the paper. I worked for a year under that group and admittedly had some philosophical differences which were never resolved (and problems with some of the dead weight on the staff working under me) and that led me to lose interest in the job after a while. The following year, for personal reasons, I decided to move to Chicago. I basically let that be known to my bosses, but that I would stay on through the busy summer festival season so as not to leave them in the lurch. Shortly after, I had a fairly serious row with the new publisher -- a dyed-in-the-wool New Times man who didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground -- about the direction of the inaugural SW music festival (an incredibly foolish enterprise intended to be a copycat of similar New Times events in other cities). Anyway, that's when my relationship with them suddenly turned very sour, they decided I shouldn't stay on through the summer and that's when I'm assuming Matos was contacted. However, I was fully aware of all the behind the scenes machinations the whole time -- secrets are generally poorly kept among alt-weekly staff, who are notorious gossips -- and in fact the month before I was "fired" I had already begun the process of moving to Chicago and interviewing for other jobs. Anyway, I certainly bore no grudge toward Michelangelo -- who wrote for me when I was at SW -- as he did a fine job with the paper, and was very kind in one of his final pieces complimenting a Reader cover story I did on Bandit Records. But also, unlike Eddy I hadn't given seven years (or more) in service of the paper, and I had been offered a more than generous opportunity to take my shot under the new management.

Anyway, that much just to set the record straight, Chris. And not to say I told you so, but I've read your New Times-related comments on this thread and I think many of the same conclusions you've come to since leaving Phoenix, are among the things I warned you about when you first got the job there and solicited my advice on the inner-workings of the company.

As to the more pressing subject of the New Times’ takeover/demolition of the Voice, I hate to be the bearer of bad news as things already seem fairly bleak here, but any of the horrible things you've heard or could possibly imagine about the NT's corporate culture are true. Having worked in Phoenix for several years, much of it directly under Lacey, I was witness to some pretty appalling shit in terms of how they treated talent (especially older, better paid writers) and the care they took with the whole notion of proofing and fact checking. So the way they've been handling things with the Voice comes as no surprise to many of us who've seen this same gameplan executed various times at various other papers.

Ultimately, the reason the New Times has suffered such a long fall from their halcyon days of the late 90s is simple: they do not value talent. Some of top people there genuinely hate and are jealous of anyone with real writing ability. I recall that sentiment actually being expressed withthin the halls of the company. You can certainly put together a long list of the really talented people NT has run off who’ve gone on to bigger and better things since. I should say that there are still a few good people in the upper reaches of NT management, but at this point they’re powerless to reverse what’s going at the Voice and elsewhere – which, frankly, is far, far more bottom line-related than people may realize.

Personally, I was always more amused by Lacey's loutish antics and demeanor than pained by it, but of course back then he wasn't threatening the whole of the alt-press. I think it's safe to say that now that NT has entered the journalistic big leagues and made a pig's breakfast of things so far, that the company and its history will be fair game for the kind of serious investigative reporting they claim to revere. When that time comes and all their dark, horrible secrets come out (and I do mean dark, horrible secrets), I can promise that you’ll shake your head at how this group of people managed to get to a position of such power in American journalism.

Anyway, I suppose I should be careful what I say as it looks like the NT police are already lurking here.

Thanks for indulging me.

p.s. Not sure if Frank Kogan is on the list here regularly. Frank, I don't have an e-mail for you but I wanted to let you know that the review of Real Punks that I wrote for MOJO will be in the next issue of the magazine.

Bob Mehr
Music Columnist
Chicago Reader

The idea that if you have great editors and writers, you will have more readers, and then will have more advertisers and can charge them more, is too many steps for media moguls - they take as a given that readership will never increase, and besides the whole idea is too - I dunno, willowy anyway.

So Ridgeway won't be replaced, any staffer who leaves voluntarily won't be replaced, and (I admit I'm speculating here) maybe Eddy was forced out because he wouldn't replace his whole stable with free NT reprints. Like I said, speculation, but it wouldn't be the first time.

And none of this means any disrespect to Rob Harvilla - don't know the guy at all. And like Supreme Court justices, you don't really know what the guy'll do until he sits in the big chair.

since the newspaper industry in general is in the middle of a long-term decline that has nothing to do with quality of writing and editing, this is a pretty sensible assumption to make

the only print category that is expanding is celebrity weeklies

From: Eddy, Chuck
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 11:38 AM
Subject: Chuck Eddy is out of here

Dear Friends, Publicists, and Record Label Folks:

As many of you have probably heard through the grapevine, I am leaving the Village Voice tomorrow, after seven often wonderful years here as the music editor. To make it brief, I have been “terminated for reasons of taste”; if you’re wondering what that cryptic phrase means, my advice would be to look at just about any random music section in one of the many other New Times alternative weekly papers around the country, compare it to any random music section I’ve put together here at the Voice, subtract the difference, and draw your own conclusions. To also be brief, I need a new job now, so if you have any leads, don’t hesitate to say so.

My replacement, who begins Monday, is Rob Harvilla, formerly at the East Bay Express. (His email now is ‘xxxx@eastbayexpress.com’; I assume that, starting next week, he’ll be reachable at xxxx@villagevoice.com.)

