1. First person usage in a review: Never, ever, ever, nope, nada, whoop, steer clear… don’t do it, kids. (But if you do, there’s hope: you’ll grow out of your narcissist phase.) Any review that comes in to me that starts with the work “I” automatically gets sent back to the writer. Exception to this rule: when an anecdotal passage suggests, illuminates or elaborates upon some key point in the review. (“While sitting in the third row I was suddenly assaulted from behind, and as I turned around I was suddenly face-to-balls with G.G. Allin’s shrunken, shit-smeared unit. Which is a pretty good description for his latest album….”)

2. “RIYL” or “For Fans Of [insert a bunch of goobers' names here]“: Do you really think that if I like, individually, Arcade Fire, Ennio Morricone, c60-era Bow Wow Wow, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion Jukebox Series and the Enoch Light Orchestra, that I would have even a passing interest in a band that unfocused in its style? Exception: I have to admit, when I’m plowing through a stack of new arrivals, those little RIYL stickers that the p.r. firms feel compelled to attach to the discs are a great screening device, because I can chuck whole bushels-worth of CDs without ever listening to them (whoa! Maxim alert!0 purely on the basis of such vapidity. Other red alerts include: “As featured on last year’s Warped Tour”; “Discovered his divorced dad’s Harry Nilsson, Gordon Lightfoot and Steely Dan records…”.

Um, I think I veered off topic. RIYL: tangents.

So where does New Journalism fit in then?

As for the “tired old” this and that’s of reviews…I just hate how we deliver the goods. 90% of the music public doesn’t think or listen like a critic, and few have a broad enough context to compare the music in…we tend to listen to relatively similar genres over and over etc…For example, I’m really excited about Mando Saenz and a good friend is still swallowing the Smashing Pumpkins release from forever ago and couldn’t really care less about Mando Saenz…So it goes.

I’m not sure where or how we deliver the goods in the same manner as the larger population listens and discovers music, but we need to find it because dropping obscure band references and ripping on bass lines etc…bores me silly.

Good writing is good writing. And I question your premises both of your implied premises (that good writing doesn’t require anything more than talent and that being paid means you’re a good music journalist.)

I’m really not wrong. At all.

Writing about your own unique, subjective experience with the music has two major, major flaws that make it terribly bad reading.

1) It’s a unique, subjective experience. That means it’s an experience that only the writer can ever have. The reader cannot share it. He/she may RELATE to it, but not within the context of the music–they’ll have their own unique, subjective experience, which makes the writer’s unique, subjective experience entirely irrelevant.

2) It assumes that the writer is more interesting than the music about which he/she is ostensibly writing. And the writer almost never is.

With respect, I think that you’re confusing good writing with good music journalism. They’re not interchangeable: music journalism is a craft unto itself, and it requires more than talent–it requires discipline, guidelines, dedication to the craft, and a good, experienced, professional editor. That’s why most of the music bloggers and overall new-media writers you speak of don’t get paid.

You’re funny. You’re also wrong (though I’m sure a fine talent and a really nice person.)

-B

“Everybody CAN now have their own experiences with the music you write about, so the only thing worth writing about is your own, unique experience with it.”

The problem is, your own, unique experience with the music is not worth READING about.

another is “wunderkind.” Or how about “pyrotechnics” (as in “guitar pyrotechnics.”

Or writers who call artists by nick-names, like they’re hanging out with them (the Boss, the Purple One or the worst…the ‘Mats).

And calling the Monkees “the Pre-fab Four” WAS funny the first time it was used CIRCA 1976 in Bomp Mag.