Monday, February 24, 2014

More music writing


If you have been keeping track, you may have expected some music writing anecdotes last week, and that didn't end up happening. What I was trying to get at turned out to be more complex than I thought, or at least my path to it was more complex, and so, I am once again off schedule. This is so normal.

Anyway, I do have some things I can say. It will probably still be pretty disorganized.

I am almost done with this phase of daily songs. That was just going to be a run of Halloween videos, but I was realizing how many great songs there were, and so I started going through the Guitar Sampler play list and the Best Bridges one. While that was going on, Farewell My Love was promoting their music video, and a few bands I had reviewed were coming out with new stuff, and I thought that I should promote them.

I went through my reviewed bands spreadsheet and made a list of bands to use. Not everyone made it, but a lot did. There were some where maybe they are not my favorite, but still, they are doing a good job at what they do, or I have personal affection for them, and so I couldn't leave them out.

That's the amazing thing. I have reviewed 117 bands. There have been two where I felt like they were bad people and it was affecting the music, a few where I felt they had insufficient depth for making their music good, and a few where what they are doing is not really bad but just not my thing. Otherwise, there have been a lot I love or like or can at least appreciate. That's been pretty cool.

Right now, I have two from the reviewed list that have not been done yet, so Torche and Closer to Closure get songs Tuesday and Wednesday. Wednesday night I will see Northcote and Dave Hause, and they will get the Thursday and Friday songs, which wraps up rather neatly. After that, I feel like I want to get in some of the songs from the Greatest Guitar Songs list and comments that did not make it into the sampler. Specifically, I will probably focus on the things that came out in the Women Rock and You Get A Gold Star posts, but I'll look over all my notes. It was a good project, and I learned a lot, so it bears going back. 

I will be reviewing new bands the whole time, and I hope to have similar luck, and I suspect when the Emo listening is done, there will be a few songs out of that. Also, right as we hit Valentine's Day I started regretting not compiling any love songs, because there were some contenders, and the last time I did that was so fruitful. However, a friend informs me that in Brazil they celebrate it in summertime. Lots of stores do Christmas in July; I can do Valentine's in June. We'll see. There's a lot of music out there.

Something happened last week with my band reviews that relates to my previous points about criticism and future points about honesty. I had one hip hop artist and one hardcore band. I do not love either of these genres.

I have questioned whether it is fair to even review them, because I am not as familiar, and I hate giving negative reviews. Still, only reviewing bands I like seems wrong, and I learn from trying the stuff that I don't expect to like. I find things that work about hardcore, even though I never pull it up for pleasure listening. I have found rap that I like, though it tends to be pretty old school.

So, it feels like for me to be a better writer, and for my writing to have any relevance, I need that stretching. It also means sometimes there are negative reviews, and the rapper got one that was pretty harsh. I debated just not sending it to him, or only doing it via DM, but apparently you can sent links via DM, so I did.

The first response was " well everyone has a right to there opinion, thanks for the review I guess. I'll try to take what constructive and use it". Later he re-tweeted my blog with " WTF moment of the year. Thx for your time tho", following that quickly with " thought I would retweet since you took the time to write about me, even if it is random as all hell and super negative, lol."

Actually, I think that is pretty gracious, and it brings up something that maybe you don't like the negative review, but still having someone write something about you matters. Having someone pay attention to you resonates.

There are basically two kinds of compliments that I get on my music reviews. One is when they compliment my accuracy ("spot on", "nailed it"), which I love. The other is that I will get feedback like "fair" and "honest", and I wasn't sure what to make of the honest at first. Having read some bad music writing, it makes more sense.

There was a bunch of noise recently about snark versus smarm. There is one summary with some links at http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/12/snark-vs-smarm-goes-mainstream-179666.html.

In the referenced Tom Scocca article, he quotes Dave Eggers saying " I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy."

Scocca's criticism of smarm is valid, and his criticism of Eggers. And Eggers has a point as well, because I do not doubt that there was something smelly inside of him that came out in fetid criticisms. I just feel like they are all missing the point.

There is an element of snark that is gleeful about finding fault. It is not hard to slip from that into losing perspective, and valuing the nastiness over the accuracy. Too much emphasis on niceness can end up missing the point too. Maybe instead of an emphasis on whether the review is mean or nice there should be some focus on whether the review is accurate. Is it helpful?

Of course I come back to honesty, because that is my thing and I will write about that more tomorrow. Part of that honestly is knowing that with taste there is more than one truth. Tool fills me with rage but they have fans.

When I review a band, I try and make it helpful. I try and make it helpful to the reader to know whether they are likely to enjoy the band, and how to find the music, and I try and make it helpful to the band if I see areas for improvement. Okay, the one band did seem to do a snarky indirect, but I have also had bands engage with me, and defend things, and I respect that. They should believe in their band and their music. I respect that, but also my attempt to be fair is about respect. There are real people here, who are doing something creative, and I am going to give them a fair shake.

And, given the long lead time in reviews, I am usually kind of fond of them by the time we get to the review. Sometimes it's different. Right now there is one guy - his review is probably about four months out, and everything about him screams "Tool!" When I get there and start listening, it may all seem different, and he could win me over. Or, my instincts may be verified, and it will be a relief to get the review done and never have to listen to him again. But writing a scathing review will not be a relief, because I will feel badly about that, so probably there will be nothing delightfully poisonous, but I hope just an accurate assessment what the music is like, and maybe what could be different.

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