As for me, I definitely plan to keep writing about music in some capacity or other — especially now that I’ll finally have time to actually write. So it would of course be great to keep getting unfathomable piles of promo CDs to listen to every day. Problem is, I can’t tell you yet where to send them; in my neighborhood in Queens, turns out there’s a 10-day waiting list for PO Boxes. As soon as I have one, I’ll be sending you another email, letting you know where to send the music you want me to hear. Meanwhile, if you have ideas about where I should go from here, or if you just want to drop me a note, I’ll be reachable at xxxx@yahoo.com, an account I just set up two days ago.

Whatever I do, it’s hard to imagine I’ll ever find another job half as fun and rewarding as this one was. I hope I did the job justice. Talk to you soon, good luck, and be good. — Chuck Eddy

sorry to chuck if you'd have rather posted this yrself, but i figure once it's on gawker, it's fair game, right?

I think he means that it's editorially unsound to produce content that your readers don't want to read, but it seems impossible to make that case using anything but the power of assumption.

x-post there should have been more titty

That does address something that I'm curious about, as I'm not a NT reader: do some of them review mainstream Nashville country (not alt) and metal? Cuz i would assume that in most NT markets, country rekkids sell massively (metal far, far less so, I would think). On the other hand, maybe the demographic identified as readers by NT were deemed hostile to Nash-Vegas, and they, like most non-coastal crits, prefer indie-rock and alt-country.

anybody know?

and yet Chuck insisted on having reviews about stuff like that, defiantly, as if to suggest to crits and smug New Yorkers that they should look up from their navels and see what non-hipsters care about musically. Often using impenetrable prose…but still…

This is exactly what I meant to say. No offense intended. I mean, "America's largest weekly newspaper" does need to consider the wants of its readership (which is not all that dissimilar to the Time Out readership, to be honest). I obviously can't back up my uneducated hunch that 30-40% of the Voice music section was of little to no interest to the vast majority of the readers. But it feels about right. Am I indulging in "truthiness" here? Sure.

x-post remarkability isn't editorially sound

Nobody can afford to pay the rates that sustain free papers, especially when their true circulation is so impossible to determine. If I can buy every ad space on Pitchforkmedia.com for 1/10th the cost of a large ad in the Village Voice music section, while reaching a more condensed demographic and getting exact numbers on what my ad is doing, why would I not do this. As someone mentioned up thread, the Voice has been Pitchforkifying for a few years (and pretty explicitly) - it's not exactly a prime target for jazz reissue adverts these days, so they're fighting for ad revenues that will probably never go their way.

So if you're with me on that point, I would hope you'd come to the same conclusion: edit is not the issue, pub is. Pub can't make print work anymore, can't sell the rates they used to, yet all we ever see as a result of this unresolvable failure (it's evolution) is editorial turmoil. Why would you symbolically execute two of the strongest editorial personalities in a barely-profitable niche if you are interested in making money? It doesn't matter who you put on the masthead, there's only one way to make money.

x-post: spin too!

http://a820.g.akamai.net/f/820/822/1d/i.ivillage.com/cosmopolitan/subscribe/coscdsmag.jpg
(Written over her face: "Orgasms Unlimited")

p.s. are you saying that pfork could/would hire chuck at his old voice salary? coz if so, more power to them. otherwise you're full of it and shut the hell up.

kernel of truth to this...

http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/5889/19142j00g0tpwn3d1one3hp.jpg

. . . and people who have actually worked in print media

conversely, there were those reviews that matched street date (and i'm thinking christian hoard on yankee hotel foxtrot here) that were so damningly perceptive and canny that while it seemed woefully out of step in that moment to a lot of readers, it was the sort of critique that endures and is memorable. chuck's ability to recognize this was without equal in mainstream publications, imho.

hats off!

Tx.

or it'll just reduce the number of specific types of publications available at them. the fashion-publishing industry, for example, isn't going anywhere probably, because it thrives on slick paper stock and vibrant color printing, and on being portable and able to cut out and post on the wall. books aren't going anywhere either. but things like music writing no longer have the lock on exclusivity they once did. I don't think this is especially difficult to figure out.

why start now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality

Wow, I guess now's the time to start blogging again to fill the vacuum, huh?

yeah, didja see that surowiecki piece? he makes the same point. of course, it's a point i'm partial too, for reasons of wanting to stay employed.

xpost - you know it!

If Chuck and Xgau think their brand of music crit can appeal to the masses of today they should start up their own online site and take some business away from Pitchfork. I'm kind of doubtful, unless deciphering Xgau reviews becomes like the new Brain Training in Japan.

Sorry about the verbosity. I'm just so SAD, this really sucks.

yeah. epaper. we'll read it over our echerios and emilk while wired up to our ecoffee and before we log in for ework we'll recieve our 'email' from the friendly neighborhood 'epostman'. and we'll listen to 'emusic'. and occasionally we'll go to the 'edoctor' when we contract 'ecoli'.

sure.

this boneheaded idea that Christgau reviews are somehow completely inscrutable and need to be 'decoded' as if they were ancient hieroglyphics has got to stop. he treats his readers as if they're as intelligent as he is. you have a brain; why not use it? he's actually one of the clearest critics out there, when it comes right down to it.

