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Subject: RTP-area local music and culture

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  • From: bendy <bendy AT blackstrap.org>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Eh, Whatever
  • Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:27:44 -0400



grady wrote:
(you hope) transform you into that guy who hangs around the Chateau Marmont with Courtney Love for three days & writes all about the experience in Rolling Stone for a cool $8k.


Sounds to me like "who is my audience?" was answered by "my fellow Pitchfork freelancers,"

And Pitchfork pays, what, $40 a review? That'll buy you ten cups of Starbucks to fuel your next review. Even if a writer struggles and strives and gets into Pitchfork, it's not like they're suddenly in the world of Camereon Crowe in Almost Famous.

The continuing disconnect between how the music scene is evolving and how it worked before filesharing/blogs/protools extends way beyond folks who draw RIAA salaries.

This is the anecdote I always keep in mind if I ever have the urge to be snarky about an unestablished band: I gotta friend who works for an avant garde press. They publish and translate and reissue a lot of stuff that has no commercial prospects but has a solid academic cult. One of his projects was a reprinting a book by an unknown-but-still-alive writer, a book he rediscovered and was charmed by, and there were enough NEA funds left over that he could take it on as a pet project.

He sends out a as many promo copies as allows. The only place the book get reviewed is Art Forum. And the critic, who my friend knows, panned it. Next time he sees the guy, he say something like, "Come on man, that book is like a tiny flower that had barely had a chance of being noticed, and walked over and stomped on it."

Yeah, there's bad independent music out there, but it's not being cynically foisted on anyone. It's the product of earnest effort, and probably has an audience somewhere. If something doesn't work for you as a critic, you can always be a journalist, and report on what you think they're trying to do.

In 1973, there were what, a dozen nationally distributed labels and five national rock publications? There was some serious scarcity a work, and a ton of money to be divided among a small elite of staffers, musicians and journalists. That's how they afforded all that coke. If you think anything like that still exists, and that you could make into that world if it did, you're delusional. That, or such a huge asshole, you'd be rich already, doing something that's actually valued under the current economy.

Bendy!




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