Love this Matt and this especially resonates with me: "You may not agree with a lot of contemporary criticism – and if you don’t you’re not alone, a lot of it drives me up the wall, and I’m not even exempting my own website from this observation – but it is, essentially, a friend who is always there for you; albeit a friend who can occasionally be infuriating and difficult to get on with."
To an old timer like me, the passing of NME into rags like Q seemed like the beginning of the end, because the literary stylists were being squeezed out by the PR men. (Coincidentally it was at around this time that the medical literate stopped being literature. In fact the decline in medical publishing - most doctors are paying to publish their research now - might be a useful comparison, It's the only field I've been in where I've been constantly, exhaustingly. interacting with scam artists, pirates, robber barons and computerized bureaucratic overdetermination)., But no one then knew music writing would get this much worse, till the monthlies, Uncut, The Wire and Record Collector, are left holding the fort (but probably make a living gig for few of their contributors outside the editorial team.).
The researchers of the future are going to be looking through the dusty old hard-drives of the fans for their pdfs.
Where might there be there hope? Jessica Hopper published “The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic,” in 2015 and she's a brilliant, obsessive stylist, so hopefully women won't let themselves become "experts in a dying field" just as it opens up to them. If we're funding women's sports we could subsidize a team of rock critics till the audience loves the game again. Sure it's woke, and excludes us, but it's an angle, and seems like fun to me. And I think rock books will always be read
Me, I'm looking forward to reading "Freaks Out! Weirdos, Misfits and Deviants – The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock ’n’ Roll" by Luke Haines. No there's a stylist, a veritable Wodehouse of our times.
I'm sure new things will pop up as the magazines and newspaper inserts continue their decline George. For me, I'm enjoying connecting with music writers here on Substack. I know this platform has its share of issues, so I'm waiting and watching it all closely to see what happens, but this mostly reminds me of the mid 2000s when the internet began taking over from print. This is just the next big media transfer I reckon.
Timely... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/30/pitchfork-q-music-reviews-critics-songs
Love this Matt and this especially resonates with me: "You may not agree with a lot of contemporary criticism – and if you don’t you’re not alone, a lot of it drives me up the wall, and I’m not even exempting my own website from this observation – but it is, essentially, a friend who is always there for you; albeit a friend who can occasionally be infuriating and difficult to get on with."
To an old timer like me, the passing of NME into rags like Q seemed like the beginning of the end, because the literary stylists were being squeezed out by the PR men. (Coincidentally it was at around this time that the medical literate stopped being literature. In fact the decline in medical publishing - most doctors are paying to publish their research now - might be a useful comparison, It's the only field I've been in where I've been constantly, exhaustingly. interacting with scam artists, pirates, robber barons and computerized bureaucratic overdetermination)., But no one then knew music writing would get this much worse, till the monthlies, Uncut, The Wire and Record Collector, are left holding the fort (but probably make a living gig for few of their contributors outside the editorial team.).
The researchers of the future are going to be looking through the dusty old hard-drives of the fans for their pdfs.
Where might there be there hope? Jessica Hopper published “The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic,” in 2015 and she's a brilliant, obsessive stylist, so hopefully women won't let themselves become "experts in a dying field" just as it opens up to them. If we're funding women's sports we could subsidize a team of rock critics till the audience loves the game again. Sure it's woke, and excludes us, but it's an angle, and seems like fun to me. And I think rock books will always be read
Me, I'm looking forward to reading "Freaks Out! Weirdos, Misfits and Deviants – The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock ’n’ Roll" by Luke Haines. No there's a stylist, a veritable Wodehouse of our times.
I'm sure new things will pop up as the magazines and newspaper inserts continue their decline George. For me, I'm enjoying connecting with music writers here on Substack. I know this platform has its share of issues, so I'm waiting and watching it all closely to see what happens, but this mostly reminds me of the mid 2000s when the internet began taking over from print. This is just the next big media transfer I reckon.