RIP my "second career"

(sadly I don't actually wonder - I know how these polls work/are worked; if there's a sponsored tour/30-page cover feature at stake, then, to quote Stonebridge, put 'em high)

I'm glad of course that I held on to the day job, as it seems to be the only sphere of activity in which I'm actually doing some good.

I don't know yr relationship with whoever doles out the work at Uncut these days, but if you want to keep writing for them you maybe need to try and figure out what they're looking for for short reviews- breadth, quick turnaround, toeing the Uncut line 100% etc etc, then see how you can best fit into that AND write something that's satisfying to you. Then pitch some ideas in that are more in line with what you believe in.

marcello, you know where i am, on the other side of the phone/email or whatever.

As far as magazines go, I don't really fit in anywhere. The Wire has its own agenda to which I'm not privy, Uncut is going to continue going down its merry Bob Harris way...as far as Mojo is concerned there's no room at the inn for more reviewers, but for the life of me I cannot think of ideas for large features to pitch there or anywhere.

I should have just thrown in my lot with the rest of the Monitor crowd and gone to write for the MM in '86.

As for the freelancer thing, I'm just getting started out after six months at a local paper and it ain't easy. I'm lucky that in Scotland you've got maybe got a smaller pool of writers to compete with, but at the same time, you've got fewer publications with spaces already filled. Realised I can't make any kind of living from it, so it's a case of getting a boring day job and back to uni for that Mlit I think.
One tip I got as a freelancer was to cast my net widely and write for trade mags. You can become an expert on, I dunno, paper clips, and make a nice little earner from articles your music mag reading pals will never see.
The List recently published a best Scottish bands ever booklet - but pitching reviews of new Scottish bands to them is proving hard. In fact, that's the case with much of the Scottish media. The Daily Record went for it (as well as Damo Suzuki!) but the powers that be wanted to save money on freelancers, so their live reviews page has been ditched for the time being. Oy vey.

Dunno what's up with Verso but I have to put in my review copies order from them and will ask where the fuck this amazing book went. Did you get a signing and delivery advance? Publication could still be awhile off - I know one friend who delivered and then there was tumbleweeds for two years which annoyed her, but is by no means unusual.

Perhaps it all comes down to my not actually having any ambition in this field. I'm not one of life's natural "pushers" and I hate doing interviews (try to avoid doing them wherever possible, in fact). Actually, as far as large features are concerned, I do have ideas, but the way the music monthlies are at the moment they're not ideas which would sell lots more copies, and therefore not ideas in which their editors would be interested.

I like doing thinkpieces, not interview-based pieces, but the market for those at the moment is zero.

As far as the broadsheets go, well...heheh, Petridish would love to have me at the Grauniad, not.

Guess I'm just not cut out for this business.

1) i can now download stuff and hear it for myself, rather than having to read about it to try and decide (functional use: gone)

2) there are hundreds of fairly well-written blogs that i can freely access that provide someone's opinion/criticism/analysis without the constraint of fitting into an x-page article, which beats having to go out to buy something full of ads and things i'm paying for and don't necessarily want

3) there are hundreds of failry specialized messageboards and lists that allow me to interact freely with other fans and discuss music/artists/trends/ideas/theories/etc at length, thus providing an immediate feedback and participation experience that a written piece in a mag or paper could never provide

i'm not saying that's true for everyone, and clearly there is still worth in music criticism from an intellectual standpoint - but the practicality of it has certainly been lessened by the interweb

the only reason i offer this suggestion is that perhaps it's less to do with you and your writing than it is to do with the market/demand for writers in general these days, thus pushing the price down and (as mentioned above) trying to keep things simple and pandering, rather than investigative and probing

keep at it with the blog, though. my guess is that they'll (over time) replace paper nearly altogether

Yes, well Martin Davidson (Emanem), Evan Parker (psi), Eddie Prevost (Matchless), Karen Brookman (Incus) and Hazel Miller (Ogun/Cadillac) are all friends and/or colleagues of mine so I know full well how difficult it is selling improv CDs for a living - and also how difficult it is to pitch them to mainstream music mags. When it does work, it can have a significant effect; the Lunge, Limescale and People Band CDs in particular have been relatively high sellers and that can at least in part be traced to my championing of them in the pages of Uncut. But it gets harder to do this month by month as the constraints become tighter.