If you clicked on a link that you found on a website or blog and it led you here and you are reading this now, you can blame Chuck Eddy. It’s all his fault. He was the one who put the idea in my head that my opinion was worth a damn and EVEN worth reading, and I take no responsibility for this turn of events. All I did was write him a fan letter.
I had been a fan of his music writing for years. So much so, that when I bought a magazine that he wrote for, the first thing I usually did was look for his reviews in the back of the book. Rolling Stone, Spin, Creem, Creem Metal, Entertainment Weekly. This was in the 80's and 90’s and the "golden age" of rockcrit had passed (perhaps), but Chuck kept the flame lit for those of us who had laughed our heads off reading Klassic Creem in the 70's and found it harder and harder to find writing about rock that was funny and smart and full of life (there are always exceptions. Spin and the Village Voice even employed some of these exceptions during the Reagan years. And there were zines that also tried to keep the ball rolling). Chuck stood out. He was funny as hell, for one thing. And he had a way with words that often boggled my little mind. And he was always decisively HIMSELF without that being a detriment to whatever he was writing about. Even in Entertainment Weekly of all places, he managed to hold on to his voice despite the lack of space and restrictions of the company style. This always amazed me. He was the only writer you could pick out of a line-up in that mag at times.
Anyway, I was a fan cuz I treasure good writing wherever I find it, and Chuck’s first book, *Stairway To Hell*, put him over the top for me. This thing was borderline-genius. It also brought home what it was that really made me dig his brand of crit, and what he had to say. It’s kinda corny so you might want to hide your eyes for this part: He made me feel like I wasn’t alone in the world! Somebody else out there actually cared about the same stuff that I did. And took it seriously! Just in case people have forgotten, a pre-internet world could be a lonely place for Wide Boy Awake fans.
When his second book, *The Accidental Evolution Of Rock & Roll*, came out in 1997, I devoured it in record time and I knew I had to do something. I had to write this guy. Just to thank him and let him know that his stuff was much appreciated. I'm not a fan-letter writer kinda guy. It's only been recently that I have made a point of telling the people who have made a difference in my life that I appreciate what they have done. Better late than never! I was always too shy when I was younger. This can backfire, of course. The look of horror on George Carlin’s face as I ran around the counter and accosted him at my last job in Philadelphia – a Korean deli off of Rittenhouse Square- is something I wish I could blot from my memory. "Thanks for all the years, George!" i stammered after FORBIDDING HIM TO LEAVE THE STORE UNTIL I COULD SHAKE HIS HAND! Oy vey. I only hope I gave him 5 good minutes on how annoying people are for a future T.V. special. Thanks for all the years? I'm still fucking mortified.
But I wrote Chuck. I knew he lived in Philly, and there he was in the phone book. Not long after, I got a call at home and it was him. I was awestruck. No, really, awestruck. My ever clever tongue was busy at work. “How did you get my number??!!” (I thought he was magik like Madonna) What do you know. Turns out I was in the phone book too! We talked for a good long time and I could tell that he was happy to talk with someone who not only got his stuff, but who dug so much of the same music. Music is good like that. We kept in touch and he invited me to his parties and I got to ogle his record collection and I was just happy to know someone new in Philly who I admired and that was genuine and funny and weird. (I don't make friends easily)
Fast forward to 1999. Chuck tells me that he might be getting a new job and moving, but he can't talk about it. He does get the job and it’s music editor at the Village Voice and he will be moving to New York. Wow, what a gig. And if anyone is made for it, it's Chuck. On the job for about a week, he gives me a call at work. "Scott, guess what?” What? “I want you to write for me.” I’m speechless. Then I remember something: “You know that I’m not a writer, right?” It doesn’t matter to him. He is obviously insane. Based on our conversations and one fan letter, and possibly another letter that I sent along to him with a mix-tape, he wants me to write for the Village Voice ( In the two years that I had known him, we had never ever discussed writing. Ever!). And the Village Voice actually MATTERED to me. I grew up reading it thanks to a hepcat dad who always had to know who was playing at the Blue Note. But I hadn’t written ANYTHING since my one and only (miserable and failed) year of college in the go-go 80’s! And those were, you know, book reports and such. But I had to do it. I wasn’t gonna chicken out. I had nothing to lose! I had a lonely apartment, a shit job that paid me under the table, and a blossoming booze habit. Nothing to hang on to. Plus, it was for Chuck!
So, I did it. I was petrified. This wasn’t some little blurb either. This was a full page in a major newspaper! He was completely insane. What was he thinking? It took us forever to edit it over the phone. I can look at that first piece today without cringing too badly (okay, some of it makes me cringe. But there is a glimmer of hope in it), but boy was it rough. However, I surprised myself. And I might have even surprised Chuck. I don’t know if he thought I would want to keep at it or not, but he didn’t discourage me and that’s all the encouragement I needed. And I got better at it in a hurry. The editing sessions were no longer so lengthy. Those first couple of years were a whirlwind. I wrote a LOT! For me. Someone who never wrote much of anything before. It started to become truly fun too. I played with it and didn't hold back. And Chuck TRUSTED me like crazy. I worked a lot too, so most of my writing had to be done AT work, and I ended up writing on the backs of paper bags and cigarette cartons and later transcribing the stuff I had written at home (yes, I could afford a notebook, but I wanted it to look like I was working at work!). Maybe for the first time in my life I felt like I was a part of something truly worthwhile and good. I loved what Chuck was doing with the section. The chances he was willing to take. And I got to know, via e-mail, some great writers and like minds like Don Allred and Frank Kogan. Fellow oddballs. I was tickled when Chuck told me that he would have the same CDs sent to me, Frank, and Don when he knew it was something that other people might pass on or ignore and when it was something that HE really liked. I really did give it my all. I wanted to do good work cuz I saw so many others doing good work around me. I had never felt like this about anything before. I had never wanted to try so hard before.
Nothing will ever beat those first two or three years of writing for Chuck and the Voice. I was so lucky to have been able to do the stuff that I did. I never took it for granted for a minute either. I learned a lot in a short period of time. It got to the point where for the last 3 or 4 years…shit, i hope I'm not telling tales out of school. Chuck is an amazing editor and any time that he made a change in something I wrote he ALWAYS made it better and he ALWAYS asked me about it before he did it. Basically, I let him do whatever he wanted to my stuff. Cuz it was never much…but, anyway, for the last 3 or 4 years he hasn’t really touched anything I have written at all! A snip here and there for length, maybe move a sentence up or down or around every blue moon, but basically, when you get right down to it, we are talking word for word from my pen to the printing press. Long kinda convoluted pieces that ran EXACTLY as I had written them! This, in case you don't know, is rare. And it's all about trust and faith and knowing when to leave something alone. And I completely understand the editor’s urge to get a fingerprint on the finished product. But I have also been a party to fingerprints that left unsightly smudges, and Chuck NEVER did this. (And fingerprints or no, I certainly understand the need for good editing). I am not crowing by the way. I’m just pointing out that we were simpatico and he knew what he could expect of me and I tried to deliver as often as I could. There were times when I definitely dropped the ball. But hopefully not too many times (I will let others judge).
A while back, the Voice cut the space for the music section and this kinda took the wind out of everyone’s sails. I know Chuck was miserable about it. There wasn’t as much room for longer, involved pieces and I missed that. And not for ego reasons either. I missed READING other people’s long pieces and can safely say that I am better writing long than I am doing the short stuff. Writing the capsule-sized stuff and doing it well is a journalistic skill that I’m still trying to get a grip on. Robert Christgau, George Smith, and Chuck himself are amazing practitioners of the 200 words or less review. All three are fine newspaper journalists as well as critics, and I think this might have something to do with it. Even with my Decibel reviews, I can go over 400 words and this makes all the difference in the world to me. One of these days, I will write the perfect 200 word review!
I’m writing all this, in case you don’t know, because Chuck was given the boot by the new management at the Voice. Ironically, there were a few times in the last couple of years when I wanted to ask Chuck why he didn’t quit over what the “old” management was doing at the Voice. But I knew why. It's hard to leave a job you were born to do. Well, either editing the Voice music section or editing and writing for a cool music magazine a la Creem (a job that I know he has always dreamed about). Heck, the only two times I have ever been fired from a job was when I stayed too long after new owners/management came along. And I hated those jobs. And I KNEW I should leave them before the switch. It's hard sometimes. Especially when you have spent so much time and energy creating something so cool like Chuck did for the last 7 years at the Voice. It wasn’t perfect. But at it’s best, there was some amazing writing going on there with life and wit and ideas and a whole slew of amazing contributors, not all of whom were pros or lifers or "name" critics, but just people who had a way with words and who were given a chance by a great writer who happens to believe that almost anyone can tell a good story, be funny, or share what they hear to others in an interesting way if you let them and give them the space.

