HELLO THERE, for a while now I've been meaning to follow up on a bit of the feedback I received about my last post "LOCAL MUSIC CRITICISM 101." Despite a fair amount of long-winded (and potentially unnecessary) lecturing on what a good writer should or shouldn't do; the point I wanted to get across was that good album reviews are grounded in things like credibility, context, consistency, and an honest stab at "objectivity". In other words: do your homework and go get the story, and consider the views of your audience while you artfully communicate your unique opinion.
I probably clouded that point a bit by trying to professorially address both local and major-label album reviews. It was indeed, as I described in the piece, a "sustained lack of consistency and objective approach" in the Second Supper's local record reviews that compelled me to write the piece. Although what I really meant by "objective approach" (do your homework on the local scene) wasn't objectively obvious in the following paragraph:
"In short, a good music review is written in an objective style. Generally speaking, it is focused purely on the music or artist itself and is written for a defined audience. In other words, there is usually no reason for the writer to explicitly state his / her own personal tastes, expectations, or projections. It is of course possible for one to make a valid point using such statements, but in most cases doing so is unnecessary and simply lazy or sloppy writing. In fact, the writer should never have to use the first person and rarely the word "I"."
Geez, reading that again just now makes me feel like flag-sucking snob. Thankfully the editor of the Second Supper himself, the honorable Mr. Adam Bissen, politely pointed out the hoity-toity element of my reasoning in an portion of an e-mail exchange that I've pasted below--in good faith and without proper journalistic permission:
"In my opinion, you can't be objective about art, and it's foolish to even try. I respect those reviewers who focus exclusively on how an album sounds, but I prefer reviews when an author talks about how a record makes him feel. Lester Bangs was the king of this sort of record reviewing, and I don't think anyone else has ever done it better. I also find it interesting that you extol Pitchfork Media and Brooklyn Vegan as the high-water mark of "objective" CD reviews, because when I read those sites I was mostly struck by how personal their writing was....In my mind, as long as you state your biases, that's the only kind of fair music writing you can do."
Touche, good sir! So yes, what I failed to accurately articulate in my last blog post is the variable that makes a writer like Antiquiet's Johnny Firecloud more insightful than your average review on All Music Guide, despite his personalized subjective snark: doing your homework and getting the real story. (Johnny's scathing review of Limp Bizkit's new CD and the resulting polite rebuttal / conversation with Wes Borland could be considered "Exhibit A" here.)
Stating your biases while also expressing your personal opinions is entirely fair and indeed unavoidable. I gag at foolishly implying otherwise. However, it is also fair to do some research and provide proper context--whether your reviewing releases from experienced local acts like Porcupine, T.U.G.G., and Michelle Lynn, or up-and-comers like Elliot Arms.
As an interesting diversion, I'd also like to mention that getting the story, or--more accurately--getting the story first hand, may also prove to be the defining difference between the legendary Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and his apparent modern-day successor, Mr. Matt Taibbi. Despite his obvious writing talents (who can forget the "vampire squid" metaphor?), Taibbi is currently in a bit of hot water resulting from using a fair amount of un-sourced material in his profile piece on Michele Bachmann in the new Rolling Stone. Check out THIS LINK for the full story, but G.R. Anderson--the former City Pages reporter and current U of M journalism professor, whom Taibbi did not credit in his piece--told the following to City Pages about the two Rolling Stone writers:
"The differences between Taibbi and Dr. Thompson is that Thompson went to get a story--he went places--he didn't write it from fucking Jann Wenner's fucking couch. You couldn't find Thompson for months, because he was working on a story. Clearly, this Bachmann piece shows the difference quite clearly, between Taibbi and Hunter S. Thompson--which is vast. The longer Taibbi chases it with rhetoric and no reporting, he's going to lose."
So there it is. I believe this brief foray into being a media critic (or meta-critic, so to say) needs to end. Much thanks to Mr. Bissen for indulging me in this tangent and to Mr. Crider for being classy and not publicly rebutting my words. Both men are certainly assets to the local music community. Kudos as well to Second Supper, who continues to provide an outstanding community digest, despite the current state of print media in modern America--its writers get paid too little to take crap from a snooty blogger like me.
Furthermore, the fact that most of the other feedback I got on my music criticism piece was from people praising my "Greendale" review, tells me that I should take some of my own advice and devote more energy in general to writing and / or producing content about what's going on here right now....Or at least posting some content on here a little more regularly than I have been as of late. And big thanks as well to Kate in Michigan for the kick-in-the-butt email I received earlier today: "I did notice it's been a while since [your last] post was published. Will you still be updating in the future? I'm not in your area, but I always love learning about new, independent artists and I'm looking forward to reading more!"
Yes much is in the works! Stay tuned for more, fellow drifters!
3-Minute Egg is on deep freeze
11 years ago