Bang Part Two

"this shit is immortal" they say

if we change the question to "do they have the goods to highlight nme's irrelevance?" then i'd have to say, unfortunately, no they don't. unfortunately they're trying to play nme at its own obnoxious game and losing. now that's a question i'm interested in, why does such a lot of british music criticism cultivate this played-out macho-posturing air of snindiness and brutality when it should be all about passionate reactions to music, not massaging aa writer's ego. i mean look at simon reynolds, dave tompkins (who there's another entire thread about right now) and phil sherburne, then put them up against steven wells et al... well, i know who i'd rather read and it aint the latter. 1) they have engaging reading styles that show their enthusiasm for the subject and 2) you actually learn something about the subject in question...

The NME shouldn't try to embargo artists when all this will do is sap them of the ability to get coverage in a time when the industry as a whole is pretty shakey. When the NME had competition - Select, not MM - it had to compete and was much better for it. Publicists would mollify each magazine by making exclusives - Title A would get the single first, Title B the LP, Title C the feature/cover. And next time, give each title a different kind of exclusive. If Bang were clever they'd get a better review section and make sure they got the reviews in first, then use the gap to get a better grasp on the artistes in features by more engaged or important writers.

Need I also add that such embargoes also impact on...freelance writers? It boils down to restraint of fucking trade, which is not RAWK unless you like dancing to Hip To Be Square in your Manhattan penthouse, dig? Say I wanted to write something about a band the NME were prepared to have a snit about and the publicist having to hook me up with the group was getting stick from them - if I lost a 3000 word feature on that basis I'd be out at least £500. Understand?

meant to post this in your last thread on the board about Bang! magazine. you said that the Gloom Brothers had a problem with me in particular, and i find that a little hard to believe, for a number of reasons, not least because i've never met them, or even dealt with them via e mail.

who else do you write for, just out of interest? and under which name? would find your comments a lot easier to believe if not veiled in some yellow 'net pseudonym.

Perhaps the most tellign phrase in the entire thread. e; outside of Das Capitol no one knows nor cares about Bang. I bought the first issue cos of the thread on here and cos it was only £1; it was rub; I barely read anything cos there was little about bands/music I wanna hear about and what I did read suXored. I picked up the new Bang the other day, took one list at the names on the cover and put it down again.

If NME want to threaten Bang and Bang want to be gobby upstarts and put NME's back up then fine, let them get on with it. I don't read either magazine and probably never will.

(I am too scared to try Wire! ehehehehehe; but now I have said that I will mowsy on over to the other uni library and take out loads of issues this afternoon! I have already stolen the free CDs from the last six months...)

is my new favourite

now this has been pointed out, i take it all back. this was not a typo, rather an inspired bit of subconscious neologism on my part - i thank you...

Thought this issue did look somewhat nicer than the first, but the brief flickthrough in Sainsbury's wasn't enough to tempt. It was disturbingly heavy on coverage for the kind of bands that get pushed hard to student media, which isn't a fantastic thing.

Dave: The specific malady you're searching for is Irredeemable-Cuntiness.

I cannot believe that they did that 'Dead Fashion' feature again, with some square-faced muppet dressed as Bolan perched on a Cooper. Can someone connected with Bang! please tell me exactly what was said in the editorial meetings which culminated in the decision to run with such a horrifically crapulent idea?

I am in awe!!

As for fake names, etc - I hope the email I sent will explain it. Maybe not. C'est la vie.

Rock'n'roll industries? I no longer take seriously. Being attacked after suffering a series of deaths on ILX. I do. Basically, that is why I go under a fake name.

Again, many apologies for my error.

Okay, sorry, I was comparing the _conditions_ of the two sorts of jobs and their pay.

I'm not saying they require the same sort of dedication or skill. I'm not very successfully trying to emphasise the fact that there is a huge difference between these occupations, that isn't evident if you look _just_ at the money.

oh well, now i know why i aint got that contributing editorship on vanity fair yet...

Strictly speaking, no, IPC Media don't earn the rights to my Nirvana material - but it's complicated. As Suzy rightly says, I was staff so all my writing is automatically owned by IPC, but I had a verbal agreement (witnessed by many in the office) with the then-editor of Melody Maker, Allan Jones that IPC could NOT sell on any of the interviews/articles I conducted with either Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love, post-"Nevermind"...

