You write to make an impact: A tribute to Steven Wells

i mean, i really liked this article cos right from the start he's pointing out that the main role of these legendary old nme guys was, above all else, to entertain. and be it thought or anger provoking or righteous or whatever, it was still entertainment; it was read for enjoyment, over criticism.

so he can write almost flippantly of swells changing his mind about what was good/bad, which is surely a significant flaw for any paid critic to have, yet its of little consequence cos that was part of his giant personality. the sames true for loads of those guys, they chose to be "tastemakers" and wrote this madly ENTERTAINING polemic instead of "this is good, buy it, this is bad, don't". they turned their works into art instead of criticism and i think thats whats these articles seem to be bemoaning the death of.

i mean, the whole point of working as a journalist / critic should be to report the facts in a manner so unbiased and accurate that yr audience is able to make up their own mind as to whether they'll enjoy the album/tour/whatever product. they make choices based on yr information and how good you are at getting it across to them dictates whether they'll trust you the next time.

swells and everett true and All Them Others made these personality cults to the extent that they became the central feature of whatever they were writing about. half the time it seemed they were more famous than their subject matter. how justified/worth it that was is a separate debate (i grew up in the nme/mm period he talks about, and regardless of their actual opinions they were always colourful and fun to read so id say totally. fuck you, northern uproar, you deserved it)
BUT i think its dangerous to call a death knell for music journalism cos less people listen to a bunch of ranty angry men than they used to, even if they were the best ranty angry men ever.
the boards here are full of illogical heartfelt and witty and passionate talk about things we love, and theres no I AM A TASTEMAKER egobolt cos theres so many of us. theres yr positive progress comment.

IMO alexei

I mean it's not the be-all and end-all of being a music journalist but anyone who wants to read a music review fundamentally wants to know

a) Does the person reviewing it think it is any good?

b) Why do they think it is or isn't any good? (ideally with enough info so you can tell if this person looks for the same things in music as you do)

c) Will I like this band or album?

It's all well and good if music journalist does more than that as well but certainly, with reviews, it's the item being reviewed rather than the reviewer people are interested in.

Obviously a lot of what Swells did was opinion pieces, and obviously with that you read it for the entertainment and opinions of the writer and is a different kettle of fish entirely.

see, i strongly disagree with yr first point, if we're talking about pure journalism - the facts should be what you build yr article on. and if yr a good enough writer then you make yr entertainment out of that. and, if you worked for what car or total film or edge any other non music reviewy (?) place then that'd be like, THE GOLDEN RULE.

like, i hate to bring it up again, glorious amiga power had the same personality-cult with it's writers as nme/mm did, but its motto was - DISSEMINATE ESSENTIAL INFORMATION; start with the facts and entertain-them-up. maybe thats why those guys have more solid careers now? i dunno.

its odd how music criticism has evolved on this weird branch. yr right, id far rather read about jesus rape than time change, and i've probably bought more records off the back of wild passionate writing like that than unbiased comparative analysis. but that's because the writers have been so skilled at making me empathise with them, not because theyve found a way to out hyperbole the last thing they wrote.

i think theres a line between objective criticism and pure ILOVE/HATETHIS splurge that music writers always fall around and its wildly dependant on who they are and who they're writing for.
anyway i think were sort of arguing the same point from opposite sides of the fence. yr wilson, i wont get to see yr face till the last episode.

i disagree, yr confusing opinions and facts.

as Stuart Braithwaite alludes to in his article and Everett discusses above, maybe the days of a 'tastemaker' journalist in the truest sense are gone, in that there are no publications left which can actually grant a journalist that level of power (save perhaps Pitchfork) but just because there aren't 'Big Men' in the style of Swells and Everett True: Nineties edition doesn't mean writers of their equivalent don't exists - Miss AMP, kicking_k and the man, the legend John Doran would almost certainly have been fondly regarded MM journos if they'd been about a bit earlier, it's just the question of whether or not any sort of mass forum for them exists anymore.

