"Hacks"

"Hacks is self deprecating, WE journalists don't use the term Ronan". My lecturer speaks.

Could have sworn this was a title of thread before now, sorry if that sounds Dastoory.

As much as I like music writing, I find myself passionately hating the majority of music journalists. There are so very few throughout the years that really got it right (whatever "it" is), and so very many of the rest are the kind of smug, vile, star-worshipping clowns that got rejection slips from the local tabloids.

Thanks for the warning on this book, Tom.

I think part of it is Gorman's fault - unlike Simon Garfield who also does this kind of oral history thing he doesn't know how to turn his interviews into a narrative. He's got to work through 40 years of history admittedly - but the storytelling doesn't come alive, maybe people who interview for a living are a bit wary themselves about giving interviews too.

I read the final chapter in the bath this morning and it is all doom and gloom. Very predictable.

Yes, I've read... most of it. i read the last quarter of it first, the 'Now the music press is a thing of the past' / 'Melody Maker closing' etc. A lot of it got on my nerves to tell the truth. Especially Q editor David Hepworth, who comes over as a rather prissy, pompous sort (especially on the David Sylvian review "to- do").
And was it me or did it seem that the varying opinions of when the Music Press 'ceased to matter' always happened to coincide with when whichever particular journo stopped writing for it (be it in the mid 70s, late 70s, 80s, early 90s etc). And that they were now much more fulfilled writing a weekly column in The Observer or whatever. And modern music now = rubbich, anyway. Oh dear.

I think Tom Zito (Washington Post rock journalist in the 1970s among other things) once said something like... I stopped writing about music when I realised I'd run out of adjectives.

Music like anything else in life starts off as a love affair. Once you are tarnished by free booze and CDs you can never really be a fan again.

Music burns brightly for those that want it. Hacks just go about trying to want it too often