The reasons for this weren't because I thought I'd be able to make tons of money later from same, but because Kurt absolutely fucking detested the British press at the time and would NOT, in any way shape or form have spoken to me under any other conditions. (He did so, because I was considered a "friend!.) How rich the irony then, the "NME" Nirvana Special - put out by a paper that Kurt (rightly or wrongly) hated.

And I'm fine with that, because I don't think that what someone will pay for necessarily bears any relation to how valuable it is.

Also Suzy, I read both volumes of Julian Cope's autobio and enjoyed them very much. I think he only mentions 'farmpunk' once, somewhere in the first book, and he doen't properly explain what he means. Still, I think I may well be one.

i remember,before i quit NME, the latest contract IPC put through would've claimed ownership of all interview TAPES as well as material and feature. meaning any confidential, off the record conversations with trusted artists would now be in their possession and, hence, no longer 'Off the record'...

How much does he get paid for turning NME into teenagers rock weekly, and writing bollox about Coldplay, The Strokes, Oasis and The Vines?

I see Mark Sutherland is still being paid to churn out rubbish,these days at the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/music_news/editorial_20030604.shtml

way way way too much...

It's odd: I feel like a good university lecturer who is well-published, respected work-wise and can't get tenure despite everything.

i feel like one who can't get it in england...

what??!! I know I've been out of the loop for a while, but jeez...

It's odd: I feel like a good university lecturer who is well-published, respected work-wise and can't get tenure despite everything.

I hope that doesn't make you feel bad. I think even people who know it's not all about money/recognition sometimes subconciously forget that.

Better measures would be:

'How much do you enjoy it?',
'Do _you_ think it's worthwhile?'
'Is there something else you'd rather do?'

and, for the competitive:

'How many people wish they had my job?'

(I'm guessing for you the answers would be 'lots', 'yes', 'no' and 'lots').

not sure... i quit shortly after. i mean, it was unworkable, but yeah, i'm sure lotsa scared naive freelancers signed the contract...

-- DJ Martian (xxxxxxxxxxx@excite.com), June 9th, 2003.

Why do you think it's rubbish?

It's not _very_ good, I don't agree with him and I didn't enjoy reading it, but why is it rubbish.

I think Stereophonics fans, of which there are quite a few, would like it.

*EXPLODES*

But why? You wouldn't review an album or gig and say the band weren't very good because 'it's shit music'.

*EXPLODES*
I've just asked a friend who likes the Stereophonics to read that article, without telling him why.
He laughed several times, said afterwards that he enjoyed reading it and thought the writer had a valid point. My friend didn'y think it was shit writing.

It's not _very_ good, I don't agree with him and I didn't enjoy reading it, but why is it rubbish?

To put it another way, REM aren't _very_ good, their lyrics are annoying and the music is unexciting.

Because they're shit.

(in the mid-80s the nme and new scientist and one of the women's titles went on strike for SIX WEEKS!! a pyrrhic victory, esp. as the melody maker scabbed — except for the good writers, who all debunked over to nme!! — and ipc management then spent a decade looking for editors who would toe the company line absolutely...)

the main reason i lost interest in entryism has been the petrification of possible formal categories: yr allowed reviews/live reviews/lists/big interviews/brief news stories AND THAT'S IT!!

i ran out of ways to use these to my own satisfaction => went on to be editor of a smaller mag (= could write any kind of piece bcz the editor was happy to run it) => lost that job and was unemployable as a writer except for very occasional one-offs

(my approach to reviews is apparently out of bounds at wire these days, even tho i'm v.long-time buddies w.almost its entire staff -> no one ever explicitly told me this, it's just that good pieces got spiked or clumsily cut, and for the amount you earn, i stopped seeing the point)

hence: ilm/nyplm is better (for some reason i never yet got into using radio free narnia for music writing)

village voice primarily started using me as a result of stuff i did here, so you cd call it kind of loss leader/woodshedding/R&D if you like => basically i write better not for money, but i don't think i ever put anyone out of a job (haha who is the more expensive me? i pity the fool... )

And when I say anyone who writes for a living is doing it for the money, I mean in the sense that it is their living, not their vocation. The idea that music journalism is a vocation is the really iffy and undesirable one.