"With all this 'A+' and 'B-', I just feel too much like I'm in school again."

Hi Bob ... thank you for the clarification on that -- I should know better than go on the vagaries. And yes, you did tell me so re: PHX ... it's all fascinating in retrospect. Shrug ... :-)

Hope all is well in Chicago ...

As a matter of taste - I did find the voice's music format and their hoops to gaining coverage snooty. I don't like Christgau as a writer (bone dry ) or a tastemaker. This is the guy who called Jimi Hendrix a Tom while covering him at Monteray Pop in 67.

Chuck Eddy loves KIX. A band who literally threw a towel on stage when their DAT tapes jammed - as a signal they they had to play instead of pose. I give him credit for playing the game as long as he has. He'll land on his feet somewhere.

It does suck that the Voice is losing some of her character - but remember folks -- Fox owned it for several years and it remained the voice. They are a far more evil borg than NT.

While everything Mehr said is true about NT, much of it could be said about the entire print press. Ever since the conglomerates changed the rules as to what defined a profitable paper fifteen years ago, jobs have been slashed and qulality has suffered.

There is no value placed on talent or knowledge by the brass.Especially when it comes to arts coverage. Why pay a living wage to an "expert" when some 22 year old kid fresh out of college has Pitchfork clips and is willing to do the same job for peanuts? Who cares if he or she doesn't know their ass from their elbow? It's not like their superiors are going to know the difference.