Which is obviously part of what this week's about, but I think maybe people are a little too soon to converge the idea of 'music journalist with personality' with 'Gonzo'; Matt Taibbi (the only reason to read Rolling Stone) is kind of semi-Gonzo and I it's better having a guy like that writing about the big issues than have him demolish a Coldplay album, awesome as that would be.

Are you seriously trying to tell us Mr True that the "tastemaker critic" isn't still prevalent in the likes of the NME? And no, I don't want tastemakers ramming the same artists down my throat every time I read one of their sodding columns. Having an opinion is one thing, but playing God (oh sorry, I mean "tastemaker") is another entirely.

lovely.

this was after reading ET's blog

What do they do? How is it different from putting bands on the cover likely to shift units / bring in web-traffic / etc., and how much does this differ from "good business sense"?

Are you talking about lazy journalists who simply don't like that many new bands? Why read them? Not being argumentative, just not sure what you mean...

I just don't see they're very comparable lines of work, a music critic obviously does not provide a service in the same way as a plumber, but that's the nature of the arts. By your own logic nobody in your record collection has as much value as a window-glazer.

...

you can choose to live your life without them, of course. no worries. depends how much you care about your health/lodgings/music really.

well I'll source my pointing / roofing experts from The Yellow Pages.

My medical experts from my referrals, public statistics & other patients' reccomendations

And my musical expertise from anyone who consistantly turns me onto stuff I like, be it friends, blogs, messageboarders, small labels, promoters or a journalist. If the latter entertains me while doing so then great - he's earning his wage, but taste / tastemaking-wise there's no difference really...not any more. Not now promos are out of the window.

People aren't stupid - you trust the opinion of anyone who consistantly performs, or someone who maybe turns you onto stuff you'd not expect to like. It's just that these people's roles are no longer really mandated or validated by who pays them.

If you're really interested in something (anything...), you read books about it, magazines, watch movies, go to events, discuss with your friends/message boarders, buy merch and probably start doing it yourself. To suggest that you 'care' about music and that consists entirely of listening to it and formulating your own opinions from the ether is ridiculous. While I don't need someone telling me to like Oasis every week, I live for writing/ers with an agenda and identifiable personality talking about what fires them up or turns them cold.

Others have mentioned the qualitative differences between, say, healthcare professionals and art critics. I think the difference there is generally so obvious that it's hard to talk about without seeming patronising, so let's narrow it down further and think about the crucial differences between even videogame and music critics.

A music critic has a very limited set of objective criteria to work with, because there are no definitive structures for music. On one hand, you could say anything that obscures the message of the music (whether that's the melody, the rhythm, the lyrics, whatever) is an objective criteria; but on the other hand, ambiguity and noise and lo-fi has its places in music too.

Not so in videogames journalism. Lots of games have an underlying structure; a set of core mechanics that can -not- be enahnced by obscuring them. Putting some distortion on the lyrics of a song may or may not enhance it; putting a filter on the screen of a game of chess so that you can't make out the pieces can only hurt the game.

But what if your filter changes the rules of the game? Perhaps it adds a sort of 'fog of war' to chess? That is the role of an expert in videogames criticism; to identify changes in the underlying ruleset, to relate them to what has gone before, and talk about how successful the individual title has accessed the rules of the basic game.

This role doesn't exist in music journalism. "Song X is better than song Y because it has better guitar playing." "Eh, I prefer the sloppy sort of solo." Perhaps the guitar player who did song X could replicate the 'sloppy' solo in song Y, and this is something that an expert music journo might like to pick up on; but this makes no functional difference whatsoever to the average listener/consumer.

So while experts are indeed experts, some experts are fundamentally more useful than others.

I mean, if I'm interested in a record, I'll read a few publications to form a consensus of sorts, for myself, and look for familiarities in their message. Surely Swells was just another facet to that consensus, and helped build and catalog a much more valued and insightful overall critical response to the release of any piece of art.

being editors who force certain artists on their writers and readership on a regular basis, who will not allow other artists not on "their radar" to be given exposure and who insist on every piece about said artists to be positive, or else.
It has been prevalent certainly for this decade, hence the reason why certain acts are pushed by every publication playing follow the leader with the next one.

or Plastic Fantastic.