Bah at this stage in my relatively young career I am entirely sick of writing for free, the real world doesn't recognise kudos from anyone around here, they'd sooner recognise a nice new shirt or a name in print or even a few bloody interviews with minor celebs.

do you really think so? why?

Loving music may be a vocation. Writing about it isn't.

I'm not Scottish, that was a typo.

The reason the NUJ is irrelevant to anything IPC might do is not that hungry young hacks won't join a union. It's that IPC doesn't recognize the NUJ, which was the eventual result of that 80s strike detailed above. They just ignore it. You work for them on the understanding that you have no union rights whatsoever. Which doesn't get them out of trouble re. the NME "Originals" controv, of course.

I've been quietly fuming at this talk of writers and how their highly-skilled work shouldn't earn them any money. It's like if I went into a students' union forum and starting saying "well I'm not a student, I've never been a student, I'm a taxpayer funding students, so I think student loans are a great idea. Why should I pay for you bastards to lounge around while I work my arse off and get fuck all?" It sounds fairly reasonable, unless you have ANY IDEA AT ALL of what you're talking about, or its consequences, or of which people with which objectives you're effectively siding with.

100-word capsule reviews on Teletext, or in some freesheet handed out in record shops shouldn't earn anyone a living. Because anyone *can* do that, and would probably like to. But - and forgive the self-aggrandisement, but I'm out of work and bitter - read one of my articles, or an article by any 'good' music writer, and ask yourself "could anyone do this? Could *I* do this? Could my Auntie Susan do this?" Does it contain IDEAS? Then clearly, *no one* else could have written that *particular* article. Does it draw on reserves of knowledge which might be described as 'specialist'? Is it constructed properly and spelt correctly? Then it's skilled work. In general, people whose work involves exploiting skills which they have and other people don't - no matter how easy, or how much fun the work might be - get paid MORE than those who do something that any jerk could do, given a few months' training (for example, telesales. Or driving a bus. Or playing bass in a rock band). Footballers, popular songwriters, TV "personalities", actors, and then everyone from C++ programmers to CEOs. These people are valued (in some cases overvalued, clearly) because they have either a talent or a gift for applying themselves. So I want money. I don't even want *much* money.

You musn't lose sight of the fact that there's a battle on at the moment. The imperative of the last 100+ years has been for the elite to force the rest into a position where they're valueless and interchangeable. You know, like Iraqis will be under whatever government the US installs. You're flipping burgers, you're pressing buttons, you're doing what you're told. An efficient service economy. Globalization is speeding up and intensifying the process, and while it's long been a fact of life in the Third World, it's encroaching pretty quickly on the First World. Journalism - ok, we're discussing music journalists, but whatever - journalism is a profession already feeling the pinch because of the importance of media to corporate power. Fox News in the States, and the people working for it, and the conditions they work under, are a case in point. People working in journalism, or any media, who are happy to undercut are as bad as those who surrender the moral obligations of journalism (and even music journalism has some) in the hope of "getting on". They're like those who scabbed happily at Fortress Wapping, selling out people they'd worked with for years, having been assured their jobs were safe...then found themselves fucked by the same sword a year later.

The notion that music writers in particular are "parasitic" is ignorant rubbish. Well, not always. The indie fans on the NME swanning around town like heroes because they rearrange a sequence of cliches once a week, or men like S. Sutherland, for various reasons, can safely be described as parasites. Because they don't *give* anything. They add nothing to the imagination, they don't help anybody to get anything more out of music than they do already, and they simply ignore ideas: they don't pick up on ideas expressed in the music they write about (it interferes with the established template style), and they certainly don't generate ideas themselves. But the fact that some of us feel utterly divorced from those people isn't just hubris. If there was no such thing as music journalism, the NME types and the student-paper gigglers would find some other way to live vicariously, like moving to Beverly Hills and selling maps of movie stars' homes. But some of us would still be writers, writing about something else. Simone de Beauvoir, the sex parasite. Noam Chomsky, sucking the blood from world politics.

There are two reasons writers get so huffy about people in bands sneering at them.