The main reason Eddy is gone is his age - not his taste. NT doesn't believe anyone should remain a music critic more than five years. They purge their ranks every few years and either kick them up to staff writer or out of the company. They want young guys with goatees who ( in their eyes) can at least pretend that they stay out late at night and cover the beat, before they can "promote" them to staff writer where they have to write twice as much, for a few extra grand.

Part of Chuck's charm, btw, was that he was crazy enough to profess love for bands like KIX ... there's a guy you want to read, if only for his sheer unpredictability and style.

no kidding. that's about exactly as long as i've been newspapering in one form or another, and it's been like watching the goddam boats keep running into icebergs and eventually you realize it's because somebody bought all the boats and figured out a way to make some quick cash by running them into icebergs. it's the stupidest business model in the world. and it's no accident that the papers that manage to still do good stuff tend to be ones that have protected themselves one way or another against that kind of destruction. (see story this week about nyt's dual-class stock structure.) it's like richard gere in pretty woman has taken over the world and he hasn't met julia roberts yet. julia, help!

I should not be this jaded at this age

ps xpost Luc Sante is awesome

Kerrang! is gaining readers at the moment, and last i heard might be outselling NME again. but things are really tough in the magazine and paper industry in the UK too, as you say, ad sales are really suffering.

that was early 80s and it was RUPERT MURDOCH who owned the Village Voice. He hadn't bought FOX or expanded into TV yet and presumably had his hands full w/the NY Post (in its HEADLESS BODY FOUND IN TOPLESS BAR prime) and left the Voice alone. As mentioned upthread, that was a different era in terms of corporate control of media.

beautiful post Scott. It's worth remembering that Chuck Eddy's career at the Voice began with a passionate and unsolicited letter-bomb sent to Xgau for the P&J Poll ca 1982.

i've done this... it's easy, you just both discuss the piece with the feature open on your desktops...

he was a big supporter of legendary chicago power-popsters GREEN when almost no one else was. i'd love him for that alone, but he happens to be a perceptive and startlingly unpretentious writer too.

I did one of those with Chuck--he called me at work during my lunchbreak--and it made me giddy. He made a WASP joke that I didn't get but pretended to get but then felt guilty so I went back and said "Wait a minute..." As far as editing, I think he basically went thru pgh by pgh and we pulled out some trouble spots and he pointed out the part of the argument that didn't make sense. I emailed him the changes later, though.

Thanks for your long post, Scott.

-- Abbadavid Berman

haha!

Ken Kurson to thread (or to board)

one of the few moments in my life when i've been utterly disarmed and on-the-spot was chuck asking me "why do you like this?" during the middle of a line-edit.

Another source of pride for me: He basically went after me hard the whole time on my notion that Justin's album was classic megalomaniacal fare -- and a wonder -- while Nick's record was just dopey albeit likeable fluff. And then a few months later, he tells me I was right on Justin, and it winds up in his top 10. Another reason to respect the man: He never stopped thinking about music.

Chuck Eddy took a chance on me to write about country for the Voice, and I'm forever grateful. Seems ironic to me that New Times is so concerned about populist reportage and so forth, and here's the Voice in bad old NYC covering country music so well. At least, I think I did OK with it, with Chuck's always sharp help, as have Don, Frank, lots of others. And I feel like many of the writers have become friends, at least I hope so.

So this really hurts, and the age factor is probably in there too, as people above point out. the same shit is gonna happen in Nashville-fucking Music City USA, where the whole town is supported by the music industry and which has done a great job of selling its history to people who might come and live and who are not, ah, 22 years old. maybe even 40ish, like me, and not even decrepit, with our disposable income, reading the Nashville Scene and wishing for some lefty analysis of Blaine Larsen or Big and Rich...both of whom are getting long in the tooth...

and I've written some about country for New Times papers...they spelled my name right...

To be completely frank, shitting the bed over Chuck's ouster leaves a few things out of focus. No one murdered Eddy, they just canned him -- and, since by all accounts the Voice is on a twenty year slide, it'll probably work out to Eddy's benefit, especially if (as he says) he ends up writing more. I mean, my *girlfriend* has heard of Chuck Eddy, and she doesn’t give two shits about self-fellatiating word of music criticism, so it’s unlikely that he’s going to be buying bread with stamps any time soon. Buck up, y’all, he’s going to be back on the phone giving you line edits (and wood, likely) for a better publication in two months.

And while anonymous pussy man above makes asks some good questions:
Why pay a living wage to an "expert" when some 22 year old kid fresh out of college has Pitchfork clips and is willing to do the same job for peanuts? ….They want young guys with goatees who ( in their eyes) can at least pretend that they stay out late at night and cover the beat… , this isn’t what’s happening at the Voice. (Though this comment comes from someone who knows them some New Times. I mean, fuck, hearing how much they were offering for the music editor gig in Seattle was downright *demeaning*) Even though they’re from some provincial little tumbleweed town called Phoenix, NT brass still knew that firing Eddy was hornet’s nest and were careful to pick his replacement. Granted, the posse making decisions here might be a bunch of macho-man megalomaniacs (I mean, if I hear about one more meeting between a writer or editor and NT brass at the f'ing racetrack, swear to God, I'll fucking puke) who mostly treat employees like Chinete, but they aren’t dumb.

