De-Mystifying My Job: Or, How To Get A Job Like Mine

This time, I've been silent for a reason! I've been working on this monster -- the first of several Feature articles I hope to post here. I hope you enjoy it.
-db

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Have you ever seen Kurt Vonnegut give a talk? At this point, he is so old that he is basically a dying lung that just happens to have a body around it. He spends equal time in his speech talking and coughing. So I recommend that if you haven’t seen him yet, you do soon. Every time Vonnegut speaks, he says that the title of his speech is “How To Get A Job Like Mine.” He then proceeds to talk about whatever the fuck he feels like.

I thought that was pretty fucking rad. So I’m going to take that as my starting point from which to talk about exactly what it is that I do as the columnist for Local Motion and as a freelance music writer. Of course, there will be stops along the way ;)

There’s pretty much a constant flood of music-related e-mails in my Gmail account. It’s pretty intimidating. Between show dates, tour announcements, requests for press or reviews, and my conversations with artists, it is easily the biggest, dirtiest, busiest inbox I’ve ever seen. Reader feedback is few and far between—it comes in spades when I don’t like a band, though. Imagine that.

I spend a good chunk of time every week sorting through this cluster fuck trying to pull out good show dates and plug them into my calendar. I use a Palm Pilot, which is severely dorky, but dude—it works. There came a point where I just couldn’t remember the date and location of every show I wanted to go to—and I was slaughtering a small rainforest with all the post-it notes I was using to fail at keeping track. Anyway, I’m good with gizmos, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to get on board this Palm thing.

Meanwhile, I get a package in the mail once or twice a week from local artists and PR people who have CDs they want me to check out. This is one of the best parts of my job. I get free CDs in the mail!

Of course, there’s a disclaimer: a lot of them suck. I don’t say this to be dismissive or rude, nor do I say it because I’m trying to project some image of myself as a morbidly cynical critic. (See Pitchfork.com if you want kids who are brilliant at that—and I mean “brilliant” as the worst possible diss imaginable.) It’s just that a lot of these CDs seriously fucking suck. There’s no apologizing for them. There’s no “maybe I need to give this time to grow on me.” You listen to twenty seconds and you’re like, “yup. Coaster.”

Which reminds me: I love it when people write letters to the editor where they say something like, “I bet you just listen to the first two tracks of a CD and then dismiss it.” Um, yeah, I totally do! And you’re telling me that’s unprofessional? Dude, shut up. If you’ve ever changed the channel on your television set, or told your friend to switch the radio station because you hate a song, or sold a CD that didn’t turn out to be as good as you thought it would when you first bought it, then you’ve done the same thing. Critics and writers aren’t some zen, holistic people who give every single piece of artwork a full, undivided chance just because (gasp) it’s art. We have lives, too. Sitting through an entire CD when you can tell after the first track that it’s crappy or amateur—I don’t call that professional. I call that a waste of time.

It’s funny: when you’re surrounded by tons and tons of art, it kind of becomes more holy and less holy at the same time. I feel less callous than ever dismissing someone’s “masterpiece” if I don’t think it has artistic/aesthetic merit (although, at the end of the day, it’s still just one guy’s opinion); but at the same time, I get more amped then ever when something really wows me. Before, it would just be a quiet little surprise in my personal world—now, it makes me want to tell the world about it. And I do.

So anyway. Sucky CDs. Some I sell online; some I donate to libraries (like the one in Derby Neck) who maintain collections of local music; some I give to friends; some I put in the “free stuff” box at Metropolis Records. I never throw them out. I may not like them, but someone out there will, so I try to get them closer to that someone.

The weekend eventually comes. Sometime around Thursday afternoon/evening I start trying to nail down just which shows I’m going to attend that weekend. Sometimes it’s obvious—like if there’s a big festival, a CD release, a good artist in a genre I don’t review much, or a venue I’ve just discovered that sounds hot. Other times, I use those resources you see over on the right side of the screen, and between them and my inbox, I can usually scrounge up something interesting :)

I hit the road in my trusty bucket, usually listening to downtempo techno, death metal, local CDs I just got in the mail, or MP3 CDs of stuff I’ve recently downloaded. (I download a lot of music. I’ve got about 40 gigs of music that I like, and another 15 gigs of albums I have yet to listen to thoroughly.)

When I get to the show, I play it by ear. If it’s at some big venue, I do the press thing and get in for free (another huge job perk); if it’s a small show being run by scene kids or the bands themselves, I pay the admission like anyone else. (I mean, it goes straight into the gas tanks of the bands, so it would be pretty rude not to.)

If the band sucks, I usually slink away and find another show to write about. In general I prefer to use my handful of words each week to point people in the direction of good stuff, rather than warn them about bad stuff. If the band is good, I snap a few pictures with my little Cannon PowerShot—it doesn’t have a very impressive zoom, but it gets decent resolution, and, most importantly, it’s TINY and INDESTRUCTABLE.

I get back home, sit down at my desk, offload the pictures onto my computer—and usually fall asleep.

Sometime on Sunday I start “sketching” my column. I write out my strongest impressions of the bands and venues and crowds I saw during the weekend. Sometimes it’s a particular musical moment, like an unexpected twist in the song or a crafty technical flourish. Sometimes it’s noticing who the crowd responds to. Sometimes it’s noticing how the band shapes their sound to fit a given venue. I record brief accounts of these moments, and also jot down words that I feel accurately describe the band’s sound.

At this point I let the writing part sit and stew for a little while. It’s amazing what good ideas one can get in the bathroom :) I also pick out the best pictures of the band, throw them into Photoshop real quick, make minor touch-ups and alterations, track down the names of any band members in the photos, and upload the photos to my editor.

Then comes the tough part. I settle down with a couple beers (if it’s Sunday night) or coffee and a muffin (it it’s Monday morning) and crank out the column. Some weeks it pulls itself together right in front of my eyes, and I have a winner in less than two hours. Most weeks, though, it takes between 3 and 4 hours to write. Finally, I title it (SO HARD to do—dude, a good title is so hard to come by), and ship it off to my editor.

And if the writing process has gone anything like it did this morning, I usually stand up from my keyboard and faceplant into my pillow.