Sometimes, I write a post I think is just awesome. A coupla weeks ago I did an actors who want to be rock stars post I thought was really good. The result? Nobody read it. Oh well, at least I was happy with it and at my age I do write to make myself happy.
But sometimes… sometimes I miss it entirely.
One of the worst things I’ve written in my career was an interview with the Pretenders drummer Martin Chambers for Creem. I called up and apologized to my editor Dave DiMartino and he dismissed it with an “We take the bad with the good”.
In more recent times I wrote a dreadful overview of Thin Lizzy last year. I placed a huge hurdle in front of myself. I began with hanging out with Phil Lynott after closing time at a disco called Slack Alice, but I couldn’t use the opening paragraph to work myself in to the post. I shoulda scrapped it and started again. Instead I couldn’t get past the opening and the post was a disaster.
The next time I felt completely embarrassed by a review was my Spoon at Radio City review earlier this year. I was very tired and I found them mediocre in the extreme. though they were not as bad as I claimed -not nearly. I think I got close to the truth in my review yesterday. They were an opening band doing a headline gig.
The last time I truly hated my writing was, in fact yesterday.
I don’t like my Arcade Fire review. It was crap writing and if somebody from, say, pitchfork had written it I woulda ragged em mercilessly.
Here is what happened.
1. It was a big concert and as a blogger I didn’t want to write what everybody else would do. Also, my bit about the late start was petty.
2. I was trying to write two posts at the same time, both a full frontal attack on Wim’s arrogance and an appreciation of their many talents.
3. I wrote it during the concert and on the way home and put it in drafts when I got home, forgot I hadn’t done an edit and posted. The result was a “bumbling moronic” disaster.
4. But even with the edit it didn’t work for me. If my job was to review a concert, i didn’t do it. I did something else but not that.
Look, when you write over 70 posts a week you are gonna miss it sometimes. And since being blocked isn’t an option, I will write even when I think I am sucking so as to not be blocked (same when writing fiction, I will write crap until i get my footing again and change or delete in the edit). It took months for Helen to convince me to use spellcheck. I don’t mind being scruffy, messy, as long as I am not incoherent. And I don’t want big statements -it is antithetical to what I am trying to do here. I want to be the “OMG” not the The Suburbs. I don’t mind built in obsolescence.
So I am considering reviewing the Arcade Fire concert again… seeing if I can get it right. Or not. There is always the next post.