To me, the New Times organization's biggest problem is that they are belligerently unable to wake up to the fact that people consume media in a vastly different way than the ‘Nam protest days that birthed them (for exhibits A - Z look at the website template disaster). The people on this list and the list itself are perfect examples of that. It's the simple evolution of ideas -- Craigslist and blogs over pay ads and goateed critics -- that is rapidly killing the alternative weekly format and making old-world, high-dollar "serious" critics sadly absurd. Tangent, perhaps, but when the dust settles and we're all pitching Nick Sylvester’s blog maybe we can take Chuck Eddy, Rob Harvilla, and every asshole with a goatee out to the track to commiserate.

ps. By pressing send I'm likely killing my prospects of working with 98% of you. Love, Nate

The Shelter column going is a sad stupid change. Very "we're not from
NY and don't get it" of New Times.

However, the fact that Chuck is going is sad for him (I think he's a
single father of 2-3 kids). And no, it doesn't make the libertarian in
me feel all that great. He truly was an original -- in terms of the
style he encouraged and the range of coverage he allowed.

HOWEVER, the capitalist/market-satisfying individual in me says, it was
natural that he got axed. He edited the section for HIMSELF AND PEOPLE
LIKE HIM. Rock critics, geeks. Rock critic geeks that gave a shit that
he was contrarian, or even understood the dominant he was being
contrarian against. The idea of a paper like the Voice is that it gets,
well, *REGULAR PEOPLE READING IT*. That's how newspapers survive folks.

Here's an insight. A few years ago taught a NYU graduate j-school class
about youth culture. About 1/4 of the people were aspiring
music/culture writers. The other 3/4 could not have given a shit about
any musician less mainstream than John Meyer. I had them read some
Voice stuff and could tell from their reactions that the section was a
mess. The aspiring music/culture writers hated the Voice because it was
covering Toby Keith and random prog-rock shit, and ignoring lots of
cultural/cult/music lover faves. (Personal hateraide: I remember when I
tried to get a Shuggie Otis in the Voice a few years ago, Chuck's
argument was that "only music writers cared about it") Anyway, the
other 3/4 of the class who were in the mainstream, non-music people,
and would normally be interested in a story on John Meyer (or a big
selling prog-rock band, or a country artist, or mainstream
rap)....well, they couldn't penetrate the dense thickets of
self-referential prose that the Voice encouraged.

The V. Voice's music section, in the end, was making no one happy. And
that, in my estimation, is why Chuck is out a job.

-Alec

here is the writer's email address: alec@brassland.org
and his website: (http://www.brassland.org/ahb)

you know, I hate to tell you, but . . .

The opposite of this is, I believe, known as "pandering."

cary grant is actually the article itself, DO YOU SEE?

Yes, but there's no other way to read this guy's take other than as an argument that a music section of a paper can not be determined by an expert critic's vision of what relevant modern criticism is.

Of Flaming Lips bootlegs, natch.

I still don't understand the need to set up such a simple dichotomy. Let's look at Hoberman, a Voice critic I adore. Do his regular readers know he's partial to Brakhage and Central Asian cinema? Yes. Do the rest feel like he's cramming Brakhage and Central Asian cinema down their throats? No. Why do some of us act as if the only choice (continuing the film-crit analogy) is between Armand White and Gene Shalit?

How do we know what "the rest" feel about the music section? Because Bemis handed a few pieces to his j-school class? Because some freelancers have some resentments and hateraide?

Look at what's happened with the club ads. Seven years ago, you needed to pick up the Press and the Voice for the full picture. Now, it's one stop shopping at the Voice. There's a demonstrable measure of increased revenue for the paper that's directly attributable (I think) to the strength and breadth of the music section.

I sure hope you don't mean me; I never pitched anything to Chuck, and I'm certainly not airing a petty grievance here.

HOWEVER, the capitalist/market-satisfying individual in me says, it was natural that he got axed. He edited the section for HIMSELF AND PEOPLE LIKE HIM. Rock critics, geeks. Rock critic geeks that gave a shit that he was contrarian, or even understood the dominant he was being contrarian against. The idea of a paper like the Voice is that it gets, well, *REGULAR PEOPLE READING IT*. AB, 2006

Everyone wants them donuts hot, fresh, sugary, and NOW!

The idea of the Voice WAS to give EXTREMELY left-wing(and beyond) culturally progressive activist folx something to read on the subway. and we all know that there is nothing "regular" about commie bastards like that. even now, outside of new york, who does this dude think is the Voice's audience? i know some people who read it. they are "regular" lefties who like to read about ALL KINDS of art, music, and movies. even the stuff touted by a midwestern, ex-military, divorced father of three.

How do you figure? It's as easy to navigate to as any other website.

man i finally read those pazz and jopp ballots from harvilla.. i think a lot of what's been written here about him is unseemly. i have heard nothing but big ups from people who know the guy and have worked with him. and i am a huge muse apologist. but man - those lists are bone-crunchingly 'cif'!!!!!!