ONE: it's another musicians' conceit, part of most bands' tendency to act like the frigging Stones before anyone gives a toss about them. "Oh, the press, man." It usually means either "The press, man, *they think we're shit*" (if that's your problem then say so), or "The press, man, what a drag, we take this weird smalltown approach of trying to lord it over anyone we can perceive as less cool than us, because we're AAAAARTISTS." Eh? Even if the sneerer is your all-time favourite pop star, it seems so petty and uncharitable that it simply lowers your opinion of them. What makes these people think they can act so royal? Anyone can sing a song, right?

TWO: Musician, heal thyself. Sure, printed media is hugely responsible for pumping crap into the world on a daily basis, and no one needs more of that. But we need more CDs in the world? More kind-of-OK bands? I don't think so (should point out here that I'm not sniping at any particular ILMers on this thread, as I have no idea who anyone is anyway). One of my main reasons for choosing criticism as a form of expression is my problem with the sheer volume of mediocrity in the world. What I *don't* want to do at any cost is become some schlub at Time Out, writing witty meaningless props for middlebrow trash, just ONE OF THOSE GUYS, y'knaaa. It doesn't interest me, I think it would be a waste of whatever talent I have, and most importantly, I don't want there to be any more of this crap de-oxygenating the world, and I certainly won't accept money to do the job myself. But musicians never for a moment consider that this might be what they're doing. When stung by a slating, they'll sneer at the journalist who wrote the review in precisely the same way every time - by assuming that (s)he has no life, doesn't "understand rock'n'roll", or is a "parasite". Stands to reason, doesn't it? I mean, anyone who doesn't like your band. There has to be something wrong there. I say: compare and contrast the relative worth of the specific contribution to humanity of a record without wit, brains or imagination, and a witty, intelligent, imaginative criticism of that record. Any world in which Paul Morley is a parasite, whereas The Strokes aren't, is fucked somewhere. Who creates? Who reacts?

bit of asslicking but i used to buy this edgy mag for nathan's stuff alone. what u up to now?

The parasites are the likes of Steve and Mark Sutherland, who want to uphold the status quo, are afraid of change, stick to their narrow confines, unwilling to explore, offer nothing new and are cultural philistines that abuse their position/ power.

I sort of agree with this, most people don't read an article about a band or a CD review because they're interested in the writer, but because they're into the band or want to know more about them.

Metallica should put an extra spoken word track on their next CD single encouraging all their fans to share printed music mags this way:

- Any magazine you buy, scan in all the articles
- Share them on P2P

Magazine circulations plummet, 100s of music journalists lose their jobs. Let's see them justify THAT.

being shit is generally a large part of why things can be deemed to be shit... however, i was being flippant and don't particyulartly want to have to deconstruct cobblers like that coz it really aint worth my time or effort.

my new word of the week

But by failing to explain why it's shit you're giving the impression that your view of it isn't worth the time to explain or justify.

Christ, even the ugliest man in the world looks beautiful to his mother.

You know all those successful people who just KNEW they were going to make it?

Well I've got news for them, there are lots of unsuccessful people who also KNEW they were going to make it. But didn't.

Then there are all those tortured artists who are never satisfied with what they do, always strive for better, for perfection.

They think they're mediocre when they're not.

The real point here is that knowing you're good or whatever is never a 100 percent 24/7 thing, nor should it be. Music journalism, like most other careers, like life itself really, is a matter of a few goals or dreams tied together by a few prejudices, a few principles, and generally described as a schtick.

Believing you're "going to make it" is the common way people refer to this, but the fact is any fool can believe they're going to make it.

Real and genuine self belief is directly linked to real and genuine self knowledge, knowledge of your own failings as well as your strengths, knowledge of areas where you are more bluster than logic, and areas where you know in your gut that you are right.

The tortured artist part comes in the times when our belief in our own schtick wavers a bit, for whatever reason. It's not a case of them thinking they are mediocre, it's a case of them losing motivation a bit. I don't think in their heart of hearts that many successes really ever fully believe they are mediocre. Some days it's difficult to continue plugging away because in artistic careers you always annoy someone and obviously the language of invective is more potent than a few kind words.

Some people say they believe in themselves because this is the attitude they have learned is necessary for success and because "self belief" is such a Disnified cliche and basically a massive life-ring to cling on to. This sort of self belief is blind and just lip service really, and sooner or later the person may realise this.

The point is the people who KNEW they were going to make and didn't were wrong weren't they?