Re: cd reviewing ethics Danger: long and a bit preachy!
linda ray wrote: "Nobody's Dan Rather, here, and nobody's covering Congress." (i can't help but reply!) Close but no cigar -- I DO cover congress and I did give dan a copy of the HTC cd the other day and invited him to sit in with us and sing a coupla train songs any day (we both work for the same outfit) -- I haven't written any alt-country/country reviews yet, but I will. Because writing about alt-country/country is different than covering other genres. Right now it's a fairly underground scene -- Mike and I call the "scene" in DC underground because there aren't many venues for it here and there are no radio stations that play it (no americana stations around, either -- can you believe it?) BUT the audiences are growing - rapidly, because there is the PERCEPTION of a scene. And if there's a perceived scene, there is a scene. We had a terrible ice storm here in DC last Thursday, and - despite write-ups in the Washington Post and City Paper -- I really thought the only people who'd show up for the Greetings from the District of Country cd release party at Iota would be the players. I was happily wrong -- it was jam-packed. We are CREATING a scene here! But whatever you call it -- a scene-- a "movement" or whatever -- for the most part, the publicity isn't going to be done for us - we have to do some flag-waving ourselves. That's what the punkers and new wavers did back in the late 80s in dc- we rented storefronts and begged clubs to let us play on Mondays -- we plastered the town with flyers and started fanzines. Who else was going to write for the fanzines but the musicians? People read DCenes in the record stores, saw our flyers on lightposts around Dupont Circle and Georgetown, then started hearing our records on WGTB (bless you may you rest in peace) and on WHFS (which has now turned into a slop-90s haha "alternative"-those-kids-don't-know-the-meaning-of-alternative station) and it became a very very big scene. My little band Tru Fax the Insaniacs sold out the cavernous (as in Luray Caverns it was so big) Wax Museum and 9:30 Club many times -- and so did our compatriots like the Slickee Boys and Insect Surfers and Tiny Desk Unit and Urban Verbs and many many bands. Oops, I'm getting loud. 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. A slight aside: I think that fanzine and ezine writing is a lot different than writing for, say, The Washington Post. Eric Brace writes a "Circuits" column every week for the Post's Weekend Section. It's about the clubs and bands and shows in town. He's also in the very very good Last Train Home band, but he is not allowed to write about any shows or cds that band is involved in. I asked him to be on the Greetings cd, but he said that he couldn't, because he was going to write about the cd release party. He straddles a very wide road, but he does it very very well. But I wish he were on the cd and I wish he'd play my danged barn dance!
Re: cd reviewing ethics Danger: long and a bit preachy!
In a message dated 99-01-19 17:25:31 EST, you write: But whatever you call it -- a scene-- a "movement" or whatever -- for the most part, the publicity isn't going to be done for us - we have to do some flag-waving ourselves. That's what the punkers and new wavers did back in the late 80s in dc- we rented storefronts and begged clubs to let us play on Mondays -- we plastered the town with flyers and started fanzines. Who else was going to write for the fanzines but the musicians? People read DCenes in the record stores, saw our flyers on lightposts around Dupont Circle and Georgetown, then started hearing our records on WGTB (bless you may you rest in peace) and on WHFS (which has now turned into a slop-90s haha 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. We write about each other because we're all passionate about the music enough to put together bands, and put on bluegrass festivals (in NYC!!!) and Twang Festivals and bust our butts for the music. It's hard not to become friends with the bands, especially the ones your really like, and, especially in this tiny little market, where almost every CD project is a labor love, it seems like most musicians wear more than one hat. I have muscian friends who work at labels, who work at magazines, record stores, work for publicists. Ethically, if a band was horrid and you said they would incredible because you had a crush on the lead singer, well, that would suck. But journalists have reputations to keep up as well. If you're going to rave about something in print your creditablilty as a critic is on the line. If they're great, you win, if they blow chunks, you lose (although of course then there's the matter of taste). I've written about The Shankman Twins in Bluegrass Unlimited back in the day when I was doing those kinds of things, and they had become sort of friends of mine. I had seen them at WInterhawk, on the kiddie stage, and been blown away and a series of conversations, we hung out a bit, and pretty soon I was doing an article on them. I don't think I did anything wrong. I've written about many friends of mine for the local paper here in Hoboken when I was a regular contributor, but only when I really really loved the band. I never bumped an artist I didn't know in order to give press to a friend of mine, that would be rotten. ANd I never let anyone pressure me into presenting something the way they wanted it presented. It's hard in the small world of grass roots Twang to avoid having your name on the CD of an artist you've supported and become friendly with, or to have avoided having had a beer with this artist or that, but I think the real ethical problem would be not saying something you really want to say in print because you're afraid of what someone "might think." But then again, what do i know? I'm no hot shot journalist, just a lowly musician... Elena Skye
Re[2]: cd reviewing ethics Danger: long and a bit preachy!
..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.