In that spirit, I shall now share my Chuck Eddy story.

My first experience with him was after I bought "Stairway To Hell." As a metal writer who didn't just like metal (and had aspirations to write about non-metal stuff - or anything at all, really) it was an amazing book, one I never thought possible. I tried to get as much of it as I could and still go through the pages even today to see if I can track something down on eBay or in my store.

Being the impulsive type, I found out he lived in Philly and called 411. He was listed. I called, he answered. He not only didn't seem to mind the intrusion, he welcomed some chatter. We volleyed a bit - I don't even know what about anymore - but it was healthy. He treated me, barely off of doing a metal fanzine on my parents old IBM-compatible PS/2 with an ancient version of Word Perfect (I once lost the template that went around the F-keys and publication ground to a halt), like an equal.

I sent him a long letter afterwards. I'm sure it was pathetic.

Flash forward many years later. I am doing an Ozzfest preview in the weekly newspaper I write for and instead of just getting on the phone with the biggest band that was actually doing press, I got inspired and decided to reinvent the long-lost Creem "Triumvirate of Heavy Metal Knowledge" by having a conference call.

I gathered three authors whose books lined my shelf and somehow was able to get all of them on a conference call simultaneously: Martin Popoff, Deena Weinstein and Chuck. It was a blast.

(Later on the fine folks at rockcritics.com - Hi Scott! - were kind enough to publish the entire interview verbatim, all eleventy billion cantankerous and argumentative words of it. Here it is.)

A little later on, I finally got up the gumption to send Chuck some pitches. He hated most of what I asked about. Sometimes quite vehemently. Unlike most editors, he was honest about everything, good and bad. No bullshit like what I got when I feebly attempted to pitch folks at other big outlets. When they said no, it was like a door slamming. When Chuck said no, it was like an invitation to try again later. And unlike them, he returned emails and would talk on the phone. Again, like I was an equal.

I finally did get something in the Voice. I always had the feeling that had I been less preoccupied with things like day jobs and other outlets that gave me steady work and been smart enough to send him spec pieces that I could have got in there some more, but that's okay.

Before I thought about myself as a music critic, Chuck did. And that was really cool.

I don't feel that badly about Chuck losing his job because I think he's far too talented to be out of work for long and maybe we'll be blessed with a bunch more books that captivate and infuriate. The only bad thing about it is he's not posting here right now.

I hope one day I can share a beer with him.

i just meant that you have to seek it out. it isn't sitting in a box outside your front door. er, it isn't ubiquitous.

The SF Weekly, the Guardian, and the Express are in racks outside my office but I am far more likely to read any of them (or the VV) online as I have eight hours in front of a computer to kill every day. :)

Even though they’re from some provincial little tumbleweed town called Phoenix, NT brass still knew that firing Eddy was hornet’s nest and were careful to pick his replacement.

Under the circumstances, I do believe NT made a very nice choice in Rob Harvilla. I've tried to be careful here (yes, really!) to voice anger over Chuck's firing -- and how the lack of value toward talent is par for their corporate course -- while also acknowledging how well the company does things like emphasize reporting and the process of putting together compelling narratives. With three days passed, the visceral reactions seem to have passed and a very good discussion of Chuck's legacy and the impending change has ensued. On the matter at hand -- the obnoxious dismissal of a good pro -- I cannot defend NT (Granted, this also has made me re-live my own personal breakdown in the face of similar perniciousness/punkness. Though notice how I've left most of the actual 411 out of this discussion. I ain't *that* stupid). But otherwise, there are elements of my time in Phoenix I'm proud to have been associated with ... again, yes really!

Summary: I hate the NT attitude but am generally okay with the product (save for the music section restrictions). And I'm now done dipping in my head back in March '04. I promise.

Thank you everyone for reading ... and apparently everyone is! :-)

Solid as granite.

What you (and a few others) say is exactly right. New Times' editorial ethos is the product of a bunch of insecure and none-too-smart middle-aged men who are deluded enough to believe that they actually know what youth culture is -- judging from their evolving product, it means slavishly aping the lad-mag model. I was music editor at a NT-owned paper for a little more than 2 years, before I resigned in disgust. After seeing them fire several smart, qualified, knowledgeable staff writers and replace them with smirking, misogynist fratboy suck-ups, I just couldn't take it anymore. It seemed to be blatant age discrimination in almost all of the cases. They always seemed to like my work, but I couldn't take any solace in that fact, considering how uniformly horrible their tastes seemed to be. Besides, I was reasonably sure that they'd fire me in a few years anyway for being "too old." I would have told them all this to their faces if they'd bothered to do an exit interview, which they didn't. It wouldn't have mattered anyway: Like Donald Rumsfeld, they believe what they want to believe, reality be damned.

I don't hate Rob Harvilla, and I try to remember that not everyone has the luxury of refusing to work for a cabal of contemptible morons, but personally, I would rather be a janitor than write for those brain-dead shitbags ever again. I've long admired Chuck Eddy, and I'm sure that he's much better off not whoring himself to those tools. Believe me, after getting a few idiotic suggestions from upstairs about ways to improve the music section, he would have quit before long anyway.

