When the public and the private merge in a music critics writing…

We can’t all be former Creem editor Lester Bangs but some of us are more like him than we are like, say, New York Times Jon Parales. What I mean is: writers like myself and Helen Bach and Mary Magpie (as opposed to Brett Jensen and Mike Nessing) write about ourselves, put our selves front and center. It isn’t about the music but our reaction to it. Bangs put himself in the center of his writings and at my most objective, I still put myself in the middle. read Stone, Spin, EW… there’s nobody there…


Of all the things that made Creem different than, say, Musician, this is top of the list. We practise music criticism as self-exoneration. Yesterday I wrote a Thanksgiving post about an ex-girlfriend who had an abortion around Thanksgiving and tied it to a Ryan Adams story.


I tried to cross the line, to see how far I could pull away from music reviewing and still be a music reviewer. I wondered (and I wonder) what does it mean as far as the position we take in our writing to blog as opposed to write for a tab or a magazine.


Firstly, it means what I just said: the subjective is objective, it is about sharng ourselves while we share our opinions and by doing so highlighting our prejudices. It also means having a deadline of now. We watch, we listen and we review almost in real time. My deadline, even Mary, who is twelve years olds, deadline is NOW. Just about seven months into this I am always writing and I expect the same (at least beg for the same) of those who write with me.


And what we lose in doing so is the satisfaction of being happy with a post you’ve written for more than a moment. They are beyond ephemeral for the writers: they are like a thought passing thru your mind and into your memory tracks. And when you read what we all write I think all of us are constantly saying this is what we love about music and this is why.


So did I cross the line yesterday? Probably. But it doesn’t matter because it is already eight posts in the past and we are all still writing.

PS: yeah, yeah I’ll get around to Dear Science