>>..Anyway, the idea is to grow a "scene" the way we grew up those many
years ago. And if i have to put on my own barn dances and publish my own
little fanzine or ezine or whatever to help it grow, I'll do it.
>>
>I have to say I agree. We have a little bluegrass fanzine called The Burr
>here in the NYC area and we all write about each other in it. And it gets a
>bit of attention for all the people on the bluegrass scene here, and really
>encouraged a lot of growth in that little fledgling scene. It created a local
>forum.
There's a professionalism vs. scene-support divide in the
music-journalism biz that's hard to cope with. At the so-called
alternative-weekly I wrote for in Montreal, friendships with musicians
were considered qualifications for the job -- the one leverage we had
against the grown-up media in getting stories, interviews etc first.
There was an unspoken understanding you wouldn't stand to make $ off
promoting anyone, but that was about the only limit. I don't think it
was *entirely* healthy - I was less comfortable with folks around me
who had the same kind of friendships with major-label record and radio
hacks and who felt obliged to do favours for them re: shit music. But
since I specialized in the weird stuff - experimental indie rock,
avant-garde stuff, non-dance electronics and country/roots material -
it was easy for me to feel that I was a part of what little scene
existed in those areas, but as a writer rather than as a musician or
promoter. It sorta made life worth living - and while I might have
overstated things when I loved what a local musician was doing, along
with the "inside" role it seemed to me I was constrained to offer
constructive criticism or even a hard jab here and there, since a
critical ear and incisive pen was what, according to my lights, I had
to offer to help improve things.
Working now at a major metropolitan daily (I just like the way the
words go together) - and not being a full-time critic, but fighting
for space to do some music writing here & there - the divide is a
little harder, 'cuz there's none of the idealized marriage between the
paper and a scene that many alt-weeklies at least imagine themselves
to have. Mind you, it is fun to try to sneak things in (like my
Magnetic Fields & Richard Buckner pieces this summer) that the paper
just wouldn't normally print. And it's also fun to play the voice on
the mountaintop judging big cultural trends.
BUT - north american media's so hamstrung by the Voice of Objectivity,
and a whole overwrought ethical system that goes along with it, that
suddenly being friends with people you've praised (even because you've
praised them) is an issue. Frankly I think culture, unlike straight
politics, is so far from being a matter of objectivity that most of
these systems of thought are insane. I heard Frank Rich, former
theatre critic of the NY Times, say that during his long period as
critic he avoided having any social contact with people in the
theatre. Which means that as a reviewer you miss whole levels of
insight you can provide to an audience, and set yourself up as some
sort of vehicle of divine intervention. I'd rather read someone like
Gary Indiana, whose allegiances and positions are clear and whose
point-of-view is the spirit motor of his writing, anyday.
A friend who read my Buckner piece thought it was well-written but
criticized it for sounding "a bit too much like it was written by a
fan." To me that was praise - the aesthetic of the old punk and other
scene magazines that demanded and got great writing but great writing
by people who were clearly passionate about the art form and the
specific music they addressed. That's the kind of thing that raises
criticism to an art. All else is foul wind.
And if you can afford to take the time to write for the kind of
small-scale, non-paying miracles like the bluegrass zine Elena's
talking about, that's a sort of secular heaven.
carl w.