Rene Spencer Saller

Did Friskics-Warren quit? I like some of the freelance stuff he's done for the Washington Post. What's he gonna do now?

interestingly enough, saltz gets props on the VVM corp homepage this week for his runner-up finish in the pulitzers. chuck eddy needed a pulitzer or some other award, i guess ...

Ken Kurson to thread (or to board)

Still epoxied by the lips to his Sith lord Rudy Ghouliani's buttcheeks, most likely.

LOCK

Because that's how I found out about you and your music, from other bloggers. Many of them spoke highly about your shows, so it made me curious. How do you feel about blogs compared with the mainstream music media?

Oh man. This is my experience. On Pixel Revolt, I got a review in Spin. It was the first time I'd ever gotten a review in Spin, and we got a letter grade of "C." And I also got shit-tons of reviews on internet only sites, from Pitchfork on down. We got a really good review on Pitchfork. And usually when you get a really bad review, your hardcore fans write you and say, "Man, fuck this guy," and when you get a really good review, your hardcore fans write you and say "Oh wow, this was insightful or interesting, this is great, you should be excited."

When I got the "C" letter grade review in Spin, I heard nothing. Not from anybody. No one ever said anything to me. But whenever I got a good review from somewhere like Tiny Mix Tapes I would get emails about it. It was very clear to me then that all that print media shit doesn't matter anymore. It totally does not matter. I mean, no offense to Spin or anyone like that, but people right now, hard core music people that pay attention, they're online. The big national glossies just don't have that kind of impact anymore. I guess. I mean this is all anecdotal, I can't back any of it up, but the way people find out about us and find out things about us, it's all bloggers. It's all online 'zines. Whether it's Drowned in Sound or Tiny Mix Tapes or Largehearted Boy, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, the list goes on and on.

You know, it's weird, if someone posts something on Metafilter, I look on my website and all of a sudden, we're getting like 25,000 unique visitors in one day, you know. And we got a review on Pixel Revolt in Rolling Stone. And the day that that review came out, there was no bump whatsoever. And that was a good review. And we got no bump in traffic on the website. That's insane. I can look at where people are coming from and who's searching what, and what method they are using to get to my site. After that I was like, "Fuck paying a publicist to work your record, lets just email all the bloggers and send them a record or some MP3's."

A band will come up to me and tell me "Oh my god, we're getting a record review in Rolling Stone and what I want to tell them is, 'Listen, who cares, it doesn't mean anything.'" What means something is that a blogger with credibility has his or her own fan base, you know what I mean? People follow bloggers because they understand their aesthetic framework and what they like and their sensibilities.

June 1, 2006
Washington Journalist to Edit The Village Voice
By MOTOKO RICH
"The Village Voice, the legendary half-century-old alternative New York weekly known for its muckraking spirit and vibrant arts commentary, has a new editor in chief, Erik Wemple, editor of Washington City Paper.

Village Voice Media announced the appointment yesterday, capping a turbulent period since The Voice's merger with New Times Media, the Phoenix-based owner of a string of free weeklies around the country, was announced in October. When New Times merged with Voice Media, which owned six weeklies, it took on the Voice name; at the time the combined companies had a reported value of $400 million. The flagship Voice has been available free since 1996 and has a distribution of 250,000. Mr. Wemple, 41, will be the paper's fourth editor in seven months. . . ."

He said he wanted to expand the paper's theater section, adding reviewers and listings, and planned to add staff writers around the paper, which now employs 123 people. He said there were no plans, as some staff members fear, to use a centralized staff of arts reviewers who would work for the various Voice Media papers."

"Mr. Wemple said that while he appreciated some of The Voice's longstanding traditions, like its reporting on New York City politics, "it just doesn't seem like the staff has enough fun producing a newspaper."

"There's not enough evidence that people are thinking about innovative and fun ways to craft and present journalism," he said.

In his new role Mr. Wemple, who with a fellow City Paper reporter, Josh Levin, covered the Jayson Blair scandal at The New York Times, said he planned to hire a media writer and an arts business reporter.

Mr. Wemple will probably represent a break from The Voice's generally left-wing coverage. "My ideology and the whole New Times ideology preaches loyalty to the great story," he said. "I really don't care if a story begins with leftist sympathies, and I really don't care if a story begins from a more conservative set of sympathies. If it's a great story, we're going to report it out."

They really don't get just how much that stuff like that undermines their good deeds, do they?

Lacey is simply incapable of making a statement that's not in some way a potshot.

I'm also intrigued that the top headline in this week's Voice newsletter is a piece syndicated from New Times Broward-Palm Beach. A marvelously written piece, I hasten to add, but still a curious decision.

Instances all over the place of bold taking on the powers that be reporting.

A lot of good comes out of the place ... the bullshit just disappoints me, really.

Mourning the collapse of another Lakers playoff run.

Voice may not be nearly as profound on the intellectual tip as it has been, but it's bound to get a lot funnier.

melody, not metal-punk funkifizing, makes hits happen.

"Starting next week, issue 24, Choices will mostly be straight 'listings,' there will still be some briefs/blurbs/previews but far far less ..."

There goes a not-insubstantial source of income.

Fuck.