Coming off like a schmuck.

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So I picked up the newest Wire this weekend and was mildly shocked/horrified to see a forgotten e-missive I had fired off was their lead letter. (I think I was drunk, and while that's a cod defense of bad writing, it also happens to be true, which gives it a little extra oomph.) The fact that a letter is the first piece I've had in print forever is bad enough, but I come off like a total anti-pop snob, sadly (not my intention, although I guess amdist the Japanoise fans, improv snobs, and ecstatic jazzers I must seem hoplessly Billboard bound.) So to the writers who post here or just others who've found their crayon scrawled manifestos printed in the pages of a music rag, what's your most embarassing published moment?

― Jess, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Answer: hundreds upon hundreds of AMG reviews. I spent a summer cranking out a few dozen a day, and while I'd stand behind most of them in theory, quite a few still cause me to cringe.

― Nitsuh, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I wondered if that was you!

― Tom, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Wait...you wondered if who was who? (I think I need a nap...where's me blankee?)

― Jess, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh, crap. I can only hope you stumbled across a halfway decent one, Tom, and not an "it's 3 a.m. and I have to write 231 more reviews by morning if I want to pay rent on time."

― Nitsuh, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No no Jess' letter. I read the AMG v.little!

― Tom, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ack. I thought as much. Since Tom didn't say otherwise, we'll assume he agrees with my little self-assessment above. ;]

(My mother wanted a photocopy of it for her "Jess In Print" file; quote: "at least it's *something.*" Mothers are good like that. Now excuse me while I go drown myself in the toilet.)

― Jess, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Can't remember what it said actually, just saw the name and wondered if there was more IL* colonisation of that issue than previously suspected.

― Tom, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tis true. Yeah, I noticed Robin's Delia Derbyshire piece as well.

And in any event, it's not quite so bad now that I reread it in the light of day. I think Nitsuh and I are the only ones who are gonna admit to anything in this thread. (And even I'm cheating...that letter was hardly the *most* embarassing...)

― Jess, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Plus I got to live up to the thread's name by being self-absorbed enough to assume Tom meant me.

― Nitsuh, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I've posted things on my various sites which I cringe at now but less than I'd have thought when I started writing. It's mostly stray purple paragraphs here and there or stretches of just boring and pedantic writing. And every now and then I've got a record utterly wrong, too.

― Tom, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I would admit to something, but I'd have to dig up the choice I like best. As it is, now that I see Nitsuh says that about his AMG work, I'm *really* going to go to town! ;-)

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

And doesn't that completely suck, Tom? It's only embarrassing when you call something brilliant but it turns out to be terrible; the other way around is a nightmare of guilt and self-doubt. I can think of at least a dozen records that I completely dismissed and now realize are fantastic, and go knows how many others I've never even gotten around to re-evaluating. Much as I realize my opinion will have pretty much no impact on a record's acceptance, I still feel a nagging need to apologize to each of those artists in person: "Forgive me. I was young and rash and did not understand you."

― Nitsuh, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What a cruel question; I'd be shooting fish in a barrel.

No need to worry at all, Nitsuh -- I'm sure you were never able to achieve the following depths. Please excuse me as I'm paraphrasing here:

"The band's B-side, 'Baba O'Reilly,' shows the audacity of the band by stealing the bass line from the Who's 'Teenage Wasteland.'"

This was actually part of a review submitted by a freelancer. He no longer contributes.

― Andy, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I wrote a piece on the San Francisco turntabalist scene for the Japanese mag Tokion that I didn't dare read for more than a year after publication, such was my embarassment. I finally pulled out the issue and it wasn't *quite* as bad as I'd suspected. Still, being embarassed about old stuff is part of the process of putting things out into the world. Many, many old Pitchfork reviews make me cringe, except that it's more of a laugh, really. Everyone looks like a dork in old school photographs.

― Mark, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I published a chapbook about sex and love when i was 17. it sold 18 copies.

― anthony, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Nitsuh - no actually it's not that bad. I don't want people to buy records on my recommendation anyway, unless I know them, in which case a quick 'would I like this?' IM should sort them out. I change my mind on things a lot - praising a record and it then being rubbish is worse for me but it's an occupational hazard.

― Tom, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Back in the acid house days I sent a jokey poem called 'E is for Ecstasy' to the NME letters page. It was printed followed by a long rant about how mindlessly hedonistic attitudes such as mine were responsible for keeping the Tories in power!

― scott, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i don't think i have ever been in print. so i suppose my embarrassment is limited to my posts here, and to my website (i don't like to read the nathan barley piece too much thats for sure! and i' embarrassed about my Luomo thing, and i only wrote that yesterday)

what era were robins melody maker letters anyway?

― gareth, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The lowest point was an email I fired off to a newsgroup about campus/community radio when someone asked 'why bother?' and it ended up in a newsletter that was circulated to ncra member stations. It was one of those 22k posts that you just fire off into the void without thinking/reading twice, spellchecking or using proper English.

I hit myself upside the head when I got the email back from the listserv for sounding like such an indiediehardfanatic. I was thankful that the newsletter at least decided to make it look like I was using English words.

Otherwise I cant read 90% of what I wrote for my college paper, but my excuse for that is its almost all filler for the stoners who told me 6 hours after deadline they had forgotten to write their piece.

― zacko, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Mark -- I remember that Tokion article ... I didn't notice anything sub-par about it, but then I'm not particularly clued in to the San Francisco turntablist scene.

Besides, if a Tokion article reads badly, people just assume the English is a translation. :)

― Nitsuh, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tokion: good magazine, shame they can't afford a sub-editor.

― Momus, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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