“Still, I continued to try to fool myself that this wasn’t really me. I was a novelist who happened to be writing about music, strictly as an avocation. When I finished my first book, Feel Like Going Home, I announced to the world, in an afterword to the book, that that was it, that I wasn’t going to write about music anymore. And I didn’t … Continue reading Couldn’t Help Himself
“I haven’t written a god damn record review in well over a year. The last several reviews I managed to crank out before I quit should never have been written. There just came a point for me where the whole thing began to seem entirely useless. The record Biz, the groovy people that run it, the groups, the rock press, one album after another of … Continue reading A Generation in Rapid Retreat
Sorta-topical-relevance Friday morning listening. Continue reading My Life in Rock Criticism
“I’ve never for a second regretted pulling away from being a Professional Music Critic almost immediately after feeling burned/burned out. There were folks willing to support my writing –and they were and are still probably great, it’s not you it’s me etc. — but I can just so clearly see where that path could have gone, and it scares me. A few folks in the … Continue reading Down and Out
“And so I took a break. I put ‘music writing’ in a little box and stuffed it up in a cabinet in the back store-room of my brain and I left it there. It’s still there, and that feels right. To be clear: I am not stopping writing. I’m not sure that would be possible, or even advisable, for me to do. And I’m not … Continue reading Stuffing it in a Box
“When it comes to Pitchfork and scoring, I would say that you would be shocked by just how democratic the rating process is. Without giving much away (because I don’t think that’s fair to Pitchfork), it goes something like this: In general, a record is discussed by the writers and generally, through that, the site arrives at a score consensus. Then reviews are assigned or … Continue reading Finding the Perfect Fit
The thing about rock music, in all of the forms that I’ve worshipped, is that it’s not about thinking. You have your cerebral performers, but rock music is about the body: the corporeal sensations of fucking, moving, imbibing, ejecting. It is not about the caverns of the mind. And those caverns are where Bach spent his lifetime chasing the intricacies of forms, twisting the ideas … Continue reading “The thing about rock music…”