The one magazine I'm completely happy with at the moment is Time Out, but their freelance budgets, as fellow ILxor Mr Miller will confirm, are getting increasingly rare and sporadic. I was told that almost half of the full house for the AMM/MEV Freedom of the City gig was down to outsiders intrigued by my Time Out piece - so that's very satisfying. Wish it could happen all the time.

To dither not to review an album [e.g Pluramon] for X months - seems ridiculous.

I have already called Allan Jones a publishing dunce [on my blog] for featuring the best 2004 albums in this month's Uncut !

Damn straight! As a relative newbie to ILM, I am always blown away by Marcello's think-tank pieces and prose. In this age though, is the printed form the be-all, end-all? I have known freelancers who have had there veritable snouts in other troughs when the going gets tough.

Not content with doing 'occasional' reviews, they sometimes even do shadow stuff under aliases for competitiors. It can be a tough call though, you either compromise your principles to appease those above and keep the dream alive doing so, or take that chance and go it alone?

Whatever options, just keep it in mind that there's always gonna be someone out there (one day) wanting your scribblings depsite your animosity towards this profession.

Mate! I totally miffed my chance years ago when I was in my late-20s and building up a sizable profile covering many artist interviews/reviews for a mag here. I hashed it by paraphrasing one time and got told my services weren't wanted after establishing myself in a near semi-professional scribbler.

Since then, I haven't regained the confidence to get back into it and feel I've missed the boat now. I look back on the days whereby I could have foreseen myself even writing for Rolling Stone, for example. (A big call, I know, but something was guiding me somewhere back then!)

You've still got your integrity intact and opinons further to be espoused, so, as Curtis once said, "keep on pushing..".

I think there's a lot of truth there -- keep in mind that my own sphere has turned out to be a corporate database that gives me free rein if a low rate of recompense, which is why it's handy for me as a side pursuit than a full time thing. But it's online, it's readily accessible and it ties in with so many other things that my opinions somehow seep out there in all sorts of ways that still surprise (and please) me, based on the random feedback I keep getting.

Increasingly I'm of the opinion as well that length of analysis is not necessarily the Holy Grail -- by which I mean you *can* be extremely eloquent and informative in a small space as much in a large one. (J. D. Considine is a classic example of this to the extreme.) That said, unless these 100 word efforts talked about here, I regularly go for 300 words in my album reviews, which gives me more flexibility overall, admittedly.

Not that any of this solves your situation, Marcello. Some perspective, though: I don't think I rate in any 'best of rock crit' sense, I suppose. I avoid a centerpiece blog (FT is another matter, but I've been distracted over the last couple of weeks and need to fire up again), my pitches and appearances are low-key enough, I am distinctly not a conscious theorist and neither am I a conscious stylist. In comparison you do have a strong and obvious cachet, sir, and it's noticed. It seems to me it would be wrong not to continue trying.

U&K. it is easy to get demoralised in this business... don't forget the positive effects your writing can have. it can sustain you during partiduclarly frustrating periods.

all of this is a bit moot, of course, with you having to decided to leave the game, but something to consider. as for myself, now serving as a managing editor at a good-sized publication in nyc, i've definitely grown to appreciate those idea people -- those who come to me with pitches and not the other way around. should you decide to return to this world, just try not to think of it as kissing arse, think of it as simply selling yourself.

Summary

Mick Mercer, ex Melody Maker writer
http://www.livejournal.com/users/mickmercer/289307.html

Momus
http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/56044.html

Woebot
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=69&page=1&pp=10

this erosion of the "middleground" must be partly down to:

a) the collapse of jockey slut (if a bit flabby/cheesy theoretically, they often had good taste)

b) the situation at "fortress" wire (where for reasons best known to themselves we'll never see a junior boys article)

Marcello:

As far as magazines go, I don't really fit in anywhere. The Wire has its own agenda to which I'm not privy, Uncut is going to continue going down its merry Bob Harris way...as far as Mojo is concerned there's no room at the inn for more reviewers, but for the life of me I cannot think of ideas for large features to pitch there or anywhere

Sometimes I am convinced that the "industry" acts and behaves exactly like a dinosaur - lumbering, outsized, slow-moving and slow-witted.

In all of the writers for OMM, I can see no tangible evidence of an actual love of music in any of them.

[xpost]

I'm not bothered about the book.

What, even Morley and Mulholland?

Marcello, Time Out is a great outlet, probably better than Ucunt. More readers in a position to be nice to you about your career. And please try to care about the book.

Peter Robinson.